Environmental

Health Concept
Dr. Retno Palupi, drg.,MKes

IKGM 1

Fakultas Kedokteran Gigi

 Definition of Environment
✘ Environment is “the circumstances, objects, or conditions by
which one is surrounded.”
✘ Environment is : “the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic
factors (as climate, soil, and living things) that act upon an
organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine
its form and survival.”
✘ If our focus is on human health, we can consider the environment
to be all the external (or nongenetic) factors—physical,
nutritional, social, behavioral, and others—that act on humans.

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 Definition of Health
✘ Definition of health: “A state of complete physical, mental, and social
well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” (WHO,
2005)
✘ Environmental health has been defi ned in many ways
✘ Some definitions make reference to the relationship between people and
the environment, evoking an ecosystem concept, and others focus more
narrowly on addressing particular environmental conditions.
✘ Some focus on abating hazards, and others focus on promoting health-
enhancing environments.
✘ Some focus on physical and chemical hazards, and others extend more
broadly to aspects of the social and built environments.

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 Definition of Environmental Health
✘ Environmental health has been defined in many ways .
✘ Some definitions make reference to the relationship between
people and the environment, evoking an ecosystem concept, and
others focus more narrowly on addressing particular
environmental conditions.
✘ Some focus on abating hazards, and others focus on promoting
health-enhancing environments.
✘ Some focus on physical and chemical hazards, and others extend
more broadly to aspects of the social and built environments.

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 Definition of Environmental Health
✘ Environmental health comprises those aspects of human health,
including quality of life, that are determined by physical, chemical,
biological, social and psychosocial factors in the environment. It also
refers to the theory and practice of assessing, correcting, controlling,
and preventing those factors in the environment that can potentially
affect adversely the health of present and future generations” (World
Health Organization [WHO], 2004).
✘ “Environmental health is the branch of public health that protects
against the effects of environmental hazards that can adversely affect
health or the ecological balances essential to human health and
environmental quality”

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 Definition of Environmental Health
✘ “Environmental health comprises those aspects of human health and
disease that are determined by factors in the environment. It also refers
to the theory and practice of assessing and controlling factors in the
environment that can potentially affect health.
✘ It includeas both the direct pathological effects of chemicals, radiation
and some biological agents, and the effects (often indirect) on health and
wellbeing of the broad physical, psychological, social and aesthetic
environment, which includes housing, urban developmental land use and
transport”
(European Charter on Environment and Health; see WHO, Regional Offi ce
for Europe, 1990).

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 Definition of Environmental Health
✘ ““Environmental health is the discipline that focuses on the
interrelationships between people and their environment, promotes
human health and well-being, and fosters a safe and healthful
environment” (National Center for Environmental Health, cited in
DHHS, 1998).

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 Environmental as a Life Support

✘ the benefits provided by ecosystems are indispensable to the well-being of

people throughout the world.
✘ These benefi ts include food, natural fibers, a steady supply of clean water,
regulation of some pests and diseases, medicinal substances, recreation,
and protection from natural hazards such as storms and floods.
✘ Yet because of the complexity of ecosystems, the innumerable ways in
which human well-being is linked to ecosystem productivity, and the
limitations of economic methods and data, it is not yet possible to
accurately measure the economic value of goods and services provided by
ecosystems
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 Environmental as a Life Support System
Ecosystem services devides into four categories:
1) provisioning services,
2) regulating services,
3) supporting services,
4) cultural services.
The functions particularly relevant to environmental health are the
regulating services:
 provision and purification of water,
 recycling of wastes, and
 regulation of climate and of infectious diseases.
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 Environmental as a Life Support System
-- Provision of clean water--
✘ Ecosystems, especially forests, act both as reservoirs, holding water much like
giant sponges, and as pumps. Through the process of evapotranspiration, forest
vegetation draws water from the ground and releases it into the atmosphere.
✘ These functions, which contribute much to the hydrologic cycle, effectively
recycle used as well as unused surface water, remove impurities, and deliver
fresh water to places from which it can be harvested. Fresh water is a key
resource for human health, vital for growing food, drinking, washing, cooking,
and diluting and recycling wastes.
✘ Unfortunately, as a result of ecosystem degradation, population growth, and
inadequate water treatment and distribution infrastructure, over a billion
people in the world do not have access to clean water.
✘ Overall, the annual burden of disease resulting from inadequate water,
sanitation, and hygiene totals 1.7 million deaths and the loss of more than 54
million healthy life years

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Hydrologic Cycle

Water continually moves through

various states. The uphill loop is
driven by solar energy, and the
downhill loop provides goods and
services such as rainfall. (In Odum’s
notation, the pointed icon on the
uphill loop represents the interaction
of energy flows to produce higher
quality energy, and the bullet-shaped
icons on the downhill loop represent
conversion and concentration of solar
energy.) 11
Environmental as a Life Support System
--Waste recycling (nutrients, pathogens, and breakdown of toxins)-
✘ Ecosystem processes resulting in the breakdown of organic wastes and the
filtering of suspended matrial, including pathogens, are effective
mechanisms for cleansing the environment of wastes.
✘ Natural ecosystems can be so effective at purifying and detoxifying wastewater
that some municipalities have restored wetlands in order to use them for tertiary
sewage treatment.
✘ The filtering and microbial degradation properties of wetlands, such as marshes,
swamps, and streamside, zones consisting of soil perennially saturated with water,
are capable of physically removing or breaking down even the most toxic chemicals
and heavy metals as well as human pathogens.

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Environmental as a Life Support System
--Waste recycling (nutrients, pathogens, and breakdown of toxins)

✘ wetlands are among the world’s most endangered ecosystems, as coastal

wetlands and their upstream tributary rivers and streams are often filled
and paved over for urban development or are otherwise functionally
destroyed by misdirected flood management programs.

✘ The loss of this wasterecycling capacity has now led to local and sometimes global
waste accumulation, as the ecosystems that remain are unable to absorb and
remove the onslaught of contaminants.

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Environmental as a Life Support System
-- Regulation of infectious disease--
✘ An ecosystem’s characteristics, particularly its landscape ecology, strongly
influence the incidence of zoonotic and vector-borne diseases in local
human populations and the potential for the emergence of new,
epidemiologically significant diseases.
✘ Intact ecosystems, with their innumerable interspecies relationships and
heterogeneous landscape structures, offer a series of checks and balances
that tend to moderate population dynamics and prevent any particular
species (including host, vector, or pathogen species) from dispersing widely
or becoming superabundant, or both.
✘ This moderating function tends to break down with the clearing or fragmenting of
natural ecosystems, such as the logging of forests or the expansion of cropland and
pasture.

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Environmental as a Life Support System
-- Regulation of infectious disease--

✘ Artificial changes in the distribution and availability of surface waters,

such as occur through dam construction, irrigation, and stream diversion,
have a similar effect.
✘ Intensification of animal husbandry and livestock production practices
resulting in increased concentration, movement, and novel mixing of
animal species and of animal products and waste facilitates the cultivation
and maintenance of new pathogens strains, as evidenced in the
development of avian infl uenza (H5N1).

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Environmental as a Life Support System
-- Regulation of climate. --

✘ Natural ecosystems regulate the global climate system by acting as sinks

for greenhouse gasses.
✘ In particular, the clearing and burning of tropical forests around the world
has been a major contributor to the accelerated increase in carbon dioxide
in the Earth’s atmosphere and thus to global warming in recent decades.
✘ At the regional and local levels, natural and managed ecosystems strongly
infl uence climate due to physical properties that affect the fl ows of energy
and rainfall.

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Environmental as a Life Support System
-- Regulation of climate. --
✘ For example, the conversion of vegetated land cover to hardened surfaces
associated with urbanization produces the urban heat island effect, elevating
the temperature of a city and the surrounding region.
✘ In this way ecosystems may moderate or intensify extreme weather events
such as heat waves, freezing weather, storms, and associated floods and
coastal storm surges—events thought to be increasing due to anthropogenic
global climate change.
✘ Intact ecosystems limit the degree and extent of adverse weather impacts on
public health, directly through reducing deaths and injuries and indirectly
through limiting economic disruption, infrastructure damage, and population
displacement.
✘ Ecosystems and the ways they are managed can also have a strong negative or
positive impact on air quality and its associated health risks.
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Thanks!
Any questions?
You can find me at
retno-p@fkg.unair.ac.id

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