The term "healthy environment" is a huge one, encompassing many different meanings. To complicate the matter, environments that are healthy for one population aren’t always healthy for another. This makes it hard to agree upon what is needed in order to create a healthy environment, and to determine what has priority in this environment, such as humans, other animals, insects or plants. Usually, when people use this term, they refer to a human environment that would pose few risks for disease or health hazards. Our health depends mainly on our way of life: Our actual food, the pollution in our environment, the traffic, a lot of types of radiations around us, the noise and so on. “Progress” is also a danger for human beings, if we understand it without taking care of Nature.
Environmental Factors Affecting Health Environmental factors affect human health in important ways, both positive and negative.
Positive environmental factors sustain health, and promoting them is preventive medicine. They include:
sources of nutrition (farming: soil quality, water availability, biodiversity, genetically modified organisms (GMOs); hunting, fishing: wildlife, fish populations.) water (drinking, cooking; cleaning / sanitation); air quality; ozone layer (protection from UV, cancers, etc);
space for exercise and recreation;
sanitation / waste recycling and disposal
However….
Negative environmental
factors
threaten our health
They include