Environmental health refers to the elements present in the environment that affect and influence human public health. As established by the WHO Regional Office for Europe, the United Nations health agency, Environmental health refers to both direct pathological effect of different elements including pollution, radiation, chemicals and other various biological elements and factors, and the direct and indirect effects on the health status of the social and physical environment, including urban development and housing." (WHO Regional Office for Europe, 1990). On the other hand, community health is focused on the analysis of the health status of a specific group of individuals living in a particular geographic area, in order to determine which policies, known as "Community Health Activities" (James F. McKenzie et al., 2011) can be used to improve, maintain and protect their general wellbeing by attempting to adapt the healthcare system to solve the problems that threaten and affect their health of the group members.
Community health can be integrated by private as well as public actions. Public health refers to all the activities that "we as a society do collectively to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy" (Institute of Medicine, 1988). This paper will analyse how environmental dangers affect community and environmental health. To do so, this essay will try to identify a number of these factors and the main factors that generate them and how they affect public health, looking at the measures that could be taken at a national and international level in order to determine the level of usefulness of international agreements in terms of environmental and community health. As well as analyzing these issues, this essay will also contain some personal conclusions about the subject. This essay will intend to argue that, despite the difficulty that states experience when trying to reach a common set of public health guidelines, international agreements are useful and necessary to attempt to ameliorate environmental health risks and dangers.
[...] International objectives to ensure and protect community and environmental health are necessary to provide those guidelines. Human beings are sharing a common planet, and there are numerous issues such as climate change affect community health and cannot be tackled independently by specific countries. There is a need for a common voice and a set of shared values that preserve the environment and the health of the individuals coexisting in this planet. BIBLIOGRAPHY Damstra, T. et al. (2002) “Persistent organic pollutants: potential health effects?”. [...]
[...] (2003) “Health hazards and waste management”, in Impact of environmental pollution on health: Balancing risk. http://bmb.oxfordjournals.org/content/68/1/183.full Turkish Court of Accounts (2007) “Environmental Auditing and Supreme Audit Institutions”.www.sayistay.gov.tr/english_tca/145_Years/Symposium/IntSympEnA uditing.pdf United Nations Environment Programme. “The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants”. (UNEP/POPS/CONF/2). Available from: URL: http://www.chem.unep.ch/sc/documents/convtext_en.pdf Von Schirnding, Y. et al. (2002) “International environmental law and global public health”. Bulletin of the World Health Organization; 80: 970- 974. WHO Regional Office for Europe (1990) “Environment and health: the European charter and commentary”. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Publications, European Series, No. 35. [...]
[...] Why international agreements are necessary to protect environmental health and community health? INTRODUCTION Environmental health refers to the elements present in the environment that affect and influence human public health. As established by the WHO Regional Office for Europe, the United Nations health agency, Environmental health refers to both direct pathological effect of different elements including pollution, radiation, chemicals and other various biological elements and factors, and the direct and indirect effects on the health status of the social and physical environment, including urban development and housing.” (WHO Regional Office for Europe, 1990). [...]
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