Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a new study detailing the effects of the environment on public health. According to the report, over 13 million preventable deaths occur annually as a result of unhealthy living and working conditions.
While the link between the environment and human well-being has long been recognized, the connection is often difficult to measure. WHO hopes that this study will be a first step in quantifying, on a country-by-country basis, environmental effects on health. These data, in turn, should provide policymakers and health officials the foundation they need to begin reducing environment-related death rates.
Report Findings
The WHO study provides concrete statistics on how a variety of environmental hazards can lead to significant amounts of death, disease, and disability. In particular, WHO researchers attempted to analyze modifiable environmental factors that are "realistically amenable to change using available technologies, policies, and preventative and public health measures."
Eight environmental factors were examined in the study:
These environmental hazards, when combined, account for an estimated 24% of global disease and 23% of all deaths. Thus, while death and disease will always be major aspects of the human condition, a significant portion of the world's current health problems are largely preventable.
Source: WHO 2007
Two important trends in global environmental health emerge from this analysis.
First, every nation suffers from environment-related death and disease. Rich or poor, tropical or temperate, governments and health officials could reduce environmental hazards and save lives as a result. For example, the WHO estimates that in the United States, 398,000 deaths per year (13%) are environment-related. Outdoor air pollution contributes over 41,000 premature American deaths to this total.
Second, while environmental health is a concern everywhere, poor and underdeveloped nations are particularly susceptible. The countries with the highest incidence of environment-related health issues are Angola, Burkina Faso and Mali. Angola, for example, has one of the highest rates of diarrheal disease in the world, with approximately 43,000 deaths occurring each year due to poor water and sanitation.
Source: WHO 2007
Improving Environmental Health
WHO's analysis also illustrates how these discouraging trends can be reversed though simple, cost-effective interventions that can dramatically improve many of these problems, especially in under-developed regions.
Cleaner cooking and heating fuels and increased ventilation in homes could drastically improve indoor air quality. The result would be a concomitant decrease in the high rates of respiratory disease found in women and children throughout the developing world. Likewise, promoting water treatment and better water storage could help to eliminate hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths caused by diarrhea each year.
With this report, officials hope that changes such as these will become more likely, and that environmental health will continue to improve worldwide.
RELATED LINKS:
WHO's Global Environmental Change division
WRI's work on "Ecosystem Services"
WRI's work on sustainable transportation - including traffic safety and air pollution
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