The Environment—Its Impact on Your Health
RECENTLY, Dr. Walter Reed, of the World Resources Institute, told UN Radio that man’s impact on global environmental systems is now at a scale where man is “disrupting these cycles in a very major way.” Dr. Reed says that this environmental disruption, in turn, is contributing to health threats worldwide. In an article reviewing the book World Resources 1998-99, the magazine Our Planet, published by the United Nations, lists some of these threats to people’s health. Among them are the following:
□ Indoor and outdoor air pollution has been linked to respiratory infections that cause the death of almost four million children each year.
□ A lack of clean water and of sanitation contributes to the spread of diarrheic diseases that claim the lives of three million children each year. For instance, cholera, long banished from Latin America, reappeared there and killed 11,000 people in 1997 alone.
Each day more than 30,000 children in the poorest regions of the world reportedly die of diseases related to the environment. Just try to imagine that—30,000 persons every single day of the year, enough to fill all the seats of some 75 jumbo jets!
Environmental threats to health are, however, not limited to the developing world. Our Planet notes that “more than 100 million people in Europe and North America are still exposed to unsafe air,” which contributes to a dramatic rise in the occurrence of asthma. At the same time, increasing international travel and trade have contributed to the appearance of some 30 new infectious diseases in the developed world. In addition, the magazine reported that previously controlled diseases “have returned with a vengeance.”
The tragedy is that most of these diseases related to the environment can be prevented with existing technologies and at relatively low cost. For example, significant improvements in health could be achieved by providing all people with clean water and with sanitation. How much money would it take to realize this goal? UN Radio reports that according to the United Nations Human Development Report 1998, providing clean water and sanitation for everyone would cost 11 billion dollars—that is less than the amount of money that Europeans spend on ice cream in one year!
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Photo: Casas, Godo-Foto