9 / 17
Page 52
conferenceseries
.com
Volume 5, Issue 2 (Suppl)
Occup Med Health Aff, an open access journal
ISSN: 2329-6879
Environmental Health 2017
September 7-8, 2017
September 7-8, 2017 | Paris, France
Environmental Health & Global Climate Change
2
nd
International Conference on
ENVIRONMENTALHAZARDS AND HUMAN HEALTH
Anas H Al-Sharqi
a
a
Azadi Teaching Hospital, Iraq
A
n environmental hazard is a substance, state or event which has the potential to threaten the surrounding natural
environment and/or adversely affect human's health. This term incorporates topics like pollution, natural disasters and
human made hazards. Health studies investigate the human health effects of exposure to environmental hazards ranging from
chemical pollutants to natural, technologic or terrorist disasters. The environment in which we live can be considered as having
three fundamental sets of components, physical, chemical, biological. Associations between an exposure and an adverse health
effect do not, on their own, prove that the former is the cause of the latter. Many other non-causal associations could explain
the findings. Physical hazards involve environmental hazards that can cause harm with or without contact. Examples are
earthquakes, electromagnetic fields, floods, light pollution, noise pollution, vibration, x-rays etc. Radioactivity is associated
with an exposure dependent risk of some cancers notably leukemia. The scientific evidence of adverse health effects from
general environmental exposure to these fields is "not proven". If there are adverse effects yet to be proven, the risk is probably
likely to be small. Chemical substances causing significant damage to the environment. Tobacco smoke is the single biggest
known airborne chemical risk to health, whether measured in terms of death rates or ill-health. To a much lesser degree of
risk, these adverse effects apply to non-smokers exposed passively to side stream tobacco smoke. Health effects of concern are
asthma, bronchitis, lung cancer and similar lung diseases, and there is good evidence relating an increased risk of symptoms of
these diseases with increasing concentration of Sulphur dioxide, ozone and other pollutants. Biohazards generally fall into two
broad categories: those which produce adverse health effects through infection (microorganisms, viruses or toxins) and those
which produce adverse effects in non-infective (allergic) ways.
Occup Med Health Aff 2017, 5:2(Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/2329-6879-C1-032