Eco Health
EcoHealth is an emerging field of study researching how changes in the earth’s ecosystems affect human health. It has many prospects. EcoHealth examines changes in the biological, physical, social and economic environments and relates these changes to human health. Examples of these changes and their effects abound. Common examples include increases in asthma rates due to air pollution, PCB contamination of game fish in the Great Lakes of the United States, and habitat fragmentation leading to increasing rates of Lyme disease.
Recently virulent new infectious diseases such as SARS, Ebola virus, Nipah virus, bird flu and hantavirus have all been found to result from ecosystem change created by humans. These diseases have high death rates and very few effective therapies.
EcoHealth is bringing together physicians, veterinarians, ecologists, economists, social scientists, planners and others to study and understand how ecosystem changes affect human health. EcoHealth strives to provide innovative, practical solutions to reduce or reverse the negative health effects of ecosystem change.
Read more about Eco Health: History, How Is EcoHealth Different?, Examples, EcoHealth 101: Education For Ecosystem Approaches, Journals, Books and Papers, Organizations, Conferences, Businesses
Famous quotes containing the words eco and/or health:
“I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“To thee, fair Freedom! I retire
From flattery, cards, and dice, and din:
Nor art thou found in mansions higher
Than the low cot, or humble inn.
‘Tis here with boundless pow’r I reign;
And ev’ry health which I begin
Converts dull port to bright champagne;
Such Freedom crowns it, at an inn.”
—William Shenstone (1714–1763)