Climate Change and Environmental Health

Environmental epidemiology is a branch of epidemiology concerned with defining how environmental exposures impact human health. This field pursues to understand how various external risk factors may prompt to or protect against disease, illness, injury, evolving defects, or death. Epidemiological investigations can be grouped into four broad categories: Observational epidemiology, experimental epidemiology, natural experiments, and Theoretical epidemiology. Several types study designs and measures of relationship are used in these investigations.

Environmental epidemiology is one of the most important tools used in environmental administration decision making due to its capacity to measure and monitor environmental threats in different settings and measure their health impact on lives at risk.

Uses of Environmental Epidemology

For community diagnosis of the presence, nature and distribution of health and disease among the population, and the dimensions of these in incidence, prevalence, and mortality; taking into account that society is changing and health problems are changing. To study the workings of health services.

These consist of air pollution, depletion of ozone layer, pollution of drinking water supplies, damping of hazardous wastes, electromagnetic radiation, and agricultural practices that have hostile environmental effects.

Environmental technology is also known as 'green' or 'clean' technology and denotes to the progress of new technologies which target to protect, monitor or decrease the harmful impact on environment and the consumption of resources. Prominent examples include solar and wind energy, water desalination (the removal of salt or other minerals from saline water), electric vehicles, and pyrolysis (thermochemical decomposition of organic material).

Despite the negative impact of technology on environment, a recent rise in global concern for climate change has led to the development of new environmental technology aiming to help solve some of the biggest environmental concerns that we face as a society through a shift towards a more sustainable, low-carbon economy.

3 ways technologies are helping us save the environment :

•   Developing renewable energy technology
•   Saving endangered wildlife
•   Adopting a smarter lifestyle

Environmental monitoring

A important part of environmental technology is environmental monitoring, which is the developments and activities performed in demand to monitor the quality of the environment. Environmental monitoring has occurred as a crucial component of governmental and private organisation strategies across the globe.

Importance of environmental technology

Technology triggered several ecological and social problems, but it is also  vital to lecture to globally friendly degradation, climate change, food scarcity, waste management, and other insistent global challenges.

Environmental toxicology  is concerned with the assessment of toxic constituents in the environment. There are many sources of environmental toxicity that can lead to the presence of toxicants in our food, water and air. These sources include organic and inorganic pollutants, pesticides and biological agents, all of which can have harmful effects on living organisms. There can be so called point sources of pollution, for instance the drains from a specific factory, but also non-point sources (diffuse sources) like the rubber from car tires that contain numerous chemicals and heavy metals that are spread in the environment.

Toxins affect the environment and organisms in a variety of ways, from having little negative impact on certain abiotic factors or resistant organisms to killing animals and destroying major components of ecosystems. The extent of damage depends on the type and structure of the toxic substance; the age, the size, and the species of the organism; and the temperature and the physical and chemical characteristics of the environment (whether terrestrial or aquatic). Knowledge of how these factors interact is critical to understanding how best to prevent or reduce exposure or remove a toxin from the environment (environmental remediation).

Importance of environmental toxicology

Environmental toxicology study has been providing tools and systematic evidence to policy-makers and the public in preventing significantly greater environmental degradation, including hostile human health impacts.

Assessment and monitoring of toxic substances

Toxins affect the environment and organisms in various forms having slight negative effect on certain abiotic factors and abolishing major components of ecosystems. The level of damage depends on the type and structure of the toxic substance.

Climate change refers to long-term alterations in temperatures and weather patterns. These alterations may be natural, such as through dissimilarities in the solar cycle. But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, predominantly due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas. Climate change could affect our society through impacts on a number of different social, cultural, and natural resources. For example, climate change could affect human health, infrastructure, and transportation systems, as well as energy, food, and water supplies. Climate change may especially impact people who live in areas that are vulnerable to coastal storms, drought, and sea level rise or people who live in poverty, older adults, and immigrant communities.

Impact of climate change on the environment

Climate change may toughen erosion, failing in organic matter, salinization, loss of soil biodiversity, landslides, desertification and flooding. The result of climate change is mainly connected to changing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, increased temperatures and changing precipitation patterns.

Climate change solutions

• Afforestation and forest management
• greenhouse gas emissions

Global environmental challenges, such as impacts of climate change, loss of biodiversity, over-use of natural resources and environmental and health issues, are unfavorably linked to issues of poverty and the sustainability of ecologies, and thus the concerns of resource security and political steadiness.

The most serious environmental problems of the twenty-first century have the potential to alter the course of life on this planet. Global warming, toxic waste, water and air pollution, acid rain, and shrinking energy supplies are frightening challenges that may threaten our future if we do not face up to them.

Major environmental problems

• Ozone Weakening, Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming
• Desertification
• Deforestation
• Loss of Biodiversity
• Disposal of Wastes

Pollution is defined as the presence of garbage in the atmosphere as a result of human activity. Pollution has a negative impact on the environment. If pollution is not regulated, animals, fish, and other aquatic life, plants, and humans all suffer.

Environmental pollution is one of the most basic concerns that the world is dealing with currently, and it is growing with each passing year, causing terrible and irreversible harm to the globe. Pollutants in the air and greenhouse gases contribute to global climate change in some circumstances.

Marine pollution occurs when many sorts of trash, such as chemicals, particles, industrial, agricultural, and household garbage, noise, or the spread of invasive creatures, are dumped into the ocean. The release of greenhouse gases causes the water to warm and the marine environment to become unfriendly, harming the marine system and marine life.

Human impacts on the environment in many ways: overpopulation, contamination, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. Modifications like these have introduced climate change, soil erosion, deprived air quality, and undrinkable water. These hostile impacts can affect human behavior and can speedy mass migrations over sanitary water.  Human activity has had an effect on the environment for thousands of years, from the time of our very earliest ancestors. Since Homo sapiens first walked the earth, we have been modifying the environment around us through agriculture, travel and eventually through urbanization and commercial networks. At this point in earth’s physical history, our impact on the environment is so substantial that scientists believe “pristine nature,” or ecosystems untouched by human intervention, no longer exist

Reduce negative impact on the environment

By using public transport, cycle or walk instead of using a car. Use facilities and trips run by resident people whenever possible. Don't be desirous to touch wildlife and disrupt habitats whether on terrestrial, at the shore or under aquatic.

Climatology is the study of the atmosphere and weather circumstances  over time. This field of science emphases on recording and examining weather patterns throughout the world and understanding the atmospheric situations that cause them.

Climate classification

The most widely used classification, the Koppen climate classification, was established in the late nineteenth era and is based on vegetation. It uses monthly hotness and sleet data.

Climate risk refers to risk assessments based on appropriate investigation of the significances, possibilities and responses to the impacts of climate change and how social constraints shape adaptation options.

Types of climate change risks

• Natural disasters/Diseases
• Economic Downfall

Climate change risk management

• Mitigation
• Adaptation
• Climate engineering
• Awareness

Humans are increasingly impelling the climate and the earth's temperature by burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests and farming cattle.This enhances huge amounts of greenhouse gases to those naturally occurring in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect and globalwarming.

Effects of climate change and global warming

• Rising maximum temperatures.
• Rising minimum temperatures.
• Rising sea levels.
• Higher ocean temperatures.
• An increase in heavy drizzle (heavy rain and hail)
• Shrinking glaciers.
• Thawing permafrost.

Global warming is a steady increase in the earth's temperature usually due to the greenhouse effect caused by increased intensities of carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other impurities.

Causes of global warming

• Dissimilarities in the Sun's Intensity
• Industrial Activity
• Agricultural Activity
• Deforestation
• Earth's Own Feedback Loop.

Climate change is mostly a long-term problem. It's happening right now, and it's causing problems for policymakers trying to influence the future. Sustainability is no longer merely a buzzword. It's a method for generating holistic and triple-bottom-line growth that's well-organized. Other proven tangible and intangible benefits of sustainability include a positive impact on employee morale, an organization being recognized as an employer of choice, supply chains being motivated to adopt leading practices, and consumers being educated on the importance of responsible behaviour, in addition to risk identification and mitigation and a significant improvement in the efficiency of processes and systems for resource optimization.

Green nanotechnology is the improvement of clean technologies, "to lessen possible environmental and human health threats associated with the manufacture and use of nanotechnology products, and to boost replacement of present products with fresh nano-products that are extra environmentally friendly throughout their lifecycle.

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture and sequestration (CCS) is a set of technologies that can significantly decrease CO₂ emissions from new and prevailing coal and gas-fired power plants and large industrialized sources.

It could play a vital role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while permitting low-carbon electricity generation from power plants.

Renewable energy sources are energy sources that are always being replaced. They can never be exhausted.Because renewable energy sources such as solar and wind do not radiate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that subsidize to global warming.

A world during which neediness and imbalance are endemic will dependably be inclined to natural and different emergencies. Feasible improvement requires meeting the elemental needs of all and stretching bent all the prospect to satisfy their desires for a superior life. While organic agriculture focuses on sustainability, regenerative agriculture takes things further. By working with nature, regenerative agriculture can reverse global climate change by revitalizing ecosystems, increasing biodiversity and restoring soils degraded by industrial farming.

Green nanotechnology is the improvement of clean technologies, "to lessen possible environmental and human health threats associated with the manufacture and use of nanotechnology products, and to boost replacement of present products with fresh nano-products that are extra environmentally friendly throughout their lifecycle.

Goals of green nanotechnology

It has two objectives: producing nano components and products without abolishing the environment or human health, and producing nano-products that provide solutions to eco-friendly complications.

Mitigation means making the effects of climate change less severe by escaping or decreasing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere.

Adaptation - adjusting life in a altering climate – involves adjusting to actual or expected future climate. The goal is to reduce our susceptibility to the harmful effects of climate change. It also encompasses making the most of any potential favorable opportunities associated with climate change.