GEO Brasil - UNEP

State of health and the environment
the state of the environment in Brazil
12
STATE OF HEALTH AND THE
ENVIRONMENT
121 Health and the Environment in Brazil
When establishing a concrete relationship between health
and the environment, it is apparent that the influence the
latter exerts can be either positive or negative This is true
because it promotes conditions that favour welfare and the
full actualisation of human capacities for the population
On another level, it contributes to the appearance and
maintenance of illnesses and traumatic injuries, as well as
to the extinction and death of entire populations, or particular
groups In the environment, production, social development
and economic processes interfere with the relationships
that occur in the ecosystems by determining and
contributing to the existence of conditions or situations of
risk that influence the health quality of the populations
They undergo changes in their mortality profile due to
different sources and kinds of pollution (increase of abiotic
elements which cause aggravation), contamination
(presence of biological agents which generate illnesses)
and types of environmental dynamics which enable the
uncontrolled release of specific sorts of energy It is
acknowledged, however, that not all environmental states,
dynamics or changes are capable of producing such results
Issues involving rapid urbanisation are related to the
increase of poor neighbourhoods surrounding large cities
Non-sustainable developmental projects, greater
deforestation – specially in the Amazon and the Brazilian
outback, the quality of drinking water, and sewerage
represent factors associated with the raise of infectious
contagious diseases, malaria and diarrhoea to name but a
few The contamination of the environment by chemical
pollutants is in turn an important factor that causes damage
to health
Nevertheless, in most cases, the presence of these agents
should not be restrained to only one environmental sphere
Several environmental spheres may encompass the same
abiotic (chemical or physical) agents if it acts as a vehicle
or storage element They may also include the same biotic
(biological) one when providing the necessary
requirements for survival, not to mention the cases in
which both types of agents are elements or substrata of
the ecosystem
Scientific knowledge has progressed towards developing
and establishing relationships among a large number of
environmental and health indicators This is true mainly for
those related to particular kinds of morbidity and physiopathological
processes, but also for biological indicators of
exposure However, in order to scientifically approach and
clarify the health-environment issue, there must be a set of
both past and current data regarding the two elements of
this equation Unfortunately, this is not the case of the
Brazilian reality, for these data are not available in certain
regions of the country There are but a few studies that aim
at this relationship and its numerous possibilities, with the
exception of infectious parasitical diseases (IPD) These
diseases have been around longer For this reason, there
are official records, including compulsory notifications
Nevertheless, these records fail to represent the entire
country and are not totally reliable In spite of such failures,
they provide an initial understanding of this specific
relationship and identify its occurrence among selected
groups of the population
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