Definitions
Environmental health is population health. Environmental health relates to environmental factors that have an impact on socioeconomic and environmental conditions with the potential to increase human disease, injury, and death, especially among vulnerable populations – mainly the poor, women, and children under five (Acharya and Paunio 2008). The World Health Organization (WHO) offers this definition:
Environmental health addresses all the physical, chemical, and biological factors external to a person, and all the related factors impacting behaviours. It encompasses the assessment and control of those environmental factors that can potentially affect health. It is targeted towards preventing disease and creating a health-supportive environment. (WHO 2018a)
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has a standard, simple, precautionary definition of riskas the product or combination of the likelihood of something happening plus the magnitude of the...
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Carter, P. (2019). Environmental Health Risk Assessment for Global Climate Change and Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Pollution. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A., Brandli, L., Özuyar, P., Wall, T. (eds) Climate Action. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71063-1_95-1
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