The 20th century was a period of unprecedented ecological change, with dramatic reductions in natural ecosystems and biodiversity and equally dramatic increases in people and domestic animals. Never before have so many animals been kept by so many people—and never before have so many opportunities... existed for pathogens to pass from wild and domestic animals through the biophysical environment to affect people causing zoonotic diseases or zoonoses. The result has been a worldwide increase in emerging zoonotic
diseases, outbreaks of epidemic zoonoses as well as a rise in foodborne zoonoses globally, and a troubling persistence of neglected zoonotic diseases in poor countries.
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This booklet presents key messages for action, summarized from a set of chapters on different environmental health issues, available at www.who.int/ ceh/publications/healthyenvironmentsforhealthychildren. The work is a result of an on-going partnership between WHO, UNEP and UNICEF in the area of chi...ldren’s environmental health, and seeks to update the 2002 joint publication “Children in the New Millennium: Environmental Impact on Health.”
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Research Programme on Religious Communities and Sustainable Development Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Non-Motorized Transport (NMT) has immense benefits for individual users, as well as society at large, through improvements to physical health, air quality, the environment, climate change, personal finance, accessibility, mobility and the empowerment of vulnerable groups.
The biosphere underlies the whole sustainable development concept, as the layer on
which society and the economy rely. Nature and biodiversity fuel the natural cycles
and life-support systems of the planet, on which humanity ultimately depends.
It outlines key achievements, needs and opportunities for intervention in the field of rehabilitation in Ukraine. The content of this document is a snapshot in time – not an in-depth analysis of the entire rehabilitation sector. The analysis focuses on rehabilitation policy and governance, service... provision, financing, information management and human resources, with the aim of improving access to high-quality rehabilitation services in Ukraine.
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The global burden of disease associated with air pollution exposure exacts a massive toll on human health worldwide: exposure to air pollution is estimated to cause millions of deaths and lost years of healthy life annually. The burden of disease attributable to air pollution is now estimated to be ...on a par with other major global health risks such as unhealthy diet and tobacco smoking, and air pollution is now recognized as the single biggest environmental threat to human health.
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Children without access to safe water are more likely to die in infancy -- and throughout childhood -- from diseases caused by
water-borne bacteria, to which their small bodies are more vulnerable.
Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change pp 47–66
This chapter reviews the emerging importance of pollen allergies in relation to ongoing climate change. Allergic diseases have been increasing in prevalence over the last decades, partly as the result of the impact of climate change. ...Increased sensitisation rates and more severe symptoms have been the partial outcome of: increased pollen production of wind-pollinated plants resulting in long-term increased abundance of pollen in the air we breathe; earlier shifts of airborne pollen seasons making occurrence of allergic symptoms harder to predict and deal with efficiently; increased allergenicity of pollen causing more severe health effects in allergic individuals; introduction of new, invasive allergenic plant species causing new sensitisations; environment-environment interactions, such as plants and hosted microorganisms, i.e. fungi and bacteria, which comprise a complex and dynamic system, with additive, presently unforeseeable influences on human health; environment-human interactions, as the consequence of a combination of environmental factors, like air pollution, global warming, urbanisation and microclimatic variability, which create a multi-resolution spatiotemporal system that requires new processing technologies and huge data inflow in order to be thoroughly investigated. We suggest that novel, real-time, personalised pollen information services, like mobile-app risk alerts, must be developed to provide the optimum first line of allergy management.
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BackgroundClimate change is one of the great challenges of our time. The consequences of climate change on exposed biological subjects, as well as on vulnerable societies, are a concern for the entire scientific community. Rising temperatures, heat waves, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, fir...es, loss of forest, and glaciers, along with disappearance of rivers and desertification, can directly and indirectly cause human pathologies that are physical and mental.
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This article provides an overview of the current and projected climate change risks and impacts to mental health and provides recommendations for priority actions to address the mental health consequences of climate change.
Compared with other health areas, the mental health impacts of climate change have received less research attention. The literature on climate change and mental health is growing rapidly but is characterised by several limitations and research gaps. In a field where the need for designing evidence-b...ased adaptation strategies is urgent, and research gaps are vast, implementing a broad, all-encompassing research agenda will require some strategic focus.
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