Epidemiology and Environmental Health
Environmental epidemiology is a division of epidemiology concerned with determining how environmental experiences impact human health. This field pursues to understand how several external risk factors may predispose to or guard against disease, illness, injury, developmental abnormalities, or death. These factors may be certainly occurring or may be presented into environments where people live, work, and play. The World Health Organization European Centre for Environment and Health (WHO-ECEH) claims that 1.4 million deaths per year in Europe alone are due to avoidable environmental exposures. Environmental exposures can be approximately categorized into those that are proximate (e.g., directly leading to a health condition), including chemicals, physical agents, and microbiological pathogens, and those that are distal (e.g., indirectly leading to a health condition), such as socioeconomic circumstances, climate change, and other broad-scale environmental changes.