Environmental Hazards and Differential Health Impacts Across Vulnerable Demographics
Overview
This paper examines how environmental hazards disproportionately affect vulnerable populations including the elderly, children, and low-income groups. It discusses the significant global disease burden attributed to environmental factors and analyzes climate change as a particular threat to susceptible demographics, citing WHO estimates and epidemiological data.
What this essay covers
- Introduction to differential environmental health impacts across vulnerable populations
- Global disease burden and mortality statistics attributable to environmental causes
- Climate change effects on specific age groups and low-income communities
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Discussion 2
Environmental hazards affect demographics differently. For instance, the vulnerable groups, including the elderly, children below 13 years, and people from low-income backgrounds, are greatly affected. Remoundou & Koundouri, (2009) indicate that although it is a challenge to determine how environmental factors contribute to the development of disease and death, the “World Health Organization (WHO)” predicts that approximately 13 million deaths in each year are caused by environmental causes that could be prevented. Moreover, 24% of the disease burden across the world and 23 % of the aggregate deaths are caused by environmental factors. Low-income countries experience most of the burden. Such countries comprise of people of African descent and individuals living below the poverty level. As such, people in such regions engage in activities that cause environmental degradation. Such activities include agriculture intensification, increasing use of energy, and industrialization, which cause environmental health problems.
Moreover, the effects of climate change on the well-being and health of the human population cannot be left unmentioned. For example, climate change in 2000 was responsible for 6% of all malaria cases and 2.4% of the diarrhea cases. Climate change mostly affects the older adults aged above 60 years, and children aged below 13 years because their immune response is poor. However, the world temperature is expected to increase in the coming centuries, which implies an upsurge in the threats for human beings, especially in people from low-income backgrounds (Remoundou & Koundouri, 2009).