Air Pollution Meeting the Global Water Challenge

Issues relating to environmental health, link closely to several Millennium Development Goals-- not only with MDG 7, target 9, on ensuring environmental sustainability, but also MDG numbers 4, 5, and 6 that are linked to child mortality, maternal health, and combating vector-borne diseases.

Environmental health risks can be grouped into two broad categories.

Traditional hazards related to poverty and lack of development affect developing countries and poor people most. These include

• Water-related diseases caused by inadequate water supply and sanitation, and
• Respiratory diseases caused by poor indoor air quality, which impose an especially large health burden in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific region.

Modern hazards, caused by development that lacks environmental safeguards prevail in industrialized countries, such as

• Urban (outdoor) air pollution and
• Exposure to agro-industrial chemicals and waste, where exposure to traditional hazards is typically low.

Poor people are the first to suffer from a polluted environment.

Environmental health risks, such as polluted water and insufficient sanitation, indoor and outdoor air pollution, chemicals exposure, and the impacts of climate change, significantly influence the well-being of million of poor people.

Poverty-Environment Partnership
Joint Agency Paper (2008)
Poverty, Health, & Environment: Placing Environmental Health on Countries’ Development Agendas (472KB PDF)
 

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