Environmental factor- this is any element of the environment that is not further divided and capable of exerting a direct or indirect effect on a living organism at least during one of the stages of its individual development, or, in other words, from the environmental conditions to which the organism responds with adaptive reactions.

Environmental factors are very diverse both in nature and in their impact on living organisms. They can be roughly divided into three main groups: abiotic, biotic and anthropogenic.

Abiotic factors- these are factors associated with the impact on organisms of inanimate nature, that is, climatic factors (temperature, light, humidity, pressure, etc.); physical properties of soil and water; orographic factors (relief conditions).

Abiotic factors affect the body directly, such as light or heat, or indirectly - as a relief that determines the degree of action of direct factors: illumination, humidity, wind strength, etc.

Biotic relationships are extremely complex. They can also have both direct and indirect effects.

Anthropogenic factors- these are all those forms of human activity that either indirectly affect organisms, changing the natural (natural) environment, and hence the living conditions of living organisms, or directly affect individual species of animals and plants.

Anthropogenic factors, in fact, are also biotic, since they owe their origin to man - a biological being. However, these factors began to be singled out in a special group due to their diversity and specificity.

Depending on the nature of the impacts, anthropogenic factors are divided into two groups:

– factors of direct influence - this is a direct (direct) human impact on the body (mowing grass, cutting down forests, shooting animals, catching fish, etc.);

– factors of indirect influence- this is an indirect (indirect) effect on the body (environmental pollution, habitat destruction, anxiety, etc.).

Depending on the consequences of the impact, anthropogenic factors are divided into the following groups:

– positive factors - factors that improve the life of organisms or increase their numbers (animal breeding and protection, planting and feeding plants, environmental protection, etc.);

– negative factors - factors that worsen the life of organisms or reduce their numbers (cutting down trees, shooting animals, destruction of habitats, etc.).

The most dangerous environmental pollutants. Large volumes of various chemicals, biological agents released into the environment with a low level of control of industrial, agricultural, domestic and other pollutants do not allow us to establish a sufficiently clear measure of the health hazard of technogenic pollutants contained in the atmospheric air or soil, drinking water or food.

The most dangerous and toxic heavy metals are cadmium, mercury and lead. A relationship has been established between the amount of cadmium, lead, arsenic found in water and soil and the incidence of malignant neoplasms of various forms among the population of ecologically disadvantaged areas.

Cadmium contamination of foodstuffs usually occurs due to contamination of soil and drinking water from sewage and other industrial wastes, as well as from the use of phosphate fertilizers and pesticides. In the air of rural areas, the concentration of cadmium is 10 times higher than the levels of the natural background, and in the urban environment, the standards can be exceeded up to 100 times. Most of the cadmium a person receives from plant foods.

It is well known that nitrates and nitrites are far from harmless to the body. Nitrates, used as mineral fertilizers, are found in the highest concentrations in green vegetables, such as spinach, lettuce, sorrel, beets, carrots, cabbage. Especially dangerous are high concentrations of nitrates in drinking water, since when they interact with hemoglobin, its functions as an oxygen carrier are disrupted. There are phenomena of oxygen starvation with signs of shortness of breath, asphyxia. In severe cases, poisoning can be fatal. It has been experimentally proven that nitrates also have mutagenic and embryotoxic effects.

Nitrites, which are salts of nitrous acid, have long been used as a preservative in the manufacture of sausages, ham, and canned meat. Another danger of finding nitrites in food products is that in the gastrointestinal tract, under the influence of microflora, nitro compounds with carcinogenic properties are formed from nitrites.

Radionuclides that enter the human body also mainly with food are stable in ecological chains. Of the fission products of uranium, strontium-90 and cesium-137 (having a half-life of about 30 years) are of particular danger: strontium, due to its similarity to calcium, very easily penetrates into the bone tissue of vertebrates, while cesium accumulates in muscle tissues, replacing potassium. They are able to accumulate in the body in quantities sufficient to cause damage to health, remaining in the infected body for almost its entire life and causing carcinogenic, mutagenic and other diseases.

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution

higher professional education

Siberian State Industrial University

Subject: "The impact of environmental factors on health»

Completed by: student of group IS-131

Pervyakov K.O.

Checked: Metelev V.G.

Novokuznetsk

1.Introduction……………………………………………………………………...3

2.Goals…………………………………………………………………………..4

3. The impact of environmental factors on humans……………………….5

4. Chemical pollution of the environment and human health……………………5

5. Man and radiation…………………………………………………………….7

6. Biological pollution and human diseases………………………….10

7. The influence of sounds on a person………………………………………………….12

8. Weather and human well-being………………………………………….15

9. Nutrition and human health……………………………………………...18

10. Landscape as a health factor…………………………………………..21

11.Conclusion……………………………………………………………………25

12. List of references………………………………………………………...28

Introduction

All processes in the biosphere are interconnected. Mankind is only an insignificant part of the biosphere, and man is only one of the types of organic life - Homo sapiens (reasonable man). Reason singled out man from the animal world and gave him great power. For centuries, man has sought not to adapt to the natural environment, but to make it convenient for his existence. Now we have realized that any human activity has an impact on the environment, and the deterioration of the biosphere is dangerous for all living beings, including humans. A comprehensive study of a person, his relationship with the outside world led to the understanding that health is not only the absence of disease, but also the physical, mental and social well-being of a person. Health is a capital given to us not only by nature from birth, but also by the conditions in which we live.

The influence of the environment on the body is called the environmental factor. The exact scientific definition is:

ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOR- any environmental condition to which the living reacts with adaptive reactions.

An environmental factor is any element of the environment that has a direct or indirect effect on living organisms at least during one of the phases of their development.

By their nature, environmental factors are divided into at least three groups:

abiotic factors - the influence of inanimate nature;

biotic factors - the influence of wildlife.

anthropogenic factors - influences caused by reasonable and unreasonable human activity.

Man modifies animate and inanimate nature, and in a certain sense takes on a geochemical role (for example, releasing carbon immured in the form of coal and oil for many millions of years and releasing it into the air with carbon dioxide). Therefore, anthropogenic factors in terms of scope and global impact are approaching geological forces.

Not infrequently, environmental factors are also subjected to a more detailed classification, when it is necessary to point to a specific group of factors. For example, there are climatic soil factors of the environment.

The purpose of this work– consider the influence of environmental factors on human health.

The impact of environmental factors on humans.

Chemical pollution of the environment and human health.

Currently, human economic activity is increasingly becoming the main source of pollution of the biosphere. Gaseous, liquid and solid industrial wastes enter the natural environment in increasing quantities. Various chemicals that are in the waste, getting into the soil, air or water, pass through the ecological links from one chain to another, eventually getting into the human body.

It is almost impossible to find a place on the globe where pollutants would not be present in one or another concentration. Even in the ice of Antarctica, where there are no industrial facilities, and people live only at small scientific stations, scientists have found various toxic (poisonous) substances of modern industries. They are brought here by atmospheric flows from other continents.

Substances polluting the natural environment are very diverse. Depending on their nature, concentration, time of action on the human body, they can cause various adverse effects. Short-term exposure to small concentrations of such substances can cause dizziness, nausea, sore throat, cough. The ingestion of large concentrations of toxic substances into the human body can lead to loss of consciousness, acute poisoning and even death. An example of such an action can be smog formed in large cities in calm weather, or accidental releases of toxic substances into the atmosphere by industrial enterprises.

The body's reactions to pollution depend on individual characteristics: age, gender, health status. As a rule, children, the elderly and sick people are more vulnerable.

With a systematic or periodic intake of relatively small amounts of toxic substances into the body, chronic poisoning occurs.

Signs of chronic poisoning are a violation of normal behavior, habits, as well as neuropsychic deviations: rapid fatigue or a feeling of constant fatigue, drowsiness or, conversely, insomnia, apathy, weakening of attention, absent-mindedness, forgetfulness, severe mood swings.

In chronic poisoning, the same substances in different people can cause various damage to the kidneys, blood-forming organs, nervous system, and liver.

Similar signs are observed in radioactive contamination of the environment.

Thus, in areas exposed to radioactive contamination as a result of the Chernobyl disaster, the incidence among the population, especially children, has increased many times over.

Biologically highly active chemical compounds can cause a long-term effect on human health: chronic inflammatory diseases of various organs, changes in the nervous system, effects on the intrauterine development of the fetus, leading to various abnormalities in newborns.

Doctors have established a direct link between the increase in the number of people suffering from allergies, bronchial asthma, cancer, and the deterioration of the environmental situation in the region. It has been reliably established that such production wastes as chromium, nickel, beryllium, asbestos, and many pesticides are carcinogens, that is, they cause cancer. Back in the last century, cancer in children was almost unknown, but now it is becoming more and more common. As a result of pollution, new, previously unknown diseases appear. Their reasons can be very difficult to establish.

Smoking causes great harm to human health. A smoker not only inhales harmful substances himself, but also pollutes the atmosphere and endangers other people. It has been established that people who are in the same room with a smoker inhale even more harmful substances than he himself.

Man and radiation.

Radiation, by its very nature, is harmful to life. Small doses of radiation can “start” a not yet fully established chain of events leading to cancer or genetic damage. At high doses, radiation can destroy cells, damage organ tissues and cause the death of an organism.

Damage caused by high doses of radiation usually shows up within hours or days. Cancers, however, do not appear until many years after irradiation—usually not earlier than one to two decades. And congenital malformations and other hereditary diseases caused by damage to the genetic apparatus appear only in the next or subsequent generations: these are children, grandchildren and more distant descendants of an individual who has been exposed to radiation.

While it is not difficult to identify short-term (“acute”) effects from exposure to high doses of radiation, it is almost always very difficult to detect long-term effects from low doses of radiation. This is partly because they take a very long time to manifest. But even having discovered some effects, it is still necessary to prove that they are explained by the action of radiation, since both cancer and damage to the genetic apparatus can be caused not only by radiation, but also by many other reasons.

To cause acute damage to the body, radiation doses must exceed a certain level, but there is no reason to believe that this rule applies in the case of consequences such as cancer or damage to the genetic apparatus. At least theoretically, the smallest dose is sufficient for this. However, at the same time, no radiation dose produces these effects in all cases. Even with relatively high doses of radiation, not all people are doomed to these diseases: the reparation mechanisms operating in the human body usually eliminate all damage. In the same way, any person exposed to radiation does not necessarily have to develop cancer or become a carrier of hereditary diseases; however, the likelihood, or risk, of such consequences is greater than that of a person who has not been exposed. And this risk is greater, the greater the dose of radiation.

Acute damage to the human body occurs at high doses of radiation. Radiation has a similar effect only starting from a certain minimum, or "threshold", radiation dose.

A large amount of information has been obtained in the analysis of the results of the use of radiation therapy for the treatment of cancer. Many years of experience have allowed physicians to obtain extensive information about the response of human tissues to radiation. This reaction for different organs and tissues turned out to be unequal, and the differences are very large.

Of course, if the radiation dose is high enough, the exposed person will die. In any case, very high radiation doses of the order of 100 Gy cause such severe damage to the central nervous system that death, as a rule, occurs within a few hours or days. At radiation doses of 10 to 50 Gy for whole-body exposure, CNS damage may not be so severe as to be fatal, but the exposed person is likely to die anyway in one to two weeks from hemorrhages in the gastrointestinal tract. At even lower doses, serious damage to the gastrointestinal tract may not occur or the body can cope with them, and yet death can occur after one to two months from the time of exposure, mainly due to the destruction of red bone marrow cells, the main component of the body's hematopoietic system. : from a dose of 3-5 Gy during whole-body irradiation, about half of all exposed people die.

Thus, in this range of radiation doses, large doses differ from smaller ones only in that death occurs earlier in the first case, and later in the second. Of course, most often a person dies as a result of the simultaneous action of all these consequences of exposure.

Children are also extremely sensitive to the effects of radiation. Relatively small doses of irradiation of cartilage tissue can slow down or completely stop their bone growth, which leads to abnormalities in the development of the skeleton. The younger the child, the more bone growth is inhibited. A total dose of the order of 10 Gy, received over a period of several weeks with daily exposure, is sufficient to cause some skeletal anomalies. Apparently, there is no threshold effect for such action of radiation. It also turned out that irradiating a child's brain during radiation therapy can cause changes in his character, lead to memory loss, and in very young children even to dementia and idiocy. The bones and brain of an adult are capable of withstanding much higher doses.

There are also genetic consequences of exposure. Their study is associated with even greater difficulties than in the case of cancer. First, very little is known about what damage occurs in the human genetic apparatus during irradiation; secondly, the full identification of all hereditary defects occurs only over many generations; and thirdly, as in the case of cancer, these defects cannot be distinguished from those that arose from quite different causes.

Approximately 10% of all living newborns have some form of genetic defect, ranging from minor physical defects such as color blindness to severe conditions such as Down's syndrome and various malformations. Many of the embryos and fetuses with severe hereditary disorders do not survive to birth; according to available data, about half of all cases of spontaneous abortion are associated with abnormalities in the genetic material. But even if children with hereditary defects are born alive, they are five times less likely to survive to their first birthday than normal children.

Biological pollution and human diseases

In addition to chemical pollutants, biological pollutants are also found in the natural environment, causing various diseases in humans. These are pathogens, viruses, helminths, protozoa. They can be in the atmosphere, water, soil, in the body of other living organisms, including in the person himself.

The most dangerous pathogens of infectious diseases. They have different stability in the environment. Some are able to live outside the human body for only a few hours; being in the air, in water, on various objects, they quickly die. Others may live in the environment from a few days to several years. For others, the environment is a natural habitat. For the fourth - other organisms, such as wild animals, are a place of conservation and reproduction.

Often the source of infection is the soil, which is constantly inhabited by pathogens of tetanus, botulism, gas gangrene, and some fungal diseases. They can enter the human body if the skin is damaged, with unwashed food, or if the rules of hygiene are violated.

Pathogenic microorganisms can penetrate the groundwater and cause human infectious diseases. Therefore, water from artesian wells, wells, springs must be boiled before drinking.

Open water sources are especially polluted: rivers, lakes, ponds. Numerous cases are known when contaminated water sources caused epidemics of cholera, typhoid fever, and dysentery.

With an airborne infection, infection occurs through the respiratory tract when air containing pathogens is inhaled.

Such diseases include influenza, whooping cough, mumps, diphtheria, measles and others. The causative agents of these diseases get into the air when coughing, sneezing, and even when sick people talk.

A special group is made up of infectious diseases transmitted by close contact with the patient or by using his things, for example, a towel, a handkerchief, personal hygiene items and others that were used by the patient. These include venereal diseases (AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea), trachoma, anthrax, scab. A person, invading nature, often violates the natural conditions for the existence of pathogenic organisms and becomes himself a victim of natural eye diseases.

People and domestic animals can become infected with natural focal diseases, getting into the territory of a natural focus. Such diseases include plague, tularemia, typhus, tick-borne encephalitis, malaria, and sleeping sickness.

Other routes of infection are also possible. So, in some hot countries, as well as in a number of regions of our country, an infectious disease leptospirosis, or water fever, occurs. In our country, the causative agent of this disease lives in the organisms of common voles, widely distributed in meadows near rivers. The disease of leptospirosis is seasonal, more common during heavy rains and during the hot months (July - August). A person can become infected when water contaminated with rodent secretions enters his body.

Diseases such as plague, ornithosis are transmitted by airborne droplets. Being in areas of natural ocular diseases, it is necessary to observe special precautions.

The effect of sounds on a person

Man has always lived in a world of sounds and noise. Sound is called such mechanical vibrations of the external environment, which are perceived by the human hearing aid (from 16 to 20,000 vibrations per second). Vibrations of a higher frequency are called ultrasound, a smaller one is called infrasound. Noise - loud sounds that have merged into a discordant sound.

For all living organisms, including humans, sound is one of the environmental influences.

In nature, loud sounds are rare, the noise is relatively weak and short. The combination of sound stimuli gives animals and humans time to assess their nature and form a response. Sounds and noises of high power affect the hearing aid, nerve centers, can cause pain and shock. This is how noise pollution works.

The quiet rustle of leaves, the murmur of a stream, bird voices, a light splash of water and the sound of the surf are always pleasant to a person. They calm him, relieve stress. But the natural sounds of the voices of Nature are becoming more and more rare, they disappear completely or are drowned out by industrial traffic and other noises.

Prolonged noise adversely affects the organ of hearing, reducing the sensitivity to sound.

It leads to a breakdown in the activity of the heart, liver, to exhaustion and overstrain of nerve cells. Weakened cells of the nervous system cannot clearly coordinate the work of various body systems. This results in disruption of their activities.

The noise level is measured in units expressing the degree of sound pressure - decibels. This pressure is not perceived indefinitely. The noise level of 20-30 decibels (dB) is practically harmless to humans, this is a natural background noise. As for loud sounds, here the permissible limit is approximately 80 decibels. The sound of 130 decibels already causes

a person feels pain, and 150 becomes unbearable for him. Not without reason in the Middle Ages there was an execution “under the bell”. The hum of the bell ringing tormented and slowly killed the convict.

The level of industrial noise is also very high. In many jobs and noisy industries, it reaches 90-110 decibels or more. Not much quieter in our house, where new sources of noise appear - the so-called household appliances.

For a long time, the effect of noise on the human body was not specially studied, although already in ancient times they knew about its harm and, for example, in ancient cities, rules were introduced to limit noise.

Currently, scientists in many countries of the world are conducting various studies to determine the impact of noise on human health. Their studies have shown that noise causes significant harm to human health, but absolute silence frightens and depresses him. So, employees of one design bureau, which had excellent sound insulation, already a week later began to complain about the impossibility of working in conditions of oppressive silence. They were nervous, lost their working capacity. Conversely, scientists have found that sounds of a certain intensity stimulate the process of thinking, especially the process of counting.

Each person perceives noise differently. Much depends on age, temperament, state of health, environmental conditions.

Some people lose their hearing even after brief exposure to noise of comparatively reduced intensity.

Constant exposure to strong noise can not only adversely affect hearing, but also cause other harmful effects - ringing in the ears, dizziness, headache, increased fatigue.

Very noisy modern music also dulls the hearing, causes nervous diseases.

Noise has an accumulative effect, that is, acoustic irritation, accumulating in the body, increasingly depresses the nervous system.

Therefore, before hearing loss from exposure to noise, a functional disorder of the central nervous system occurs. Noise has a particularly harmful effect on the neuropsychic activity of the body.

The process of neuropsychiatric diseases is higher among persons working in noisy conditions than among persons working in normal sound conditions.

Noises cause functional disorders of the cardiovascular system; have a harmful effect on the visual and vestibular analyzers, reduces reflex activity, which often causes accidents and injuries.

Studies have shown that inaudible sounds can also have a harmful effect on human health. So, infrasounds have a special effect on the mental sphere of a person: all types of

intellectual activity, mood worsens, sometimes there is a feeling of confusion, anxiety, fright, fear, and at high intensity

feeling of weakness, as after a great nervous shock.

Even weak sounds of infrasound can have a significant impact on a person, especially if they are of a long-term nature. According to scientists, it is precisely by infrasounds, inaudibly penetrating through the thickest walls, that many nervous diseases of the inhabitants of large cities are caused.

Ultrasounds, which occupy a prominent place in the range of industrial noise, are also dangerous. The mechanisms of their action on living organisms are extremely diverse. The cells of the nervous system are especially susceptible to their negative effects.

Noise is insidious, its harmful effect on the body is invisibly, imperceptibly. Violations in the human body against noise is practically defenseless.

Currently, doctors are talking about noise disease, which develops as a result of exposure to noise with a primary lesion of hearing and the nervous system.

Weather and human well-being

A few decades ago, it never occurred to anyone to connect their performance, their emotional state and well-being with the activity of the Sun, with the phases of the Moon, with magnetic storms and other cosmic phenomena.

In any natural phenomenon that surrounds us, there is a strict repetition of processes: day and night, high tide and low tide, winter and summer. Rhythm is observed not only in the motion of the Earth, Sun, Moon and stars, but is also an integral and universal property of living matter, a property penetrating into all life phenomena - from the molecular level to the level of the whole organism.

In the course of historical development, a person has adapted to a certain rhythm of life, due to rhythmic changes in the natural environment and the energy dynamics of metabolic processes.

Currently, there are many rhythmic processes in the body, called biorhythms. These include the rhythms of the heart, breathing, bioelectrical activity of the brain. Our whole life is a constant change of rest and activity, sleep and wakefulness, fatigue from hard work and rest.

In the body of every person, like the tides of the sea, a great rhythm eternally reigns, arising from the connection of life phenomena with the rhythm of the Universe and symbolizing the unity of the world.

The central place among all rhythmic processes is occupied by circadian rhythms, which are of the greatest importance for the organism. The reaction of the body to any impact depends on the phase of the circadian rhythm (that is, on the time of day). This knowledge caused the development of new directions in medicine - chronodiagnostics, chronotherapy, chronopharmacology. They are based on the position that the same remedy at different hours of the day has a different, sometimes directly opposite, effect on the body. Therefore, in order to obtain a greater effect, it is important to indicate not only the dose, but also the exact time of taking the medication.

It turned out that the study of changes in circadian rhythms makes it possible to detect the occurrence of certain diseases at the earliest stages.

The climate also has a serious impact on the well-being of a person, affecting him through weather factors. Weather conditions include a complex of physical conditions: atmospheric pressure, humidity, air movement, oxygen concentration, the degree of disturbance of the Earth's magnetic field, the level of atmospheric pollution.

Environmental factors are properties of the environment in which we live.

Our health is influenced by climatic factors, the chemical and biological composition of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and many other environmental factors.

Environmental factors can have the following impact on the human body:

• can have a beneficial effect on the human body (fresh air, moderate exposure to ultraviolet rays help to strengthen our health);
• can act as irritants, thereby forcing us to adapt to certain conditions;
• can provoke significant structural and functional changes in our body (for example, dark skin color in indigenous people of regions with intense sun);
• able to completely exclude our habitation in certain conditions (a person will not be able to live under water, without access to oxygen).

Among the environmental factors affecting the human body, there are factors of inanimate nature (abiotic), associated with the action of living organisms (biotic) and the person himself (anthropogenic).

Abiotic factors - air temperature and humidity, magnetic fields, gas composition of air, chemical and mechanical composition of the soil, altitude and others. Biotic factors are the influence of microorganisms, plants and animals. Anthropogenic environmental factors include soil and air pollution by industrial and transport waste, the use of nuclear energy, as well as everything related to human life in society.

The beneficial effects of the sun, air and water on the human body do not need to be described for a long time. The dosed effect of these factors improves the adaptive capabilities of a person, strengthens the immune system, thereby helping us to stay healthy.

Unfortunately, environmental factors can also harm the human body. Most of them are associated with the impact of man himself - industrial waste that enters water sources, soil and air, the release of exhaust gases into the atmosphere, not always successful attempts by man to curb nuclear energy (as an example, the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant). We will dwell on this in more detail.

Negative impact of anthropogenic environmental factors on human health

The atmospheric air of cities receives a lot of harmful chemicals that have a toxic effect on the human body. Some of these substances directly or indirectly contribute to the development of cancer in humans (has a carcinogenic effect). These substances include benzopyrene (comes into the air with emissions from aluminum smelting plants, power plants), benzene (it is emitted into the atmosphere by petrochemical, pharmaceutical enterprises, and it is also released during the manufacture of plastics, varnishes, paints, explosives), cadmium ( enters the environment during the production of non-ferrous metals). In addition, formaldehyde has a carcinogenic effect (it is emitted into the air by chemical and metallurgical enterprises, it is released from polymeric materials, furniture, adhesives), vinyl chloride (is emitted during the production of polymeric materials), dioxins (they are emitted into the air by factories for the production of paper, cellulose, organic chemical substances).

Not only the development of oncological pathologies is fraught with air pollution. Diseases of the respiratory organs (especially bronchial asthma), cardiovascular system, gastrointestinal tract, blood, allergic and some endocrine diseases can also occur due to air pollution. The abundance of toxic chemicals in the air can lead to congenital anomalies in the fetus.

Not only the composition of the air, but also the soil and water have seriously changed due to human activity. Waste from various enterprises, the use of fertilizers, plant growth stimulants, various pest control agents contribute to this. Pollution of water and soil leads to the fact that many vegetables and fruits that we eat contain various toxic substances. It is no secret to anyone that new technologies for growing slaughter animals include the addition of various substances to the feed, which are far from always safe for the human body.

Pesticides and hormones, nitrates and salts of heavy metals, antibiotics and radioactive substances - all this we have to consume with food. As a result, various diseases of the digestive system, deterioration in the absorption of nutrients, a decrease in the body's defenses, an acceleration of the aging process and a general toxic effect on the body. In addition, contaminated food can cause infertility or birth defects in children.

Modern people also have to deal with constant exposure to ionizing radiation. Mining, combustion products of fossil fuels, air travel, production and use of building materials, nuclear explosions lead to a change in the radiation background.

What effect will be after exposure to ionizing radiation depends on the radiation dose absorbed by the human body, exposure time, type of exposure. Exposure to ionizing radiation can cause the development of cancer, radiation sickness, radiation damage to the eyes (cataracts) and burns, infertility. Sex cells are the most sensitive to radiation exposure. The result of exposure to ionizing radiation on germ cells can be various congenital malformations in children born even decades after exposure to ionizing radiation.

Negative impact of abiotic environmental factors on human health

Climatic conditions can also provoke the occurrence of various diseases in humans. The cold climate of the North can cause frequent colds, inflammation of muscles and nerves. The hot desert climate can result in heat stroke, impaired water and electrolyte metabolism, and intestinal infections.

Some people do not tolerate changes in weather conditions. This phenomenon is called meteosensitivity. In people suffering from such a disorder, when weather conditions change, exacerbations of chronic diseases (especially diseases of the lungs, cardiovascular, nervous and musculoskeletal systems) may occur.

Introduction……………………………………………………………2

1. The impact of natural and environmental factors on health

person……………………………………………………………….6

2. Impact of socio-environmental factors on health

person……………………………………………………………..9

3. The combined effect of environmental factors……………..18

4. Hygiene and human health…………………………………….23

Conclusion…………………………………………………………26

References………………………………………………...29

INTRODUCTION

The definition of health is formulated in the WHO Constitution as follows: "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." Population or public health should be distinguished from individual health, which is characterized by a system of statistical demographic indicators, indicators of capacity, morbidity, etc. Human health depends on the state of the environment in which natural-environmental, socio-ecological and other factors operate.

Currently, human economic activity is increasingly becoming the main source of pollution of the biosphere. More and more gaseous, liquid and solid industrial wastes enter the natural environment. Various chemicals in the waste, getting into the soil, air or water, pass through the ecological links from one chain to another, eventually getting into the human body.

Substances polluting the natural environment are very diverse. Depending on their nature, concentration, time of action on the human body, they can cause various adverse effects. Short-term exposure to small concentrations of such substances can cause dizziness, nausea, sore throat, cough. The ingestion of large concentrations of toxic substances into the human body can lead to loss of consciousness, acute poisoning and even death. An example of such an action can be smog formed in large cities in calm weather, or accidental releases of toxic substances into the atmosphere by industrial enterprises.

The body's reactions to pollution depend on individual characteristics: age, gender, health status. As a rule, children, the elderly and sick people are more vulnerable.

With a systematic or periodic intake of relatively small amounts of toxic substances into the body, chronic poisoning occurs.

A favorable environment is an environment, the quality of which ensures the sustainable functioning of natural ecological systems, natural and natural-anthropogenic objects.

Article 42 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation proclaims the right of everyone to a favorable environment, reliable information about its condition and compensation for damage caused to his health or property by an environmental offense.

In addition, every citizen has the right to protect the environment (Article 11 of the Federal Law "On Environmental Protection")

The choice of the topic of the course work is due to the realization that at present a significant part of human diseases is associated with the deterioration of the ecological situation in our environment: pollution of the atmosphere, water and soil, poor-quality food, increased noise.

At the heart of health is a phenomenon of life, provided by typical specialized structures, the activity of which is realized by the constant circulation of flows of plastic substances, energy and information within the body, as well as between it and the environment, which is the basis of self-organization (self-renewal, self-regulation, self-reproduction) of living systems. However, nothing social is realized without the participation of a biological substrate, and the somatic, mental and social characteristics of an individual, reflecting his health, are formed as a result of the interaction of a very complex set of environmental and internal factors. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to reflect the systematic diversity of the content of such interaction, to consider the problems of preserving the environment, its impact on human health.

To achieve this goal, the following tasks were set - to state the theoretical and practical issues of the influence of the environment on people's livelihoods. Determine the place of human ecology in the system of sciences.

Several types of sources were used in the work: these are official documents - the Constitution of the Russian Federation, Federal Laws of the Russian Federation, monographs and articles by leading experts in this field (mainly Russian), abstracts of reports from international and regional conferences.

1. INFLUENCE OF NATURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS ON HUMAN HEALTH

Initially, Homo sariens lived in the environment, like all consumers of the ecosystem, and was practically unprotected from the action of its limiting environmental factors. Primitive man was subject to the same factors of regulation and self-regulation of the ecosystem as the entire animal world, his life expectancy was short, and the population density was very low. The main limiting factors were hyperdynamia and malnutrition. Pathogenic (disease-causing) effects of a natural nature were in the first place among the causes of death. Of particular importance among them were infectious diseases, which differ, as a rule, in natural foci.

The essence of natural foci is that pathogens, specific carriers and animal accumulators, the custodians of the pathogen, exist in given natural conditions (foci), regardless of whether a person lives here or not. A person can become infected from wild animals (the "reservoir" of pathogens), living in this area permanently or accidentally being here. Such animals usually include rodents, birds, insects, etc.

All these animals are part of the biocenosis of the ecosystem associated with a particular biotope. Therefore, natural focal diseases are closely related to a certain territory, with one or another type of landscape, and therefore, with its climatic features, for example, they differ in seasonal manifestations. E. P. Pavlovsky (1938), who first proposed the concept of a natural focus, attributed plague, tularemia, tick-borne encephalitis, some helminthiases, etc. to natural focal diseases. Studies have shown that several diseases can be contained in one focus.

Natural focal diseases were the main cause of death of people until the beginning of the 20th century. The most terrible of these diseases was the plague, the death rate from which many times exceeded the death of people in the endless wars of the Middle Ages and later.

Plague is an acute infectious disease of humans and animals, it belongs to quarantine diseases. The causative agent is a plague microbe in the form of an ovoid bipolar rod. Plague epidemics covered many countries of the world. In the VI century. BC e. more than 100 million people died in the Eastern Roman Empire in 50 years. No less devastating was the epidemic in the 14th century. From the 14th century the plague was repeatedly noted in Russia, including in Moscow. In the 19th century she "mowed down" people in Transbaikalia, Transcaucasia, in the Caspian Sea and at the beginning of the 20th century. was observed even in the port cities of the Black Sea, including Odessa. In the XX century. large epidemics were recorded in India.

Diseases associated with the natural environment surrounding humans still exist, although they are constantly being fought. Their existence is explained, in particular, by reasons of a purely ecological nature, for example, resistance (the development of resistance to various factors of influence) of carriers of pathogens and the pathogens themselves. A typical example of these processes is the fight against malaria.

Malaria is a disease caused by parasites of the genus Plasmodeum, transmitted by the bite of an infected mosquito. This disease is an ecological and socio-economic problem.

Increasing attention is being paid to integrated, environmentally sound methods of malaria control - "living environment management" methods. These include draining wetlands, reducing water salinity, etc. The following groups of methods are biological - the use of other organisms to reduce the danger of mosquitoes; in 40 countries, at least 265 species of larval fish are used for this, as well as microbes that cause disease and death of mosquitoes.

Plague and other infectious diseases (cholera, malaria, anthrax, tularemia, dysentery, diphtheria, scarlet fever, etc.) destroyed people of various ages, including those of reproductive age. This led to a rather slow population growth - the first billion inhabitants on Earth appeared in 1860. But the discoveries of Pasteur and others at the end of the 19th century, which gave a powerful impetus to the development of preventive medicine in the 20th century. in the treatment of very serious diseases, a sharp improvement in sanitary and hygienic living conditions, an increase in the cultural level and education of mankind as a whole led to a sharp decrease in the incidence of natural focal diseases, and some of them practically disappeared in the 20th century.

The natural focal character can be attributed to the impact on biota and humans of anomalous areas of geophysical fields, i.e., areas on the Earth's surface that differ in quantitative characteristics from the natural background, which can become a source of disease for biota and humans. This phenomenon is called geopathogenesis, and the sites themselves are called geopathogenic zones. For example, geopathogenic zones of radioactive fields affect organisms by increased release of radon or an increase in the content of other radionuclides. Diseases in people are associated with the action of disturbances in the electromagnetic field created by solar flares, for example, with a weakened vascular system, this is an increase in blood pressure, headaches, and in especially severe cases, up to a stroke or heart attack.

To combat the action of natural factors regulating the ecosystem, man had to use natural resources, including irreplaceable ones, and create an artificial environment for his survival.

The built environment also requires adaptation to oneself, which occurs through disease. The main role in the occurrence of diseases in this case is played by the following factors: physical inactivity, overeating, information abundance, psycho-emotional stress. In this regard, there is a constant increase in the "diseases of the century": cardiovascular, oncological, allergic diseases, mental disorders and, finally, AIDS, etc.

2. IMPACT OF SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS ON HUMAN HEALTH

The natural environment is now preserved only where it was not available to people for its transformation. An urban or urban environment is an artificial world created by man, which has no analogues in nature and can only exist with constant renewal.

The social environment is difficult to integrate with any environment surrounding a person, and all the factors of each of the environments are "closely interconnected and experience the objective and subjective aspects of the "quality of the environment of life"" .

This multiplicity of factors makes us more cautious in assessing the quality of a person's life environment in terms of his health. It is necessary to carefully approach the choice of objects and indicators that diagnose the environment. They can be short-lived changes in the body, which can be used to judge different environments - home, production, transport, and long-lived in this particular urban environment - some adaptations of the acclimatization plan, etc. The influence of the urban environment is quite clearly emphasized by certain trends in the current state of human health .

From the medical and biological standpoint, the environmental factors of the urban environment have the greatest influence on the following trends: 1) the process of acceleration; 2) violation of biorhythms; 3) allergization of the population; 4) growth of oncological morbidity and mortality; 5) an increase in the proportion of overweight people; 6) lag of physiological age from the calendar one; 7) "rejuvenation" of many forms of pathology; 8) abiological tendency in the organization of life, etc.

Acceleration is the acceleration of the development of individual organs or parts of the body compared to a certain biological norm. In our case - an increase in body size and a significant shift in time towards earlier puberty. Scientists believe that this is an evolutionary transition in the life of the species, caused by improving living conditions: good nutrition, which “removed” the limiting effect of food resources, which provoked selection processes that caused acceleration.

Biological rhythms are the most important mechanism for regulating the functions of biological systems, formed, as a rule, under the influence of abiotic factors. In the conditions of urban life, they can be violated. This primarily applies to circadian rhythms: a new environmental factor was the use of electric lighting, which extended daylight hours. Desynchronosis is superimposed on this, chaotization of all previous biorhythms occurs and a transition to a new rhythmic stereotype occurs, which causes diseases in humans and in all representatives of the biota of the city, in which the photoperiod is disturbed.

Allergization of the population is one of the main new features in the changed structure of human pathology in the urban environment. Allergy is a perverted sensitivity or reactivity of the body to a particular substance, the so-called allergen (simple and complex mineral and organic substances). Allergens in relation to the body are external - exoallergens and internal - autoallergens. Exoallergens can be infectious - pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbes, viruses, etc., and non-infectious - house dust, animal hair, plant pollen, drugs, other chemicals - gasoline, chloramine, etc., as well as meat, vegetables, fruits, berries, milk, etc. Autoallergens are pieces of tissues of damaged organs (heart, liver), as well as tissues damaged by burns, radiation exposure, frostbite, etc.

The cause of allergic diseases (bronchial asthma, urticaria, drug allergies, rheumatism, lupus erythematosus, etc.) is a violation of the human immune system, which, as a result of evolution, was in balance with the natural environment. The urban environment is characterized by a sharp change in the dominant factors and the emergence of completely new substances - pollutants, the pressure of which the human immune system has not experienced before. Therefore, an allergy can occur without much resistance from the body, and it is difficult to expect that it will become resistant to it at all.

Oncological morbidity and mortality is one of the most indicative medical trends of trouble in a given city or, for example, in a countryside contaminated with radiation. These diseases are caused by tumors. Tumors (Greek "oncos") - neoplasms, excessive pathological growths of tissues. They can be benign - sealing or pushing apart the surrounding tissues, and malignant - germinating into the surrounding tissues and destroying them. Destroying blood vessels, they enter the bloodstream and spread throughout the body, forming the so-called metastases. Benign tumors do not form metastases.

The development of malignant tumors, i.e. cancer, can occur as a result of prolonged contact with certain products: lung cancer in uranium miners, skin cancer in chimney sweeps, etc. This disease is caused by certain substances called carcinogens.

Carcinogenic substances (Greek: “cancer-producing”), or simply carcinogens, are chemical compounds that can cause malignant and benign neoplasms in the body when exposed to it. Several hundred are known. By the nature of the action, they are divided into three groups: 1) local action; 2) organotropic, that is, affecting certain organs; 3) multiple action, causing tumors in different organs. Carcinogens include many cyclic hydrocarbons, nitrogen dyes, and alkalizing compounds. They are found in industrially polluted air, tobacco smoke, coal tar and soot. Many carcinogenic substances have a mutagenic effect on the body.

In addition to carcinogenic substances, tumors are also caused by tumor-causing viruses, as well as the action of certain radiations - ultraviolet, X-ray, radioactive, etc.

In addition to humans and animals, tumors also affect plants. They can be caused by fungi, bacteria, viruses, insects, exposure to low temperatures. They are formed on all parts and organs of plants. Cancer of the root system leads to their premature death.

In economically developed countries, mortality from cancer is in second place. But not all cancers are necessarily found in the same area. The confinement of individual forms of cancer to certain conditions is known, for example, skin cancer is more common in hot countries, where there is an excess of ultraviolet radiation. But the incidence of cancer of a certain localization in a person can vary depending on changes in the conditions of his life. If a person has moved to an area where this form is rare, the risk of contracting this particular form of cancer is reduced and, accordingly, vice versa.

Thus, the dependence between cancer and the ecological situation, that is, the quality of the environment, including the urban one, is clearly distinguished.

An ecological approach to this phenomenon suggests that the root cause of cancer in most cases is the processes and adaptations of metabolism to the effects of new factors other than natural, and in particular carcinogens. In general, cancer should be considered as the result of an imbalance in the body, and therefore it can be caused, in principle, by any environmental factor or a combination of them that can bring the body into an unbalanced state. For example, due to the excess of the upper threshold concentration of air pollutants, drinking water, toxic chemical elements in the diet, etc., i.e., when the normal regulation of body functions becomes impossible (Fig. 1).

Rice. 1. Dependence of regulatory processes in the body on the content of chemical elements in the diet (according to V.V. Kovalsky, 1976)

The increase in the proportion of overweight people is also a phenomenon caused by the peculiarities of the urban environment. Overeating, physical inactivity, and so on, of course, take place here. But an excess of nutrition is necessary to create energy reserves in order to withstand a sharp imbalance in environmental influences. Nevertheless, at the same time, an increase in the proportion of representatives of the asthenic type in the population is observed: the “golden mean” is being eroded and two opposite adaptation strategies are outlined; the desire for fullness and weight loss (the trend is much weaker). But both of them entail a number of pathogenic consequences.

The birth of a large number of premature babies, and therefore physically immature ones, is an indicator of the extremely unfavorable state of the human environment. It is associated with disturbances in the genetic apparatus and simply with an increase in adaptability to environmental changes. Physiological immaturity is the result of a sharp imbalance with the environment, which is transforming too rapidly and can have far-reaching consequences, including acceleration and other changes in human growth.

The current state of man as a biological species is also characterized by a number of medical and biological trends associated with changes in the urban environment: an increase in myopia and dental caries in schoolchildren, an increase in the proportion of chronic diseases, the emergence of previously unknown diseases - derivatives of scientific and technological progress: radiation, aviation, automotive, medicinal, many occupational diseases, etc. Most of these diseases are the result of anthropogenic environmental factors.

Infectious diseases have not been eradicated in the cities either. The number of people affected by malaria, hepatitis and many other diseases is enormous. Many doctors believe that we should not talk about "victory", but only about temporary success in the fight against these diseases. This is explained by the fact that the history of combating them is too short, and the unpredictability of changes in the urban environment can negate these successes. For this reason, the “return” of infectious agents is recorded among viruses, and many viruses “break away” from their natural basis and move to a new stage that can live in the human environment - they become the causative agents of influenza, a viral form of cancer and other diseases (possibly, such a form is the HIV virus). According to their mechanism of action, these forms can be equated with natural focal forms, which also occur in the urban environment (tularemia, etc.).

In recent years, in Southeast Asia, people are dying from completely new epidemics - "SARS" in China, "bird flu" in Thailand. According to the Research Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology. Pasteur (2004) "to blame" for this is not only mutagenic viruses, but also the poor knowledge of microorganisms - in total, 1-3% of the total number have been studied. Researchers simply did not know before the microbes that caused the "new" infections. So, over the past 30 years, 6-8 infections have been eliminated, but over the same period, more than 30 new infectious diseases have appeared, including HIV infection, hepatitis E and C, which already account for millions of victims.

Abiological tendencies, which are understood as such features of a person's lifestyle as physical inactivity, smoking, drug addiction, and others, are also the cause of many diseases - obesity, cancer, cardiac diseases, etc. environment, when useful forms of the human living environment are destroyed along with the harmful ones. This is due to the fact that in medicine there is still a misunderstanding of the important role in the pathology of supraorganismal forms of the living, that is, the human population. Therefore, a big step forward is the concept of health developed by ecology as a state of a biosystem and its closest connection with the environment, while pathological phenomena are considered as adaptive processes caused by it.

As applied to a person, one cannot separate the biological from the perceived in the course of social adaptation. For the individual, the ethnic environment, the form of labor activity, and social and economic certainty are important - it's only a matter of the degree and time of influence.

In Russia, over the past 10 years, the demographic situation has become critical: the death rate began to exceed the national birth rate by 1.7 times, and in 2000 its excess reached two times. Now the population of Russia is decreasing annually by 0.7-0.8 million people. According to the forecast of the State Statistics Committee of Russia, by 2050 it will decrease by 51 million people, or by 35.6% compared to 2000, and will amount to 94 million people.

In 1995, Russia had one of the lowest birth rates in the world - 9.2 babies per 1,000 people, while in 1987 it was 17.2 (in the US it was 16). For simple reproduction of the population, the birth rate per family is 2.14-2.15, and in our country today it is 1.4; that is, in Russia there is a process of reduction in the size of the human population (the phenomenon of depopulation).

All this happened as a result of a sharp change in almost the opposite of most social factors in almost 90% of the population, which led 70% of the Russian population into a state of prolonged psycho-emotional and social stress, which depletes the adaptive and compensatory mechanisms that support health. This is also one of the reasons for the noticeable reduction in average life expectancy (by 8-10 years) for both men - up to 57-58 years, and women - up to 70-71 years, the population of Russia (the last place in Europe).

V.F. Protasov believes that if events continue to develop in the same way, then “a “terrible explosion” is possible on the territory of Russia in the foreseeable future, with a catastrophically decreasing population of Russia.

3. COMBINED ACTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

Environmental factors usually act not individually, but as a whole complex. The effect of one factor depends on the level of others. The combination with various factors has a noticeable effect on the manifestation of the optimum in the properties of the organism and on the limits of their existence. The action of one factor is not replaced by the action of another. However, under the complex influence of the environment, there is often a “substitution effect”, which manifests itself in the similarity of the results of the influence of different factors. Thus, light cannot be replaced by an excess of heat or an abundance of carbon dioxide, but, by acting on changes in temperature, photosynthesis in plants or activity in animals can be suspended and thereby create the effect of diapause; as with a short day, and by lengthening the active period, create the effect of a long day. And at the same time, this is not a replacement of one factor by another, but a manifestation of quantitative indicators of environmental factors. This phenomenon is widely used in the practice of plant growing and animal husbandry.

In the complex action of the environment, factors in their effect are unequal for organisms. They can be divided into leading (main) and background (accompanying, secondary). The leading factors are different for different organisms, even if they live in the same place. The role of the leading factor at different stages of the life of the organism can be either one or the other elements of the environment. For example, in the life of many cultivated plants, such as cereals, temperature is the leading factor during germination, soil moisture during heading and flowering, and the amount of nutrients and air humidity during ripening. The role of the leading factor may change at different times of the year. So. In the awakening of activity in birds (tits, sparrows) at the end of winter, the leading factor is light and, in particular, the length of daylight hours, while in summer its effect becomes equivalent to the temperature factor.

The leading factor may not be the same in the same species living in different physical and geographical conditions. For example, the activity of mosquitoes, midges, midges in warm areas is determined by the light regime complex, while in the north - by temperature changes.

The concept of leading factors should not be confused with the concept of limiting factors.

A factor whose level in qualitative or quantitative terms (lack or excess) turns out to be close to the endurance limits of a given organism is called limiting or limiting. The limiting effect of the factor will also manifest itself in the case when other environmental factors are favorable or even optimal. Both leading and background environmental factors can act as a limiting factor.

The concept of limiting factors was introduced in 1840 by the chemist J. Liebig. Studying the influence of the content of various chemical elements in the soil on plant growth, he formulated the principle: “The minimum substance controls the crop and determines the magnitude and stability of the latter in time.” This principle is known as Liebig's rule or law of the minimum. . As a visual illustration of Liebig's law of the minimum, a barrel is often depicted, in which the boards forming the side surface have different heights.

The length of the shortest board determines the level to which the barrel can be filled with water. Therefore, the length of this board is the limiting factor for the amount of water that can be poured into a barrel. The length of the other boards no longer matters.

The limiting factor can be not only a lack, as Liebig pointed out, but also an excess of such factors as, for example, heat, light and water. As noted earlier, organisms are characterized by an ecological minimum and an ecological maximum. The ranges between these two values ​​are usually called the limits of stability, endurance or tolerance. The concept of the limiting influence of the maximum along with the minimum was introduced by W. Shelford (1913), who formulated the "law of tolerance". After 1910, numerous studies were carried out on the "ecology of tolerance", thanks to which the limits of existence for many plants and animals became known. One such example is the effect of an air pollutant on the human body (Fig. 2).

Fig.2. Effects of air pollutants on the human body

C years, C, years - lethal concentrations of a toxic substance; With lim, With 1 lim. - limiting concentrations of a toxic substance; C opt - optimal concentration

The value of the factor is indicated by the symbol C (the first letter of the Latin word "concentration"). In other cases, when a substance enters the body, one can speak not about the concentration, but about the dose of the substance (factor).

At concentration values ​​C years and C "years, a person will die, but irreversible changes in his body will occur at much lower values: C lim and C" lim Therefore, the true range of tolerance is determined precisely by the latter values. Hence, they must be experimentally, in experiments on animals, determined for each pollutant or any harmful chemical compound, and not to exceed its content in a particular environment. In sanitary environmental protection, it is not the lower limits of resistance to harmful substances that are important, but the upper limits, since environmental pollution is the excess of the body's resistance. The task or condition is set: the actual concentration of the pollutant C fact should not exceed C lim or

C fact C lim

By observation, analysis and experiment, discover "functionally important" factors;

Determine how these factors affect individuals, populations, communities. Then it is possible to quite accurately predict the result of violations of the environment or its planned changes.

4. HYGIENE AND HUMAN HEALTH

The preservation of health or the occurrence of disease is the result of complex interactions between the internal biosystems of the body and external environmental factors. The knowledge of these complex interactions was the basis for the emergence of preventive medicine and its scientific discipline - hygiene.

Hygiene is the science of a healthy lifestyle. It began to develop intensively more than 100 years ago thanks to the works of L. Pasteur, R. Koch, I. I. Mechnikov and others. Hygienists were the first to see the connection between the environment and human health, and over the past decades this science has received a powerful development, laying the foundations of modern science of protection environment. However, hygiene as a branch of medical science has its own specific tasks.

Hygiene studies the influence of various environmental factors on human health, its performance and life expectancy. These include natural factors, living conditions and social and production relations. Its main tasks include developing the scientific foundations of sanitary supervision, substantiating sanitary measures for the improvement of settlements and recreation areas, protecting the health of children and adolescents, developing sanitary legislation, and sanitary examination of the quality of food products and household items. The most important task of this science is the development of hygienic standards for the air of populated areas and industrial enterprises, water, food and materials for clothing and footwear of a person in order to preserve his health and prevent diseases.

The main strategic direction in the scientific and practical activities of hygienists is the scientific substantiation of the ecological optimum, which the human environment must comply with. This optimum should provide a person with normal development, good health, high working capacity and longevity.

A lot depends on how true this “optimum” is in a particular district, city, and even region, and above all, the reliability and correctness of the decisions made. Of course, the tasks of environmental protection and rational nature management are much broader than the tasks of hygienic science, but they serve the same goal - to improve the human environment, and, consequently, his health and well-being.

Human health and well-being depend on the solution of many problems - overpopulation of the Earth as a whole and individual regions, deterioration of the living environment of cities and rural areas, and hence the deterioration of people's health, the emergence of "psychological fatigue", etc.

If hygiene, figuratively speaking, proceeds from the tasks of improving public health through improving the quality of the environment at all its levels, then the individual health of a person is comprehensively considered by the branch of medicine that has been intensively developing in recent years - valeology. "Valeology - the theory and practice of the formation, preservation and promotion of the health of the individual using medical and paramedical technologies". The subject of valeology is the individual health of a person, its mechanisms, its main object is a healthy person, and the main task is the development and implementation of methods and methods that would allow managing a person’s health in such a way that he does not become sick, i.e. the object of traditional medicine .

CONCLUSION

The beginning of the third millennium is characterized by a trend that the global human ecosystem is in danger due to a serious imbalance between the negative impact of the transformative - creative or destructive activity of society and the lack of an adequate, adapted or compensated reaction of the objects of such activity, be it nature or society itself. This process, as the main "man-made" cause of environmental and social disasters, requires analytical and prognostic research for its potential regulation and prevention of particularly negative consequences.

The Global Environment Outlook 2000 has identified the following global and regional trends that are most likely to be expected in the next century:

- environmental disasters, both natural and artificial (provoked by human activities). They become more frequent, severe, accompanied by heavy economic losses;

- urbanization. Soon half of the population will live in cities, and where this process is not controlled or poorly organized, big environmental problems are created, primarily related to the sale of garbage and the spread of chronic diseases;

- chemization. Modern chemical pollution is seen as a bigger problem than old poisons like lead and others; and protective measures against them should be developed; overload with nitrate fertilizers, the consequences of which are not yet fully understood;

- the specter of a global water crisis, the growing problem of insufficient fresh water supply, especially for low-income populations;

- degradation of coastal zones. The exploitation of natural resources destroys coastal ecosystems and poses a greater threat than sewage;

- pollution by biological species. Deliberate introduction of foreign biological spices that overwhelm native species;

- climatic fluctuations. Over the past 20 years, there has been an increase in temperature on the surface of the earth, and it remains to be seen whether this is a harbinger of any new economic transformations;

– degradation of land (land), increasing sensitivity, vulnerability of land to water erosion;

– environmental impact of refugees, etc.

At present, a significant part of human diseases is associated with the deterioration of the ecological situation in the environment: pollution of the atmosphere, water and soil, poor-quality food, increased noise, etc. This suggests that adaptation (deterministic adaptation to objective negative influences that cannot be eliminated or changed immediately) is still far from optimal, allowing it to function at the level of maximum, genotypically and phenotypically inherent in the individual health potentials.

Based on the achievements of the past and the present, a balanced combination of the main functions of public health in various groups of the population, it is necessary to achieve in every possible way an increase in the level of socio-psychological health (optimum) of both each individual and the entire population of any city (respectively, of course, in rural areas). At the same time, it is necessary to take into account the concentrated, in essence, unique opportunities for the development of psychological health that the urban environment creates. But along with this, it is important to investigate the negative factors determined by the influence of certain phenomena of mass culture that reduce the possibilities of creative work (cultural and physical health, self-closure of the individual), anomalies in social behavior, the influence of fashion, subcultural trends (in particular, among young people). Deep links with the shadow economy can also be found here.

Pollution of the human environment primarily affects their health, physical endurance, performance, as well as their fertility and mortality. The impact of the natural environment on a person is through the dependence of a person on natural means of subsistence, on the abundance or lack of food, that is, game, fish, and plant resources. Another way of influence is the way of the presence or absence of the necessary means of labor: it is clear that in different eras, flint, tin, copper, iron, gold, coal, uranium ores had unequal importance in the economy of man and society. Another way the environment influences a person and his culture is the creation by nature itself of motives that encourage him to act, incentives for activity - the requirement of changing environmental conditions.

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A complex indicator of the state of human society is the level of health of the people themselves. According to modern concepts, health is the natural state of an organism that is in complete balance with the biosphere and is characterized by the absence of any pathological changes. According to the World Health Organization, health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

The state of health reflects the dynamic balance between the environment and the organism. Human health is influenced by lifestyle, genetic and environmental factors. Homeostasis is considered to be the relative dynamic constancy of the internal environment and some physiological functions of the body of people and animals, supported by self-regulation mechanisms under conditions of fluctuations in internal and external stimuli.

Human health, provided by the homeostasis of her body, can be maintained even with certain changes in environmental factors. Such changes cause the appearance in the human body of the corresponding biological reactions, but due to the processes of adaptation, they do not lead to negative health consequences within certain limits of the change in factors. For each person, these boundaries are individual.

Adaptation is also a sphere of scientific and practical interests of human ecology. Adaptation is the adaptation of an organism at the individual and population levels to changes in environmental conditions, developed in the process of evolutionary development.

A person is affected by various natural, economic, socio-cultural, psychological factors that affect her health. In this regard, human ecology interprets adaptation to new conditions as a set of socio-biological parameters necessary for the sustainable existence of an organism in a particular ecological environment. The adaptive capabilities of the individual and the population are in real conditions that form anthropoecological stresses - the problems of the human body caused by the action of environmental factors. Its factors are socio-psychological, industrial, domestic tension, hypokinesia (impairment of body functions due to limitation of motor activity), malnutrition, water and air pollution, increased noise, etc.

The study of the influence of these factors on a person is a prerequisite for the development of a scientifically based environmental policy, which should cover socio-economic, technological, technical, information and educational, organizational and other areas of activity aimed at developing the physical and mental capabilities of a person, his ability to improve, live in harmony with oneself and the natural world.

Today, for all successes, a person has not yet learned how to purposefully change his genotype, and therefore the limits of his body's resistance to various environmental factors have remained almost the same. For example, like tens of thousands of years ago, the following are considered optimal for a person: air temperature 18-35 ° C, atmospheric pressure 80-150 kPa, pH of drinking water 5.5-8.0, nitrate content in it 2-15 mg / l . However, there are fewer and fewer places on Earth where these factors are in the human optimum zone: there is a lot of water with a low content of nitrates and optimal pH in the tundra or in the high mountains, but the temperature, and in the mountains and pressure, go beyond the optimum. Conversely, on the plain, where both pressure and temperature are optimal, water is increasingly polluted with nitrates. Despite this, people live both on the plain and in the mountains. This is where the principle of limiting factors comes into play: if at least one of them goes beyond the tolerance range, it becomes limiting. When the value of such a factor has not yet reached the lethal limit, but has already left the optimum zone, the body experiences physiological stress: in mountainous areas it is mountain sickness, and in the plains, due to the increased content of nitrates in water, general weakness and depression.

A person, like any living being, is affected by a specific factor not by itself, but in interaction with others, and depending on the nature of this interaction, the range of tolerance may change.

For example, at a relative air humidity of 30%, an air temperature of 28 ° C corresponds to the optimum zone. But at a humidity of 70%, this same temperature goes beyond the optimum and falls into the pessimum zone: breathing speeds up, a feeling of heat and suffocation appears, depression, a person can lose consciousness.

Since the time of Hippocrates, health has been defined as the absence of disease; as a state of the body in which it is able to fully perform its functions. In this sense, health is the object of medicine. A practitioner always works with a specific person, studying the patient's health status, determines the presence of chronic diseases, analyzes the functional state of his organs and systems, individual resistance, mental and physical development, and, based on the results of the examination, makes a specific decision on treatment.

The dependence of health on heredity and environmental factors is the main aspect of the problem of human health at the population level. In this case, the object of study is not an individual, but a population or a combination of populations - an ethnic group, a nation, humanity as a whole. Health at the population level is a more general category, since what concerns the population necessarily also affects specific individuals. For example, in some areas of Polissya and Western Ukraine, a common disease is endemic goiter, which affects about half a million people. The cause of this disease is the deficiency of iodine in water and the high content of humic acids in it. In each case, the doctor prescribes drugs containing iodine. However, at the population level, a more effective way to combat the disease is to correct the mineral composition of drinking water or food by adding the required amount of iodine. This procedure applies immediately to the entire population and is not only curative, but also preventive.

The problem of human health at the population level deals with one of the new branches of ecology - medical ecology. In medical ecology, as well as in population ecology in general, statistical indicators are considered the main indicators of the state of human populations. Determining the health of a population, medical ecologists primarily analyze birth and death rates, life expectancy, morbidity and its structure, performance, psychological indicators, such as life satisfaction. Demographic indicators (life expectancy, birth-to-mortality ratio) make it possible to assess the general state of the population. However, the most informative environmentally morbidity and its structure. Morbidity reflects the degree of adaptability of the population to environmental conditions, and the structure of morbidity reflects the share of each disease in their total number.

Knowledge of the incidence and its structure, the causes of diseases, the environmental conditions through which these three causes arise, gives a person a powerful tool to protect his population and each individual from the effects of adverse environmental factors.

Morbidity is not a random phenomenon. Approximately 50% of it is due to the lifestyle of each individual person. Bad habits, malnutrition, insufficient physical activity, loneliness, stress, violation of work and rest regimes contribute to the development of diseases. About 40% of the incidence depends on heredity and environmental conditions - climate, environmental pollution - and about 10% is determined by the current level of medical care.

Within the range of tolerance, a person adapts to environmental conditions due to numerous protective and adaptive (adaptive) reactions of the body, the main of which are maintaining the constancy of the properties of the internal environment (homeostasis), regenerative processes, immunity, regulation of metabolism. Within the framework of the optimum, these reactions ensure efficient functioning, high performance, and efficient recovery. And in the case of the transition of any factor into the pessimum zone, the effectiveness of individual adaptive systems decreases or the adaptive ability is lost altogether. Pathological changes begin in the body, which indicates a certain disease. The pathological condition under the influence of adverse environmental factors often turns out to be poisoning (toxicosis), allergic reactions, malignant tumors, hereditary diseases, congenital anomalies.