Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi (Jan 2017)
Interaction Between Human Health and the Environment
Abstract
A sustainable life on earth strongly depends upon a balanced surrounding environment as well as continuous and organized material cycles (ecological cycle) such as water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, sulfur and magnesium which are known as eternal renewals. Because, all living creatures including human being live in Earth’s living areas called ecosystems. In an ecosystem, a defect in oxygen, water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen cycles or the pollution of substances essential for life like air, water, soil complicates life and life conditions. Similar problems in ecosystem cause numerous alterations in man’s physical, mental, cognitive and social structure. The persistence of a healthy and positive human life relies on the interaction between genetic structure of human being and environmental conditions. The environmental factors concerning cold, hot, humidity, elevation, nutrition, geologic and topographic structure, socioeconomic and education level of man directly affect high quality and healthy life, besides directly or indirectly control the working of genetic structure. Therefore, environment is an essential element of life. Furthermore, the environmental factors are a must for the growth, development and all activities of human being. A healthy and vigorous human is unimaginable in case air, water and soil is polluted. Likewise, man having poor and unbalanced nutrition cannot have a healthy, vigorous and quality life. The environmental factors directly affect man’s physical, mental, cognitive and social structure. It is known that man’s difficulty in communicating with his/her relatives, friends and neighbors results in physical, mental and social problems. In this context, even noise pollution adversely affects the work life. Environmental pollution, poor nutrition, elevation, negative weather conditions may cause stress in daily life leading to the disruption of mental structure as well as may trigger mental illnesses like schizophrenia by affecting the nervous system. In this literature study, the effect of environmental factors on physical, mental, cognitive and social relations and growth, development and all activities related to life is discussed considering various examples.
