U.S. Health in International Perspective PDF Download

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309264146
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.

Author: Mohamed Khallaf
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 9533075287
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
This book aims to strengthen the knowledge base dealing with Air Pollution. The book consists of 21 chapters dealing with Air Pollution and its effects in the fields of Health, Environment, Economy and Agricultural Sources. It is divided into four sections. The first one deals with effect of air pollution on health and human body organs. The second section includes the Impact of air pollution on plants and agricultural sources and methods of resistance. The third section includes environmental changes, geographic and climatic conditions due to air pollution. The fourth section includes case studies concerning of the impact of air pollution in the economy and development goals, such as, indoor air pollution in México, indoor air pollution and millennium development goals in Bangladesh, epidemiologic and economic impact of natural gas on indoor air pollution in Colombia and economic growth and air pollution in Iran during development programs. In this book the authors explain the definition of air pollution, the most important pollutants and their different sources and effects on humans and various fields of life. The authors offer different solutions to the problems resulting from air pollution.

Author: Sponsored by The Health Effects Institute
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309037263
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 703

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Book Description
"The combination of scientific and institutional integrity represented by this book is unusual. It should be a model for future endeavors to help quantify environmental risk as a basis for good decisionmaking." â€"William D. Ruckelshaus, from the foreword. This volume, prepared under the auspices of the Health Effects Institute, an independent research organization created and funded jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency and the automobile industry, brings together experts on atmospheric exposure and on the biological effects of toxic substances to examine what is knownâ€"and not knownâ€"about the human health risks of automotive emissions.

Author: Weltgesundheitsorganisation
Publisher: World Health Organization
ISBN: 9240034226
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The main objective of these updated global guidelines is to offer health-based air quality guideline levels, expressed as long-term or short-term concentrations for six key air pollutants: PM2.5, PM10, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide. In addition, the guidelines provide interim targets to guide reduction efforts of these pollutants, as well as good practice statements for the management of certain types of PM (i.e., black carbon/elemental carbon, ultrafine particles, particles originating from sand and duststorms). These guidelines are not legally binding standards; however, they provide WHO Member States with an evidence-informed tool, which they can use to inform legislation and policy. Ultimately, the goal of these guidelines is to help reduce levels of air pollutants in order to decrease the enormous health burden resulting from the exposure to air pollution worldwide.

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309452961
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 583

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Book Description
In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Author: Haneen Khreis
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0128181230
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 650

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Book Description
Traffic-Related Air Pollution synthesizes and maps TRAP and its impact on human health at the individual and population level. The book analyzes mitigating standards and regulations with a focus on cities. It provides the methods and tools for assessing and quantifying the associated road traffic emissions, air pollution, exposure and population-based health impacts, while also illuminating the mechanisms underlying health impacts through clinical and toxicological research. Real-world implications are set alongside policy options, emerging technologies and best practices. Finally, the book recommends ways to influence discourse and policy to better account for the health impacts of TRAP and its societal costs. - Overviews existing and emerging tools to assess TRAP's public health impacts - Examines TRAP's health effects at the population level - Explores the latest technologies and policies--alongside their potential effectiveness and adverse consequences--for mitigating TRAP - Guides on how methods and tools can leverage teaching, practice and policymaking to ameliorate TRAP and its effects

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030906371X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Incineration has been used widely for waste disposal, including household, hazardous, and medical wasteâ€"but there is increasing public concern over the benefits of combusting the waste versus the health risk from pollutants emitted during combustion. Waste Incineration and Public Health informs the emerging debate with the most up-to-date information available on incineration, pollution, and human healthâ€"along with expert conclusions and recommendations for further research and improvement of such areas as risk communication. The committee provides details on: Processes involved in incineration and how contaminants are released. Environmental dynamics of contaminants and routes of human exposure. Tools and approaches for assessing possible human health effects. Scientific concerns pertinent to future regulatory actions. The book also examines some of the social, psychological, and economic factors that affect the communities where incineration takes place and addresses the problem of uncertainty and variation in predicting the health effects of incineration processes.

Author: Frederick W. Lipfert
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9780471285601
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
Air Pollution and Community Health A Critical Review and Data Sourcebook Frederick W. Lipfert Air pollution has affected community health since the advent of the industrial age and arguably since the discovery of fire. While organized societies have taken important steps to reduce and control emissions, the quality of the air we breathe today remains a critical concern. Air Pollution and Community Health transforms the major epidemiological works of the past 40 years into a coherent picture of the effects of air pollution on respiration, hospitalization, and mortality. The book re-evaluates these studies to clarify their findings within a consistent analytical framework and to define statistical relationships between various measures of community health and air quality. Lipfert emphasizes observational studies and the quality of the data used. The book is organized by health endpoint rather than by pollutant, beginning with the major air pollution disasters that helped galvanize the environmental revolution. His analysis shows that community air pollution acts primarily to exacerbate existing conditions in susceptible individuals, rather than to create new cases of respiratory disease. He concludes that "the alarms that sounded over 40 years ago are still ringing"--substantial health risks are still presented by the current urban mixtures of air pollution. Many of the studies reviewed suggest that the current ambient air quality standards required by the Clean Air Act fail to protect the health of the most susceptible individuals. Further, because of the role of natural sources of air pollution, questions are raised as to whether complete protection can ever be achieved. The book presents data from many of the epidemiological studies reviewed, including those of the major disasters of 1930-1960. Graphical presentations are featured for easy reference; many new analyses are presented here for the first time. The book also includes introductory chapters on air pollution, statistical analysis, and respiratory physiology, for the convenience of readers who may not be well versed in all of these topics. The major technical chapters on mortality and hospitalization include reviews of the effects of air pollution episodes, time-series analyses, cross-sectional studies, and long-term studies of pollution abatement. The chapters on respiratory function include both the effects of air pollution on function and the role of lung function as an independent predictor of longevity. Air Pollution and Community Health presents one of the first comprehensive analyses of the subject. It should be used to re-examine the effectiveness of air pollution research and control policies in the United States and is essential reading for all professionals involved in air pollution control or public health.

Author: Merlin Chowkwanyun
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469667681
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Health is political. It entails fierce battles over the allocation of resources, arguments over the imposition of regulations, and the mediation of dueling public sentiments—all conflicts that are often narrated from a national, top-down view. In All Health Politics Is Local, Merlin Chowkwanyun shifts our focus, taking us to four very different places—New York City, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Central Appalachia—to experience a national story through a regional lens. He shows how racial uprisings in the 1960s catalyzed the creation of new medical infrastructure for those long denied it, what local authorities did to curb air pollution so toxic that it made residents choke and cry, how community health activists and bureaucrats fought over who'd control facilities long run by insular elites, and what a national coal boom did to community ecology and health. All Health Politics Is Local shatters the notion of a single national health agenda. Health is and has always been political, shaped both by formal policy at the highest levels and by grassroots community battles far below.

Author:
Publisher: World Health Organization
ISBN:
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
This book presents WHO guidelines for the protection of public health from risks due to a number of chemicals commonly present in indoor air. The substances considered in this review, i.e. benzene, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, naphthalene, nitrogen dioxide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (especially benzo[a]pyrene), radon, trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene, have indoor sources, are known in respect of their hazardousness to health and are often found indoors in concentrations of health concern. The guidelines are targeted at public health professionals involved in preventing health risks of environmental exposures, as well as specialists and authorities involved in the design and use of buildings, indoor materials and products. They provide a scientific basis for legally enforceable standards.