Think globally, act locally. Environmental slogan
39.1 Environmental profile
39.2 Environmental profile, its characteristics
Control questions Situational tasks
39.1. Environmental profile
It is known that the major determinants of population health are the body's biological characteristics (hereditary factors), natural and climatic environment (landscape, climate, flora and fauna), social environment (social interactions, the level of industrial and agricultural development, health services, culture, age-sex pattern of the population, living conditions, quality of housing and the like). The concept of multifactorality is aimed at developing scientifically validated approaches to the evaluation of health standards.
Disease emerges within a specific ecological system. That is why the specifics of the living environment should also be considered to clarify the cause of disease. At the present moment there is no agreement concerning the ratio of various factors which influence human health. According to WHO, the determinants include: lifestyle 50%, physical environment 20%, heredity 20%, and health care10%.
Human adaptation to specific environmental conditions occurs not only with the help of industrial equipment, but also as a result of biological adjustments which involve both functional and structural systems of the human body.
Ethnic physiological differences
A lot of scientists have addressed the issue of racial differences. Among them are John Davy (1790-1868), Adolf Ritter (1890-?), John Marie Keating (1852-1893), and others.
Thus, Sir Arthur Keith (1874-1942), a prominent Scottish anthropologist, was among the first to analyze the effects of hormones on racial differences. He concluded that not only the primitive constitution of Neanderthals, but even facial features in the Caucasian race and anomalous deviations in genital functioning in the Mongoloid race and the Bushmen can be interpreted as a result of race-specific functioning of reproductive and adrenal glands. Moreover, differences of constitutional types, hair distribuiton and pigmentation are of the same origin. It was observed that the thyroid gland in the Malays is much smaller than in European people because in the latter there is one gram of the thyroid substance per 1920 grams of body mass, while in the former the proportion is 1 to 3571. In the Chinese, these differences are not so significant; however, in the Chinese, the pineal gland weighs less than in European people. Further, in the Negroid race, the thyroid gland weighs less than in the Caucasian race. These genetic differences enabled Egon von Eickstedt to classify races according to the weight of the endocrine organs, and to correlate these properties with the incidence of mental and sexual disorders in the representatives of different races. He wrote, ?It was long ago detected that the Negroid race is exceptionally resistant to yellow fever. This characteristic is inherited by the hybrids. In the Negroid race, the occurrence of rickets, warts, malignant anemia, comedones and certain forms of syphilis is not common. On the other hand, they are highly vulnerable to tuberculosis, which is extremely common for