Final answer:
Environmental health focuses on preventing disease and injury by reducing exposure to adverse environmental conditions. Traditional hazards affect developing countries, while modern hazards are prevalent in industrialized countries. Contaminated water, poor sanitation, and indoor air pollution are significant contributors to poor health.
Step-by-step explanation:
Environmental health is concerned with preventing disease, death and disability by reducing exposure to adverse environmental conditions and promoting behavioral change. It focuses on the direct and indirect causes of diseases and injuries, and taps resources inside and outside the health care system to help improve health outcomes. Environmental health risks can be grouped into two broad categories. Traditional hazards related to poverty and lack of development affect developing countries and poor people most. Modern hazards, caused by development that lacks environmental safeguards, such as urban (outdoor) air pollution and exposure to agro-industrial chemicals and waste, prevail in industrialized countries, where exposure to traditional hazards is low. Each year contaminated water and poor sanitation contribute to 5.4 billion cases of diarrhea worldwide and 1.6 million deaths, mostly among children under the age of five. Indoor air pollution—a much less publicized source of poor health is responsible for more than 1.6 million deaths per year and for 2.7 percent of global burden of disease.