To what extent the environmental debates relates to the debate about healthy lifestyle and heredity factors?
Both seem to revolve around something that can not be influenced (heredity/nature) and cultural antrophomorpic components such as the human foot print and life style.
How can both debates be comparred, and can we learn from either of them for the other debates in case there are similarities?
Almost all complex chronic diseases are influenced by gene-environment interactions. Genetic variation are differences in specific locations in the DNA sequences of individual genes (gentotypes). These variants are unique and fixed. In many genes, different variants (genotypes), alter the expressed outcomes (phenotype) even when exposed to the same environmental conditions. At the molecular level, changes in gene function that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence are regulated by epigenetic mechanisms. Because the developmental phase in life is a period of rapid cell division, it is very sensitive towards epigenetic modifications including environmental exposures.
The exposome therefore encompasses the totality of human environmental exposures over the life course which includes both social economic factors, environmental and nutritional exposures, physical activity, well-being, residential landscape ect. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines environment, as it relates to health, as “all the physical, chemical, and biological factors external to a person, and all the related behaviors”.
In this regard, air pollution is currently the factor with the highest attributable impact at the population level in terms of environmental health issues. The WHO estimated the effects of combustion-related particulate matter on life expectancy. The results of this analysis indicate that current exposure to particulate matter from anthropogenic sources leads to an average loss of 8.6 months of life expectancy in Europe. The impacts vary from around 3 months in Finland to more than 13 months in Belgium. Along similar lines, cleaner air has contributed to increased life expectancy in the US (Pope et al. N Engl J Med. 2009). A decrease of 10 μg/m3 in the concentration of fine particulate matter was associated with an estimated increase in life expectancy of 7.3 months. Fifteen percent of the overall increase in life expectancy over a two decade period was attributed to reductions in air pollution.
The effect on reduced life expectancy is one of the main drivers to further reduce air pollution and this debate interact also with other environmental debates such as climate change. A healthy life style includes living in an healthy environment. Evidence from environmental health sciences, toxicology and environmental epidemiology guides policy to set environmental standards to maintain, enhance and promote people’s health. That environmental health as part of promoting a healthier life-style interacts with the environmental debate is also clear from the fact that many classical environmental oriented scientific journals focus now more often also on environmental health related issues (e.g. Environmental International, Environmental Research, Environmental Pollution,…) and that more medical oriented journals such as those of the Lancet family, introduce now a journal on Planetary Health as a recognition of the medical sector of the link between earths sustainability and human health.
Almost all complex chronic diseases are influenced by gene-environment interactions. Genetic variation are differences in specific locations in the DNA sequences of individual genes (gentotypes). These variants are unique and fixed. In many genes, different variants (genotypes), alter the expressed outcomes (phenotype) even when exposed to the same environmental conditions. At the molecular level, changes in gene function that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence are regulated by epigenetic mechanisms. Because the developmental phase in life is a period of rapid cell division, it is very sensitive towards epigenetic modifications including environmental exposures.
The exposome therefore encompasses the totality of human environmental exposures over the life course which includes both social economic factors, environmental and nutritional exposures, physical activity, well-being, residential landscape ect. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines environment, as it relates to health, as “all the physical, chemical, and biological factors external to a person, and all the related behaviors”.
In this regard, air pollution is currently the factor with the highest attributable impact at the population level in terms of environmental health issues. The WHO estimated the effects of combustion-related particulate matter on life expectancy. The results of this analysis indicate that current exposure to particulate matter from anthropogenic sources leads to an average loss of 8.6 months of life expectancy in Europe. The impacts vary from around 3 months in Finland to more than 13 months in Belgium. Along similar lines, cleaner air has contributed to increased life expectancy in the US (Pope et al. N Engl J Med. 2009). A decrease of 10 μg/m3 in the concentration of fine particulate matter was associated with an estimated increase in life expectancy of 7.3 months. Fifteen percent of the overall increase in life expectancy over a two decade period was attributed to reductions in air pollution.
The effect on reduced life expectancy is one of the main drivers to further reduce air pollution and this debate interact also with other environmental debates such as climate change. A healthy life style includes living in an healthy environment. Evidence from environmental health sciences, toxicology and environmental epidemiology guides policy to set environmental standards to maintain, enhance and promote people’s health. That environmental health as part of promoting a healthier life-style interacts with the environmental debate is also clear from the fact that many classical environmental oriented scientific journals focus now more often also on environmental health related issues (e.g. Environmental International, Environmental Research, Environmental Pollution,…) and that more medical oriented journals such as those of the Lancet family, introduce now a journal on Planetary Health as a recognition of the medical sector of the link between earths sustainability and human health.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/children/applied-and.../heredity-versus-environment
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