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Article: Environmental Determinants of Health
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of Public Health
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ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH
An environmental determinant of health is, in general, any external agent (biological, chemical, physical, social, or cultural) that can be causally linked to a change in health status. However, since virtually everything that is not genetically determined could be considered "environmental," this general definition is too all-encompassing to be useful. Rather, environmental epidemiologists have narrowed the term to include only those environmental influences that are involuntary. For example, breathing secondhand tobacco smoke would be an environmental hazard, whereas active tobacco smoking would be considered a behavioral determinant.
In the ...