Environmental health helps prevent disease and create health-supportive environments.
It includes the aspects of human health that are determined by physical, chemical, biological and social factors in the environment. Environmental health works to assess and control these factors.
This section of the Chief Health Officer report looks at the issue of climate change, which the World Health Organization has described as the defining health issue of the 21st century.
Other key issues include air quality – both ambient (outdoor) and the emerging issue of indoor air quality – as well as heat health, which is an important issue related to climate change.
It also discusses the significant thunderstorm asthma event of late 2016.
This section draws on several climate change reports, including: Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public , published by the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change in 2015, and Climate-ready Victoria, published by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning in 2015.
It also draws on:
- a 2016 speech from the Director General of the World Health Organization, Climate change is the defining issue for public health in the 21st .
- Air pollution in Victoria – a summary of the state of , published by the Environment Protection Authority Victoria (EPA)
- Air monitoring report , also published by the EPA
- Thunderstorm asthma
- Heat health resources.
Reviewed 24 October 2023