Ecocrisis interaction, the synergistic interface of two or more environmental events or pollutants that multiply resulting harmful health effects beyond their additive impact is putting humans as well as other species at catastrophic risk. Perils of Eco-Crises Interaction: Human Health and the Changing Environment is a timely volume designed to increase understanding of the link between health and the environment. The diverse ecological calamities humans face are not presented as standalone threats, which has been the conventional perspective, but rather a novel framework is developed for understanding how negative human impacts on the environment interact and magnify their hazardous effects. This discussion raises essential questions about the extinction of species, populations, and ways of life.
Volume highlights include:
- Traces of the mounting risk of eco-crisis interaction beginning with the sweeping environmental and social transformation launched by the industrial revolution
- Changes in a new geological epoch, Anthropocene, which highlights the dominant role now played by human activity in shaping the geology and ecology of Earth
- Production and use of fossil fuels contributing to an intense rise in carbon dioxide and other pollutants in the atmosphere and in the oceans
- Industrial production, in turn, contributing to an array of other environmental crises, including fuel spills, waste dumpings and leakages, deforestation, the spread of infectious diseases, loss of biodiversity, and the devastation of marine life
- Eco-crisis occurrence when various pollutants and environment disruptions generated by fossil capitalism are co-present in the same environmental context collectively contributing to unidirectionally or multidirectionally magnify their impact on human health and society and other species as well
- Development of an understanding of the pathways and mechanisms through which two or more ecocrises deleteriously intermingle in the air, on land, and in bodies of fresh or salt water
- Complex sets of interactions between global warming and anthropogenic impairments to clean air that can be seen in various planetary ecozones involving a diverse set of environmental corridors of interaction, with some interactions increasing human vulnerability to a range of debilitating and deadly diseases
- Examination of the diverse ecological threats humans face, and exploration of the nature (pathways and mechanisms) and vital importance of eco-crisis interaction in health and well-being
- Consideration of the entwinement of human and non-human health in light of environmental change
- Incorporation of thresholds of planetary boundaries perspective
Perils of Eco-Crises Interaction: Human Health and the Changing Environment is a valuable resource for researchers and professionals in the field of environmental health, global health, planetary health, ecohealth, public health, medical geology, climate change and society, and medical anthropology. This volume will also be useful for policy makers and analysts.
