Environmental medicine is a multidisciplinary field involving medicine, environmental science, chemistry and others, overlapping with environmental pathology. It deals with diseases that other physicians encounter in their practice, whether cancer, lung disease, contact dermatitis, gut diseases, cardiovascular, brain or other chronic and acute diseases."

 

Environmental medicine focuses on the connection between the patient and the environment and utilizes disciplines from the environmental sciences that analyze the four major environmental media: air, water, soil and food. Environmental medicine integrates concerns, protocols and knowledge base with preventive, community, and occupational medicine related to chemical and physical hazards in the environment.

 

Environmental medicine principles and practices may help our clinician isolate the cause of the patient's problems and take the appropriate steps to help the patient prevent ill-health effects from environmental exposures."

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— Michael Gochfield, in Environmental Medicine, pp. 3- 8.

 

Environmental factors in the causation of environmental diseases can be classified into:

• Physical

• Chemical

• Biological

• Social (including Psychological and Culture variables)

• Ergonomic

• Safety

• Any combination of the above