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Ensuring Environmental Health in Postindustrial Cities Workshop Summary (2003) / Chapter Skim
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5. Improving Health in the Built Environment: A Daunting But Doable Challenge
Pages 28-35

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From page 28...
... To avoid environmental health catastrophe at that level, and even well below it we already face some serious issues under present conditions we must reconsider the ways in which we design our daily landscape so as to reduce and hopefully even reverse the environmental public health trends we face today. In modern science, we are good at isolating problems and solving them, and this focused method has worked very well for us.
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From page 29...
... The risk of asthma has been growing in a stepwise fashion in the United States. Just about any school nurse will attest that while asthma in school kids was relatively uncommon 25 years ago, it' s now a virtual epidemic, with typically a third of the kids who come in for medical attention suffering from asthma or a related condition.
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From page 30...
... DRIVEN TO DEPRESSION, OR WORSE The "landscraping" trend cited above largely to serve cars, of course has effects that go well beyond degradation of the water and air and the increased incidences of related diseases. We spend more and more time in our carscommuting time to work, for example, has gone up 14 percent in just the past 10 years and this is not merely tedious and fuel-consum~ng.
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From page 31...
... As renowned pediatncian/ child psychiatrist Herbert Needleman has said about young children, "It is the job of a child to taste, touch, and feel its environment, to immerse itself in its environment." School age children need continuing challenges of mastery. Every parent and teacher knows that it is important to present to the learning child tasks that are doable, where they can succeed, but not too easily.
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From page 32...
... consumption (see Figure 5-3) or that three million children in the United States suffer from depression.
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From page 33...
... For example, my colleagues and I calculate that the obesification of the American public raises the airlines' jet-fuel costs some $200 million per year just in the United States alone. Most notably, being obese is a risk factor for type II diabetes a very serious problem that can cause the loss of eyes, kidneys, feet, and ultimately life itself.
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From page 34...
... 8%-10% >10% FIGURE 5-4 The incidence rates of diabetes in the United States have been rapidly growing in recent years. In 1993, only 4 states reported diabetic rates between 8 and 10 percent of their population.
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From page 35...
... The same can be true of environmental health in Pittsburgh and the nation if we reclaim the land and water and air for human habitability, fitness, and fulfillment.
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Key Terms

  • built environment
  • fatality rates
  • states reported
  • sprawl cities
  • time driving

  • pedestrian fatality
  • national highway
  • highway traffic
  • traffic safety
  • safety administration

  • people spend
  • pedestrian fatalities
  • school age
  • sports games
  • avoid environmental

  • medical student
  • reported diabetic
  • body mass
  • cities create
  • psychologically oppressive

  • automobile fatality
  • low density
  • diabetic rates
  • issue comes
  • water returning

  • air conditioners
  • dramatic reduction
  • resulting impervious
  • surrounding countryside
  • percent decrease


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