The Environmental factor is a concept used in business management to refer to external elements outside a company’s control that cannot be changed. These can range from the economic environment to social and cultural influences.
Businesses are heavily dependent on their environment to operate successfully, and businesses that ignore this factor could end up in trouble. Therefore, companies need to pay attention to these external aspects in order to craft successful marketing strategies and boost revenues.
Environmental factors can have a significant effect on an individual or population’s health, affecting physical fitness and susceptibility to disease. These include air pollution, climate change, microbe-causing microbes, water/sanitation infrastructure quality and access to public services like hospitals or clinics.
Furthermore, people can come into contact with hazardous chemicals in their daily lives through the air and water they breathe, the products they use or the foods they eat. Many of these pollutants are persistent pollutants that bioaccumulate in both the environment and food chain, posing risks to human health over time.
Some of these chemicals can be absorbed through the skin, leading to long-lasting health effects. Others have an immediate impact on the brain that could result in psychiatric disorders like depression or anxiety.
Environmental elements can shape how someone views life events such as divorce, loss of a job or surgery and how they respond to stressful situations. For instance, exposure to green space after such an experience helps patients recover more quickly from it and reduces their emotional distress.
Environmental factors also have a significant effect on children’s wellbeing. Studies have indicated that the environment can influence how much physical activity young children participate in.
Factors such as pollution, bad roads, litter and lack of sidewalks can make it more challenging for children to go outside to play, potentially leading to less physical activity in the future.
Environmental elements like crime and deprivation can increase a child’s likelihood of illness and injury. Furthermore, pesticides used within communities have the potential to negatively affect health in residents; and lack of sanitation infrastructure leads to high rates of communicable diseases among local populations.
The interplay between environment and other health determinants is fundamental for understanding the U.S. health disadvantage and projecting its trajectory into the future. To address this problem, further research must explore how environmental elements interact with these other risk factors to explain and prevent this disparity from arising in future generations. Policies that reduce exposures or mitigate their distribution could help explain and prevent such disadvantages from arising in our future generations, respectively.
There is growing recognition of the role environment plays in mental health and wellbeing. This field of research examines how our environment shapes how we behave and interact, with an aim to improving both natural and built environments that impact our wellbeing.
