Cause, Cause And Environmental Impacts Of Civil Engineering And Public Health

Introduction

In 1884, William Le Baron Jenney, who is known as the father of American skyscraper, built the first skyscraper in Chicago, solving the problem of lacking living place in overpopulated area. Today, although all kinds of buildings are built all over the world, not all of them are benefiting us. On the other hand, some of them are hurting our health slowly and insignificantly.

In late 19th century, public health, city planning and civil engineering wew one field of study in North America, and it was used to reduce harmful effects of industrialization and urbanization. But, throughout the first half of the 20th century, interest of public health started to focus on immunization plans instead improving urban infrastructure. Civil engineering and public health is a disparate area of study today; however, civil planning has direct impact on public health, yet good civil planning can make people live healthier. People’s health is directly affected by the environment they live in, such as: air pollution, water quality, and so on. To truly make people healthy, we not only need to heal the person physically, but also need to erase diseases’ root causes. Similarly, farmers do not clear weeds just by cutting them, but by taking their roots out of the soil.

This paper will address to the cause, effect and solution of two problems related to the issue that build environment we live in is harming our health.

In some well developed cities, buildings are so tall and many that people call it ‘concrete jungle’. Although these building solve the problem of the lack of space in those area, it creates pollution, toxins, crowding and noise. Living in a concrete jungle might be a dream for many people, but life is the city is actually stre...

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...ne of the root lethal diseases. A better control of collecting, handling , and disposing wastes can improvement people’s health in that area. Systems for transporting, storing, and distributing potable water is also needed.

Injuries in the built environment: Indoor injuries may caused by poor interior design such as: doors with runs that are too narrow, stairways that are too steep or very sharp internal turns, and inadequately lighted.

Traffic accidents: Many people think that traffic accidents are caused by incompetence of drivers and poorly maintained vehicles, but most of the accidents result from poorly designed roads. Traffic accidents often happen at places where people share the carriageway with cars because of the absence of sidewalks. This problem is compounded by the lack of street light, absence of street signage, and no designated pedestrian crossings.