Question

Health, Wellness, and Disease Environmental illness: Real or Imagined? am Our natural environment can be the source of a number of acute ill- nesses and long-term or chronic diseases. Plants, insects, and even the sun cause danger to human beings. When people make changes to the environment-either the micro environment in which an individual lives or works or the macro environment in which we all live and work, there is a risk of potential illness and disease. Many of the activities we undertake daily cause pollution of var- ious sorts. Fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and other compounds cause pollution of the soil and water. Paints, improperly vented space heaters, tobacco smoke, and the naturally occurring substance radon cause indoor air pollution. The burning of fossil fuels to create energy is the largest cause of outdoor air pollution. The largest danger of both indoor and outdoor air pollution is chronic lung diseases, the most common of which is asthma. Scientific studies clearly link increased asthma rates with higher levels of air pol- lution caused by family members who smoke, as well as by transporta- tion and manufacturing emissions. Los Angeles leads the country in the most days with low air quality; large industrial cities in the East and Midwest, such as New York, Phil- adelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Chicago, also have high pollution indices and high asthma rates. Pollution, however, is a natural outgrowth of modern living. Those who study disease, known as epidemiologists (we'll study more about them in Chapter 10), continue to believe that far less disease is caused by pollution than was caused in earlier years by poor hygiene and lack of modern technologies. Think Critically To test the hypothesis that increased asthma rates are correlated to higher levels of air pollution, would it make more sense to compare asthma rates between individuals in New York City and those in rural Kentucky, or would you be better off designing an experiment with a con- trol group and an experimental group from the same location? Defend your answer.

Answer 1

Environment illness is indeed real, as can be seen by a decrease in overall air quality around the globe leading to more and more cases of lung diseases such as asthama.

The hypothesis is that increased asthama rates are correlated to air pollution. To test this hypothesis we need to compare asthama rates of individuals at different places. The places chosen for this are rural Kentucky and NYC. It is obvious that NYC will have more cases of asthama since it is an urban area but we need something to compare our results, choosing Kentucky alone will not suffice since it will set it as a base example, basically neglecting the asthamatics in Kentucky. The better way is to have a control as a base, that is, to compare Kentucky as well with it. This is because even if it is a rural area it still contributes to air pollution such as burning of waste crops and cattle waste thus by having a control we can gauge the amount of asthama patients and then compare it with NYC as well without losing any credibility.