Environmental factors

Examples of Environmental factors in the following topics:

• Tilting the Tests: Discrimination by IQ

  • Furthermore, the relationship between genetics and environmental factors is likely complicated.
  • In general, explanations fall into one of two camps: genetic explanations and environmental explanations.
  • Researchers have suggested a wide array of environmental factors that might influence intelligence.
  • Furthermore, the relationship between genetics and environmental factors is likely complicated.
  • Discuss the various explanations for the IQ gap, ranging from genetic to environmental factors

• Nature vs. Nurture: A False Debate

  • A "genetic predisposition to violence" could be a mitigating factor in crime if the science behind genetic determinants can be found conclusive.
  • "Nurture"-based explanations, such as a disadvantaged background, have in some cases already been accepted as mitigating factors.
  • But today, the concept of nurture has expanded to refer to any environmental factor - which may arise from prenatal, parental, extended family, or peer experiences, or even from media, marketing, and socioeconomic status.
  • Environmental factors could begin to influence development even before it begins: a substantial amount of individual variation might be traced back to environmental influences that affect prenatal development.

• Race and Ethnicity

  • Many explanations for such differences have been argued, including socioeconomic factors, lifestyle behaviors, social environment, and access to preventive health-care services among other environmental differences.
  • In multiracial societies, such as the United States, racial groups differ greatly in regard to social and cultural factors, such as socioeconomic status, healthcare, diet, and education.
  • There is also the presence of racism, which some see as a very important explaining factor.
  • Some argue that for many diseases, racial differences would disappear if all environmental factors could be controlled for.

• Race and Health

  • Many explanations for such differences have been argued, including socioeconomic factors, lifestyle, social environment, and access to preventive health-care services, among other environmental differences.
  • In multiracial societies such as the United States, racial groups differ greatly in regard to social and cultural factors such as socioeconomic status, healthcare, diet, and education.
  • There is also the presence of racism which some see as a very important explaining factor.
  • Some argue that for many diseases racial differences would disappear if all environmental factors could be controlled for.
  • Apart from the general controversy regarding race, some argue that the continued use of racial categories in health care, and as risk factors, could result in increased stereotyping and discrimination in society and health services.

• Physical Health

  • "Food deserts" are areas with low access to fresh produce and nutritious groceries, typically found in poor urban neighborhoods or isolated rural areas, and can be considered an environmental cause of negative health outcomes for the lower class.
  • "Food deserts" are areas with low access to fresh produce and nutritious groceries, typically found in poor urban neighborhoods or isolated rural areas, and can be considered an environmental cause of negative health outcomes for the lower class.
  • Social determinants are environmental, meaning that they are risk factors found in one's living and working conditions (including the distribution of income, wealth, influence, and power), rather than individual factors (such as behavioral risk factors or genetics).
  • Many social scientists hypothesize that the higher rate of illness among those with low SES can be attributed to environmental hazards.
  • Health inequality refers to the unequal distribution of environmental health hazards and access to health services between demographic groups, including social classes.

• Corporations and Corporate Power

  • Anti-corporate advocates express the commonly held view that corporations answer only to shareholders, and give little consideration to human rights, environmental concerns, or other cultural issues.
  • Multinational corporations are important factors in the processes of globalization .
  • To compete, political entities may offer MNCs incentives such as tax breaks, governmental assistance, subsidies, or lax environmental and labor regulations.

• World Health Trends

  • Diseases of affluence refer to physical health conditions for which personal lifestyles (such as lack of exercise or eating a high-fat diet) and societal conditions (such as stressful work arrangements or environmental pollution) associated with economic development are believed to be an important risk factor.
  • In contrast, the diseases of poverty tend to consist largely of infectious diseases, often related to poor sanitation, low vaccination coverage, inadequate public health services, and weak enforcement of environmental health and safety regulations.
  • Thus, health interventions must likewise address not just diseases themselves, but the structural factors which prevent certain groups from accessing adequate healthcare or from having adequate information with which to practice healthy habits and prevent disease.
  • Explain why health interventions must not just address diseases but also structural factors

• Social Class and Health

  • From the differences in socioeconomic and environmental characteristics of different ethnic and racial groups.
  • While gender and race play significant factors in explaining healthcare inequality in the United States, socioeconomic status is the greatest determining factor in an individual's level of access to healthcare.
  • They are risk factors found in one's living and working conditions (such as the distribution of income, wealth, influence, and power), rather than individual factors (such as behavioral risk factors or genetics) that influence the risk for a disease, injury, or vulnerability to disease or injury.

• The Process of Urbanization

  • Urbanization is the process of a population shift from rural areas to cities, often motivated by economic factors.
  • These factors negatively affect the economy of small- and middle-sized farms and strongly reduce the size of the rural labor market.
  • Urbanization has significant economic and environmental effects on cities and surrounding areas.
  • These patterns may be driven by transportation infrastructure, or social factors like racism.
  • The cities became seen as dangerous, crime-infested areas, while the suburbs were seen as safe places to live and raise a family, leading to a social trend known in some parts of the world as "white flight. " Some social scientists suggest that the historical processes of suburbanization and decentralization are instances of white privilege that have contributed to contemporary patterns of environmental racism.

• Urbanization

  • People move into cities to seek economic opportunities.A major contributing factor is known as "rural flight".In rural areas, often on small family farms, it is difficult to improve one's standard of living beyond basic sustenance.Farm living is dependent on unpredictable environmental conditions, and in times of drought, flood or pestilence, survival becomes extremely problematic.In modern times, industrialization of agriculture has negatively affected the economy of small and middle-sized farms and strongly reduced the size of the rural labour market.Cities, in contrast, are known to be places where money, services and wealth are centralized.Cities are where fortunes are made and where social mobility is possible.Businesses, which generate jobs and capital, are usually located in urban areas.Whether the source is trade or tourism, it is also through the cities that foreign money flows into a country.Thus, as with immigration generally, there are factors that push people out of rural areas and pull them into urban areas.
  • There are more job opportunities and a greater variety of jobs.Health is another major factor.People, especially the elderly are often forced to move to cities where there are doctors and hospitals that can address their health needs.Other factors include a greater variety of entertainment (e.g., restaurants, movie theaters, theme parks, etc.) and better quality of education in the form of universities.Due to their high populations, urban areas can also have much more diverse social communities allowing others to find people like them when they might not be able to in rural areas.These conditions are heightened during times of change from a pre-industrial society to an industrial one.
  • One environmental concern associated with urbanization is the urban heat island.The urban heat island is formed when industrial and urban areas are developed and heat becomes more abundant.In rural areas, a large part of the incoming solar energy is used to evaporate water from vegetation and soil.In cities, where less vegetation and exposed soil exists, the majority of the sun's energy is absorbed by urban structures and asphalt.Hence, during warm daylight hours, less evaporative cooling in cities allows surface temperatures to rise higher than in rural areas.Additional city heat is given off by vehicles and factories, as well as by industrial and domestic heating and cooling units.This effect causes the city to become 2 to 10o F (1 to 6o C) warmer than surrounding landscapes.Impacts also include reducing soil moisture and intensification of carbon dioxide emissions.
  • The effects of urbanization may be an overall positive for the environment.Birth rates of new urban dwellers fall immediately to the replacement rate (2.1), and keep falling.This can prevent overpopulation (see discussion below).Additionally, it puts a stop to destructive subsistence farming techniques, like slash and burn agriculture.Finally, it minimizes land use by humans, leaving more for nature.
  • Different forms of urbanization can be classified depending on the style of architecture and planning methods as well as historic growth of areas.In cities of the developed world urbanization traditionally exhibited a concentration of human activities and settlements around the downtown area.Recent developments, such as inner-city redevelopment schemes, mean that new arrivals in cities no longer necessarily settle in the centre.In some developed regions, the reverse effect, originally called counter urbanisation has occurred, with cities losing population to rural areas, and is particularly common for richer families.This has been possible because of improved communications and means of transportation, and has been caused by factors such as the fear of crime and poor urban environments.Later termed "white flight", the effect is not restricted to cities with a high ethnic minority population.When the residential area shifts outward, this is called suburbanization.Some research suggests that suburbanization has gone so far to form new points of concentration outside the downtown both in developed and developing countries such as India.