The Environment and the Individual Answers

An individual exposed to smoke and asbestos will likely develop lung issues, such as asthma and lung cancer.

Student answers will vary. Possible answers include malaria, heat exhaustion, skin cancer, elevation sickness, heat stroke, frostbite, hyperthermia, and hypothermia.

A potential risk associated with the use of insecticides and herbicides in agriculture is contamination of the food that is grown. While the insecticides and herbicides might help control plant and insect populations that are harmful to the growth of crops, those same chemicals may be harmful to humans either in the long and/or short term.

The global environment includes aspects of the environment that are globally determined, such as ozone depletion that can affect an individual’s health. The outdoor environment refers to environmental factors that can directly influence an individual’s health, but are specific to that individual’s location.

Children are at a higher risk of suffering negative effects from environmental hazards than adults, because children do not have fully developed immune systems. In addition, children have a higher exposure to environmental hazards, because they spend more time outside, on average, than adults. Children also take in more air per unit mass than adults, which means that they also take in more pollutants relative to their size.