• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Human activities leading to increased infectious disease

Physician Practice Advisor, July 6, 2004

We've known for decades that the way humans interact with the natural world endangers thousands of species, permanently alters the landscape, and allows urban areas to extend. But a recent study in Environmental Health Perspectives adds a new consequence to human behavior: the spread of infectious disease.

Currently, scientists only understand how human behavior has spread a limited number of diseases. The report offers examples such as the growth of Lyme disease in the northeastern United States as a direct result of deforestation and urban sprawl. It also hypothesizes that human activities cause the tragic global scale of the HIV virus. Hunters gained access to infected "bush meat" by logging roads. It was then spread by human contact locally, and then globally because of the relative ease of global travel.

"Many of our current activities, primarily for economic development, have major adverse health effects," says lead report author and a department of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin. "There is no single smoking gun."

The list of activities that lead to infectious diseases is long-it includes ecotourism, agriculture, and war. Other diseases that are finding new ways to thrive in response to human actions include malaria, cholera, influenza, and foot and mouth.

For more information, click here.

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive