[Environmental medicine]

As technology and industrialization have altered our environment, we have become increasingly aware that man made environmental change may lead to disease. Obvious examples are the widespread use of asbestos during this century, the epidemic of cigarette-caused disease, and the prevalent air and water pollution. Such examples have lead to more general concerns about the environment, particularly about its global change, and the need for ongoing evaluation of suspect risk factors. Hereby, medicine concerned with these risk factors, environmental medicine and hygiene, involves prevention, diagnosis, therapy, and study of disease and injury due to external influences; its core disciplines are toxicology, epidemiology, and occupational medicine. Yet more important, the environmental medicine is not understood as a new specialty but as a transdisciplinary task of all doctors and those who are concerned with human health problems.