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Rapid Urbanization in the Developing World May Breed Disease, Says Environmental Health Expert
By Sara Olkon, Fall 2002 IRP Fellow
WASHINGTON, October 9, 2002 - At least a third of the 55-60 million people who die each year lose their lives to infectious and parasitic diseases, with malaria topping the list with about two million deaths a year, according to John D. Groopman, chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"It's a travesty that in the 21st Century, [so many people] die from essentially preventable disease,'' Groopman told a IRP Fellows seminar on environmental health in the developing world. By contrast, he said, cancer kills six million and war claims about four million lives each year.
In his talk, Groopman covered a wide variety of environmental health topics, addressing topics ranging from current cancer mortality rates in Baltimore (presently the highest in the country) to the affect of sand filtration on typhoid in Lawrence, Massachusetts in the late 1800s (it caused a 95 percent drop in the number of cases).
He traced the growth of environmental health awareness in the United States. One seminal event was a thermal inversion in New York City in the fall of 1967. A cold spell, followed by a warm trend, trapped thick yellow clouds of the high sulfur heating fuel used at the time over the city. "Deaths just skyrocketed -- by the thousands, [especially for] people with compromised immune systems,'' said Groopman. The event led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. "It was a visual thing,'' he said, referring to the public outcry. "When the sky turns yellow and your grandmother dies, it really galvanizes the political environment."
Moving to the present day, the professor sounded an alarm over the present trend towards rapid urbanization in the developing world that is "occurring on the backbone of an infrastructure that doesn't exist." He cited Africa, where urban dwellers numbered three million in 1950, but are projected to swell to 225 million by the year 2015. He warned that the lack of infrastructure in these cities could lead to disease outbreaks.
Much of Groopman's criticism was directed at the tobacco industry. He said that much of the world's consumption of tobacco now occurs in the developing world, and will lead to a huge public health crisis in the future. In 1997, the most recent year for which he had data, China led the world by smoking a third of all cigarettes. By contrast, the U.S. smoked 11 percent of all cigarettes that year. He ended his talk on tobacco with graphic slides of head and throat cancer victims, mostly users of "smokeless" tobacco.
Copyright © 2005 International Reporting Project. All Rights Reserved.