Air Pollution and Health in China

Environmental factors have both direct and indirect impacts on human life and health. This chapter characterizes environmental health from two dimensions: environmental risks and health risks. Specifically, the definitions of risk, environmental factors, and health risks are reviewed. To provide an in-depth understanding of environmental risks, it introduces a case study on haze, or prevalent outdoor air pollution. The contamination effects of haze on the population are revealed, and the adverse influence of haze as an environmental risk explored, especially in the country of China, where haze is a perennial environmental issue. The chapter emphasizes characteristics of risk as being constructed by social and culture factors and emphasize more comparison studies in various cultural contexts. The case study identified two major frames of the haze issue-an environmental frame (the dominant frame) and a health frame. Studies show that environmental risks increase health risks, while such health risks are less represented in current research.