Measuring the Lifetime Environment in LMICs: Perspectives from Epidemiology, Environmental Health, and Anthropology

Across the lifetime, each person will experience and accumulate countless exposures to the natural, built, social, and chemical components of the environment. These exposures occur in many ways, through people’s behaviors and lifestyle choices (for example, smoking, diet, or level of activity), physical contact (intentional or not) with chemicals, structures, or physical forces (for example, heat waves or hurricanes), or interactions with people, institutions, policies/laws, and geopolitical forces (for example, war). Whatever a person’s lifetime exposures may be, scientists believe that they affect human health in important ways, contributing either to the development of disease or to maintenance of good health. In the field of public health, exposures are called “risk factors” if they contribute to disease and “protective factors” if they contribute to health. This chapter discusses these factors.