Environmental health refers to creating and maintaining healthy and safe environments and surroundings to minimize the risk of physical harm from environmental contaminants or nuisances such as noise, UV rays, carbon monoxide or lead.
Interventions in schools should aim to improve or maintain the quality of life of young people, both indoors (e.g. cleanliness, air quality, quality of drinking water and swimming pool water) and outdoors (e.g. fight against heat islands, protection against UV rays). These actions should also help raise awareness among young people of behaviours to adopt to protect the environment and of the benefits of such actions on their health and the health of others. Actions may include, for example, using sunscreen to protect themselves from the sun or helping design the schoolyard to create shaded areas.
Keywords
air quality
extreme temperatures
cleanliness
noise
safety
soil quality
UV rays
water quality
Key moments for implementing structured educational interventions
