About Environmental Health Sciences

Since prehistoric times, human beings have been accustomed to follow certain sanitary practices. There is ample evidence that the people who lived in caves used to clean their shelters and dispose of their waste. Relics of old water supplies and sewerage systems which have been uncovered in ancient Babylonia, Egypt, Athens and Rome are evidences of the role that sanitation played in the golden ages of these regions. Environment can be defined as the sum of all external influences and conditions which affects life and growth of an organism. The report of the first session of the World Health Organization (WHO) expert committee on Environmental Sanitation (1950) defined “Environmental Sanitation” as the control of all those factors in man‘s physical environment which exercise or may exercise a deleterious effect on his physical, mental, social development, and survival. It refers to: