Chapter 14 - Environmental Pollution and the Burden of Food-Borne Diseases

Abstract

Global environmental crisis is increasingly becoming multifarious and dynamic. Various types of environmental pollutions lead to distress, and they are often indirect and reliant on numerous adaptive forces. The connection linking environmental contamination to food-borne ailments is obscure, insufficiently illustrated in literature, and a frequent occurrence in developing nations. Numerous menaces to the ecosystem directing to food-borne ailments comprise change in climate, contaminated water, use of excess fertilizers-pesticides, poor sanitation, and so on. Climate change lays stress on agricultural production causing mass malnutrition and vulnerability to diseases. Furthermore, the dissemination and activity of carriers of food-borne pathogens as insects and rodents alter with changes in weather conditions; producing diseases. Atmospheric contaminants as polybrominated or polychlorinated biphenyls often migrate in food in small amounts causing life threats. Environmental pollution causing food-borne diseases being an area of serious concern at all echelons, the chapter discusses each of these issues in detail with special reference to the developing countries.