Medical Geochemistry

Abstract

Several diseases can generate many quandaries for medical societies. Accordingly, new categories of medical sciences may contribute to addressing a range of those health restrictions. Medical geology is a rapidly developing branch with the remarkable ability to serve medical communities to address a massive scale of environmental health issues. Medical geology can be considered an integral part of environmental health to deal with the effects of geological processes and materials on human and animal health. Medical geology aims to address health problems caused by geological materials and processes such as trace elements, rocks, minerals, dust, water, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. This branch has accurately defined the correlation between geological elements and human health for centuries. Among the environmental health problems that geologists work with the medical community are exposure to toxic levels of basic insignificant elements such as arsenic and mercury, exposure to dust and radioactivity, presence of organic compounds in drinking water, gases emitted from volcanoes, and so on. Geologists have developed a set of tools and databases that the environmental health community can use to treat pesticide-borne diseases. These scientists also helped establish mechanisms to clarify the spread of pollution in surface and ground water, as well as industrial pollution and occupational health problems. In this chapter, we will focus on the benefits of medical geochemistry as a very important branch of geochemistry, and we will also look at the future of this science and what it can do to humanity to protect the environment and human health from the dangers of pollution.