Environmental Alteration Leads to Human Disease: A Planetary Health Approach

This book aims to explore the impact of human alterations of Earth's ecological systems on human health. Human activities are producing fundamental biophysical changes faster than ever before in the history of our species, which are accompanied by dangerous health effects. Drawing on advanced ecological principles, the book demonstrates the importance of using systemic medicine to study the effects of ecological alterations on human health.

Planetary Health is an interdisciplinary field, but first of all it must be systemic and it needs a preferential relationship between Ecology and Medicine. This relation is to be upgrading, because today both ecology and medicine pursue few systemic characters and few correct interrelations. We need to refer to new principles and methods sustained by the most advanced fields, as Landscape Bionomics and Systemic Medicine. Thus, we will be able to better discover environmental syndromes and their consequences on human health. Environmental transformations proposed by PHA (from biodiversity shifts to climate change) do not consider bionomic dysfunctions which can menace human health. On the contrary, finding advanced diagnostic criteria in landscape syndromes can strongly help to find the effects on human well-being. The passage from sick care to health care can't avoid the mentioned upgrading.

Vittorio Ingegnoli is the founder of the new discipline of Landscape Bionomics. Since 2016 he has been a Visiting Professor of Landscape Bionomics at the Dept. of Environmental Science & Policy at the University of Milan, Italy. His research focuses on environmental alterations in connection with human health. From 2004 to 2008 he was a Member of the Con. Eco. For. (CFS, State Foresters) and ICP European Forest Monitoring; from 2012 to 2014 he was Coordinator of the Research on Suburban Landscapes in Brussels and Milan, KU-Leuven, Belgium, with prof. H. Gulink. Currently, he is a Member of the Planetary Health Alliance (University of Harvard), of the SIPNEI (It. Soc. of Psycho-Neuro-Endocrine-Immunology) and of the Academic Experts for CAI Central Scientific Committee (It. Alpine Club). He has authored more than 150 books and articles.

Francesco Lombardo is a Visiting Professor at the Royal University of Jordan, Director of the Master in Andrology and Seminology of the University of Rome "La Sapienza," and Member of the Ethical Committee of the University Hospital "Umberto I" of Rome since 2016. Since 1989 he has been involved in an Operative Unit of the "Prevention and Control of Diseases Factors" (FATMA) Subproject "Control of Human Fertility," sponsored by the Italian National Council of Research. He is a member of various national and international societies (e.g. the Italian Society of Fertility and Sterility, the Italian Society of Endocrinology, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the International Society of Immunology of Reproduction). He has authored or co-authored more than 100 papers in national and international journals.

Giuseppe La Torre is an Associate Professor of Occupational Medicine at Sapienza University of Rome, and Head of the Unit of Occupational Medicine of the Teaching Hospital Policlinico Umberto I in Rome. He has experience of teaching in Hygiene, Public Health, Epidemiology and Biostatistics (Catholic University Rome, University of Rome "La Sapienza," University of Cassino). He has been head of the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Unit at the Catholic University of Rome, and was responsible for the Health Technology Assessment Public Health Unit at the Institute of Hygiene. The research activities are mainly focused on Occupational risk factors, Environment, Public Health and Prevention. He serves as Editor for several international scientific journals (e.g. Public Health, Journal of Public Health (Springer), Journal of Clinical Medicine, Vaccines, Clinica Terapeutica).