📖 The impact of health care on the environment is increasingly emerging as an issue that needs to be addressed urgently. In the new book ‘Cuidados de Saúde e Ambiente – Uma verdade incómoda’ (Health Care and the Environment – An uncomfortable truth, in English), the prestigious Portuguese cardiologist and surgeon Dr João Queiroz e Mello establishes a direct relationship between pollution provoked by health care and the diseases that result from it. “In human health, air pollution is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and stroke, respiratory infections, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), lung cancer, and there is growing evidence that it increases the risk of mental illnesses, including depression. It causes about seven million deaths annually and a reduction in life expectancy of 2.9 years. It has been known for many years that health care is responsible for a portion of this pollution, but this fact has been almost ignored in Portugal. I decided to write this book to spread knowledge about this incomprehensibly forgotten ‘disease’ in my country’s health sector.”
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