This paper addresses the relationships between health and environment and the possibilities of a theoretical and practical approach between the disciplinary fields of Environmental Health and Worker's Health. In the first part, it presents a panoramic view of the health-environment relation, examining some of its approaches. This overview emphasizes the production and consumption mode, and the development model it determines in each society, as a key-point to relate work, environment and health. It discusses the identification of the adverse effects to health related to the environment, and the difficulties in establishing these relations, as well as some epistemological and methodological challenges present the research in this area today. The second part suggests an integrated approach between production, work, environment and health, as basic categories to define quality of life and health standards for the population, based on the systemic incorporation of these categories into development policies. The integrated analysis of productive processes is examined from the perspective of its threefold relations with work, environment and health, as one of the points for combining public policies in these fields, in a trans-sectorial, trans-disciplinary, democratic and participative approach, in which the State and society expand the effectiveness of the control of productive processes.
Environmental Health; Worker's Health; Production and Consumption Mode; Development
