Urban environmental dynamics is a process that may be considered as both structuring, since it creates and builds landscapes, and distructuring, for it disorganizes and changes them. Health and urban issues are addressed, not only those related to services, but also their interactions with the protected environment. The research aimed at collecting Capela do Socorro community perceptions of health and environment by means of with a semi structured interviews. The city outskirts dwellers produce and reproduce their own knowledge and social practices as resources to preserve life, which results in the social production of environment and health. Shortage conditions make the dwellers create their own life conservation and preservation strategies. Work is the tool of this social production; it is the work category that links environment and health in communities of the metropolis outskirts.
environment; health; outskirts; communities; work