Health Problems Associated with Housing Conditions

This article discusses the health problems associated with housing conditions such as dampness, coldness, and overcrowding. It covers respiratory problems, mental well-being, and diseases like tuberculosis and dysentery.

Running head: ENVIRONMENTAL HEATH
Environmental health
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Author’s note

1ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
Health problems associated with housing condition of dampness:
 Respiratory problem: Mould growth in damp homes are the reason for common
symptoms in residents like wheeze, sore throat, irritability, headaches, fever and runny
nose. Patients with asthma were found to have hypersensitivity to fungi. Boomsma et al.
(2017) suggest that respiratory problem is most common in damp environment because
many bacteria and fungi thrive best in such condition.
 Poor mental well-being: Damp housing increases psychological problems like depression
in residents. Cold and damp home has an impact on mental well-being. In contrast,
residents living in homes which had energy efficiency were found to have lower odds of
poor mental health (Liddell & Guiney, 2015).
Health problems associated with cold house:
 Death from hypothermia is common in people living in cold housing and such risk is
mainly seen at temperature below 6 OC. This is evident from research done in Europe
which showed that extreme climatic conditions on house increases physiological health
risk in people. Hypothermia and death results due to cold induced thermoregulation
(Santamouris & Kolokotsa, 2015).
 Cold housing is the reason for death due to respiratory cause. High risk of respiratory
problem is seen in cold housing because of susceptibility of human respiratory tract to
infectious agents.
 Cold home is also associated with mental problems. Research carried out in Glasgow
revealed that quality of insulation has association with mental health (Liddell & Guiney,
2015).

2ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
Health problems associated with overcrowding house:
 High risk of diseases like tuberculosis and dysentery in people living in shared house
because there is high risk of transmission of infectious agents via air and fecal-oral
routes. Aboriginal communities are particularly vulnerable to household crowding and
this is highly linked to respiratory problem in people. It also exposes people to other kind
of health risk.
 Other disease conditions like stroke, bronchial carcinoma, chronic bronchitis and peptic
ulceration is highly correlated with crowded houses.
 Exposure to crowding increases respiratory problems like chronic cough, diminished lung
function and respiratory disease in infants (Riva et al., 2014).

3ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
References:
Boomsma, C., Pahl, S., Jones, R. V., & Fuertes, A. (2017). “Damp in bathroom. Damp in back
room. It's very depressing!” exploring the relationship between perceived housing
problems, energy affordability concerns, and health and well-being in UK social
housing. Energy Policy, 106, 382-393.
Liddell, C., & Guiney, C. (2015). Living in a cold and damp home: frameworks for
understanding impacts on mental well-being. Public Health, 129(3), 191-199.
Riva, M., Plusquellec, P., Juster, R. P., Laouan-Sidi, E. A., Abdous, B., Lucas, M., ... &
Dewailly, E. (2014). Household crowding is associated with higher allostatic load among
the Inuit. J Epidemiol Community Health, jech-2013.
Santamouris, M., & Kolokotsa, D. (2015). On the impact of urban overheating and extreme
climatic conditions on housing, energy, comfort and environmental quality of vulnerable
population in Europe. Energy and Buildings, 98, 125-133.
World Health Organization (WHO), (2017). Health literacy. The solid facts. Health.