Luis A. Aviles, PhD, MPH, Sociology Department, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, Apartado 1177, Boqueron, PR 00622-1177, 939-640-3265, laviles@uprm.edu

Hippocrates’ book, On Airs, Waters, and Places have been considered by many in the Western World as one of the earliest writings on environmental public health. This Greek physician’s interest in investigating the environmental origins of diseases, a sort of epidemiologic imagination, was well regarded for many centuries. Nevertheless, appeals to the Hippocratic ideal of clean airs, waters and grounds for a healthy population, in the absence of broader societal considerations, can do little to improve the public’s health, whether in classical Greece or in the more contemporary cases of industrial contamination of the air of Cataño, Puerto Rico, water pollution in Maine, and soil contamination in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. This introduction places the environmental history case-studies of this session into a broader consideration of justice. The Hippocratic idea of healthy environments needs to be tempered by a critical consideration of justice, one which can well find its roots in Hippocrates’ contemporary, Plato. In his book, The Republic, Plato made Thrasymachus to assert that justice is that which is advantageous to the stronger. Taking the ideas of Airs, Water and Places, of Hippocrates and those of a just Republic of Plato, this introduction will emphasize the inextricable link between the environment, justice and the public's health.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain the limitations of actions to preserve or clean the environment if issues of justice are disregarded.

Keywords: Social Justice, History

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.