Effects of Environment on Human Society:

(i) Effects of the environment on human society has been emerging as a major challenge for quite some time. Development was for long associated with under exploitation of natural resources. It was little realised that obsession with under exploitation may result in over-exploitation.

(ii) We seem to have believed that natural resources are inexhaustible. Environmental processes include those physical processes, which operate on the surface of the earth both internally and externally. Though man began to interfere with the natural processes right from the beginning of sedentary life, it assumed greater proportion after the industrial revolution.

(iii) The impact of modern technology on the environment is varied and highly complex as the transformation or modification of our natural condition and process leads to a series of changes in the biotic and abiotic components of the natural environment process.

(iv) We have seen that man, equipped with modern technologies and advanced scientific knowledge, has become an important factor in changing the environmental processes. It has to be realized that disturbances in one of the elements of nature (i.e., air, water, land, flora and fauna) gives rise to an imbalance in others. Natural processes or human factors sometimes aggravate natural environmental processes to cause disaster for human society (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, cyclones etc.)

(v) They result in heavy loss of life and property. Environmental hazards for human health are as follows:

(i) Air pollution causes respiratory diseases.

(ii) Water pollution causes enteric diseases. 

(iii) Solid waste pollution causes vector-borne diseases.

(iv) Toxic waste causes cancer and neurological disorders.