Environmental health is referring to the health of people in relation to environmental quality. Due to rapid urbanisation, more people are living in urban neighbourhoods. Urban planning and design aspects including the neighbourhood environment are potentially affecting the human healthy lifestyle and health condition. Thus, the relationship between Malaysian neighbourhood environmental aspects and human health has become the concern of this research. One of the neighbourhood units in Shah Alam city had been chosen as the study area for this purpose. Questionnaire survey had been carried out to examine the health condition and physical activeness of residents. Besides, the perception of residents on the quality of neighbourhood environmental aspects also had been collected in the questionnaire survey. The health condition of residents was measured by non-communicable diseases (NCD) and the physical activeness was measured in duration as well as the frequency of physical exercise activities. The study found that the quality of neighbourhood environmental aspects significantly increased the physical activeness of respondents. The physical activeness was positively associated with human health as measured in NCD (heart diseases and high blood pressure, HBP). It shows that neighbourhood environmental (physical and social) aspects are potentially affecting the healthy life of people living in the neighbourhood.Keywords: Healthy life, Neighbourhood environment, Non-communicable diseases (NCD), Physical activeness, Quality.
Ambient air in the urban area normally is more polluted than less developed areas. This is due to the concentration of urban activities, such as industrial, transportations and commercial or business activities. A study about the impact of urban land uses and activities on the levels of air pollutants in Malaysia’s most urbanised and most developed region that is Klang Valley was conducted. Data of Air Pollutant Index (API) and average concentration of selected air pollutants were used to analyse the ambient air quality of the selected five (5) cities or towns in Klang Valley. The air quality condition of the five (5) cities or towns were related to the land use distributions of the cities or towns with a purpose to understand the impact of land uses on the ambient air quality. Furthermore, the changes of ambient air quality before and after Movement Control Order (MCO) were analysed to examine the impact of human activity changes on the ambient air quality. The study found that a city or a town with more industrial and transportation land uses with fewer greens was more polluted than the area with less industrial and transportation land uses with more greens. However, this finding did not apply to all areas due to effect of winds on the distribution of air pollutants. Besides that, because of MCO, most people stayed at home with the mode of “work from home” that caused air pollutant levels in urban areas to decrease due to less urban activities. Nevertheless, there was a risk of an increase in air pollution levels in residential areas due to the concentration of activities, especially driving motor vehicles in residential areas. A recommendation is given to encourage “work from home” and reduce dependency on auto-mobile in residential areas in order to improve the air quality in urban areas.
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