The major air pollutants in the Seoul area are sulfur dioxide and total sus-pended particulates, which can have pronounced effects on human health and well-being. The major sources of air pollution in Seoul are automobile exhaust emissions and the combustion of domestic fuels. Outdoor measurements from air monitoring systems have often been used to represent ambient levels of ex-posure. However, there has been increased awareness about the importance of indoor air quality in the assessment of the health effects of air pollution, because most individuals spend from 70 to 90% of their time indoors. Although it is very difficult to accurately measure personal exposure, some epidemiological studies have attempted to investigate the potential effects of outdoor and indoor air pollution. It became apparent that comparison of indoor and outdoor measurements might have important implications for health effects studies. Recently, limited studies have reported on the levels of indoor air pollution although little attention has been paid to research on indoor air quality in Korea. This paper attempts to evaluate the indoor and outdoor levels of selected pollutants and the impact of certain household characterstics on the indoor levels in the Seoul area and to examine the adverse health effects of residences from self reports of a respiratory questionnaire.

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With the gradual industrial development in China between the early 1950's and 1960's, occupational hazards were major problems in working populations. During that period, the equipment and facilities for production were very simple. The workers were exposed to very high concentrations of various dusts, toxic chemicals, and physical agents, with very poor working conditions. The number of cases of occupational diseases increased rapidly; therefore, the serious occupational health problem drew both special public and governmental attentions. For many years, the Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Labor and National Trade Union worked closely together, trying to solve these problems. Under the administration of both ministries, a number of organizations were established and have provided industrial hygiene and occupational health services to the factories and employees. The working conditions were improved a lot and the incidences of occupational diseases and injuries decreased thereafter. Since the early 1980's, there has been a rapid development of township industry in rural areas, with more than 90 million employees now. The Chinese industrial hygiene and occupational health professionals face a big new challenge and are encountering much more serious situations than ever before (Public Health Bureau of Wuxi County, 1986; ZHU, 1986; ZHANG et al., 1987; HUANG et al., 1987).

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Until approximately 30 years ago, the main industry in Korea was agriculture. However, Korea has rapidly industrialized during the past 30 years since 1960 through five 5-year economic development plans, and various industries, such as steel manufacturing, shipbuilding, automobile manufacturing, electronics, construction and mining industries, have been highly developed. During this period, the governments and employers placed emphasis on production, rather than on protection of workers' health. Worker unions were more interested in getting money than protecting their health through improvement of work environments. Thus, extremely high frequency rates of industrial accidents have been annually reported. Only a few industrial health personnel, consisting of mainly medical doctors and fewer industrial hygienists, have performed physical examinations, industrial hygiene surveys and research in the area of industrial health. Therefore, detailed basic information on workers' exposures to chemical and physical agents and prevalence rates of occupational diseases is limited. Since coal workers' pneumoconiosis has accounted for 70 % of total occupational diseases, most studies have been conducted on this subject. This paper presents current data on industrial accidents, prevalence rate of occupational diseases, regulation on occupational safety and health, and environmental conditions in Korean industries.

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This paper provides an overview of the relationship between health and socioeconomic development in Singapore from a historical perspective as well as from an analysis of recent trends. Amidst rapid industrialization and urbanization over the past decades, Singapore has experienced dramatic changes in its population structure and disease patterns. Improved living conditions including better nutrition, sanitation, and housing have contributed to a decline of infectious and communicable diseases. There has been a shift towards chronic degenerative diseases affecting the older age-groups and related to affluent urban lifestyles, such as obesity, lack of physical activity, stress, smoking and drinking. Heart disease, cancer, cerebrovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, and accidents represent the principal causes of deaths (see Figs. 1-3). Trends in the notifications of industrial diseases in Singapore point to the prevalence of occupational diseases such as noise-induced deafness, industrial dermatitis, compressed air-sickness and barotraua, silicosis, chemical and other poisoning. Industrial accidents have also risen, mainly in the construction and shipbuilding industries.

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Urban life can be characterized by dense habitation, crowding, industrialized working, artificial and/or polluted environment, etc.; these factors contribute to the differences of health between rural and urban areas. For public health activities in urban areas, examining the impacts of the changing environment, as well as demographic characteristics on health, is necessary. As has been frequently documented in studies of urban ecology, a city is usually in a process of dynamic and continuous change. During its growth, a city reveals functional and morphological differentiation in its accompanying regional variations of demographic characteristics (BURGESS, 1955; SUZUKI and MATSUYAMA, 1973; TAKEMOTO et al., 1975). We examined the regional variation of characteristics of demography and living environment within the city of Nagasaki and evaluated its impacts on health.

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A sense of uneasiness often pervades the thoughts on issues of health and urbanization in many developing countries bordering the Asia-Pacific region (these countries are termed Third-World Countries). Despite more than 40 years of concerted efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO) in disease identification, control, and eradication, and the countries' national development strategies, massive poverty caused by rapidly growing population, food shortages, malnutrition, large external national debts, and in some cases political turmoil, have persisted. All these have generated feelings that the health status of the people in these Third-World Countries has not improved over the years. Indeed, there is a wealth of literature to forewarn about the effects of rapid urbanization, yet optimism prevails that economic development through industrialization and broadening of the employment and infrastructural base will lead to improvements in the health status of the population. Thus writers such as MACLEAN (1966), CHIA and MACANDERSON (1979), and BLAU (1986) had attributed the individual's health to be directly related to his socio-economic status, which in turn was highly dependent on economic development and political stability of the country. It was HELLER (1976) who suggested that the quality of the individual's health was derived from a much more fundamental demand for good health. According to him, the quality of the external environment is important for it determines the prevalence of pathogenic agents which expose the person to the levels of risks of illness. However, given the greater consumption of clothing, shelter, nutrients, and amenities such as water, partial insulation against the risks to diseases is possible and can occur since these tend to strengthen the body's ability to resist infection. In the context of the Third-World Countries, given the wide range of socio-economic, political, cultural, and environmental problems encountered, is it possible to insulate against risks to diseases? This paper will examine this issue in Peninsular Malaysia, focusing on the squatters residing in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia. It will review several case studies carried out in the course of the research on accessibility to governmental health facilities. The aim is to elucidate information on whether the health status of an economically low-income group in the capital city is much lower than its counterparts and whether specific health policies and strategies are necessary to assist them.

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It has long been known in Britain that mortality from many causes of death is highest in the conurbations, decreases in large and medium-sized towns, and is lowest in small towns and rural areas (MCKEOWN and LOWS, 1974). Similarly, in the United States, metropolitan areas tend to have higher mortality than nonmetropolitan (SAVER, 1980). However, in Japan, we have demonstrated that the situation is reversed and rural residence increases the risk of death (ARAKI and MURATA, 1984, 1985 b). In this study, following the previous presentation in the 2nd Asian Conference on Health and Medical Sociology in Chiba, Japan (1986), we intend to summarize the effects of a wide variety of social life factors on the age-specific mortality (ARAKI and MURATA, 1986 a), life expectancy (ARAKI and MURATA, 1987), and age-adjusted marriage, divorce, and birth rates (UCHIDA et al., 1988) for Japanese males and females. Effects of these factors on the age-adjusted mortality of 8 major working and non-working male populations are additionally analyzed (ARAKI and MURATA, 1986 b).

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An ecological perspective places emphasis on features of the environment, social as well as physical and biological, as a system of resources and constraints within which people act in obtaining, distributing, and consuming resources. Emphases of public health activities also have been placed on the same areas: the interactions of environmental conditions, and health conditions of people. Different emphasis between the two directions may be placed depending on the decision of health planners, the severity of the health problems, the technology and the resources available. But, in a closed and traditional rural community, or the national level, the two focuses have been generally well integrated. These two em-phases are what I would like to interpret as site-specific and population-specific focuses. With a rapid urbanization and industrialization, there is a wide recognition of an increased permeability of population boundaries due to a growing flux of migration. People maintain their relation to the areas of origin, and their health conditions are subject to the environmental conditions of both the areas of origin and of destination. In this situation, traditional community-based health activities do not necessarily cover the health problems of migrants. Thus there is a need for conceptual integration of site- and population-specific research focuses so that the two focuses appropriately include people moving from one area to the other.

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Urbanization can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but the common denominator is a concentration of population in urban areas and the subsequent expansion of "urban" lifestyles. Due to rapid industrialization and urbanization, environmental conditions have been undergoing drastic change. Man-made and socio-cultural factors have become more strongly influential in human life and activities. Furthermore, as the main health problems have shifted from communicable diseases to non-infectious chronic diseases such as cancer, heart diseases, and cardiovascular diseases, health and illness has become more closely related to human behavior and lifestyles. Therefore, today, it is difficult to understand health problems or their solutions without considering social and cultural factors. In this presentation, for the development of new health indicators, I will attempt to analyze health issues by discussing environmental conditions and individual situations both from objective (directly observable facts) and subjective (individually perceived facts) perspectives. Both perspectives are necessary for complete understanding of health issues.

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