Crisis of utopias and the four justices: ecologies, epistemologies and social emancipation for reinventing public health.

The article proposes a reinterpretation about the health crisis within a broader crisis of utopias and the need to reinvent social emancipation that can show us realistic paths of hope from the present. For this purpose, we propose the association of four types of justice: social, health, environmental and cognitive. The two first ones are well known in critical thinking and collective health, and the last two extend the understanding of the crisis in its civilizing, ethical, and planetary aspects, marked by the contradictions and destructive potential of Eurocentric, Western and capitalist modernity.

[The struggle of indigenous peoples for health in environmental conflict contexts in Brazil (1999-2014)].

The Brazilian development model, based on commodities and electro-intensive industries for trade in global markets, generates social and environmental inequalities that trigger various conflicts between indigenous peoples and communities and economic groups involving disputes over territory and common assets in contexts that influence the health situation of these communities. The objective of this paper is to present an overview of environmental conflicts involving the Brazilian indigenous peoples, their strategies to ensure the sustainability and demarcation of their territories and discuss the forms of pressure of the population on this Subsystem of Indigenous Healthcare (SASI) or alternatives they have proposed to tackle the problems generated. This analysis is based on a mapping of environmental conflicts based on the bibliographical revision of secondary sources (by indigenous movements or their partners) that supported the construction of reports on conflicts and analysis of the indigenous narratives about the territory where they live and their struggles.

Can Health Surveillance be emancipatory? An alternative way of thinking about alternatives in times of crisis.

This article in essay form is an invitation to reflect upon the emancipatory character of health surveillance, a debate that was interrupted in the 1990s. In these times of grave political and institutional crisis in Brazil and in the year of the first National Conference on Health Surveillance (1ª CNVS, acronym in Portuguese), it is particularly appropriate to revive the critical theoretical and epistemological discussions that have grounded the trajectory of Latin American social medicine and public health over the last 40 years. To this end, I draw on aspects of critical thinking on modernity devised by the Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, who postulates three pillars of domination: capitalism, colonialism (or coloniality), and patriarchy.

[Challenges for the construction of 'Health and Environment "in view of its Thematic Group in the Brazilian Association of Collective Health].

'Health and Environment' is the nucleus of knowledge and practices surrounding the relations between society and nature, mediated by the mode of production and human labor, which help to understand the determination of the health-disease process of different social classes and groups. This paper discusses the challenges to build this field from the perspective of its Thematic Group of the Association of Collective Health. The three core themes of the 2nd Brazilian Symposium on Environmental Health are taken as the theoretical framework for analysis.

[Collective health, territorial and environmental conflicts: bases for a critical socio-environmental approach].

The phenomenon of globalization and the increase in neo-extractivism in the global periphery intensify the search for new territories and natural resources for the economy, resulting in significant impacts on ecosystems and on the lives of vulnerable populations. It is considered that the environmental crisis imposes new challenges and requires an updating of the theoretical and methodological foundations of collective health and the social determinants of health. The scope of this paper is to present theoretical contributions to the construction of a critical socio-environmental approach from a review of the literature structured around previous work on the mapping of environmental conflicts, and conducting empirical studies in conflicting areas.

[Environmental management: critical analysis, scenarios and challenges].

This article discusses the limits, alternatives and challenges of environmental management in contemporary globalized capitalist societies. It is based on a critical analysis supported by authors from social sciences, political ecology and public health. To this end, we systematize the meaning of hegemonic environmental management in terms of eco-efficiency and its limits to tackle environmental risks and construct democratic processes and societies.

Pesticide use and economic impacts on health.

Objective: To estimate the externalities associated with acute poisoning from pesticides.

Methods: The probabilities of acute poisoning were estimated according to characteristics of rural properties and cities in the state of Paraná, Southern Brazil. Information about acute poisoning obtained from the 1998-1999 Harvest Forecast Survey was used.

[Co-incineration in cement kilns: health and environmental risks].

In this article we discuss the development of hazardous waste co-incineration in cement kilns in Brazil as well as its impacts on health and the environment. Information was gathered through an extensive review on social and environmental impacts of co-incineration, and case studies, chosen after discussion with social movement representatives concerned with the co-incineration issue and related to the Brazilian Network on Environmental Justice, are described to illustrate the reality of co-incineration in Brazil. Studies showed that workers and community health suffers negative impacts from such practices in high-, middle- and low-income countries.

[Garbage, work, and health: a case study of garbage pickers at the metropolitan landfill in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil].

This article presents the results of a study on the lives, work, and health conditions of garbage pickers in the largest metropolitan landfill in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Using a semi-structured questionnaire with open-ended and closed questions, the study interviewed these individuals and developed a discussion of their daily lives, work, and health conditions. According to a quantitative-qualitative analysis, the garbage pickers identified garbage as a source of survival and defined health simply as the ability to work.