Environmental factor
any factor, whether abiotic or biotic, that influences living organisms in an ecosystem
An environmental factor, ecological factor or eco factor is any factor, abiotic or biotic, that influences living organisms. Abiotic factors include ambient temperature, amount of sunlight, air, soil, water and pH of the water soil in which an organism lives. Biotic factors would include the availability of food organisms and the presence of biological specificity, competitors, predators, and parasites.
Harmful factors are considered environmental hazards.
Overall
An organism's genotype (e.g., in the zygote) translated into the adult phenotype through development during an organism's ontogeny, and subject to influences by many environmental effects. In this context, a phenotype (or phenotypic trait) can be viewed as any definable and measurable characteristic of an organism, such as its body mass or skin color.
Apart from the true monogenic genetic disorders, environmental factors may determine the development of disease in those genetically predisposed to a particular condition. Pollution, stress, physical and mental abuse, diet, exposure to toxins, pathogens, radiation and chemicals found in almost all personal-care products and household cleaners are common environmental factors that determine a large segment of non-hereditary disease.
If a disease process is concluded to be the result of a combination of genetic and environmental factor influences, its etiological origin can be referred to as having a multifactorial pattern.
Cancer is often related to environmental factors.
“Environmental factor” enters the record as any factor, whether abiotic or biotic, that influences living organisms in an ecosystem. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Environmental, factor and whether can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2142347. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Environmental factor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.