Environmental hazard
a substance, a condition or an event which has the potential to threaten the surrounding natural environment or adversely affect people's health
An environmental hazard is something which is hazardous, either to the natural environment or of the natural environment and which is normally present in the specific environment and is dangerous to people present in that environment.
Well-known examples of hazards to the environment include potential oil spills, water pollution, slash and burn deforestation, air pollution, ground fissures, and build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide. They may apply to a particular part of the environment (slash and burn deforestation) or to the environment as a whole (carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere)..
Similarly, a hazard of an environment may be inherent in the whole of that environment, like a drowning hazard is inherent to the general underwater environment, or localised, like potential shark attack is a hazard of those parts of the ocean where sharks that are likely to attack people are likely to exist.
An active volcano may be a hazard to the environment, whether natural or artificial, and at the same time a hazard in and of the environment.
Types
A hazard can be defined as "a source of danger", or "the potential occurrence of a natural or human-induced physical event or trend that may cause loss of life, injury, or other health impacts, as well as damage and loss to property, infrastructure, livelihoods, service provision, ecosystems and environmental resources."
Without the potential for exposure there is no hazard, (and without the potential for harmful consequence there is no risk).
Environmental hazards can be categorized in many different ways, but the main distinction is between hazards to the environment, and hazards of the environment.
Hazards to the environment
Hazards to the environment usually imply hazards that are dangerous to a natural environment of biomes or ecosystems, but artificial environments may also be at risk from exposure to hazards, which may be natural or anthropogenic.
Hazards of the environment
Hazards of an environment are hazards that are normally present in the specific environment and are dangerous to people, other organisms or property present in that environment. The environment can be natural or built, and may be a work or recreational environment In this case too, the hazards may be natural or anthropogenic.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Environmental hazard” as a substance, a condition or an event which has the potential to threaten the surrounding natural environment or adversely affect people's health. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as a substance, a condition or an event which has the potential to threaten the surrounding natural environment or adversely affect people's health. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3899872. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Environmental hazard”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Environmental hazard primary sources, Environmental hazard archive and Environmental research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Environmental hazard”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Environmental hazard” 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.