Medical Geology

This module explores the linkages between human health and the geosphere. Medical Geology is a relatively new and rapidly evolving field within the geosciences. This module explores the complex relationships between human health and disease, focusing on those aspects of the surface and near-surface environment that reflect underlying geological controls. Topics include health-relevant soil and water geochemistry, food-soil-rock connections, the role of soil and rock type in determining local to regional scale excesses and deficiencies in essential and trace elements (e.g. selenium), geochemical controls on metal speciation and bioavailability, natural processes that influence atmospheric dust and other particulate loads (e.g. desert dusts, volcanic emissions, naturally occurring carcinogenic minerals such as some asbestos-group minerals, nanominerals), naturally occurring radioactivity (e.g. uranium, radon), synergistic inter-actions between multiple geogenic pollutants (e.g lead, arsenic and uranium) in groundwater and implications for human health, biomineralisation processes, geophagy, the interactions between minerals and microbes including current research on the antimicrobial properties of certain minerals, the use of techniques with roots in geochemistry (e.g. heavy stable isotopes) in medical science.