THE GLOBAL SCENARIO PRESENTS HUGE CHALLENGES regarding health and environment. In addition to hunger, environmental imbalance and pollution have contributed to climate change and water crisis, showing how the anthropic action impacts the alarming health situation and the recurrence or increase of diseases such as yellow fever, dengue, zika and parasitic diseases. Thus, environmental control actions, such as sanitation, inside and outside work environments are essential for the reduction of externalities caused to public health. They focus on the study of environmental factors in the physical environment in which man dwells, works and coexist, which can have a damaging effect on physical, mental and social well-being. They aim to contribute to the promotion of healthy environments, reduction of environmental risks and the mitigation of their impacts in health. Its work also covers situations of disasters caused by natural factors or by human interference.

Regarding health and work, the picture is not different, since we are equally challenged to understand the current configurations of the productive processes, as well as the work organizations and their repercussions on the health of the working population. Aspects such as intensification and social precariousness of work, loss of social, social security and labor rights reflect historical setbacks of achievements of the working class, pointing to the essential need to strengthen social movements and local resistance with the participation of workers. In this context, this thematic issue of the journal ‘Saúde em Debate’ (‘Health in Debate’) aims to contribute to a reflection on current issues of health, work and the environment.

This supplement is the result of an institutional commitment from the Postgraduate Program in Public Health of the Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. The proposal of the Coordination of the Postgraduate Program, approved in the Postgraduate Coordination (CPG), is the publication of a sequence of thematic numbers, which bring together institutional areas of the mentioned program. Here, in this issue, two areas of knowledge are presented: health, work and environment and environmental sanitation.

It is worth mentioning that the open call made possible the sending of papers from several teaching and research institutions in public health in Brazil, including Latin American countries. In fact, the theme of health, work and environment, analyzed here under different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches, has successfully mirrored the production of knowledge in these areas, both nationally and internationally. A total of 127 articles were received from all over Brazil and Latin America, which, through the team of invited editors, were submitted to peer review and, after approval and revision by the authors, composed this special issue of the journal. Thus, this issue contains 19 original articles, 4 essays, 1 literature review and 3 experience reports, all resulting from dissertations, theses and investigations from research groups from different postgraduate programs.

The topics addressed cover the most various aspects of the work and its relation to health, such as: domestic and work violence; child labor; the work of women in agribusiness; the process of working in an immunobiological production unit; the educational and occupational trajectories of workers of the Unified Health System (SUS); the reorganization of work in a Social Security agency; the impacts of sericulture on workers; evaluation of workers in Primary Health Care; workers in a neonatal Intensive Care Unit (UTI); occupational hazards in vivariums; evaluation of burnout Syndrome in workers in the hospital system; the repercussions of Chagas’ Disease on workers; worker health policies in mental health; health issues of immigrant labor; and occupational exposure to chemicals.

There are articles on public policies issues and disaster reduction, on the Minamata Convention, risks to leptospirosis in Rio de Janeiro, environmental risks in slaughterhouses, the territory as an important category in public health, the interfaces between vulnerability, territory and social metabolisms.

It is necessary to mention, also, works that deepen subjective aspects of military firemen in the dynamics of recognition, and analysis of congenital malformations in the use of pesticides in monocultures.

Three reports of experiences that address the territorial issue and the risk in a differentiated way with analyses and proposals of solutions are presented. The first addresses the disaster of the Região Serrana in 2011, where the affected population stayed in temporary shelters, analyzing the failures and gaps in the planning of those shelters. In sequence, the participatory methodological proposal named ‘Live Map Workshop’ to combat the Aedes aegypti mosquito is presented, and it closes with the description of environmental education actions carried out in the Ribeirão Izidora basin.

Finally, the expectation is that this set of studies serve as a reference to reflect and act in the face of adversity of context, based on critical and socially engaged knowledge.

We hope you enjoy the reading.

Maria Helena Barros de Oliveira
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health (Ensp), Department of Human Rights, Health and Cultural Diversity (DIHS) - Rio de Janeiro (RJ), Brazil.Aldo Pacheco Ferreira
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health (Ensp), Department of Human Rights, Health and Cultural Diversity (DIHS) - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Telma Abdalla de Oliveira Cardoso
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health (Ensp), Department of Sanitation and Environmental Health (DSSA) - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Simone Cynamon Cohen
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health (Ensp), Department of Sanitation and Environmental Health (DSSA) - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Débora Cynamom Kligerman
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health (Ensp), Department of Sanitation and Environmental Health (DSSA) - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Katia Reis de Souza
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health (Ensp), Center of Studies on Worker’s Health and Human Ecology (Cesteh) - Rio de Janeiro (RJ), Brazil.

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