"harsh elements" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use this phrase to refer to negative situations, difficult challenges, trying times, and more. For example: "The family faced many harsh elements while working to get back on their feet."
On the program, the contestants were expected to survive the harsh elements of desert island life on their own.
The southernmost island — i.e., the one most exposed to the harsh elements — might well be one of the planet's most inhospitable landscapes.
Under pressure from moderates within the governing party, the authorities recently removed some harsh elements from a tough media law, and have allowed the opposition to hold some rallies.
Both professors agreed that Melville would have celebrated the communal warmth of the smelt shanty, where, as with a whaling vessel, the cozy proximity of friends creates a spiritual bulwark against the harsh elements of the indifferent natural world.
The fall collection, designed with the harsh elements of the city in mind, includes draped dresses, thick wool leggings stylized with leather ruffles, and a high-collared 18-Way Coat.
After the comforts of the Australis and the clear blue skies, we were perhaps due a taste of the harsh elements that had made this far-flung land barely inhabitable.
Fear has eased, and the public has begun to question some harsher elements of the war on drugs and crime.
The new houses are being installed in the elm trees of Tompkins Square Park to protect squirrels from the harsher elements.
But the lawmakers bowed to pressure from powerful moderates within President Robert Mugabe's own political party and eliminated some of the harshest elements from earlier drafts of the legislation.
Our technological wizardry, the combined effect of tens of thousands of labor-saving tools, has done wonderful things, shielding us from the harshest elements of nature, curing disease, replacing hard labor, extending human life.
That film, which depicts the lives of an Inuit family in Arctic Canada as it navigates some of the Earth's harshest elements in order to survive, has been criticized for staging scenes and for reinforcing stereotypes of Inuit life.
