User:Sarahv504/Environmental health

Lead
Over 12 million people die each year due to environmental health concerns such as soil, water, food, and air contaminants. These health issues can lead to cancer, respiratory, heart and complications. Natural,anthropogenic disasters,waste, inporoper land use and climate change are all contrinuting factors to environmental health issues among the community. Many studies have been done citing the dangers related to environmental health found in the further reading section. One issue that is usually missed is environmental racism. Racial discrimination is the act of omitting persons of color and minorities out of the decision, law making and enforcement process concerning environmental issues.

Concerns[edit]
Overview of main health effects on humans from some common types of pollution. FEMA/EPA Hazardous Materials Team removing hazards left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, 2005. Lecture of Joyeeta Gupta (University of Amsterdam) on environmental health

Environmental health addresses all human-health-related aspects of the natural environment and the built environment. Environmental health concerns include:


 * Air quality, including both ambient outdoor air and indoor air quality, which also comprises concerns about environmental tobacco smoke.
 * Biosafety
 * Disaster preparedness and response.
 * Climate change and its effects on health.
 * Environmental racism, wherein certain groups of people can be put at higher risk for environmental hazards, such as air, soil, and water pollution. This often happens due to marginalization, economic and political processes, and ultimately, racism. Environmental racism disproportionately affects different groups globally, however generally the most marginalized groups of any given region/nation.
 * Food safety, including in agriculture, transportation, food processing, wholesale and retail distribution and sale.
 * Hazardous materials management, including hazardous waste management, contaminated site remediation, the prevention of leaks from underground storage tanks and the prevention of hazardous materials releases to the environment and responses to emergency situations resulting from such releases.
 * Housing, including substandard housing abatement and the inspection of jails and prisons.
 * Childhood lead poisoning prevention.
 * Land use planning, including smart growth.
 * Liquid waste disposal, including city waste water treatment plants and on-site waste water disposal systems, such as septic tank systems and chemical toilets.
 * Medical waste management and disposal.
 * Noise pollution control.
 * Occupational health and industrial hygiene.
 * Radiological health, including exposure to ionizing radiation from X-rays or radioactive isotopes.
 * Recreational water illness prevention, including from swimming pools, spas and ocean and freshwater bathing places.
 * Safe drinking water.
 * Solid waste management, including landfills, recycling facilities, composting and solid waste transfer stations.
 * Toxic chemical exposure whether in consumer products, housing, workplaces, air, water or soil.
 * Vector control, including the control of mosquitoes, rodents, flies, cockroaches and other animals that may transmit pathogens.
 * Lead exposures and risks
 * Environmental epidemiology

Environmental health professionals may be known as environmental health officers, public health inspectors, environmental health specialists or environmental health practitioners. Researchers and policy-makers also play important roles in how environmental health is practiced in the field. In many European countries, physicians and veterinarians are involved in environmental health.[citation needed] In the United Kingdom, practitioners must have a graduate degree in environmental health and be certified and registered with the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health or the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland. In Canada, practitioners in environmental health are required to obtain an approved bachelor's degree in environmental health along with the national professional certificate, the Certificate in Public Health Inspection (Canada), CPHI(C). Many states in the United States also require that individuals have a bachelor's degree and professional licenses in order to practice environmental health.[citation needed]

The environmental health profession had its modern-day roots in the sanitary and public health movement of the United Kingdom. This was epitomized by Sir Edwin Chadwick, who was instrumental in the repeal of the poor laws, and in 1884 was the founding president of the Association of Public Sanitary Inspectors, now called the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.[citation needed]

Further reading[edit]

 * Air pollution impacts from a pulp and paper mill facility located in adjacent communities, Edmundston, New Brunswick, Canada and Madawaska, Maine, United States.
 * Lifestyle factors that can induce an independent and persistent low-grade systemic inflammatory response: a wholistic approach George Vrousgos, N.D. – Southern Cross University
 * Superfund, Pesticide Regulation, and Spray Drift: Rethinking the Federal Pesticide Regulatory Framework to provide alternative remedies for pesticide damage. Iowa Law Review.
 * Cancer incidence among former Love Canal residents. Environmental Health Perspectives.
 * Uneven magnitude of disparities in cancer risks from Air Toxics. International journal of environmental research and public health.
 * Environmental health impacts of unconventional natural gas development: A review of the current strength of evidence.
 * Pervasive structural racism in environmental epidemiology.
 * Confronting environmental racism: Voices from the grassroots
 * See also[edit]
 * Environment portal
 * Medicine portal
 * EcoHealth
 * Environmental disease
 * Environmental engineering
 * Healing environments
 * Health effects from noise
 * Industrial and organizational psychology
 * Nightingale's environmental theory
 * Occupational health psychology
 * One Health
 * Pollution
 * Environmental racism
 * Pesticides
 * Cancer
 * Natural gas