Environmental Health

x

| Home | Links | Overview |

Session 1

Chapter 1 & 2

Preview, Science & Methods

Understanding Environmental Health

 

Flash Cards Chapter One; Flash Cards Chapter Two:

Slides Chapter One: Slides Chapter Two:

Key Concepts:

  1. Environmental health science distinguishes among chemical, physical, biological, and social hazards to human health.

  2. Modern Western-style development creates many products and wastes, some of which create hazards to human health.

  3.  Modern Western-style development changes the environment in ways that are neither sustainable nor equitable at a global scale.

  4.  In terms of their behavior in the environment, organic chemicals have characteristic tendencies.

  5. Although they make up only a small proportion of the atmosphere, certain gases in the Earth’s atmosphere have important functions.

  6. Water circulates through the environment, as shown in Figure 2.3 in the textbook. Important parts of the hydrologic cycle take place underground and may be unfamiliar to some readers.

  7.  Environmental chemicals can enter the body, where they may be transformed, transported, and ultimately removed from the body.

  8. The quantitative relationship between the dose of a toxicant and its toxic effect is usually presented as a dose–response curve.

  9. The chronic rodent bioassay is the cornerstone of toxicity testing in animals.

  10. Given that “the dose makes the poison,” it is important to measure or estimate exposure as accurately as possible. Modern science frames the assessment of exposure in terms of an exposure pathway.

  11. Ideally, exposure is quantified inside the body. However, often this is not practical, and a measurement made in the environment is used as proxy.

  12. As a practical matter, certain environmental media are most associated with each of the three major routes of exposure.

  13. Modern science uses various techniques to measure or estimate exposure all along the exposure pathway.

  14. he units typically used to quantify absorbed dose are milligrams of toxicant per kilogram of body weight per day, or mg/(kg 3 day).

  15. Epidemiologists use three distinct measures—incidence, prevalence, and mortality — to quantify a given disease in a population.

  16. Surveillance epidemiologists typically use one of two measures to compare rates of death and disease in different populations: the standardized rate ratio or the standardized incidence (or mortality) ratio.

  17. Several distinct study designs are used in environmental epidemiology, depending on the investigator’s purpose and the availability of data.

  18. Not every statistical association represents a causal association.

  19. Community participation in health research is often valuable.

  20. Risk assessment is an applied science used to evaluate the public health risk of environmental hazards using information on exposure and toxicity.

  21. The conceptual divide between non-cancer and cancer health effects that appeared in toxicology is carried through in the risk assessment of chemicals. Therefore, the four major steps in risk assessment are parallel, but not the same, in risk assessment for non-cancer and cancer effects of chemicals.

  22. When the risk assessment approach is applied to a site, the same four steps are followed, but they play out differently in this context. This is because most sites are contaminated by multiple chemicals and because each contaminated site offers a different set of opportunities for exposure (see Table 2.6).

  23. In environmental health, risk management consists of actions taken to control or reduce environmental health risks.

  24. Many risk management actions are not as straightforward as setting a drinking water standard.

  25. The general public’s perception of risk has been called “hazard plus outrage.”

  26. Communication between epidemiologists and research subjects has expanded well beyond informed consent.

  27. The consensus conference, though rarely used in the United States, is a sophisticated form of risk communication.

  28. The precautionary principle is an alternative to the mindset of the risk assessment – risk management paradigm.

  29. Implementing a precautionary approach in the United States would represent a major shift from the risk assessment–risk management paradigm.

  30. Using a structured process, it is possible to tap the collective knowledge and judgment of the lay public in the development of scientific knowledge.

  31. Like a risk assessment, the health impact assessment is a structured process to evaluate public health impacts; unlike risk assessment, it looks forward rather than backward in time.

Supplemental Links

Homework: Read this session's assignment. Answer all of the discussion questions found at the end of each chapter for the assigned chapters and email the attached questions and answers in Word or pdf format to Canvas Email by 5 pm on Sunday the last day of Session 1. In the title box in the email please put Enviro Health Session 1.