Environmental Health Equity

IN THIS WEEK'S BLOG, please provide a summary of the highlights of your learning for the semester. I'd also especially like to know how the small group blogging experience was for you? If there are any other comments, including critiques, about the course, PLEASE share them with me and the TAs. I really enjoyed the blogging experience. This was my first time ever creating and posting in a blog and I found the experience very rewarding. It is nice to have a place to write out my thoughts on these various topics as I learn about them. I think it helped me understand and comprehend the material better. It also reinforced the ideas and topics that I was learning in my mind and I think I retained much more from the course due to these weekly blog posts. In fact, I think this may even be a good way for me to study for other courses in the future.  I actually think it would be helpful for these blog posts to count for some small amount of credit to encourage everyone to complete ...

Assignments Discussions Grades People Google Drive Office 365 As we begin to think about being active and prepared, explore  the website for The National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health  (Links to an external site.)  and the links that are specific to your region or area of interest to learn more about health (physical and psychosocial) and environmental impacts or preparedness needs for these disaster precipitators. In California we have the  Disaster Healthcare Volunteers Site  (Links to an external site.) , where healthcare professionals and those with healthcare experience can express a desire to be a volunteer should a disaster happen. Is there something similar in your town, city, county? I visited the website for the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health and I was surprised to learn that there are over one million earthquakes that occur yearly worldwide. I read specifically about earthquakes beca...

BLOG about the following: What do you personally find most troubling about climate change? I find it troubling that we are all collectively destroying our home and worsening the health of everyone in the process. It is scary that we are all contributing to the destruction of planet earth and our own human health at such a rapid pace and are not doing anything to stop it. I fear that there will be mass extinction of the most vulnerable people on earth within our lifetimes. It makes me worry about the future of humanity and question whether it is even ethical for me to have children. It seems wrong to bring children into a world that we have already destroyed beyond repair and one that will poison them because of our bad actions, beginning in the womb.  As a public health professional, what do you think needs the greatest attention right now? I think everything needs attention. Climate change is honestly one of the most overwhelming topics for me to think about. My p...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF72px2R3Hg After finishing this module, including watching the YouTube video about a young woman who chose to live a ZERO WASTE life, consider your household waste stream. Are there changes that you might be able to make in your life to live a zero-waste life and enter your thoughts/ideas into your blog. I found Lauren Singer's argument for living a zero-waste life highly compelling and surprisingly manageable. I had assumed that living a zero-waste life would require drastic lifestyle changes that would simply not be feasible for me at this time. However, I have been conscious of the waste I produce for quite some time and have already implemented many of the changes Lauren suggested in her Ted Talk. I have to give credit to my partner and close friends who have been a positive impact on me and taught me how to reduce my waste over the past several years. I have made several changes including using only reusable bags, buying food in bulk ...

There are a number of classic occupational diseases.    Byssinosis  (Brown Lung),  Pneumoconiosis  (Black Lung),  Asbestosis  (White Lung) are among them.   Each of these diseases still affects many workers today.   Over the years there have been major public health campaigns to address them.  Organized labor has often lead the campaigns.    Select one of these diseases and search the web to learn about the history  of the public health campaigns and the  current status  of the disease and related occupational health policies.   (What are the OSHA or MSHA regulations regarding the exposures that cause the disease that you selected to review?)    Feature a short blurb on your blog regarding your selected occupationally-related disease. The disease I chose to research for this blog post is Pneumoconiosis or Black Lung disease. Black lung is also known as Coalworker's pneumoconiosi...

CHOOSE ONE of the following organizations/agencies: OSHA, CAL/OSHA, NIOSH, ILO, WHO, AFL-CIO Go to their website. Each of these occupational safety and health or labor organizations support a range of occupational health and safety programs. Select a health and safety program sponsored by one of these organizations, read about it. Provide a short summary on your BLOG and how it might relate to your health and safety. I chose the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) as the agency to explore for this blog post. I went to their website (link:  https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/index.htm ) and looked at all the different health and safety programs that they sponsor. The program I chose to read about in more depth is one of the programs in the NIOSH Research Program Portfolio. The program I read about the NIOSH Occupational Health Equity Program. The NIOSH Occupational Health Equity Program "seeks to promote health equity in disease incidence, injury, mental ...

Obtain a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) from your workplace or from the workplace of a family member or friend.   Material Safety Data Sheets are chemical information sheets created by chemical manufacturers that all employers are required to obtain and keep for any potentially hazardous chemicals in the workplace. For this blog post, I tried to find a material safety data sheet (MSDS) from UCSF. The MSDS I found is for "Equi-soft Foam Antimicrobial Handsoap"  Here is a link to the MSDS:  https://cleanhands.ucsfmedicalcenter.org/docs/Product%20information/Arichive/Equi-soft_Foam_MSDS.pdf Review  the MSDS and answer the following questions: What are the health risks associated with this chemical? There are four chemicals in the antimicrobial handsoap:  2-methylpentane-2,4-diol; amines, coco alkyldimethyl, n-oxides; Polyethylene Glycol; and benzalkonium chloride.  The health risk associated with these chemicals is they can cause eye irrita...

READ  this  interesting history of lead poisoning Actions  (.PDF, 157KB) READ  this  article about a particularly tragic situation with lead poisoning in Nigeria Actions   (.PDF, 55KB) Blog  on your thoughts about these articles. I think lead poisoning is so frightening and I have become increasingly aware and worried about this issue since I began this class. I am shocked to learn about the history of lead poisoning and the ways in which we have still been unable to ban lead exposure completely, despite mountains of incriminating evidence clearly proving how harmful it is to human health at any level. The collaborative project in Nigeria that effectively reduced blood levels from >170ug/dL to <20ug/dL in just four years is a remarkable and important example of how we can work together to protect communities from lead poisoning. It is horrible that it took losing over 400 children under the age of 5 years old to lead poisonin...

Green chemistry is the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances. Green chemistry applies across the life cycle of a chemical product, including its design, manufacture, use, and ultimate disposal. Green chemistry is also known as sustainable chemistry. Green chemistry: Prevents pollution at the molecular level Is a philosophy that applies to all areas of chemistry, not a single discipline of chemistry Applies innovative scientific solutions to real-world environmental problems Results in  source reduction  (Links to an external site.)  because it prevents the generation of pollution Reduces the negative impacts of chemical products and processes on human health and the environment Lessens and sometimes eliminates hazard from existing products and processes Designs chemical products and processes to reduce their intrinsic hazards Green chemistry reduces pollution at its source by minimi...

The Green Science Policy Institute has created a set of lectures on the 6 classes of chemicals that are both the most commonly found in our consumer products AND highly toxic. Knowledge about these 6 classes of chemicals is essential to anyone working on prevention. WATCH For each of the  6 chemicals  (Links to an external site.) , there is a PPT and voice-over found on this page, starting with an introductory PPT: Discuss  each of the 6 half-hour webinars in a single blog post, separating the post by inserting each webinar's title before discussing that webinar. There are also two extra webinars on the page, regarding regulation ("Do We Need It?") and green chemistry ("Green Chemistry"). These are not required viewing, but are fascinating and recommended if you are interested in the topics. 1. PFAs or highly fluorinated chemicals I thought this webinar on PFAs was fascinating because I did not know that much about PFAs prior to taking this class. I w...