Question

Environmental health consists of preventing or controlling disease, injury, and disability related to the interactions between people and their environment. How does this affect the quality of public health? Please explain how ones natural environment of exposure to toxic substances and other physical hazards can be harmful to public health/ safety?

Answer 1

Environmental hazards increase the risk of cancer, heart disease, asthma, and many other illnesses. These hazards can be physical, such as pollution, toxic chemicals, and food contaminants, or they can be social, such as dangerous work, poor housing conditions, urban sprawl, and poverty.

The place where the chemical originates is called the source. Chemicals can enter the environment from many different sources such as landfills, incinerators, tanks, drums, or factories. Human exposure to hazardous chemicals can occur at the source or the chemical could move to a place where people can come into contact with it. Chemicals can move through air, soil, and water. They can also be on plants or animals, and can get into the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink.

The different ways a person can come into contact with hazardous chemicals are called exposure pathways. There are three basic exposure pathways: inhalation, ingestion, and skin contact. Inhalation is breathing or inhaling into the lungs. Ingestion is taking something in by mouth. Skin contact occurs when something comes in direct contact with the skin. Ingestion can be a secondary exposure pathway after skin contact has occurred, if you put your hands in your mouth and transfer the chemical from your hands to your mouth.

To pen down, all these above mentioned risks ultimately affects the public.