PHHE 295. Chapter 14. Community Health and the Environment

PHHE 295

Chapter 14: Community Health and the Environment

Chapter Objectives

1)      List the sources and types of air pollutants, including the criteria pollutants, and explain the difference between primary and secondary pollutants.

2)      Describe the role of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in protecting the environment.

3)      Outline the provisions of the Clean Air Act, the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, and the Air Quality Index.

4)      List the major types of indoor air pollutants, including radon, and describe ways to reduce exposure to them.

5)      Explain the difference between point source and nonpoint source pollution.

6)      Define what is meant by the term waterborne disease outbreak and list some of the causative agents.

7)      Explain why we should not carelessly discard pharmaceuticals and personal care products.

8)      Describe the measures communities take to ensure the quality of drinking water and the measures communities take to manage wastewater.

9)      Explain the purposes of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

10)  Name some of the agents associated with foodborne disease outbreaks and list some of the factors that lead to the occurrence of these outbreaks.

11)  List and describe the role of some of the agencies that help protect the safety of our food.

12)  Describe the composition of our municipal solid waste and outline acceptable municipal solid waste management strategies.

Key Terms

·         Environmental Health: The study and management of environmental conditions that affect the health and well-being of humans.

·         Environmental Hazards: Factors or conditions in the environments that increase the risk of human injury, disease, or death.

·         Air Pollution: Contamination of the air that interferes with the comfort, safety, and health of living organisms.

·         Primary Pollutants: Air pollutants emanating directly from transportation, power and industrial plants, and refineries.

·         Secondary Pollutants: Air pollutants formed when primary air pollutants react with sunlight and other atmospheric component to form new harmful compounds.

·         Photochemical Smog: Smog formed when air pollutants interact with sunlight.

·         Industrial Smog: Smog formed primarily by sulfur dioxide and suspended particles from the burning of coal, also known as gray smog.

·         Ozone: An inorganic molecule considered to be a pollutant in the atmosphere because it harms human tissue, but considered beneficial in the stratosphere because it screens out UV radiation.

·         Thermal Inversion: A condition that occurs when warm air traps cooler air at the surface of the earth.

·         Clean Air Act: The federal law that provides the government with authority to address interstate air pollution.

·         National Ambient Air Quality Standards: Standards created by the EPA for allowable concentration levels of outdoor air pollutants.

·         Environmental Protection Agency: The federal agency primarily responsible for setting, maintaining, and enforcing environmental standards.

·         Criteria Pollutants: The most pervasive air pollutants and those of greatest concern in the United States.

·         Air Quality Index: An index that indicates the level of pollution in the air and the associated health risk.

·         Greenhouse Gases: Atmosphere gases, principally carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, ozone, methane, water vapor, and nitrous oxide, that are transparent to visible light but absorb infrared radiation.

·         Asbestos: A naturally occurring mineral fiber that has been identified as a Class A carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency.

·         Biogenic Pollutants: Airborne biological organisms or their particles or gases or other toxic materials that can produce illness.

·         Combustion By-Products: Gases and particulates generated by burning.

·         Volatile Organic Compounds: Compounds that exist as vapors over the normal range of air pressures and temperatures.

·         Formaldehyde: A water-soluble gas used in aqueous solutions in hundreds of consumer products.

·         Carcinogens: Agents, usually chemicals, that cause cancer.

·         Radon: A naturally occurring colorless, tasteless, odorless, radioactive gas formed during the radioactive decay of uranium-238.

·         Environmental Tobacco Smoke: Tobacco smoke that can be inhaled by nonsmokers.

·         Secondhand Smoke: Environmental tobacco smoke.

·         Mainstream Smoke: Tobacco smoke inhaled and exhaled by the smoker.

·         Side-Stream Tobacco Smoke: Tobacco smoke that comes off the end of burning tobacco products.

·         Passive Smoking: The inhalation of environmental tobacco smoke by nonsmokers.

·         Sick Building Syndrome: A term to describe a situation in which the air quality in a building produces generalized signs and symptoms of ill health in the building’s occupants.

·         Sanitation: The practice of establishing and maintaining healthy or hygienic conditions in the environment.

·         Surface Water: Precipitation that does not infiltrate the ground or return to the atmosphere by evaporation; the water in streams, rivers, and lakes.

·         Groundwater: Water located under the surface of the ground.

·         Aquifers: Porous, water-saturated layers of underground bedrock sand, and gravel that can yield economically significant amounts of water.

·         Water Pollution: Any physical or chemical change in water that can harm living organisms or make the water unfit for other uses.

·         Point Source Pollution: Pollution that can be traced to a single identifiable source.

·         Nonpoint Source Pollution: All pollution that occurs through the runoff, seepage, or falling of pollutants into the water.

·         Runoff: Water that flows over land surfaces, typically from precipitation.

·         Waterborne Disease Outbreak: A disease in which at least two persons experience a similar illness after the ingestion of drinking water or after exposure to water used for recreational purposes and epidemiological evidence implicates water as the probable source of the illness.

·         Endocrine-Disrupting Chemical: A chemical that interferes in some way with the body’s endocrine system.

·         Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products: Synthetic chemicals found in everyday consumer health care products and cosmetics.

·         Wastewater: the aqueous mixture that remains after water has been used or contaminated by humans.

·         Wastewater Treatment: The process of improving the quality of wastewater to the point that it can be released into a body of water without seriously disrupting the aquatic environment, causing health problems in humans, or causing nuisance conditions.

·         Sludge: A semiliquid mixture of solid waste that includes bacteria, viruses, organic matter, toxic metals, synthetic organic chemicals, and solid chemicals.

·         Septic Tank: A watertight concrete or fiberglass tank that holds sewage; one of two main parts of a septic system.

·         Absorption Fluid: The element of a septic system in which the liquid portion of waste is distributed.

·         Clean Water Act: The federal law aimed at ensuring that all rivers are swimmable and fishable and that limits the discharge of pollutants in U.S. waters to zero.

·         Watershed: The area of land from which all of the water that is under it or drains from it goes into the same place and drains in one point.

·         Safe Drinking Water Act: The federal law that regulates the safety of public drinking water.

·         Foodborne Disease Outbreak: The occurrence of two or more cases of a similar illness resulting from the ingestion of food.

·         Pest: Any organism—a multi-celled animal or plant, or a microbe—that has an adverse effect on human interests.

·         Pesticides: Synthetic chemicals developed and manufactured for the purpose of killing pests.

·         Target Organism: The organism for which a pesticide is applied.

·         Non-Target Organisms: All other susceptible organisms in the environment, for which a pesticide was not intended.

·         Registered Environmental Health Specialists: Environmental workers responsible for the inspection of restaurants, retail food outlets, public housing, and other sites to ensure compliance with public health codes.

·         Solid Waste: Solid refuse from households, agriculture, and business.

·         Municipal Solid Waste: Waste generated by individual households, businesses, and institutions located within municipalities.

·         Hazardous Waste: A solid waste combination of solid wastes that is dangerous to human health or the environment.

·         Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976: The federal law that sets forth guidelines for the proper handling and disposal of hazardous wastes.

·         Solid Waste Management: The collection, transportation, and disposal of solid waste.

·         Source Reduction: A waste management approach involving the reduction or elimination of the use of materials that produce an accumulation of solid waste.

·         Recycling: The collecting, sorting, and processing of materials that would otherwise be considered waste into raw materials for manufacturing new products, and the subsequent use of those new products.

·         Composting: The natural, aerobic biodegradation of organic plant and animal matter to compost.

·         Sanitary Landfills: Waste disposal sites on land suited for this purpose and on which waste is spread in thin layers, compacted, and covered with a fresh later of clay or plastic foam each day.

·         Leachates: Liquids created when water mixes with wastes and removes soluble constituents from them by percolation.

·         Combustion: The burning of solid wastes.

·         Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act: The federal law created to clean up abandoned hazardous waste sites.

·         Brownfields: Property where reuse is complicated by the presence of hazardous substances from prior use.

·         Lead: A naturally occurring mineral element found throughout the environment and used in large quantities for industrial products, including batteries, pipes, solder, paints, and pigments.

·         Vector: A living organism, usually an insect or other arthropod, that can transmit a communicable disease agent to a susceptible host.

·         Vectorborne Disease Outbreak: An occurrence of an unexpectedly large number of cases of disease caused by an agent transmitted by insects or other arthropods.

·         Natural Hazard: Naturally occurring phenomenon or event that produces or releases energy in amounts that exceed human endurance, causing injury, disease, or death.

·         Radiation: A process in which energy is emitted as particles or waves.

·         Ionizing Radiation: High-energy radiation that can knock an electron out of orbit, creating an ion, and can thereby damage living cells and tissues.

·         Ultraviolet Radiation: Radiation energy with wavelengths 0-400 nanometers.

·         Natural Disaster: A natural hazard that results in substantial loss of life or property.

·         Carrying Capacity: The maximum population of a particular species that a given habitat can support over a given period of time.

·         Bias and Hate Crimes: Crimes that occur when offenders choose a victim because of some characteristic—for example, race, ethnicity, or religion—and provide evidence that the hate prompted them to commit the crime.

·         Terrorism: Calculated use of violence against civilians to attain goals that are political or religious in nature.

·         Federal Emergency Management Agency: The nation’s official emergency response agency.

·         American Red Cross: A nonprofit humanitarian organization led by volunteers and guided by its Congressional Charter that provides relief to victims of disasters.

Chapter Summary

·         Environmental health is the study and management of environmental conditions that affect our health and well-being. Environmental hazards increase our risk of injury, disease, or death.

·         Air pollution is contamination of the air by gases, liquids, or solids in amounts that harm humans, other living organisms, or the ecosystem or that change the climate. Sources of primary air pollutants are stationary or mobile. Secondary air pollutants arise from the interaction of primary air pollutants and sunlight.

·         Efforts to regulate air quality include the Clean Air Act of 1963 and its amendements, which resulted in the establishment of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The Environmental Protection Agency calculates the Air Quality Index to help people relate air quality to their health.

·         Indoor air pollutants include asbestos, biogenic materials, combustion by-products, and volatile organic compounds. Radon gas and environmental tobacco smoke pose additional indoor air threats to our health.

·         The United States has the safest water in the world. Nonetheless, point source and increasingly nonpoint source pollution threaten the safety of our water supply.

·         Waterborne disease outbreaks caused by biological and non-biological pollutants are reported each year, with an increasing proportion of outbreaks being associated with recreational water use.

·         Population growth, chemical manufacturing, and reckless land use practice contribute to the deterioration of our water quality.

·         Municipal water treatment plants provide water for domestic use, and wastewater treatment plants to remove much of the waste before used water is returned to the environment.

·         Water quality is regulated by two important laws:

o   1) The Clean Water Act

o   2) The Safe Drinking Water Act

·         More than 200 known diseases are transmitted through the food we eat. Foodborne disease outbreaks occur each year and are reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

·         The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration inspect food processing plants and enforce health and safety standards. Registered environmental health specialists inspect local restaurants and retail food outlets to enforce food preparation and food handling laws, thereby protecting consumers.

·         Solid and hazardous waste management is another environmental concern. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act governs the management of both municipal and hazardous solid waste, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act governs the cleanup of existing hazardous waste sites.

·         Of special concern are the many toxic chemicals and heavy metals, such as lead, that can leach into sources of our drinking water.

·         Vectorborne diseases such as West Nile fever and Lyme Disease, represent another group of environmental health concerns. These diseases affect thousands of people each year and are difficult to predict or control.

·         Natural hazards include high-energy radiation and natural environmental events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and weather-related events such as tornados, hurricanes, and floods.

·         Avoiding exposure to ionizing radiation can reduce one’s risk for skin cancer and other health problems.

·         Natural environmental events that cause extensive loss of human life are called natural disasters.

·         Uncontrolled population growth can contribute to psychological and sociological hazards.

·         FEMA and the American Red Cross are two agencies that prepare for and respond to natural disasters.