The environments we find ourselves require proper attention and care. It is our utmost responsibility to ensure that our environment is healthy enough for us to live in.
Cleanliness is a major part of healthy living and to live a healthy life, we must pay attention to a healthy environment because a poor living environment has a great impact on our health, especially for those who suffer from existing health issues.
Different environmental factors such as climate change, air pollution, poor infrastructures, and poor water quality among many others can greatly affect our health as individuals and as a nation at large. It is therefore important for individuals and communities to strive for environmental cleanliness, as it is not centered alone on individuals’ health but also the community’s well-being.
Environmental health is an aspect of public health concerned with the aspect of the natural environment affecting human health. According to World Health Organization, it deals with the aspects of human health and disease that are determined by environmental factors. Environmental health is targeted toward the prevention of diseases and creating a health-supportive environment to effectively control factors that can affect our health, we must meet the requirements for what it takes to keep a healthy environment.
In 2016, according to World Health Organization (WHO), environmental health focuses on physical, chemical, and biological factors external to a person and all other related factors that have impacts on our behaviors. It also focuses on factors that can affect our health as humans and the prevention of diseases.
Accordingly, there are five basic angles to which environmental health can be achieved and it include;
Environmental Epidemiology: This focuses on the relationship between environmental exposure and human health. Environmental exposures can be physical, chemical, and
biological. Examples of these exposures are; radiation, exposure to chemicals, exposure to toxic air, etc.
Toxicology: This shows how certain environmental exposure experimented on animals lead to some specific health outcomes to understand certain health outcomes in human beings. This experimental approach is usually carried out on animals to understand certain health conditions that affect humans.
Exposure Science: This identifies and describes different environmental exposures that lead to different health conditions in humans. It quantifies exposures to specific chemicals, but unlike environmental epistemology and toxicology, it does not give information about the health outcome of such exposure.
Environmental Engineering: This uses a scientific approach to ensure the protection of humans from the effect of adverse environmental factors such as human and natural activities.
Environmental Law: This addresses the effects of human activities on the environment.
In addition, issues of environmental health should be taken into serious consideration as any dangerous or unhealthy state of our environment can lead to a great disaster for our health. Proper attention should be given to where we live and other public places while environmental pollution and contamination should be completely avoided.
Water pollution is also one great environmental factor that affects human health but a proper drainage system in our environment will prevent water stagnation that can result in adverse health conditions.
Other environmental health concerns include; solid waste management, exposure to toxic chemicals, housing deficiency, climate change, etc.
It will be unfair if as humans we conclude that ensuring quality environmental health is the work of only those who are regarded as environmental health specialists. To maintain a good and quality environment, it is the work of every individual to ensure that they do their best to put their environment in place and this will in turn reduce the heavy workload on environmental health practitioners and ensure that we all live in a safe and healthy environment.
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