XCPD-571 - Environmental Health

Course Description:
Environmental health is that branch of public health that deals with the human health effects of exposure to chemical, physical, and biological agents in the community, workplace, and home. Activities within Environmental Health Sciences are associated with recognizing, assessing, understanding, and mitigating the impacts of chemical, physical, and biological agents as well as understanding how human behavior and action impacts the environment. The Environmental health field is a broad, multi-disciplinary field. Environmental health scientists face complex problems requiring multi-disciplinary approaches. This course focuses on the central concepts, principles, issues, and applications of the essential scientific components and strategies of control of major environmental health problems.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand history of environmental health issues.
2. Identify important chemical, physical, and biological exposures in the environment that can affect the health of human populations.
3. Analyze how environmental contaminants (chemical, physical and biological agents) interact with biological systems, including mechanisms of their adverse effects on humans.
4. Evaluate the risk of environmental exposures to human populations through the incorporation of exposure, hazard, and other relevant data into risk assessment methodology, including hazard identification, exposure assessment, dose-response evaluation and risk characterization.
5. Apply the basic scientific principles of environmental health to areas of air, water, and food-borne contaminants.
6. Describe current legislation and regulation regarding environmental issues.
7. Describe interventions to control environmental risks and evaluate environmental control programs.