Environmental Sustainability

Environmental sustainability is involved with preserving the environment and making sure that nature is protected.  Environmental sustainability is specifically interested in businesses and the effects they have or can have on the environment.  The idea here is to teach businesses about the long term effects they can positively have for the environment and nature, instead of negative ones.  On the website http://toolkit.smallbiz.nsw.gov.au/part/17/86/371 , there is a short list of ways that businesses are causing damage to the environment.  A few listed include pollution through burning fossil fuels, and damaging woods and rain forests by logging.  Businesses might be a little skeptical at this idea, however, because everything is about making money and the idea may not appear to be very thrifty.  However, according to the website http://toolkit.smallbiz.nsw.gov.au/part/17/86/372 , having the environment in mind with your business may actually be beneficial to businesses.  One of the benefits is about being more energy efficient and in the long run, save the business a lot of money.  Another benefit that acting towards environmental sustainability is beneficial to businesses is that a business is going to have an advantage over other businesses while talking to partners, investors and customers if their business is thinking about the environment.  People are going to keep those ideas in mind when comparing business to business.  These are just a few ways described on this web site.  According to the website http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=501027 , there are 4 research areas within environmental sustainability.  These four things are industrial ecology, green engineering, ecological engineering and earth systems engineering.  These four areas of research are concerned about people's well-being and environmental issues.  So, what is environmental sustainability? quite simply, it is the study and idea of making the environment safe/safer and thinking about the long term effects individuals and businesses can have on it, and what can be done long term in a positive way instead of in a negative way.  I hope this blog helped describe what environmental sustainability is, as well as provide some useful information as to how it is being done.

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Noise Induced Hearing Loss

What is noise induced hearing loss?  Well, it can be described as the permanent impairment to hearing over time after being exposed to loud noises.  Everyday there are noises around us that do not damage our hearing because they are at a safe level.  However, exposure to higher levels for long, or possibly even short amounts of time can be very detrimental to ones hearing.  Things that are everyday noises that are at safe levels to our hearing are things like house hold appliances use to clean or cook, music (at a moderate volume), traffic noises like cars driving down the street, and also sounds from the television.  Obviously some of these things can be harmful to ones hearing at high levels, but there are many things that are automatically harmful to ones hearing and that can cause noise induced hearing loss quickly.  Some if these things include loud concerts, hearing an explosion, shooting targets and hunting, listening to music through headphones at high volumes, and using lawn equipment like leaf blowers and lawn mowers.  You can get some data on decibel levels on the website http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/pages/noise.aspx and also on this website you can see what decibel levels are safer levels than others.  Also, if you want to learn more about the ear, this website has a diagram of the ear and I have also posted a picture of the ear on my blog.  How can noise induced hearing loss, or NIHL, be prevented?  There are many things you can do, according to the website http://american-hearing.org/disorders/noise-induced-hearing-loss/#whatis .  Obviously the number one thing, try and avoid loud noises.  Other things include wearing hearing protection like earplugs and earmuffs to lower the sound intensity.  I hope this blog was helpful in describing what noise induced hearing loss is and what can cause it and also how it can be prevented.

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National Environmental Public Health Tracking

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a very helpful website that allows people to explore many things concerning health.  This website is http://ephtracking.cdc.gov/showHome.action .  Once at the home page of this site, there are a few tabs, these tabs titled Environments, Health Effects, and Population Health.  Each one of these tabs has a few bullet points describing the kind of information that can be found inside that specific tab.  So, lets just say you click on Environments.  Once you click this tab, there are many more tabs with more specific topics.  So lets say you click on climate change because you want to learn more about it.  Lets just say you have never really gotten a complete understanding of what climate change actually is?  Well, no worries.  There is a detailed description at the very top of the page there to assist you.  Now, you have some sort of background about what climate change is, right? So now it peeks your interest a little more, and you decide to research further about climate change.  You decide to study climate change in your region, but how do you do that?  One of the tabs within the climate change tab is actually available for you to type in anywhere you want to research the climate and/or climate change.  You simply click on the tab titled Search Data and go from there, its that simple!  You can type in the places you want to research and the data is available to you.  Also, while surfing this website for climate change, there are links all over the page related to the topic with which you are browsing.  So, on the climate change page, there are quick links about climate change and your health, as well as extreme heat.  Lower down the page you will also find topics that are being discussed a lot,  such as carbon monoxide poisoning prevention.  So once you get on this site, you will find yourself just browsing the web for more information because it is everywhere.  No matter where you are on this site, there is a link that allows you to search for health information by location.  Another thing that's useful on this site is the tracking index at the top of the page.  You can type in or search health information a lot easier this way.  Basically, this website is very useful in providing people with health information.  I hope this article was helpful in describing just how useful this site can be when researching health information.

Poison Control Centers

What are Poison control centers?  Well, its not too difficult to figure out that these centers help people with poisons.  But what does that actually entail?  Well, the poison control centers have a hot line, which is 1-800-222-1222.  This hot line is a universal hot line to all of the centers around the country, which can all be found at http://www.aapcc.org/about/united-states-poison-centers/ or on the map I will post on my blog.  There are 55 poison control centers across the country and they can all be located on this map.  So what does this hot line do?  Well, this hot line is available 24/7, and is able to answer all sorts of questions and provide information about poisonings.  According to the site http://www.answers4families.org/information-services/volunteer/news-articles/what-does-poison-control-do , things that the hot line can answer for people include questions concerning reactions to any kind of food and/or medication, concerns about mixing certain drugs, questions about food that has been recalled lately, questions concerning the identity of medication, concerns about the health of family, friends or yourself, and much more.  So what do the poison control centers do?  Hopefully after reading the above information you have a better understanding of what they do.  They are centers available to people to contact when they are concerned about poison, and the hot line above will connect you to the center in your local area.  Ohio is actually one state which contains two poison control centers.  One being located in Columbus, the other being located in Cincinnati.  According to http://poisonhelp.hrsa.gov/poison-centers/ , the center in Columbus is the Central Ohio Poison Center and the center in Cincinnati is the Cincinnati Drug and Poison Information Center.  A definition of what a poison control center does can be found at http://poisonhelp.hrsa.gov/poison-centers/about-poison-centers/index.html.  It states "Poison centers provide educational services to prevent poisonings, as well as help during poison emergencies to people who need it."  However, if you are looking for more details about poison control centers, I hope there was some information in this blog that was helpful in giving a little more specifics to what these centers actually do. 

What is Environmental Health?

A simple way anyone would most likely "define" environmental health would most likely sound like the way the environment affects your health.  This is very true, but also a very broad definition.  This phrase doesn't give somebody a very good understanding of what exactly Environmental health is.  According to the World Health Organization, Environmental Health "addresses all the physical, chemical, and biological factors external to a person, and all the related factors impacting behaviors. It encompasses the assessment and control of those environmental factors that can potentially affect health. It is targeted towards preventing disease and creating health-supportive environments. This definition excludes behavior not related to environment, as well as behavior related to the social and cultural environment, and genetics." (http://www.who.int/topics/environmental_health/en/) This definition gives the reader a much better understanding about environmental health because it gives specific ways in which environmental health is more than just a phrase talking about how the environment affects your health.  There are a lot of other factors involved, like studying to make a certain environment healthier for people, studying what specifically makes an area safe and/or unsafe to live in, etc.  When you type in on google what environmental health is, there are so many different things to look at to help explain what it actually is.  There are hundreds of links to help describe this for a reader, which is a good example of how complex environmental health really is.  There are so many areas of environmental health and what most people don't probably realize is that the environment part of environmental health doesn't necessarily mean "outside".  An environment can be an office building, classroom, hospital, or a factory producing large automobiles.  In this factory, there are a lot of health hazards possible.  For example, cars are being painted, and those fumes while the painting process is being completed can be harmful to ones health.  So there needs to be study done on this painting to figure out how to contain it and to do whatever it takes to not be harmful to the people working in the factory.  This is just one example of environmental health to show people that it doesn't necessarily need to be talking about outdoors.  There are many organizations dedicated to environmental health and keeping people safe, both indoors and out.  One example would be the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  "CDC's National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) plans, directs, and coordinates a national program to maintain and improve the health of the American people by promoting a healthy environment and by preventing premature death and avoidable illness and disability caused by non-infectious, non-occupational environmental and related factors." (http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/)  This organization is completely dedicated to making sure the environment is safe for people to be in, and is a good example of how people actually help the environment and make it safe for people.  I hope this was a little more helpful in explaining what exactly environmental health is.  Yes, it is the way the environment affects your health, but there are also large organizations studying to make sure water is safe to drink, that the companies working big business are safe places to work, etc.  There is a lot of stuff going on about environmental health, I hope this helped.