What's the Big Deal About Environmental Health

What is environmental health? Why should you care about it? It wasn’t until this past year that I even knew what environmental health was. The year 2020 brought significant changes for everyone. I found myself focusing more on my health and wellbeing while trying to grapple with being in the midst of a global pandemic. When I was looking at how I could start this new journey, environmental health was a topic that came up frequently. Frequently enough that I decided to actually look up what it was.

Environmental health according to the National Environmental Health Association is defined as “the science and practice of preventing human injury and illness and promoting well-being by

• identifying and evaluating environmental sources and hazardous agents and

• limiting exposures to hazardous physical, chemical, and biological agents in air, water, soil, food, and other environmental media or settings that may adversely affect human health.”

So in short, environmental health is basically the study of how the environment affects all aspects of human health.

But environmental health is not something that is just microscopic and is applied to your own life and your own immediate personal environment, it is also to be applied to worldwide issues. There have been studies and research about how the environment impacts mental health, how climate change is contributing to allergies, and most important now: how climate change and the world’s environment play a role in the spread of pandemics.

As I sit at home logging on my computer to attend virtual classes every week I now know how much the way humans have morphed the planet to fit their own capitalistic needs plays into the position I and the rest of the world now sit in today. Every aspect of a successful thriving society depends on a successful

thriving environment. If society isn’t ready to see that connection global pandemics, destructive weather events, and other social crises will not just be unique events they will become the fabric of the world we experience.