Claudia's EnviroHealth Blog

The NCDMPH serves as the Nation's academic center of excellence for education, training, and educational research in disaster medicine and public health preparedness. NCDMPH website is user friendly, it has an abundance of educational content regarding resources, services and pertinent information for those experiencing disasters.  With our most recent disaster of wildfires I decided to explore the website for information regarding this subject. I pleased to find a wide rage detailed information. It provided the following content regarding wildfires: Background  Resources: Preparedness and Mitigation Resources: Health Impacts of Wildfire Resources: Environmental Health Impacts  Resources: Psychosocial Resources: Health Systems Impact Resources: Evacuation and Sheltering Sacramento Reserve Medical Corps is similar to DHV of Sacramento. Similar to DHV, SRMC   is made up of licensed healthcare professionals such as physicians, n...

What do you personally find most troubling about climate change?  The lack of acknowledgement and sense of urgency to correct  climate change is what I find to be most troubling. As a public health professional, what do you think needs the greatest attention right now? Active measures to address climate change preparedness should be conducted with a sense of urgency. The implications for lack of climate change preparedness will be detrimental for all us, an example demonstrating the implication = Increased storm activity, as of August 2018 we've had 91 major hurricanes (NOAA,2018) If you were visiting with a long-lost relative who had never heard about climate change, how would you describe it and its attendant human health and ecological threats? Climate change is also known as global warming, rise in average surface temperatures on Earth. Emission of greenhouse gases has a large role in creating this rise in the temperature. The more greenhouse gases that get trap...

The TEDS Talk by Lauren Singer was really inspiring to watch, but it seems challenging to apply. Conceptually I'm motivated to implement a zero waste life for myself and my family but I'm not sure how to go about it. I decided to make note of Singer's 3 simple steps for living a zero waste lifestyle and compare the steps to how I live my life. 1-Look at your trash and understand what it is, meaning what are sources of my trash: Food products- practically all of my food products are packaged in some form of plastic. I need to purchase grocery's today and I made conscious decision to not buy products that are packaged in plastic and only buy in bulk. This was really hard to do, I ended up not buying quiet a few products. But I got stumped when I was trying to buy food products for my baby, all of them are packaged by some form of plastic. For example, a gallon of organic whole milk is only found in a plastic container at my grocery store. The only milk product that was...

1) Consider your workplace or a workplace of one of your family members. Are there chemical, biological, radiological or ergonomic issues? Using the industrial hygiene hierarchy of controls, how might you address the issues? How are they being addressed in reality? A family member works for PG&E in San Francisco and I interviewed him for this assignment. He states, " PG&E places a great deal of care with ensuring safety for employee exposure to any chemical, biological, radiological pollutants. I have a ergonomic desk and my computer usage is also automatically limited. I don't have any hygiene issues at work, if I had any concerns I could always report it to our office manager". 2) What might be the barriers to workers exercising their rights to a healthy and safe workplace? "I've worked with PG&E for over 10 years and I haven't experienced any barriers to my rights regarding my health and safety. Healthy lifestyles are promoted by PG&...

I asked my husband to share his MSDS from work, he's an  Aviation Operations Sergeant for California National Guard ( USA Army). I choose to examine the Glass & Surface Cleaner from the MSDS, no specific brand name was provided for this product. What are the health risks associated with this chemical? This cleaner is listed as hazardous by OSHA/HCS status. The hazardous statements = Causes serious eye irritation and skin irritation. Is the chemical a carcinogen? Per HazMat linked via Toxnet, this chemical is listed as:  IARC Carcinogen Not Classifiable ACGIH Carcinogen Confirmed Animal What personal protective equipment or special precautions should be taken when working with this chemical? Wear protective gloves, 1-4 hours (breakthrough time): butyl rubber. Wear eye or face protection. Recommended: safety glasses with shields. Wash hands thoroughly after handling. If this is a chemical found in your workplace, what training/education were you g...

The primary pneumoconioses are asbestosis, silicosis, and coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (commonly referred to as CWP or black lung). As their names imply, they are caused by inhalation of  asbestos fibers,   silica dust , and coal mine dust. Typically, these three diseases take many years to develop and be manifested, although in some cases – silicosis, particularly – rapidly progressive forms can occur after only short periods of intense exposure. When severe, the diseases often lead to lung impairment, disability, and premature death. From a public health perspective, these conditions are entirely man-made, and can be avoided through appropriate dust control (CDC, 2017). The Respiratory Health Division within NIOSH published the first Work-Related Lung Disease (WoRLD) Surveillance Report in 1991 ( http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/91-113/ ). This report presents data for asbestosis, coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, silicosis, byssinosis, exposure to cotton dust, hypersensitivity...