Environmental Health

What Is Environmental Health?

Environmental health is the part of public health efforts that exist to understand 1) how people, plants, and animals affect the environment and how the environment affects them and 2) what can then be done to improve these relationships to correct problems that exist.  In actuality, the first part of the definition is what gets the most attention these days—we focus more on the problems and less about how to fix them.  Over the last few decades, there have been many success stories—like cleaning up air pollution in some big cities that were dangerous to live in because of smoke from factories; or regulating run-off from manufacturing into major bodies of water making the people who lived nearby sick; or poisoning the fish with toxic waste that then poisoned the people who ate them.  Many of these situations have been cleaned up over the years.  But, many still exist. I bet you can think of all kinds of environment concerns that you have right now, largely caused by people in some way. These complex problems take a multi-disciplinary approach to solve and people from lots of different fields, depending upon the problem.

Studying the field of environmental health will prepare you for some positions in the field, and further training and certifications will be needed for more official positions.  If you believe strongly in the cause of protecting our environment, now and forever, then look in this field for your life’s work.  People like you are needed.  Examples of job titles in the field are Environmental Health and Safety Consultant, Manufacturing Environmental Health Specialist, Environmental Health and Safety Tech, Corporate Environmental Engineer, Environmental Officer U.S. Navy, and Client Environmental Health Supervisor.