Read 'n' Seed 6: Final Review of Environmental Epidemiology: Epidemiological Investigation of Community Environmental Health Problems

OVERVIEW

This book went through many aspects of environmental health from in the past. It talked about studies done about cholera outbreaks from water contamination, deaths from chemical leaks at plants, the quality of air, indoors and out, lead in drinking water, heat waves, drinking and driving, asthma due to living next to factories, and many other things. It was interesting to read about the findings of these studies. Some things they were able to figure out and cure or fix, other things took much longer to fix. It was very interesting and educational.

3 SIGNIFICANT THINGS

One of the things that I found the most significant was the "20 Minute Disaster". So much can happen in so little time, and we only have a limited time to think and act before we suffer the consequences. Many families died or were injured due to a chemical leak, and had almost no time to escape. It is something to learn from and hopefully avoid if it ever happens again.
Another thing that really stuck with me is the quality of water. So many things can be in our water causing disease and illness and we don't even know it. It would be nice to catch these things before they cause too much damage.
And finally, the study on drinking and driving in michigan was very significant. The changes they made reduced the number of accidents due to driving while drunk. If we could keep reducing the number of accidents, it could save many lives and save a ton of money.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

It is important to learn from the past so we can prepare for a more healthy future. By doing studies like the ones explained in the book, scientists can find ways to ensure that we are safe, and make the changes necessary for that to happen. Outbreaks like the ones in describedin the book can happen again, and if we can catch the signs early enough, it can be stopped before too many people are affected by it.

WOULD YOU RECOMMEND THIS BOOK?

I would recommend this book. It's beneficial and educational. It is a little old, but it's important to know things about the history so things can be learned and changed in order to make for a better future. It was interesting to read, but at times it was confusing with all of the statistics and numbers. Overall, it was a good read and I learned a lot from it.

Read 'n' Seed 5: Fourth Quarter of Environmental Epidemiology: Epidemiological Investigation of Community Environmental Health Problems

For the final quarter of my book I read chapters 17 through 24, which were pages 197-253.

Chapter 17 was about young drunk drivers in Michigan and the accidents caused by it. Deaths due to external causes are the highest causes of deaths for people aged 15-24 and car accidents is number one on that list. They talked about raising the legal limit for purchasing alcohol from 18 to 21, in hopes of it decreasing the number of fatalities due to drunk driving. This study was done in the late '70s and since then, they have found a significant decrease in drunken driving since raising the age.

Chapter 18 was just a review of the past five chapters, mostly talking about how it is hard to conduct these studies based on long term effects, so they are using the short term effects to hypothesize what the long term effects will likely be.

Chapter 19 was very interesting. It talks about a chemical, 1,2-dibromo-3chloropropane, also known as DBCP. They found that men who worked with this chemical (used on some crops to eliminate nematodes), became sterile. The longer they were around this chemical, the lower their sperm count. If someone had worked with it a shorter period of time, their count was lower than normal also. They found that if they stayed away from this chemical for a long time, they would regain their ability to reproduce. I found it interesting because there were no birth defects out of the ordinary, just less pregnancies.

Chapter 20 was about reproduction in relation to being exposed to anesthetic gases. Female anesthetists being exposed to this gas had results of spontaneous abortions. "The findings are sufficient to indicate three things: women should not be exposed to work involving exposures to waste anesthetic gases during early pregnancy; waste anesthetic gases can and should be controlled in order to protect the health of all operating room personnel; prospective monitoring of reproductive outcomes of nurses and of operating room personnel is needed to assure that unfavorable effects do not continue to occur" (p. 231-232).

Chapter 21 was a review of chapters 19 and 20. It mostly just talked about being adequately ventilated in work places, as to not be exposed for long periods of time to gases that can affect the body.

Chapter 22 starts to wrap up the entire book. It talks about the community studies that they wrote about in the previous chapters and how we learn from them to make health better. "Environmental health decisions reflect political, historical, and economic considerations as well as what is known and/or suspected about the impact of environmental exposures on health" (p. 240). He talks about how people who run farms and factories do not intend to cause damage to the health of the affected communities. It's important to learn from our experiences and make the changes necessary to protect ourselves for the future.

In chapter 23, he talks about the unintended effects of technological change, and how it not only affects humans, but our natural world around us that sustains our life, and how we must take responsibility for it. I thought it was very interesting because we talked about these things in class. We need to make changes before things get too out of hand and we lose all our resources.

The final chapter, chapter 24, is the historical postscript. He mentions the late Arnold Toynbee, who was dean of historians back in 1971. Toynbee says "Is it not an atrocity, to produce children who will have been condemned in advance to lifelong suffering and misery by the pollution of the world that is mankind's habitat?" (p. 253). It is so true and we need to do something to change our planet soon.

Goldsmith hopes that this book can teach people to alter their judgment and make the changes necessary to make our world last for generations to come. Like I said before, we need to make the changes necessary to overcome this. Not just a select few, but everybody. It's the only way we can make a difference for the future of this planet.

Read 'n' Seed 4: Third Quarter of Environmental Epidemiology: Epidemiological Investigation of Community Environmental Health Problems

For the third quarter of my book, I read chapters 11 through 16, which were pages 129-196. These chapters are much like the previous chapters I read in the second quarter, which have to do with pollution and the ozone.

In chapter 11, is about odor pollution. I thought it was a little odd, because I guess I never thought about odor as being a pollutant, depending on what kind of odor I suppose. Some of the people in the areas reported being bothered very much or moderately, on a scale of very much, moderately, a little, or not at all. Differences in this study between men and women were noticed for headache and nervousness.

Chapter 12 is basically a review of the previous pollution chapters. They showed that after a few minutes exposure to an odorous material in the lab, the awareness of the odor begins to diminish. They talked about pollution and the effects of new exposures, how, if detected early, it should be taken care of immediately, instead of waiting to see if any health risks come about from it.

Chapter 13 is about nitrate levels in drinking water and methemoglobin in infants. They discovered that infants whose formulas were made up with contaminated ground water would give them this disease of Methemoglobinemia. In adults, the stomach secretions are strongly acidic, and this can limit the types of bacteria that can survive mixture with the stomach's secretions; but in infants, the strongly acid secretion has not yet evolved, and so when bacteria are ingested they may colonize the entire intestinal tract. They found it obvious that babies that are breast fed are likely to have little tap water ingestion in relation to infants fed a dry or powdered milk formula.

Chapter 14 is about carbon monoxide exposures and survival from heart attacks. This chapter was really confusing to me because they used a bunch of numbers and figures that were hard for me to understand. They were trying to research the difference between carbon monoxide exposures to the survival rate of heart attacks. The conclusions found that in Los Angeles in 1958 in times and places of high exposures to carbon monoxide there is an increase in the case fatality rate for heart attacks.

Chapter 15 is about lead exposures in children. They used the teeth that children naturally lose to test for lead and then compare to their school performance and intelligence. The study provided powerful evidence of a possible role of lead exposures in early childhood in handicapping school performance and intelligence.

Chapter 16 is about photochemical pollutants and the long term health effects. In 1971, the published data supported these conslusions:
"At times and locations with increased photochemical pollution, eye irritation, respiratory irritaion, increased cough and sputum, and possible headache were observed; A fraction of the population with existing asthma was more likely to experience asthma attacks when pollution levels exceeded an hourly average of 0.20 ppm of ozone; Men with cronic bronchitis or emphysema and impaired lung function experienced further lung function impairment when levels of ozone were elevated from 0.10 to 0.30 ppm; Mortality from chronic respiratory conditions was showing a general upward trend, but effects of cigarette smoking, survival from tuberculosis and pneumonia, and occupational exposures were considered the predominant contributors; High school cross country teams had 'poorer' times when they exercised during smoggy weather than the same teams exercising when smog was less" (p. 182-183).

It's scary to think about all of these things and some of them have irreversible effects. Hopefully, we can keep making sure our water is clean, keep carbon monoxide reduced, and photochemical pollution reduced. So many of these things are detrimental to our health, as well as our environment's health. We need to make sure we take care of these new exposures as they are happening instead of waiting to find out years later that they cause serious medical problems, because that long into it, it would take years to figure out how to reduce it all again.

Read 'n' Seed 3: Second Quarter of Environmental Epidemiology: Epidemiological Investigation of Community Environmental Health Problems

For the second quarter  of my book, I covered chapters 5 through 11 which is pages 65-127. These chapters mostly went through and told stories and studies of pollution and ozone problems.

Chapter 5 was the most interesting to me. The title of the chapter is called "The 20 Minute Disaster: Hydrogen Sulfide Spill at Poza Rica". It tells the story of a neighborhood near a plant that happened to have a gas leak. People in the neighborhood were poisoned by these gases, some of which died, some of which were hospitalized. I found it very sad, because so many families were affected by it. Some lost children, some lost a parent, and some lost children and a spouse, all because of a few minute long gas leak. Once the valves were shut, the fog cleared up and the air got better, but not before the devastating effects took place.

Chapter 6 went on to talk about three Los Angelos heat waves, and the researching of the effects of the elderly and sick in the nursing homes. They found there was a 1-day lag between th peak of temperature and the peak of mortality in each age group. They also found that heat waves like these happen every 8 years. 1939, 1947, 1955, and 1963 are significant years in this study.

Chapter 7 is about the planning, analysis, and preparation and how it can save lives. One statement that stuck out to me says "Most heat waves are forecast by the weather service. Should such forecasts provide advice to elderly and ill persons to take preventive measures? If you answered yes, what measures, at what temperature level, and who should offer the advice?" (Goldsmith, 84). I found that very interesting, because taking such precautions could save many lives.

Chapter 8 is about school children in Kawasaki, Japan and their respiratory problems because of the industries near the school district. They used two measuring indexes of air pollution: monthly sulfation rate by lead peroxide method and monthly dustfall. Dustfall?? Honestly? Now that's some serious pollution right there. These students had layers of dust on their school desks and their books became soiled. The industries eventually did something about it to solve the problem, but how horrible for those kids to go through that!

Chapter 9 mostly talks about people with asthma and environmental factors, and the affect on their breathing. An interesting thing I saw was a list of environmental factors of asthma attacks. "1. Allergens such as those produced by cockroaches, house dust mites, mammals and birds, molds and fungi, pollen, and food and drugs. 2. Irritants such as SO2, ozone, NO2 and mixtures of pollutants consisting of ozone, CO, and NO2. 3. Climatic factors such as temperature (more specifically, sudden changes in temperature) and humidity, and temperature inversions. 4. Respiratory infections" (Goldstein and Hartel, 102).

Chapter 10 is about asthma and air pollution in Los Angeles. They found that most of the asthma attacks occurred at night, whereas peak pollution levels were in the middle of the day to early afternoon. It showed that there is a latent period between the pollution exposure and the maximum effect. I found that to be intriguing. They also concluded that small increases in sulfur oxides can lead to aggravation of asthma in a number of the asthmatic persons exposed.

A lot of these cases are from years ago, but it still shows how the environment has an effect on our health. It's good to see that they have done some things to try and fix some of these problems. But it's also sad to see that some of these problems still exist today, even after all the researching. Hopefully, we can continue to minimize pollution. We need our planet for as long as possible!

Read 'n' Seed 2: First Quarter of Environmental Epidemiology: Epidemiological Investigation of Community Environmental Health Problems

Wow. So this week has been crazy for this read 'n' seed. I went to check out my first book I had chosen, only to find out it had already been checked out, and not due back until November 3rd. I then looked on the UMD library website for another book, only to once again find out it was not available. The librarian and I searched for new books on the library website once again, and I finally found a book that looked interesting to me. My friends and I went to where that book was located, only to find one next to it that looked more interesting to me. So here, I finally have a book called Environmental Epidemiology: Epidemiological Investigation of Community Environmental Health Problems by John R. Goldsmith. It has been interesting so far.

I was able to read the first 4 chapters, which was about 63 pages. The first chapter pretty much just talked about definitions, concepts, and problems. It talked about measuring environmental exposure and one term that I found interesting was "Personal Exposure Estimate", something attached to a person in order to obtain a measurement of indoor pollution levels. I thought that was interesting to hear about.

The next three chapters talked about a couple of the significant cholera outbreaks in our world. Chapter two was all about the Broad Street Pump and how Dr. John Snow discovered what caused the outbreak of cholera in a London district back in the 1800s. Everyone in a certain neighborhood was getting their water from a local pump, and Snow found that the water from the pump was contaminated and was causing the cholera which caused a great number of deaths in a short period of time. The handle to the pump was then removed, although it was when the epidemic was subsiding.

Chapter 3 talked about the cholera outbreak in Jerusalem in 1970. It was learned that farms were getting their irrigation water from sewage systems and the people who ate the plants from their crops were infected with cholera because of the fecal specimens from the water. Within a seven week span, there were a 176 cases in the town of Jerusalem, the peak being during the 5th week, with 59 cases. It was intresting to hear about these different cases between London and Jerusalem.

Chapter 4 was just about cholera in our day today. It just talked about how it is spread through fecal contamination of drinking water. There are simple household methods to treat cholera such as using a mixture of salt, sugar and water, just by drinking it, to retain all of your fluids back.

It is possible for another cholera outbreak to happen, it is just a matter of when and where. That's why it's important for our water to be clean from contaminants and pollution. Because you never know when your water might be unsafe. Scary stuff!

Read 'n' Seed 1: Greening the Ivory Tower: Improving the Environmental Track Record of Universities, Colleges, and Other Institutions

I chose Greening the Ivory Tower by Sarah Hammond Creighton. It talks about different things colleges and universities can do to make their environment more "green". It can teach staff and students strategies for "greening" up the place, if they have no experience in working on those kind of changes. They begin to focus on food waste, transportation, and energy efficiency at Tufts University where the author was a project manager of Tufts CLEAN!, which is a program that tries to reduce the environmental impact at the university.
I chose this book because, as a college student, I want to learn ways to reduce the impact on the environment, in the things I do. I want to establish habits that will be healthier for the environment and I feel that this book is a good source for it.
Here are some links provided where I found more information about this book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=DKRQqPthJygC&source=gbs_navlinks_s
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=5269
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Greening-the-Ivory-Tower/Sarah-Hammond-Creighton/e/9780262531511


The book has 9 chapters, 357 pages. For my first quarter of the book I plan on reading the first 3 chapters, then for each quarter after I will do 2 chapters each. I look forward to discussing what I learn from this book!

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I'm Danielle and my blog is for HLTH 3500 Environmental Health. I will be blogging about things we do in class, things I do outside of class, and just other random things!



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