Public Health Hazard Prevention
Service Programs
Service program delivery toward achieving the goal of Environmental Health for Life ensures protection of the health of the public by supporting individuals, groups and businesses through inspection, risk assessment and communication and educational activities that will result in the reduction of health hazards and promotion of health and wellbeing. Objectives of the Environmental Health for Life service programs:
Sources of Environmental Public Health Hazards
Environmental Health Hazard is a substance that has the ability to cause some type of adverse health effect, be it minor damage to tissue, serious illness or death. Hazard means a potential harm and does not mean the same thing as risk. Risk is the probability that the potential harm in a hazard will actually occur or be realized. For example, floods and fires are harmful hazards but their risk of harm varies as in the following cases; a fire burning or flood filling a terrain away (low risk) from us may not cause us to evacuate, but if either of these hazards is raging close to our houses (high risk) then we may have to rapidly evacuate.
Sources of Environmental Health Hazards
Sources of environmental and public health hazards include: air, soil, water, radiant energy, food safety, noise, consumer products, art and hobbyist materials and the workplace. Most of these sources can be grouped into four categories
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Biological hazards such as microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria, parasites, molds and fungi. Many of them cause diseases ttansmissible from person to person through the air, water, food, bodily fluids or insects (vectors).
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Chemical hazards such toxins that affect the brain and nervous system; carcinogens that cause or promote the growth of cancer; teratogens that cause birth defects; mutagens that cause changes in the genetic material found in chromosomes. chemical hazards may be natural or synthetic and occur in substances found in our air, food, workplaces, homes and schools.
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Physical hazards from external sources in the environment resulting in bodily injuries as fractures, lacerations, abrasions, burns; in the workplace including noise, vibrations, ergonomics; radiation that damage cells and the genetic material in them.
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Cultural hazards that are hereditary and which interrelate with environmental factors such as family history of disease, age, gender, occupational environment, home and community, tobacco smoking, diet, stress, social support, alcohol or substance abuse, sexual practices.
Preventing Disease and Injury
Prevention of disease and injury arising from the ordinary environment and the workplace involves the identification of health hazards, the evaluation or assessment of the extent of risk posed by the hazards, and the elimination or control of the risks. Health hazards typically found in the environment and the workplace include chemicals; physical agents, such as noise, heat, vibration and radiation; biological agents, such as bacteria, fungi and viruses; and ergonomic and safety hazards commonly encountered in workplaces, as well as, workplace environmental controls.
Prevention of disease and injury require proactive strategies and action to
anticipate, identify and assess the potential risks to health posed by hazardous materials, agents and situations in the ordinary and occupational environment, to evaluate exposures to these hazards, and to develop and manage effective control strategies for them.
Practical Disease and Injury Prevention Actions
Self awareness about health hazards, biological, chemical, physical or cultural in our environment and participating to control or eliminate where any exists will prevent disease and injury and benefit individuals and communities.
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Advocate for government action by developing appropriate policies and enacting legislation that ensures safe movement, use, labelling, registration and any possible adverse effects on the environment and health; examples, food safety, water safety, clean air, toxic and hazardous substances, pesticides, environmental standards
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Individuals and communities can act on preventive measures to minimize and control environmental health hazards.
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Physicians can alert patients and communities about use of drugs which may suppress the functions of organs in the body in fighting invasive diseases.
Promoting Health and Safety
Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. To reach a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, an individual or group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, to satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment. Health is, therefore, seen as a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities. Therefore, health promotion is responsible for enabling these healthy life-styles and well-being.
Health Promotion explores perspectives in social science to address issues related to the health of individuals, communities and populations, giving particular attention to identifying, understanding and addressing the societal and personal determinants of health through key strategies, including: health education and communications, community development, the role of organizational development and change, health advocacy, and the development of health promoting public policy.
Practical Health Promotion initiatives
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Empowering (enabling individuals and communities to assume more power and control over their personal, socioeconomic and environmental factors that affect their health)
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Participatory (involving all concerned at all stages of the process)
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Holistic (fostering physical, mental, social and spiritual health)
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Intersectoral (involving the collaboration of agencies from relevant sectors)
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Equitable (guided by a concern for equality and social justice)
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Sustainable (bringing about changes that individuals and communities can maintain once initial funding has ended)
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Multi-strategy, multi-level and comprehensive (using a variety of approaches in combination at the individual, organizational, community and policy levels)
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Reflexive regarding power relations, one’s own social location, health promotion discourse and rhetoric (including the need to ‘walk the talk’), asking critical questions about the differential social impacts of health promotion practice
