Environmental Health

Environmental health refers to issues affected by one’s immediate environment, such as vermin, air-borne and insect-borne diseases, food poisoning, lead in homes and drinking water, lack of vaccination against childhood diseases, air and water pollution.

Environmental health concerns include:

• Biosafety.
• Food safety, including in agriculture, transportation, and food processing.
• Childhood lead poisoning prevention.
• Land use planning, including smart growth.
• Liquid waste disposal, including city waste water treatment plants, septic tanks, and chemical toilets.
• Medical waste management and disposal.
• Occupational health and industrial hygiene.
• Radiological health, including exposure to ionizing radiation from X-rays or radioactive isotopes.
• Recreational water illness prevention, including from swimming pools and ocean and freshwater swimming places.
• Solid waste management, including landfills, incinerators, recycling facilities, and composting.
• Toxic chemical exposure whether in consumer products, housing, workplaces, air, water or soil.
• Toxins from molds and algal blooms.
• Vector control, including the control of mosquitoes, rodents, flies, and cockroaches.

(Wikipedia)

The Delaware County Department of Health has a Division of Environmental Health which currently has five activities:

• Environmental Health Codes
• Environmental Health Programs and Services
• Mosquito/West Nile
• Food Safety Inspections
• Animal Bites to Humans

(Delaware County, PA)