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The environmental health profession has undergone rapid change in the United
States. Derived in large part from occupational
medicine, the idea of environmental health has expanded from illness in the
workplace to linking human health with natural, built, and social environments.
In response, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommends that the
approach to environmental health change from one that responds to specific
health threats and laws to one that identifies the broad scope of environmental
health and how, by understanding how priorities relate to each other, efficient
environmental health solutions can be created. NAS also reported that the field
of environmental health continues to become more complex as the interaction of
environment
and genes becomes understood. Healthy
People 2010 identifies the short-term environmental health goals of the
U.S. government.
It identifies the most significant preventable threats to health and
establishes national goals to reduce these threats. Information on the six
major environmental health topics within the Healthy People 2010: Outdoor Air
Quality, Water Quality, Toxics and Wastes, Healthy Homes and Healthy
Communities, Infrastructure and Surveillance, and Global Environmental Health
is provided by the Public Health Foundation. With
the possible exception of lead poisoning, efforts to solve environmental health
problems are hindered by a lack of data. Laboratories often cannot measure
human exposure to environmental threats, a lack of information on typical human
exposures makes it difficult to set priorities, and coordination between
government agencies is weak. Few national
environmental health studies are performed.
In response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention created the first
National Report on Human
Exposure to Environmental Chemicals and groups such as the Council of State and Territorial
Epidemiologists have joined the call of The Pew
Environmental Health Commission for a national tracking system for a broad
range of environmental diseases.
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