Surveillance System for an Environmental Health Concern
Introduction
Environmental health is an important concern for health care providers because it comprises the areas of human health that are impacted by external factors, such as chemical agents, biological agents, physical environment and so on. Issues that fall under environmental health are air pollution, water pollution, pesticides, chemical spills, and other areas (Laroque, 2009). Because of the risk of these areas negatively impacting human health, there is a need to monitor environmental health areas. One major area of environmental health that desperately needs surveillance is the quality of the air in urban areas near major airports. As Schlenker and Walker (2015) point out, airports are responsible for some of the highest concentrations of air pollution in the nation. An as West et al. (2016) show, air pollution is the cause of millions of premature deaths all over the earth. Thus, there is tremendous reason to be more diligent about monitoring how much air pollution one of the most used forms of travel is putting out. This paper will develop a surveillance system for the environmental health concern of air pollution at airport hubs. It will describe how this source of air pollution impacts environmental health, public health and communities. It will explain the types of surveillance needed for this environmental problem and discuss how various stakeholders can help to prevent this problem from occurring in the future.
Airport Air Pollution
Airport air pollution needs surveillance because it impacts the lives of so many travelers and creates a concentration of pollution in an area near where many people live. Aircraft release a lot of pollution into the air, including carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide (CO), and hydrocarbons—all of which make the air unfit to breathe (Schlenker & Walker, 2015). It is especially important to monitor air pollution coming from airports because neighboring communities, including those that are downwind from airports are likely to be negatively impacted by the release of so much air pollution from these hubs of traffic.
How It Impacts Environmental Health
Klepac, Locatelli, Korosec, Kunzli and Kukec (2018) have found that air pollution can be particularly damaging for pregnant mothers, resulting in a greater risk of preterm birth. Preterm births can impact both the mother and the child. Air pollution can harm children and impact their growth, lead to respiratory issues and more (Simeonova, Currie, Nilsson & Walker, 2018). And the World Health Organization has classified air pollution as a cancer-causing agent that leads to lung and bladder cancer in people who have to breathe in air pollutants on a regular basis (Simon, 2013). Those individuals who lived in communities that are nearby airports are thus at great risk of contracting illnesses and cancer as a result of their exposure to the pollutants emitted by airplane engines and their exhaust. The environmental health of people is negatively impacted by busy airports and if there is no monitoring of the amount of pollution displaced by these airports, the environmental health area of this concern is neglected and the health of communities is placed at further risk.
How It Impacts Public Health
Air pollution is a major public health concern, as the World Health Organization (WHO) has shown. The WHO (2013) has called air pollution carcinogenic—i.e., poison—and therefore unfit to be breathed by people. Yet people everywhere are forced to breathe in toxic air because of the modern modes of travel that have become so prevalent in societies around the world. Kelly and Fussell (2015) note that improvements in the quality of air that people breathe must be made because air pollution is a major public health concern: air pollution is responsible for many diseases that researchers are only now beginning to understand as being connected to poor air quality.
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Thus, air pollution is an environmental health issue that negatively impacts public health and has to be monitored to be controlled.
How It Impacts Communities
Communities can benefit from easy access to travel, which flying affords, but they are negatively impacted by the air pollution that comes with access to air travel. Communities that suffer from air pollution are likely to suffer from poor health, and communities that are in poor health will not add advantageous contributions to the rest of society: they will instead bring more costs of care to the state and end up being more of a burden than they are a positive contribution. To ensure that communities have the best chances of contributing to the world, they have to have access to clean air and thus…
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…on getting off of fossil-fuel energy as cities in California are currently seeking to do.
Stakeholders can make a difference by introducing legislation at local, state, regional and national levels to help curb pollution abuses so that clean air quality can be improved, not just in one place but in all locales. Stakeholders in transportation need to find ways to move people from one destination to another without burning fossil fuels for energy. Stakeholders in agriculture need to find ways to meet customer demand for meat, or else the culture of food needs to change so that consumers begin eating more of a vegan or vegetarian diet; the more that consumers demand meet, the more agriculture is going to rely on farm animals, and the more CO2 is going to remain in the atmosphere. Stakeholders have to be willing to look at where they can make changes to their lifestyle and where they are willing to budge. Some people may not like the idea of electric cars, but the alternative is air pollution and a risk to human health. As people lose loved ones to cancer year after year, the reality of risks the world is running by continuing to pollute the air needs to be understood.
Finally, stakeholders in health care can play a part by spreading health literacy and teaching communities how to lobby for change to protect their health. If airports air pollution is going to be a problem, airports should be held accountable. If local leaders are not spearheading change to help protect the health of the public, those leaders need to be replaced. Air pollution prevention is not going to be solved overnight, but it can begin to be addressed by letting the right people get into positions of power wherein they can make change happen.
Conclusion
Air pollution is responsible for harming the health of people the world over. The World Health Organization views air pollution as carcinogenic and air pollution has been linked with causing cancer. Monitoring air pollution at high-concentration areas like airports is important because there are surrounding communities that are likely to be negatively impacted by the concentrated levels of pollutant that result from aircraft emissions. To be sure, aircraft are not the number one source of air pollution: that distinction is….....
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