MPH - 632 kbscherer

Final Blog I really enjoyed the different online learning tools and modules that we were able to complete on the online weeks. I thought they were really pertinent and timely and I was able to learn at my own pace. I also really liked learning about the local environmental health components that are around me, like my water system and air quality issues. I feel more component about being able to look up the environmental components of products and feel like I have a better grasp of both their deleterious health and environmental implications. As for the blogging component, I felt having 3 separate blogging assignments every week was a lot. Less about the work that it took to do the assignment, but more about reading my classmates assignments. I enjoyed reading the assignments of my classmates because they gleaned different elements from the assignments, but I did find it challenging to write to each of their assignments every week and respond to the comments that they left on my as...

M14.4 Disaster Preparedness I reviewed disaster preparedness information for the city of San Diego. Being a California based city, they would also use the Disaster Healthcare Volunteer site . San Diego also has a lot of community resources to both volunteer and learn how to be more prepared on its cities website . They have inform individuals how to get involved in the InfraGaurd, which is an FBI affiliated non-profit, and volunteers help protect against criminal and terrorist threats. There is also volunteer opportunities for civilians and retirees to be part of a volunteer patrol service associated with the San Diego police department. They also have a crisis center and a youth volunteer service for emergency response. There is also a place for volunteers to sign up for the emergency firefighter organization, to help with emergency situations and response. For public health professionals or medical professionals, they can use the Medical Reserve Corps  to register for potenti...

M12.9 Climate Change 1. What do you personally find most troubling about climate change? I think one of the most troubling aspects of climate change is one of its indirect factors on food and food production. The growth and production of food and crops will be negatively impact by the change in temperature and climate of specific areas. Additionally, due to the higher concentrations of CO2 in the soil/fertilization during plant growth, consumed crops will have lower levels of protein and essential minerals making them less nutritious for the general population.  This fact is particularly troubling as many countries already experience food insecurity and the increase in total global population and decrease in food production and food quality will exacerbate this issue.  2.  As a public health professional, what do you think needs the greatest attention right now? I think the aspect of climate change that needs the greatest attention right now on ...

M11.5 Zero Waste Lifestyle I have seen Lauren Singer's blog before and it has always felt like a lifestyle that was so far out of reach. But I really like what she said in her presentation that she is not their to judge anyone for the trash that they produce, but wants to inform people that they can start small and make small behavior changes in our lives that could have a large impact. I definitely have tried to make a conscious choice to try and practice more sustainable purchasing habits, I am still a far ways away from being zero waste. I think the area that I struggle the most in is the food packaging waste like Laura was talking about spurred her lifestyle change. I have been trying to shop thrifty, but in my cost saving ways have moved away from purchasing foods from farmers markets or from bulk locations and instead just go to the grocery outlet down the street from my house. While grocery outlet does sell food from other grocery stores that would have otherwise been ...

M10.8 Occupationally Related Disease I selected byssinosis, more commonly known as brown lung, specifically b/c I have never heard of it before. But brown lung is characterized as asthma like symptoms that, with prolonged exposures, can cause irreversible chronic obstructive lung disease. Brown lung is seen most commonly in workers who work in cotton processing plants, as well as hemp and flax industries. Brown lung has also been known as "Monday fever", which is characterized by workers coming back from the weekend after experiencing no asthma like symptoms and then once at work re-triggering their symptoms which would continue to get worse as the week goes on due to cotton dust exposure. Cotton effects on workers respiratory systems was known by doctors since 1705, however little was done prior to the later 1900's to actually make any regulations around the inhalation of cotton. 50,000 workers were being impacted at a single given time in the later 1970's with 7...

10.5 Occupational Safety and Health Organization I choose the World Health Organization (WHO), and their efforts toward occupational health have been through an initiative to promote workers health through a global plan of action. Their plan of action focuses on a couple of different areas:  To implement national policies to establish mechanisms and legal framework to implement, monitor and evaluate workers health To have full occupational health services for all workers globally To strengthen institutional capacities and human resource capabilities to deal with the special health needs of workers by developing evidence on the heterogenous needs of workers and translating that into policies and actions develop specific guidelines for workers and communities with positions that produce hazardous material Promote collaboration across all organization that focus on occupational health To encourage occupational health presence in more national policies Encourage collaborat...

M10.2 Safety Data Sheet In my line of work I do not have any safety data sheets that are used at my org nor do we have any trainings on the safety practices of specific safety measures that we need to practice around chemicals. The only safety training we have is around patient privacy and security. However, sometimes in clinical research we will using chemicals for some facet of the project. I looked up the safety data sheet for a product that we are utilizing in a virtual research study to investigate the incidence of flu this season. We are using the Quidel QuickVue Influenza A+B Test. The test includes nasal swabs for participants to collect a viral sample and equipment to run a lateral immunoassay. What are the health risks associated with this chemical? There are no health risks with this specific test kit or the material that it has. Is the chemical a carcinogen? The extraction reagent solution is the only chemical found in the product and it is not a carcinogen W...

M9.4 Heavy Metals It was really interesting to read both of these articles and learn that we have had an understanding of lead and been studying the health effects of lead for a long time. However, even today we suffer from lead poisoning. Reading the article about the health effects that happened in the Nigerian village due to ore mining in 2002 made me feel very uncomfortable that implementation and chemical usage was not thought about with greater intensity when building an infrastructure next to residential areas. In the end, by not investigating the full effects and health implications of situations like this, I feel that more money is being spent on halting production and potential law suits that come out of situations like these. Another aspect that I also found very interesting is how lead poisoning disproportionately impacts women. Because lead is very commonly found in bones, when women become postmenopausal they are loosing bone density and as a result lead in reentering...

M9.3 Green Chemistry I have honestly never really heard of green chemistry formally, in my mind chemicals should have always been developed with the entire lifecycle in mind of what was being created. Part of understanding science and coming up with innovative solutions is to also balance the cost and benefits of what is happening. Just because something works, does not make it right and ethical to put into the world. For example, in the early 2000's there was a lot of oppression with using and researching stem cells of therapeutic purposes. However, because the opposing side of this argument was more in line with anti abortion and christian values of law makers, the opposition almost seemed like it was taken more seriously than green chemistry. I think that I resonate the most with Green Chemistry principal #10, that states that the chemical should degrade after its actual use. I think thinking about the entire lifecycle of a chemical or a product is one of the most importan...

M9.2 Six Chemicals 1 - PFAS: Learning that 98% of American's have this toxic and man made chemical inside of them is disheartening. Because of its inability to breakdown, it can never leave our environment and is found in our water and even in remote areas because it is able to travel. So whenever any new PFAs are used in products that are created to provide stain or water repellency, that means that it is contributing to the total PFAs that we have in our environment. I think these types of chemicals, that do not breakdown in the natural environment need to be the ones that are most strictly regulated. 2 - Antimicrobials: I find antimicrobials the most surprising chemical, because in my mind they have always been good But the fact that they kill both good and bad bacteria and we can receive the same health benefits just by washing with regular soap and water means that their rise to mass usage was just due to capitalistic agendas. By marketing to the population that they w...

M8.5 Ideal Chemical Policy I think the ideal chemical policy needs two elements, it needs to be centralized and universal and it needs to be mandatory. I do not think that the mechanism we have now, which only seems to have restrictions for severely hazardous chemicals post unsafe exposure and harm to the population,  is the best option. We need to change our policy to cover all chemicals, both synthetic and natural under a regulatory umbrella and then decide specific chemicals that are absolutely necessary and the concentrations that are safe. Right now it feels like a lot of the best practices of chemical creation and usage is based off of guidelines, unless the chemical has previously shown harm to a population. I think to make the best policy, scientists, not politicians, need to make decisions, not on fiscal stipulations, but on actual health implications. These regulations will be made by individuals that do not need to campaign or barter for a seat at the table, so will ...

M8.4: Chemical Policy Reform I choose a Background Paper describing the "Safe Substitutes and Solutions" for hazardous chemicals. And it outlines what you might already expect, that there is limited, if any, regulation about what chemical are actually being "substituted" with the other hazardous chemicals, and that the "substituted" chemical may just be a different chemical with the same hazardous level, or they may be just a more diluted version of the previous chemical. What I also found really interesting about the background research is that they specifically called out the power that "halogenated chemical producers and others within the American Chemical Society" really have over the legislation that is passed for these chemicals use within the public. I think that it is crazy to see that, as a country, we are more obsessed with capitalistic tendencies and less focused on health of the entirety of our population. It is not like there is ...

M8.3: Pesticides Last night I had Steak and fingerling potatoes with a kale, apple, scallion salad. According the What's on my Food website , the breakdown of pesticides per-food is as follows:  Fingerling Potatoes (health effects: carcinogen, hormone disruptor, neurotoxin) Chlorpropham (found at 80.2%) Imidacloprid (found at 25.5%) Flutolanil (found at 11.1%) Variety of a total of 35 pesticides, most found at lower levels Kale (health effects: carcinogen, hormone disruptor, neurotoxin, reproductive toxin) DCPA (found at 53.1%) Imidacloprid (found at 30.3%) DDE p,p' (27.2%) Variety of a total of 35 pesticides, most found at lower levels Apple (health effects: carcinogen, hormone disruptor, reproductive toxin) Diphenylamine (DPA) (found at 82.8%) Thiabendazole (found at 81%) Pyrimethanil (found at 75.2%) Variety of a total of 47 pesticides, most found at lower levels I find it not surprising knowing that there are chemicals on my food, I grew up in ...

M7.8 Topic of Interest I read the "Love Canal: A Story Continues..." by Lois Gibbs for our NYT style book review. It was about a community movement for retribution and removal from the gov't and a chemical company after living on a superfund site. This story takes place between 1978 - 1980, however this is by far not the end of situations where neighborhoods are schools are built on and around this hazardous waste dump sites. I was talking with a friend of mine who is a public school teacher in NOLA, and she said how a community in her district just won a  settlement because a school and neighborhood was on a toxic waste sight. She also talked about a sister campus to the high school that she presently worked at, just opened up and she was offered a chance to work at the facility, but older teachers at the school warned her of the potential health effects that could manifest from working on the campus because of the proximity to a superfund site. I am hoping to do a...

M7.7 Federal Agencies Environmental Role Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) The HUD department was founded in 1965 by Lyndon B Johnson through the Department of Urban Development Act. It is focused on solving the "urban issues" that were uncovered during that time. HUD focuses on housing policy and programs to ensure equitable and safe housing for all Americans. The present HUD secretary is Ben Carson, appointed by president Trump after no previous housing or urban development experience. All HUD assisted projects go through an environmental review which assess the potential environmental impacts of said HUD projects and determines if they fall within the local, state and federal regulations.  All projects must be in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and be confirmed to not have adverse events to those that may be living in the community or negative impacts of to the environment. The Office of Environment and Energy (OEE) is t...

M7.4 Local Environmental Services I am familiar with San Francisco's health and substance abuse programs, but did not even know that we had an environmental health department. I knew that there were programs that supported environmental initiatives like the PG & E Energy Savings Assistance Program that focused on changing out home appliances (like water heaters or furnaces) for low income bay area resident to be more energy efficient and reduce the energy bill for families that were eligible. However, I did not know that they have programs for and regulate for a whole slew of issues that include healthy housing, regulating hazardous waste, health equity and sustainability, and even health massage programs. At first glance the Environmental Health Department's website looks very robust and comprehensive covering a wide breadth of programs covering issues from animal fur to water waste, however when I click into any of these issues they do not actually have a lot of infor...

M6.7 Obesogens: An environmental to Obesity Locally grown and seasonal in my area:  I know California is a big ag. state, so it was really cool to use the Seasonal Food Guide finder to really see all of the things that can be harvested just at the end of September within our state, such as avocados, bok choy, chard, kiwi, and strawberries. While there are many local farmers markers that come into the city, like the Ferry Building Saturday market, there are really no major commercial food sources within the county. However there are a large amount in neighboring counties like Brentwood, Marin, Santa Rosa, Dixon and Davis. The city also makes it really easy to buy local ingredients at local store fronts to make it easy to access. However there is still a higher cost for many of the local and organic products. So even though they are much more affordable than other locations that source in the CA local produce, for a city that is quickly widening the income gap, these fresh, or...

M6.6 Use of Antibiotics Antibiotics Resistance 101:  The lack of regulation on a known public health issue like antibiotic resistance (AR) seems ludicrous to me. This non-therapeutic use of antibiotics within our factory farms has known and well studied impacts to humans, so much so that other nations like the EU, Sweden and Denmark have all put in legislation to prevent continued harm for their constituents. I feel like it is again a play where the gov't is listening to the people with the most money, like those from the pharmaceutical industry or the factory farming industry, as opposed to the health and needs of the majority of the population. As opposed to implementing surefire mechanisms to prevent AR's from being regulated, like banning the use of non-therapeutic use, they instead promote suggestions and guidance for the factory farmers to follow, with no major repercussions if guidelines are not followed. It is then up to the knowledge of the consumer to know to bu...

M6.4 Industrial Farming Vanishing Bees: I have heard of this crisis in the past and about colony collapse disorder (CCD) but did not previously know to the extent or the reason why it might be happening. I think that the most surprising notion of the film and the issue in general was the silo'd nature of important information about CCD or "bee death", which France used to describe the same issue. France went through the same issue in the 90's in dealing with the synergy of systemic pesticides which had enough of an impact that the government had to make stricter regulation. However, the U.S./CDC/EPA did not know or follow suit on those regulations, so the same issue just happened again, even though we had the know how, the science, and the precedent to stop it. Dirt! The Movie: I never would have thought that there would be so many people just emphatically into dirt. It was really interesting to be able to get into all of the levels and structures of dirt. It ...

M5.7 Sewage Facilities There are 3 sewage facilities that support San Francisco. 1. North Point Wet Weather Facility (NPF) - Fisherman's Wharf 2. Southeast Treatment Plant (SEP) - Between SF Zoo & Lake Merced 3. Oceanside Treatment Plant (OSP) - Bay View/Hunter's Point I live in the Richmond District of San Francisco and am served by the Oceanside Treatment plant, which is the newest of all of the wastewater plants built in San Francisco. Unlike NPF and SEP, which were built in 1951 and 1952 respectively and are currently functioning with out dated equipment, OSP was built in 1993 and is the all weather treatment facility for the west side of the city. It was largely built underground however, because of its proximity to the ocean it is subject to a faster rate of corrosion so does require regular repairs and updates in order to maintain seismically reliable.