A big challenge for veterinary educators is to stimulate interest in public health medicine and make the curriculum interesting, and relevant, to veterinary students. Veterinary public health encompasses many areas, including zoonosis control, food safety, animal health and biosecurity, animals as sentinels of environmental hazards and the contribution of animal waste to pollution of food and w...

Late effects of exposure to certain environmental hazards as a consequence of their active military service have become an issue of particular concern to veterans and the public at large. Approximately one out of four Americans is a veteran or a family member of a veteran. The US military develops and uses increasingly complex and sophisticated weaponry. As the military technology changes, so d...

BACKGROUND Unsafe working practices, working environments, disposable waste products, and chemicals in clinical laboratories contribute to infectious and non-infectious hazards. Staffs, the community, and patients are less safe. Furthermore, such practices compromise the quality of laboratory services. We conducted a study to describe safety practices in public hospital laboratories of Oromia R...

Environmental public health indicators (EPHIs) are used by local, state, and federal health agencies to track the status of environmental hazards; exposure to those hazards; health effects of exposure; and public health interventions designed to reduce or prevent the hazard, exposure, or resulting health effect. Climate and health EPHIs have been developed at the state, federal, and internation...

The Toxicity Leaching Characteristic Procedure (TCLP) is used by some to estimate the potential hazard that chemicals in solid wastes represent to public health and the environment. This use is done mechanically without understanding the origin of this procedure and the severe limitations and unreliability of this procedure in estimating public health and environmental hazards of the potentiall...

The Bandar Bushehr, Iran earthquake of April 9, 2013 gravely illustrates how disaster-prone areas of the world are compounding their risk of disaster and major public health emergencies when there is a geographical convergence of natural and technological hazards. Scientists must emphasize to policy makers that ever-increasing regional industrialization and the broader introduction of nuclear f...

OBJECTIVE We tested the Analytical Hierarchy Process tool for its use in public health to identify potential gaps in emergency preparedness by local health departments (LHDs) in California and Hawaii during a radiological emergency. METHODS We developed a dedicated tool called All-Hazards Preparedness Squared (AHP2) that can be used by those who are responsible for all-hazards preparedness pl...

ifteen years ago, the Pew Environ­ mental Health Commission detailed in a report the lack of basic informa­ tion available to document linkages between environmental exposures and the health of the public. The commission found that there was “no cohesive national strategy to iden­ tify environmental hazards, measure popula­ tion exposures, and track health conditions that may be related to the ...

Although public debate in Canada about climate change and air pollution is louder than ever, the state of the environment remains a relatively neglected determinant of health, and environmental public health infrastructure and programs are poorly developed. Health Canada has only recently begun to develop a national environmental public health tracking or surveillance system. The authors review...