The county that I currently live in, Stanislaus County, has an Environmental Health Services agency. According to their website, they are responsible for enforcing permits, monitoring and controlling air pollution, responds to complaints regarding food mishandling, and many more tasks. Although I did not find the following tasks surprising, it was interesting enough to note that the majority of responsibilities were regarding air and water quality. Where I live water is extremely important due to the large amount of farming. Also, the air quality control is really important, because there is large amount of pesticides that are used at all times for the farming.
Here at this county, we also have a Public Health agency. When looking at their website, I was not able to find much information on environmental health. I thought this could be that the county offers a separate website that concentrates on environmental health services. The one responsibility that falls under the Public Health department is prevention and education programs. These could be used in order to educate the public regarding environmental health issues.
As you touched upon here, public and environmental health concerns are especially important in counties such as yours. Farming regions such as Stanislaus County and the surrounding areas are ground zero for pesticide use, water contamination concerns, and air pollution. The region of Pennsylvania that I grew up in is also a major state center for industrial agriculture, and the pollution problems are similarly troubling. Unfortunately, though, Lancaster County doesn’t have anything near the public/environmental health infrastructure of Stanislaus.
ReplyDeleteGreat information! Where I live, there aren't too many farming areas in close proximity. We do place a lot of emphasis on water quality since we are located right next to the bay. Alameda county does have its own public health department and has a healthcare service agency located in San Leandro.
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