Environmental Health

What is environmental health? Environmental health is the study of factors in our environment that can affect human health and disease. Environmental exposures cause hundreds of thousands of illnesses each year, including asthma and cancers. Environmental health professionals learn how to identify, prevent and control those exposures to protect health.

Freshwater harmful cyanobacterial blooms (HCBs) present a mounting threat to public health outcomes and lake ecosystem services. The current climate crisis is expected to intensify the occurrence of freshwater HCBs in recreational water bodies, their formation of potent toxins, and resultant human exposures.