M1.5 Environmental Health Home Assessment

This is my first time completing an environmental health home assessment. Many of the categories I have not thought or worried about in the past 17 years that I have been living in my house. When going through this assessment, I had to ask my parents– who are the owners of the house– when the house was built and if the house was inspected for lead and radon. To answer most of the questions of this assessment, I had to inspect my house to get the answers. This exercise made me realize that I am not particularly aware of the possible harmful environmental hazards that my family and I are exposed too. I am now more aware of these exposures and know where they might stem from. The one environmental exposure that I am highly aware of is smoke from tobacco. I have a slight case of asthma and my parents are strict on no smoking in the house for the tenants that live below us. Our family does have an attached garage, but my family does not use it for parking space, but rather a storage space, and we park our cars outside.  

M1.4 List of Environmental Exposures

This activity made me realize I am always surrounded by chemical, biological, and radiological exposures wherever I go. I feel like it is near impossible to avoid all these exposures because I can encounter these exposures by doing my daily activities, such as cleaning where I am exposed to harmful chemicals from the cleaning supplies. Looking at the list that my group created, there are many exposures that appear in all the four categories, indicating that they are very common exposures that everyone may have been exposed too at least once in their life. My group did not have much listed for school and so I decided to do a bit of research about the possible environmental exposures in a school setting. One thing I want to add to the list is the toxic chemicals from art supplies.