MPH632Spring2018-Huang

After watching Jane Hoolihan's video I started to look at all the products that I use and I was shocked and surprised to find that some products do contain chemicals that was mentioned. I suddenly felt weird and uncomfortable that I have been putting these harmful chemicals on my body without knowing how it could be damaging for my health. In the video, Ms.Hoolihan talked about the lack of regulations, standards and testing on these product does raise some concerns because these personal care products are being used by people mostly on a daily basis, we apply it on our body and it is being absorbed into our body. I think personal care products should be held to the same standards as medication drug products that goes through clinical trials to ensure the safety,efficacy and no toxicity, and to have monitoring of these products to make sure there's no adverse reactions. Recently there were a recall of a makeup set by Claire's that was contaminated with asbestos, imagine the ...

This article published in The Guardian was a very interesting topic.  I have never thought to link mental disorder and air pollution together, and according to the study in the article, the data shown is very frightening and concerning. The study done in Hong Kong have found a strong link between deaths of people suffering from mental disorder such as schizophrenia, depression, dementia, and bipolar disease on days that have bad air quality. The analysis shows a rise in mortality risk of 16% on the first day of haze, 27% on the second day, and go up to 79% on days that have haze with high ozone pollution compared to a normal day. The article also goes on to mention some studies showed that there were evidence of small particle pollutant found in the brain which may point to the possibility how air pollutant can trigger acute depression response that leads to suicide. While reading this article I started to think about the severity of the findings and how it can affect millions of p...

The first product that I looked at was the Lysol Dual Action wipes, which had a health and flammability rating of 1 which is overall very safe. The only hazard warning was eye irritation. I use Lysol wipes very frequently to clean my surfaces so I was happy to see that it is an overall safe product to use as long as it doesn't get into my eye. The second product was Dawn liquid dish soap, which also had a health and flammability rating of 1 and there was no finding of carcinogen. The hazardous warning is prevent eye irritation and accidental ingestion. Knowing these information tells me the two product are good and safe to be used in my house. I was not really surprised with the rating because I think that these two products are used to clean items and surfaces that we use and touch everyday so it would be best to have little to no health risk. If there were bad rating and toxicity in these products then I would definitely find new products that are more safer to use. Just like th...

The first product that I looked up was my body wash, Dove deep moisture body wash. The result from the Safe Cosmetics Database had an overall rating of 5 which is moderate hazard according to their scale.  There is a low chance of cancer, but high in allergies, irritation and contamination. I was very surprised that cosmetic products contain many ingredients that may be hazardous and toxic. Overall I was pleased that the rating wasn't in the higher number especially since this is a product that I used on a regular basis.  I was glad that the developmental and reproductive toxicity was low because I am in my reproductive age and hope to someday be a mother, so it was comforting to know that the body wash does not have many ingredients that would jeopardize it. The second product that I looked at was my Neutrogena Ultra Sheer sunscreen, which I also use on a daily basis. The result was very similar to my body wash with an overall rating of 5. After looking at the results I am be...

An article published on BBC talking about the huge amount of plastic in our ocean and how it is affecting the coral reefs hits very close to home. Hawaii is the home to many beautiful coral reefs and it's very important to our marine life and ecosystem. Large amount of coral reefs due to the warming of the ocean have been bleach, and once it's bleach it's dead, therefore it's very important to take care of them. Coral reefs are homes and food source for many marine creatures, and a many of the fishes are our food sources, if the coral reefs are dead then it would affect our food source too. The article was mainly focused on the Asia-Pacific region and  that there are 11 billion plastic items was found on coral reefs, and it is estimated to increase to 15 billion in 2025, that's a significant number. Plastic not only affect coral reefs, our ocean quality, it can kill marine animals whom ingest it or get stuck on it, and imagine eating a fish with a piece of plastic i...

My family recently bought a new house that was built in 1964, so we had many inspections done before we moved in. My dad is in construction so he understands about home safety and health hazards, and he placed many hours renovating the house and making sure that everything was up to date. While going through the assessment, I was glad that our house is pretty safe from any environmental health and safety hazards.Since we live Hawaii it is very hard to avoid insects especially since we live on a mountain, so we always make sure that we routinely get the house tented for termites and other insects, and clean the house regularly. Hawaii rarely have radon so we don't really test for it. I did find while completing the assessment that our house don't have a carbon monoxide detector, and I don't recall it as being a common thing in Hawaii, but it might be good to have one. Our home don't use any gas or have a fire place, we do have a central AC which does have a vent. Hawa...