Bringing out the Major Concerns in the field of Health Sciences

Faculty of Dental Medicine. Loai Aljerf, Researcher & Docent Damascus University, Syria, Email: envirochrom@hotmail.com

Published: 23-Jun-2021

Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health(JENVOH) is unusual amongst multi-disciplinary international journals in the field of medicinal sciences in terms of the broadly cast range of topics it covers, its annual submission, and it has a very high annual output in the range of published articles each year. Turning over this volume of wide-ranging research reports, whilst maintaining quality, presents a significant challenge.

Environmental Health is that the branch of public health that focuses on the interrelationships between people and their environment, promotes human health and well-being, and fosters healthy and safe communities. As a fundamental component of a comprehensive public health system, environmental health works to advance policies and programs to reduce chemical and other environmental exposures in air, water, soil and food to protect residents and provide communities with healthier environments.

Environmental health protects the public by tracking environmental exposures in communities across the United States and potential links with disease outcomes. To achieve a healthy community, homes should be safe, affordable, and healthy places for families to gather. Workplaces, schools, and child-care centers should be free of exposures that negatively impact the health of workers or children.

Nutritious, affordable foods should be safe for all community members. Access to safe and affordable multimodal transportation options, including biking and public transit, improves the environment and drives down obesity and other chronic illnesses. Outdoor and indoor air quality in all communities should be healthy and safe to breathe for everyone. Children and adults alike should have access to safe and clean public spaces such as parks. When a disaster strikes, a community must be prepared and will have the tools and resources to be resilient against physical (infrastructure and human) and emotional damage. All these activities require the participation of federal, state, local, and tribal governments.

Environmental health professionals work every day to ensure that the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the foods we eat are safe and secure. No one would need a person without a medical degree performing surgery, nor should anyone want the security of their food or water being determined by an individual who is not a highly skilled professional. Offering collaboration early, enhancing their capabilities to detect and answer threats, grounding policy and actions in evidence-based research, and ensuring that their services reach everyone are critical tenets of a system that can create resilient communities after a disaster.

Recent major emergencies demonstrate the need for a strong governmental nationwide environmental health system. The Covid-19 outbreak, mucormycosis are few examples with stark environmental health implications. These emergencies will not be the last, so we must prepare by investing in a robust environmental health system.

Occupational health deals with all aspects of health and safety at the workplace with special emphasis on primary prevention of hazards. The health of the workers has several determinants, including risk factors at the workplace leading to cancers, accidents, musculoskeletal diseases, respiratory diseases, hearing loss, circulatory diseases, stress related disorders, communicable diseases and others.

Employment and working conditions in the formal and informal economy embrace important determinants such as working hours, salaries, workplace policies concerning maternity leave, health promotion benefits and protection provisions, amongst others.

Safety and health of workers has a positive impact on productivity and economic and social development. Prevention should form an essential part of economic activities. To ensure sustainable and fair economic growth, having the highest standards of safety and health standard are just as important as business performance, profits and bottom line.

Recognizing that occupational health is closely linked to public health and health systems development, WHO is addressing all determinants of workers' health, including risks for disease and injury in the occupational environment, social and individual factors, and access to health services. WHO’s work on occupational health is governed by the Global Plan of Action on Workers’ Health 2008-2017, endorsed by the World Health Assembly in 2007.

Currently only 15% of workers worldwide have access to specialized occupational health services. They mostly carry out prevention of occupational risks, health surveillance, training in safe working methods, first aid and advising employers on aspects related to occupational health and safety.

In developing, constitutional provisions form the basis of workplace safety and health laws. It is the duty of the state to implement policies that encourage workplace safety and health of workers.

The major occupational diseases/morbidity of concern are silicosis, musculoskeletal injuries, coal workers' pneumoconiosis, chronic obstructive lung diseases, asbestosis, byssinosis, pesticide poisoning and noise induced hearing loss. It serves as a technical arm of the ministry and assists in formulating national policies on occupational safety and health in factories and docks. It also advises factories on problems concerning safety, health, efficiency and well-being of every employee.

We would like to thank the editors and reviewers of Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health. We thank all the authors for contributing their outstanding manuscripts to Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health. We also thank all reviewers and the editorial team of JENVOH for helping us to form this issue and ensuring the high quality of publication.

Citation: Loai Aljerf. Bringing out the Major Concerns in the field of Health Sciences. J Environ Occup Health. 2021; 11(6):67-68.

Copyright: © 2021 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.