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title: Introduction and Overview
author: Arindam Basu
tags: environmental, health, hlth214, syllabus, environment
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# Introduction to the course and overview

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## In this lecture presentation ...
- A brief overview of the course
- Assessments and modules
- Due dates
- Basics of Environmental and Occupational Health
- Your questions and answers

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## What will you learn
- Concepts of environmental health
- Concepts of epidemiology
- Toxicology
- Environmental Health risk assessment
- Occupational health and hazards
- Specific issues: air pollution, water sanitation hygiene, and others

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## Logistics: when and where
- Classes are held at Rehua 101
- Tuesdays, 11 AM - 1 PM
- Lectures are also in Zoom
- Zoom recordings are made available after class

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## Order of the topics
- First half of the course: theory
- Second half of the course: applications
- This class is discursive and hands-on
- Theoretical topics are on video
- Practical hands-on and discussions in class

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## Tutorial and textbook
- No tutorial classes
- Use tutorial time for self-organised learning
- No textbook
- Instead of textbook, journal articles and book chapters in PDF
- Read the materials and be prepared to discuss them

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## Assessments
- Two assessments in the course:
- a memo (50% wt, 50 marks) and
- annotated bibliography (50% wt, 50 marks)

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## Memo
- Write a memo on Environmental or Occupational health issue
- Address it to your local councillor
- Write the envirommental and related health issue
- Word limit: 2000 words, excludes words in images, tables, title, etc
- Submit by 21st August, 5 PM

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## Annotated bibliography
- Select Environmental Health Problem
- Search scholarly databases
- Cite each article using APA 7th version
- Next to each article, write a short summary and note about it
- word limit 2000 words
- Word count excludes words in title/abstract/ titles of papers/tables/images

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## Getting help
- Try Forum first
- Post your question to the forum
- Add a new discussion topic

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## How to get notifications in Forum

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## Key concepts in this course
- Environment is about human-engendered and external
- Hazard is potential of harm and qualitative
- Risk is realised health effect
- Exposure is external, dose is at the target organ
- Occupational Health is a special case of Environmental Health

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## Main topics
- Environmental Epidemiology
- Toxicology
- Environmental Health Risk Assessment
- Occupational Health
- Topics related to Environmental and Occupational Health

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## Environmental Epidemiology
- Distribution and determinants of health states
- Measures of distribution and determinants
- Internal and external validity
- Causal inference in Environmental Health
- Environmental epidemiological study designs

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## Toxicology
- Dose is the poison is an important concept
- What the toxin does to the body (toxicokinetics)
- What the body does to the toxin (toxicodynamics)
- Threshold of effect
- Dose-response gradients

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## Dose is the poison

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## Environmental Health risk assessment

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## Specific Health issues
- Air pollution
- Water, sanitation, hygiene
- Occupational hazards
- Sustainable living
- Climate change

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## Conclusion: how to ace this course
- Complete the assigned readings on time
- Complete the assessments on time
- We use "flipped grading", so submit on time
- Everyone passes this course, so
- Focus on studying and gaining knowledge

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# Enjoy the course!