Alex Neff

Public Health Trends:

Dorothy Monson: Davis County Environmental Health Services Division.

1.       Hazardous Waste.

One of the main problems with hazardous waste is that people think its all okay sense it’s in a landfill. But it’s not. Sometimes, many industries will make crude landfills to store their waste and sometimes even dump their waste into bodies of water. Hazardous waste is a problem no matter where it is. Another problem is that no one will take the time to help fix this problem of hazardous waste. The expenses that is asked to help get rid of hazardous waste is a lot, but in the long run worth every penny.

1.       Poor Air Quality

Utah is known for their poor air quality throughout the United States. The air we breathe is made up of about 60 percent car exhaust, 30 percent area sources and the last 10 percent from industries (see http://www.airquality.utah.gov/). The air quality gets to the point that it’s so bad people are asked to stay inside for the whole day. Even with the attention that air quality gets it still manages to be the worst air in America. It has to be carefully monitored or even more problems will arise.

2.       Unhealthy Water

An illness known as, recreational water illness is on an outbreak. It is thought that chlorine kills all the germs in a pool, but it can take up to days for the chlorine to kill a germ. Many children get sick from swallowing, breathing in mists and even having contact with contaminated water “playgrounds.” RWIs are on a rise. And children are getting really sick from these recreational pools from just swallowing just a tad bit of pool water.

3.       Hepatitis B

Even though hepatitis b is only really known to happen in parts of Africa, China and Asia it happens here in Utah also. It happens through an exchange of body fluids usually done sexually, but not always. Hepatitis B is almost 100 times more infectious than HIV and many people encounter having hepatitis b at least once in their life time. Recently there has been an Affordable Care Act (ACA) that helps people prevent hepatitis b from occurring.

4.       Rabies

Recently there has been a big problem with rabies specifically rabies and kids. It is said; that if kids under the age of 15 get rabies and if it’s not prevented they will end up dying. Rabies is a serious virus causes many deaths a year in every state. Rabies is passed from unhealthy animals, usually dogs and cats so owners need to make sure they give their pets a rabies shot.