Introduction to Environmental Health and Occupational Health

The purpose of this website is to provide a guide to open access resources on the closely interlinked topics of environmental health (EH) and occupational health (OH). Although users of this site will likely be familiar with these fields, a very brief summary of what they encompass, and how they relate to public health is provided for those who are not.

In 1997 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Environmental Health Policy Committee (EHPC) asked their Risk Communication and Education Subcommittee to review various definitions of “environmental health”.  In 1998 they published "An Ensemble of Definitions of Environmental Health"[7], that included 28 definitions that had been considered. The top-ranked one was the World Health Organization (WHO) 1993 draft definition, which was only slightly modified in their published 1998 definition: [8]

Environmental health comprises those aspects of human health, including quality of life, that are determined by physical, chemical, biological, social, and psychosocial factors in the environment. It also refers to the theory and practice of assessing, correcting, controlling, and preventing those factors in the environment that can potentially affect adversely the health of present and future generations.

Environmental health services involve the prevention and correction of the impact of the stressors summarized in Figure 1. [9]  In a broad sense, environmental health can be viewed as a branch of public health that includes occupational health and safety, food safety and environmental protection [10]. The environments included are the home, work and recreational environments.  The work environment scope interlinks environmental and occupational health.  For the purpose of this website, occupational health will be simply defined as workplace health and safety.  It can be viewed as a branch of environmental health. 

Figure 1: The scope of environmental health services [9]

According to the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, the contributions of environmental health to public health involve: [10]

• Housing and planning
• Availability of wholesome drinking water supplies
• Quality and availability of safe and nutritious food supplies and support for local food production
• Prevention of accidents and injuries
• Health protection and communicable disease control
• Noise control
• The control of pollution, including nuisances
• Remediation of contaminated land
• Occupational health and safety
• The improvement of air quality

Papers that pertain to EH and OH are published predominantly in EH and OH journals. However, given the scope of these fields, papers are also published in public health (PH) journals, as well as those involving other fields.  For this reason, although this website is titled ‘A Subject Guide to Open Access Environmental Health and Occupational Health Subject Resources’, there is also some material presented on OA public health (PH) resources.

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