Final Blog

There have been so many highlights of learning in this class this semester. It has completely opened my eyes even more to the environment and how we treat it and the class has also made me more of a pain in the butt to shop with.

I am so thankful that we are more educated on various topics and that we are now ready to share our new knowledge with family, friends, and the community. Also with strangers too, lol!

I really enjoyed blogging with Angela and Matt! It was great to read about their perspective on the topics.

Some of the modules I wish we talked about as a class instead of just among the 3 of us because a lot of the the blogs would have been great discussions in class.

A few highlights I take away from this class is, I should be a hippy, I am not as green as I thought I was, my skin care products are causing more damage than good, disinfecting wipes are not helping anything, I should live in a bubble because everything causes cancer, and bleach is the devil!

M12: 9 Climate Change

1. What do you personally find most troubling about climate change?

What I find most troubling personally about climate change is the misconception people have about it or that people do not know that it exists! Am I mistaken that Trump said that climate change is not a real thing?? If he did in fact say that, I find it sickening, not troubling, that someone in charge of this country would say something like that. Like hello, haven’t you read about the glaciers and hungry polar bears? So yeah, misinformation being given or advertised is very troubling to me!

2. As a public health professional, what do you think needs the greatest attention right now?

OMG I have to pick just one thing that needs the greatest attention? I feel like I am going to pick the wrong thing but I would say that the health of our earth needs great attention. I say the earth because the land is vital to most things and if we take care of that then people and animals will be healthy as well. 

3. If you were visiting with a long-lost relative who had never heard about climate change, how would you describe it and its attendant human health and ecological threats?

I would describe climate change as the weather being unpredictable and off. Like it is hot out when it is supposed to be raining by now. Or climate change is because of fire smoke being the new normal. Human health is suffering because of the unpredictable atmosphere

M11:5 A Zero Waste Life

After watching and reading the assignments in Module 11, I came to the realization that I would not survive a Zero Waste lifestyle. At first, I just thought about food waste but then I thought about all of my hobbies that come with packaging or fabric waste that come from project scraps. After listening to the TED talk video, I feel like a hoarder and that I need to do some deep spring cleaning! 

While watching the food waste video with john oliver, I honestly got annoyed with him and stopped watching about 9 minutes in to be completely honest. I felt he was yelling and pointing his finger at America, or whoever his viewers are, for being a part of food waste. I got frustrated because as my blogging partners and I learned in our behavior change class, people do not like to be told what to do, especially in an aggressive manor. He was being too aggressive in my opinion without having any credibility to his name. In the nine out of 17 minutes that I watched john oliver talk about food waste, I was saying “who the hell are you?” I am a public health person and I was getting pissed with his platform but it is because it was his approach of information. I feel he should have had an environmental scientist or someone with credentials on his show to talk about food waste. It made me think of the exercise we did in class last week asking is the person credible and do we trust them? Did he even mention at the end if he lives a Zero Waste life? I doubt it he is but maybe I am wrong since he is schooling us on food waste!

I already shop with reusable shopping bags so that is the change I have already done years ago. I have thought about taking cloth bags if I buy bulk but I would be buying the bags or making the bags, which will be contributing to waste. it is a vicious cycle! 

M10:2 MSDS & ToxNet

I asked my mom and a friend if their works had an MSDS form for this blog. My friend said "Not that I know-we are such a big company....there may be msds somewhere". So he was no help. Then I asked my mom and she said she would ask her HR. Felipe at HR said "We have MSDS for our facilities. They are not online in our web site. We can email to you the information. Please send me your email address. Having said that, you can also find MSDS information for paint, adhesives in the internet". As of right now, I am waiting for the information from my moms work but nothing to post yet on this blog.

Whenever I get the information, I will answer the questions from the assignment. Now I am really curious what the MSDS looks like because I feel like this assignment was looking for a needle in a hay stack. Now that I think of it, I am not surprised my moms HR was like, oh yeah we have it, because they are the courthouse and law and stuff so they they would be the best people to contact for paperwork because they do not want to get sued? lol

M10:8 Occupationally-Related Disease

Asbestosis (white lung)

I found a great timeline about asbestos at this website https://www.mesotheliomahelp.org/asbestos/history/  it is a lot to write a short blurb about so please take a look at it, it’s great! 

According to the WHO Currently about 125 million people in the world are exposed to asbestos at the workplace. In 2004, asbestos-related lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis from occupational exposures resulted in 107,000 deaths and 1,523,000 Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs). In addition, several thousands of deaths can be attributed to other asbestos-related diseases, as well as to nonoccupational exposures to asbestos. 

Elimination of asbestos-related diseases should take place through the following public health actions: 

a.     recognizing that the most efficient way to eliminate asbestos-related diseases is to stop the use of all types of asbestos;

b.     replacing asbestos with safer substitutes and developing economic and technological mechanisms to stimulate its replacement;

c.     taking measures to prevent exposure to asbestos in place and during asbestos removal (abatement), and;

d.     improving early diagnosis, treatment, social and medical rehabilitation of asbestos-related diseases and establishing registries of people with past and/or current exposures to asbestos.

https://www.who.int/ipcs/assessment/public_health/asbestos/en/

M10:5 Occupational Safety & Health Organization

I chose the WHO. http://www.who.int/occupational_health/en/  

Healthy workplaces: a WHO global model for action

 The WHO healthy workplace model: a comprehensive way of thinking and acting that addresses:

 Healthy Workplaces:  A Model for Action

• work-related physical and psychosocial risks;
• promotion and support of healthy behaviors;
• broader social and environmental determinants.

The United Nations high-level meeting on non-communicable disease prevention and control in 2011 called on the private sector to “promote and create an enabling environment for healthy behaviours among workers, including by establishing tobacco-free workplaces and safe and healthy working environments through occupational safety and health measures, including, where appropriate, through good corporate practices, workplace wellness programmes and health insurance plans.” WHO considers workplace health programmes as one of the best-buy options for prevention and control of non-communicable diseases and for mental health. Such programmes can help achieving the WHO objective of reducing the avoidable deaths of NCDs and the burden of mental ill health and to protect and promote health at the workplace as stipulated in the Global Plan of Action on Workers’ health 2008-2017.

http://www.who.int/occupational_health/healthy_workplaces/en/

M10:1 Video

My mom has been working at the Monterey County Courthouse for 35 years. The three branches are Salinas (Criminal), Monterey (Family Law), and Marina (Traffic). The Salinas building has been around since 1930 and my mom has spent her career between Salinas and Monterey. The issue that has plagued the Salinas Courthouse until its recent renovation is Asbestos. A good handful of my mom’s friends and/or collogues, have been diagnosed with cancer. Some are survivors of the diagnosis while others have not been so lucky. What they had in common, is working in the Salinas branch courthouse. 

I feel that the issue has already been addressed because the oldest part of the building has just finished a renovation/upgrade to get rid of the Asbestos. It took years to make the change and I think that many current and past employees were being diagnosed with cancer. I hope someone took the data into consideration for the change linking the courthouse, cancer, and Asbestos together. 

A barrier to workers exercising their rights to a healthy and safe workplace is budget, management, and people higher than you not listening. I used to work for a nonprofit until recently and every Friday the manager would bring in donuts. I love sweets but sometimes I would rather eat fruit or something at work. On three occasions I told the manager if she could bring fruit instead of donuts on Friday and she said “it’s not in the budget”. NO JOKE, that is a direct quote from her!!! And my response was “and donuts ARE in the budget”? I even suggested that she spend the Friday donut money on half donut and half fruit. Yeah, that NEVER happened. So, another barrier could be stubbornness (and I say stubborn so I don’t get in trouble for foul language, lol).