Fat Tom

   This is the week's blog and the topic is about food safety. To introduce that, people should know what Fat Tom stands for. Each letter represent a different word. F:food, that means bacteria need a high protein and high carbohydrate source environment to reproduce. This environment usually means food. A: acidity, bacteria can not reproduce in a high acidic foods like lemon. The first T stands for temperature, bacteria can rapidly reproduce between 41 Fahrenheit and 135 Fahrenheit. The second T stands for Time, that means if a certain food exposes to the temperature between 41F to 135F can only stay normal for four hours. After that, the food is unsafe. The O stands for oxygen, bacteria requires oxygen to reproduce so use vacuum technique to reserve food is always a good option. The m is stand for moisture, bacteria requires moisture food to grow which means keep certain food in a dry condition is also a good way to reserve food.

   There are five major food born illness in America. First, improper holding time and temperatures. That means either the food is kept in a wrong temperature or past expiration date. Second cause is poor personal hygiene. That means the person who cooked the food is not meet the requirements of food safety. The third cause is inadequate cooking, this means during the process of cooking, the food is not reach the require temperature. That means some bacteria may still present in the food. the fourth cause is contaminated equipment. People using the same equipment to prepare the ready to eat food and raw meat will cause cross contamination. The fifth cause is food from unsafe source. All the food source supplier should pass the certain inspection and requirement to be qualified to provide food.


This is a picture of Fat Tom. It shows clearly what each words stand for.




This is a picture of my refrigerator. Some food were kept there for a long time. After researched this blog, I know the importance of keep away the food that already pass the expiration date.

Steps to constructing a new sewage treatment

     Nearly 20% of American household depend on septic systems to treat their waste water, failure to maintain a septic system will lead to backups, malfunctions and early failures can result expensive repairs.

     Septic system are underground waste water treatment structures that use a combination of nature and time-tested technology to treat waste water from household plumbing produced by bathroom, kitchen and laundry. People can find out if they are using the septic system by many ways. If you are using the septic system, you can find zero charge on your "sewer amount charged" on your water bill; the waterline coming into your house doesn't have a meter or your neighborhood have a septic system. There are some advantages about maintaining your septic system. It can save your money compared with repair it; it can protect your property value and also it can keep you can your neighborhood healthy to stop contaminating nearby service water.

     There are six major steps to constructing a new sewage treatment system. First, contact your local health district for the information on STS permitting. The local health district will visit your site to begin the initial site evaluation process. Second, determine where to locate the STS. The nature soil is most commonly used for STS from a home. A complete evaluation of the soil is the soil thickness and where it is located. Other conditions include slope, topography and the location of nearby water source and drinking water supplies. These evaluation service are provided by local health district or some private companies. Third, find a suitable type of STS for your land.  Fourth, obtain quotes and bids from registered STS contractors, the contract must have fully discussed all steps of the construction process and service. Fifth, the local health district will perform a final inspection of your system to approve or disapprove the installations. And the last step, start operation and maintenance of your new STS to ensure the system works.

 
This is a picture of a failure STS in China. It is exposed to the air and it would affect nearby water and human health.


This is a good example of STS. This is the water supposed to be like.

What is Coliform and Bacteria

     Last week, we talked about air pollution and we mainly focused on human behavior caused air pollution. This week, we are talking about water pollution. Although the major contribution to water pollution are industries activities, we are going to introduce how coliform and bacteria polluted the water, and they come from the nature.

     Coliform is a kind of bacteria, you can find it in soil plants and animals feces. The coliform family is made up by many groups, one of them is fecal coliform group, which is found in intestinal tracts of warm-blooded animals including human. If any fecal coliform found in drinking water or swimming pool, it would cause many diseases spread through fecal transmission. It considered safer if found fecal coliform in swimming pool than drinking water. It's a serious problem if found fecal coliform in drinking water. The most common illness of drinking or swallowing water contaminated with bacteria is diarrhea. Also, there are two other common waterborne diseases are giardiasis and cryptosporidiosis.

     In Ohio, many residents receive their drinking water from ground and surface water resources through private water system. Like wells, springs, ponds, rain water, cisterns and hauled water. The Ohio department of health requires that water provided from these systems be tested for a few basic contaminants upon completion of the private water system construction. Once that open permit receives final approval from the local health district, property owners need to take special precautions to ensure the protection and maintenance during the life time of their private water system. The requirement tests to get approve a private water system permit are total coliform bacteria, E.coli and nitrates.

     After read this post, people should be aware that if you are hiking or travel to some places which have springs or wells, the water may not capable for drink, they may contains many bacterias that make you sick.


This is a picture of a spring. Although it looks very beautiful and the water looks very clean, you should be aware of the water main contains many bacterias that make you sick.


This is a picture of toilet. If the waste water hasn't been handled carefully, contaminated the river and the drinking water system will cause a serious problem.

Air Pollution: The Air Quality index between Cincinnati and Cleveland

     Air quality index is a number used by government agencies to inform the public how polluted the air currently is or how polluted it is the forecast to become. If the AQI number breaks a certain point, the danger of getting health problem's chance are increasing. They are roughly six stages in the AQI range, each of them contains 50 points. The level of each stages goes from good to hazardous.
   
      Generally, there are two main categories of air pollution, one is gaseous and the other is particulates. Gaseous pollution includes sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen fluoride and various gaseous from metals. These pollution usually come from fossil fuel fired power plants: smelters, industrial boilers and mobile sources and etc. They can case injures to eco systems and organisms, aggravate respiratory diseases and reduce visibility. Particulates pollution come from solid forms. Large particulates include dust, asbestos fibers and lead. These particulates contain sulfates, nitrates. These human behaviors cause particulates pollution: power plants, smelters, mining operation and automobiles. These human behaviors also cause acid rain and acid deposition.
   
      The Cincinnati air quality overall is better than Cleveland. Based on the data at airnow.gov, Cincinnati's air quality is good, pm 2.5 is 41, ozone is 31, and pm 10 is 22; Cleveland's air quality is moderate, the major contribute of the air quality is pm 2.5. As this blog mentions before, pm 2.5 mainly come from power plants, mining operations. There might be more power plants in Cleveland area than Cincinnati.

     The AQI is at the good level overall around the America, some moderate areas focus on middle area and southwest area. The reason why middle area of America have a moderate level maybe because there are many industrial facilities were built through the history. South California and Texas air pollution may come from dessert.

     
I took this picture when I was jogging outside in 2011. I was touched by the views because I never saw this beautiful sky after eight. The AQI level is unhealthy in China.


This is a picture of a power plant. It use coal to produce electricity. As you can see, the smoke is coming from the chimney, and it's black. The smoke contains many unhealthy chemicals which are pollution our air.

Roundup: is it harmful for humans?

     Roundup is a product from Monsanto, it's a brand of  a herbicide made from glyphosate. Glyphosate is used to kill weeds, it's a board-spectrum systemic herbicide and an organophosphorus compound, means that it has negative effects on almost every plant with which it comes in contact. But on Mar. 20 2015, there was a research published by international agency for research on cancer stated that there is evidences shows that glyphosate lead to human cancer. After that, the U.S. environmental protection agency and the USDA suggest people to stop using products which has glyphosate.

     Monsanto has false advertising on roundup's safety. It claims itself "environmental friendly", encourage customers to use it on playground, golf courses, school yards and home gardens. A French court ruled those marketing claims were false advertising. In nearly 20 years of study, scientist has found that the consequence of roundup and glyphosate in our food, air and drink. A new U.S. geological survey has concluded that glyphosate was present in 75% of air and rainfall test sample. Also, they found that people who are sick have higher level of glyphosate than normal people. There are list of major health problem of glyphosate: attention deficit disorder, Alzheimer, Autism, a birth defect called Anencephaly and many kinds of cancer.

     Roundup overuse has already enable weeds and insects to build an immunity to its toxins. The Monsanto solved this problem with stronger pesticide. Although the country or region use the toxic pesticide may bring a short term economy benefit, the potential long term health risk would cost the government even much more money, which is not worth it. The best solution is to find another product which is more safe to human and truly environmental friendly. And there is another tip to kill the weeds, just put some newspaper, leaves and other compost ingredients totally cover the weeks for about six months, the weeds wound gone without any harmful herbicide use.


It's the picture of the Roundup herbicide product. You can still find it in many supermarkets. There is some people don't aware of the dangerous of using that in there garden.


It's a field just been weeding and ready to seeding. If this field has been using the toxic herbicide, the plants grown on it would still contain the toxic. Eventually, it will all go to human body.

Bad Sides of Nuclear Power

   With the increasing demand of electricity, more and more nuclear power stations have been build around the world.

   Compared with traditional ways of how we generate power, nuclear power is much cleaner, but it's also more dangerous. For example, five years ago in Fukushima, Japan, the tsunami took the nuclear power station down and made the nuclear material leak into the ocean. It costs a very serious damage to the local environment.

   I want to talk about the nuclear leak's influence to the human body first. According to atomicarchive website, the radiation can affect human for many ways. Such as losing of hair quickly, radiation sickness which may last up to 10 years and may increase long-term risk for leukemia and lymphoma, and it may also cause heart failure and immediate death. 

   The second part is about the influence to the animals lives around the nuclear station. There are so may reports about how bad the radiation affect the local environment and made the animals mutation and the change of numbers. For example, some researchers compared monkeys from two regions of Japan, contaminated land in Fukushima and a place 400km north of Fukushima. Fukushima monkeys apparently had low white and red blood cell counts according to beyond unclear website. 

   At last, I want to talk about the plans and environment after radiation material released by accident. There are many pictures you can found online about the harmful effects on plants living within 20 to 30 kilometers of the Chernobyl power station. These genetic effects also called mutation. some of these mutation plants even been changed to a new kind of plants. which is a very terrible thing. plants evolve to fit the environment, but we don't want to see they evolve to fit the radiation.

   Overall the nuclear power is very dangerous if we don't operate it in a right way or make any mistake. And that would cause so many damages which are very hard to fix,. Like Chernobyl, you may can go to the center of it until the next century after next century.  

                                              The picture is the light in my apartment. We need to turn off the lights and save power for protecting the environment. 

 

The picture is the areas that been affect by the Fukushima nuclear power leaks. We can see this is really big. It's very dangerous of the nuclear power leak. 

                                                                                                                                                                                            

Zika virus: prevent and control

   The Zika virus is definitely a hot topic in recently news, I am going to introduce the Zika virus also how to prevent and control it in this blog.

   Zika virus is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, mother to child and also sexually. According to the CDC website, the name of "Zika" comes from the Zika forest in Uganda. Zika virus was first isolated in that area in 1947. Although it has been found and outbreak for a long time, we just started to cover it on news because the affects are very slight for adults, people don't get sick enough to go to the hospital. And it's very rare that people are died because of Zika virus. It has similar symptoms as dengue, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis and west Nile viruses, such as fever, rash, joint pain, red eyes. The Zika virus has been having a outbreak in Brazil in May, 2015, the major risk of infected Zika virus cause birth defects, it called microcephaly. Although there are additional studies needed to determine the level of relation between Zika and microcephaly, evidences are clear to see some link with these two.
 
   The most and important prevent way for pregnant women is avoid biting by mosquitoes. There are few steps from preventing pregnant women get bites. First, always wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants. Second, stay indoor with locked windows and doors to keep mosquitoes outside. Third, sleep under a mosquitoes bed net. If you are male who lives in or has visited the area with Zika, you should avoid sexual contact with your partner or use condoms.

   Unfortunately, doctors haven't develop a vaccine or specific medicine to effectively cure the Zika infections. If you have symptoms I listed above, these are some treatment you need to do. First, get enough rest. Second, keep your body hydrate. Third, take medicine like acetaminophen to relieve fever and pain. Fourth, don't take aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Do these and if you didn't get better in four weeks, go to see s doctor.

   

This is a picture of a child with microcephaly. if the pregnant women still infected by Zika virus and can't get effective treatment, more infants will be under the illness. It's a serious issue to develop a vaccine.








This is an example of long-sleeves shirt. If you traveled to or lived in the Zika virus area, remember to wear long-sleeves and long pants.

Polluter pay principle

    The polluter pay principle (PPP) is an environmental policy that requires polluters to pay the cost. Bugge (1996) concluded four advantages of the PPP: economically, it's more efficient; legally, it's more fair to the world and to the people; it pleased international environmental policies; it shows how to arrange costs within a State.

    The PPP was first mentioned in the year of 1972, suggested by the OECD (organization for economic Co-operation and development) and the European community. Where is stated that:" The principle to be used for allocation costs of pollution prevention and control measures to encourage rational use of scarce environment resources and to avoid distortions in international trade and investment is the so-called Polluter-Pays Principle."

    India imbibed the PPP into their Law of land. They believed that the PPP is aim to repairing ecological damage. The main idea is who messed it, who need to pay to clean it up. It actually punished the polluter who made the damage but it still need to be implement properly. The fine is too low for many Co-operations, this situation is also happened in China. The news always report that many factories had very low amount of fine compared with their revenue. It is insignificant. In case of that, these companies are willing to pay the fine without stopping damage the environment.

    But there are still some cons about PPP. First, If the country adopts the PP, production costs might increase, thus the company may lose its competition in the market. Second, since the company lost their previous status in the market, they may be move their factory to a country which don't apply the PPP instead. Third, PPP basically is a tax law, and this tax is based on pollution. Pollution can be measure accurately. Government should invest lots of money on administration fee to measure that. 

Reference
Bugge H. C., 1996. "The principles of polluter pays in economics and law", in Eide E. and van der Bergh R. (eds) "Law and Economics of the Environment", Oslo: Juridisk Forlag, 1996.


 





This is a picture I found online. It indicates pollution equals money. The factories should pay for what they have damaged the environment. 



      




 I arrived at Chicago on Friday. It's snowing today. I noticed that they are many air pollution in big cities. Like vehicle exhaust, industrial waste gas.

How do we recognize stress and three options to reduce it

   After watched the video in class and read some articles, I realize that stress sometimes is not a motivation, it's harmful. If a person is under lots of stress, he has a high chance to have health issues. According to a article on HelpGuide.com:"if the stress beyond the comfort zone, stress stops being helpful and can start causing major damage to your mind and body." Also the video showed in the class has the same idea but it focus on animals. Stress causes cognitive symptoms like memory problems which is also mentioned in class and make you can't concentrate well. Overlord stress leads emotional symptoms like moodiness; physical symptoms like aches and pain; diarrhea and constipation last the behavioral symptoms like eating disorder and sleep disorder. We can know the damage is real and serious.

   If we want to find some ways to reduce stress, we must know the causes of it. There are two parts of causes: external causes like life environment changes like change a school or a job or moving to a new city. And there is internal causes like people have negative attitude or been pessimism. Obviously, change attitude about life is important to reduce internal causes of stress. Otherwise there are very less ways that people can really get rid of internal cause stress. Stay positive is they key. For the external causes, another article in the same website mentions couple ways which can help. One is to eat a healthy diet; two, reduce caffeine and sugar, these substances often end in with a crash in mood and energy number; three, avoid alcohol, cigarettes and drugs and last, get enough sleep, sleep too less or too much is not a good sign of people's health.

   Stay positive for life, eat healthy and sleep well. Three easy but crucial keys to make you a stress-free person.



                                                                                                                                                           This is an elliptical I bought last year. I sometimes got lazy when thought of going to the gym. But after having this at home, I have no reason to be lazy. And exercise everyday make me feel energetic and alive.            

                               This picture shows all the harms that stress can cause to our body, mind, emotions and behavior. Also, it warning us how important it is to learn how to reduce the stress.                                                                              

               

how to use national environment public health tracking network

   Today's blog is about how to use CDC public health tracking network. It has all the basic information about health and environment. There are six major parts on the website: environments, health effects, population health. explore tracking data, info by location and state and local tracking programs. I want to introduce two parts: one is health effects and the other is info by location.

   When I introduce you the health effects, I want to take Asthma for example. After you click in the health effects, it gives you a general information like what is Asthma; what can cause Asthma and how you can prevent getting Asthma. If you or any of your family members are suffering from some common diseases, you can search the disease and read the specific page about this disease. Read the page to start a health lifestyle to prevent and to lower the risk.

   The info by location page is useful for everyone live in this country. It's very easy to find information  about health and general information in your area. For example, I typed Athens, Ohio, it gives me a lot information about this area. Such as the number of people are living below the poverty line in Athens is doubled compared with state of Ohio; 60% of people in Athens are under age 34 and the race information. The PM 2.5(what is PM2.5) is lower compared with national average and it's only 11.1 ug. We also can know the smoking percentage at state of Ohio is five percent higher than national. This page gives most people a basic health information about this area. For people who want to move to another city, check this website and compare with their current living place will be a good idea.

   Getting to know the common diseases and getting to know the environment around you start from CDC public health.



 This is a picture took in Beijing, China. The air pollution is a  serious issue in China right now. It causes lots of lung and breathe problems.



I started smoke after 18, It has been years. But I know smoking is bad for health. I am trying to quit smoking.

Current annual report for American Association of poison control centers

   I read through the three parts: age and gender distributions, reason for exposure, route of exposure and their data table on page 979 at AAPCC(American Association of poison control centers) 2014 current annual report. 


   The first part is age and gender distributions, we noticed that 47.7% of children who under the age of six are affected by poison. Seeing this 47.7% of children as one group, nearly 70% of children from that group are under the age of three; this group of children are infant and don't have much cognitive ability. They are easily to eat toxic food when their parents are not around. From the evidences above, we can see that there are so many toxic chemicals in our daily life. Also, boys are more active than girls so they are more easily get toxic chemicals than girls. 


   The second part is reason for exposure. It indicates that 79.4% of exposure are unintentional, still provides the evidence that there are so many toxic substances around our life. The therapeutic error and misuse also play a big part in it, the therapeutic error takes 12.6 and the medicine misuse takes 5.8%.  Although the rate is not very high but it still affect hundreds of thousands individuals, so it's still a big problem. But there are some thing we can do to prevent it from happening. Such as create a comprehensive medical file; FDA can also apply a more strict rule to control drugs. 

   The last part is route  of exposure. We can see 83.74% of route of exposure are ingestion, so food safety is the biggest issue that we should focus on. Water pollution and farm chemicals caused I can't eat a cucumber without cleaning it, but how can I know the water I used to clean the cucumber is pure and clean? Dermal and inhalation take the next  two big parts because of chemical fabrics and air pollution. 


   All in all, human body is very fragile. After the industrialization there are millions of new chemicals and antibiotics appear and human take millions years to evolve and adapt the environment. We may can't experience things like 1800s London pollution again, but we are facing  new environment challenges and new chemicals more than ever before. Any chemicals should serve one propose that to make a better life and a better world for human without harming human.





I searched "water pollution" on google and I find this picture. We can see the beautiful background in this picture, but the pollution on the beach gets more attention. It is a strong warning to us that we need protect the environment intermediately. 

It is the refrigerator in my apartment, I put all the food I bought into the refrigerator. Since the food safety is the biggest issue, I am worried about if I eat the poisoned food. The government should tack action for food safety. 

Week 1 blog topic:Heuristics

   The word "heuristics" by definition is a way that people using their experience or "common sense" to learn and improve. It exists in our daily life's every decision making more that our thinking. We are facing hundreds of choices every day, such as when to get up in case late for classes; What kind of food to eat today; which TV show to watch tonight. And heuristics can affect every situations I just mentioned.


   There are three types of heuristics: availability heuristics, representativeness heuristics, and base-rate heuristics. These three kinds of heuristics have some differences in psychology field. An example for availability heuristics, people always think violent crime plays a big part in all kinds of crime, but the truth is there are less than 12% of crime involves violence. 

   If someone tells you his father is an engineer, sits at office all day and always work late, you may start to picturing a mid-age man probably wear glasses and with little hair, also he could be a little bit fat because he lacks of exercises. That's a representativeness heuristic. It's similar to stereotypes. Sometimes, representativeness heuristic can be very helpful for providing a picture in our brain, the picture could have many useful information about the person or the situation we are about to meet.

   The last one is base-rate heuristic which helps us make decisions base on probability. For instance, if you hear a lion roaring next to your door, you will think maybe your neighbors are watching a movie right now instead of thinking there is actually a lion next door to you. Also, it's based on your common sense. According to your information, it's forbidden to raise a lion privately and it may not be that easy for a lion to escape from the zoo.

 This picture tells us, our brain receives lots of information everyday, we may not realize but these information are influence us when we are making decisions. I chose this picture because it can well-explained how much our brain involves. When we are making decisions, our brain is like a machine, and each part plays it role.

This picture I took at home is a example of rate-base heuristic. Every time we order him to sit down, we always has a snack on our hand, now he doesn't need the order. As long as he see a snack, he will sit down.