UEP 201 Environmental Health and Policy

This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the environmental factors impacting human and ecological health including consequences of natural and human-made hazards. Environmental health is a rapidly growing and interdisciplinary field that involves both science and public policy. It is integrated into numerous aspects of our lives both directly and indirectly. Topics to be covered include food safety water access and equality pesticides air quality the identification of environmental hazards the assessment of various risks (including exposure to dangerous chemicals used in toys food workplaces and other activities) and the social and biological causes of disease (epidemiology) Students will gain an understanding of environmental health analytical and scientific methods. We will also explore ways that communities and policy-makers seek to address environmental health challenges. A common thread running through the course will be an examination of how exposure to environmental and health risks vary among different population groups in the Los Angeles area in the United States and around the world and the ways that scientific issues become embedded in and inseparable from issues of policy regulation and justice. We will also explore the role of science in environmental policy-making the enforcement of regulations and the efforts of community groups to influence public policy. (Students are encouraged to enroll in Geology 150 a laboratory science that in parallel explores the spatial and geographic dimensions of environmental health.

Not open to frosh without permission of instructor.