Blog Topic 3

Noah Swart

Environmental Health

Mr. Moss

    The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network, has a large list of information regarding all topics of public health. With this website I found an article regarding the use of pesticides

in our environment. This article described the full names of commonly used chemicals and what they’re used for. It also explained the exposure of certain types of pesticides and how the most dangerous pesticides for both the environment and people are the ones used on crops and farm fields to eradicate insects and other unsavory critters.

Spraying

   I found the article, both interesting and informative, as I was not always aware of the wide variety of chemicals that are being used in our day to day environment. I also had little to no knowledge of the names each chemical was under, and how depending on the name it can make it more or less dangerous. I found the article to have an unbiased tone, with neither an opinion on if the topic at hand is good for the environment and people or not. I personally believe that pesticides are overall bad for the environment regardless of the small benefit that it gives to people. I know that pesticides are not always regulated properly and can run off into streams or other wildlife sanctuaries. Regardless, it’s nice for the article to be all about the fact of the matter as opposed to the author’s personal opinion.

Run off

   The article was written with enough enticement that it lead me to expand my knowledge more on the topic. Its credibility of all articles listed pretty firmly throughout the website I had no feeling that the article was leading me misinformation. Overall, the article was to the point and helpful, it lead me to get a better understanding for what we put in our food, rivers, grass, and even our bodies. I hope that more people are able to find the website and get the understanding I did from these few crucial paragraphs.

   

Blog entry #2

Noah Swart

EH – 2000

Blog Topic – American Association/annual report

  Poison control centers are something almost everyone has seen at least once on a warning label. Of course, unlike the widely known emergency numbers like 911 but when time comes nobody can remember the number for the poison control. Just by calling 1-800-222-1222 you can have access to both information regarding all forms of poisons, but also access to statistics, emergency poison help and up and coming research on the daily toxic leaks.

The dangers

  Poison is normally portrayed as something that rarely happens and only does if it is an intentional criminal act. The reality is that poisonings happen all the time, and unintentional poisoning is the most common form. Inside the website of the American Association of Poison Control the current annual report is listed. This report lists the annual report for poison control centers. When it comes to the average age of who ingests the most poisons/toxins it is made up largely by children, the age of six and under precisely 47.7%. This may be surprising to a few people but the fact of the matter is that young children don’t have the ability to question what they put in their mouths. Even more so in the instance of children three or under who make up 35.6% of poison cases, this is due to the fact that young children lack the senses needed to learn an object through touch. With their mouths they are able to feel the object and learn its capabilities.

AAPCC 

  How do people, and mostly small children manage to get these toxins/poisons in their bodies? Well 79.4% of poison exposures are unintentional, with 53.8% being overall unintentional acts, 12.6% being therapeutic errors, and 5.8% being unintentional misuse. Realistically the fear some hold of being poisoned is just a fear and never holds a huge merit. Of course, this doesn’t apply for the chance that a mistake of someone else’s could be what gets you poisoned.

  With the idea that babies’ major routes of exposures are indeed their mouths, as they are always putting things in their mouths one wouldn’t be all that surprised that the most common route of exposure is ingestion 83.7% normally and with fatality rates of 81.4%. This is due to a few reasons, one a lot of poisons are easy to ingest, are commonly in liquid form, and because our skin has a built in protection for what it absorbs into our bodies. The second largest rate for exposure fatalities is inhalation coming in at 10.1%, which itself is also very realistic. We are of course constantly breathing and sometimes not even the nose can pick up toxic poisonous gases. The third greatest route of exposure is unknown 7.8% because a lot of the time tracking the type of poison and process of ingestion can be difficult.

 These statistics change every year, and that’s why the American Association of Poison and Control does well to monitor and research how the overall percentage of poison/toxin deaths can be diminished in our society. This should also apply to the person, as everyone should be vigilant about what they put into their bodies, either It be a soft drink or the typical work day hazardous gasses that one may run into, or simply just what your baby manages to get in mouth distance. Any of these methods can decrease the rate at which one becomes ill.

Blog Entry one – Heuristic

Noah Swart

EH – 2000

The Thought Process

Heuristic is an approach to a problem or a learning situation or something that is discovered that needs a new approach to be understood. Heuristic employs a practical method to solve something, the heuristic method however isn’t always the most logical way nor is it optimal. Due to the way heuristic method presents themselves this can lead to a bias. Although, is not always prevalent in heuristic problem solving. This bias can still show itself quite often, an example would be educated guessing. Educated guessing is the process of taking a multiple choice question and breaking it down realistically using the common knowledge that is known to the user.

How does this present a bias? When the user is basing his answer off of an answer or question that has been presented to him before, and how is the user to know if that question was right or if he absorbed the wrong form of the answer. Another example, would be using common sense to solve a problem, this of course doesn’t have a huge amount of bias structured into it but some can still be prevalent.

The term using common sense refers to looking at the problem or situation from a situational stand point. You think about how the normal person would behave or how a perfectly logical person would handle the situation and you go from there. Heuristics in its most basic form is just a simple thought process that leads us to make the simple decisions we do. People rely on how easy it is to making a decision without stressing the brain to think through the process.

Stressing 

 However, there are two types of heuristic problem solving, those being availability heuristics and representative heuristics. Availability heuristics is the process of making a decision based on your already base knowledge, the example of educated guessing is an availability heuristics because you’ll bring up past problems or events that remind you of the problem and critically analyze how to solve it. Meanwhile, representative heuristics is the process of looking at the average or stereotype of something and comparing it to the problem you have now.

Heuristics is just a basic process of the human brain, however it can be seen as something of a short cut like most short cuts it isn’t foolproof. As we use heuristics in our daily lives we must also look through and be able to spot the signs of bias and logical faults in our constant problematic situations.