The Environment and Your Health

An essential textbook on how the environment influences our health and well-being.The Environment and Your Health

Everything around us—air, water, food, buildings, neighborhoods—shapes our health in profound ways. Edited by Megan Weil Latshaw and Joseph P. Bressler, this essential textbook offers a comprehensive foundation in environmental health to help students understand how physical, chemical, biological, and social environments influence well-being.

This textbook provides clear, accessible coverage of the key topics required by instructors, including legacy content from traditional environmental health syllabi and new competency-based standards. Students will explore environmental exposure assessment, toxicology, epidemiology, air and water pollution, food safety, occupational health, and risk assessment.

They'll also examine broader systemic issues, such as climate change, food systems, environmental justice, and the intersection of human, animal, and ecosystem health. Emerging concerns like "forever chemicals," global waste, and the health impacts of the built environment are addressed alongside traditional core topics. Through a systems-thinking lens, the book encourages readers to analyze complex, real-world challenges and consider policy and intervention strategies that can improve health outcomes at individual, community, and global scales. Engaging case studies and clear learning objectives reinforce each chapter's key concepts.

The Environment and Your Health equips students with the knowledge and perspective to understand how their environment shapes their health—and how they can help shape healthier environments.