Chapter 15: Environmental Concerns: Waste & Pollution

Environmental Concerns: Wastes and Pollution

Natural hazards in the environment can damage or even destroy wildlife habitats, kill or farm humans, and damage property. Some natural include: earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, avalanches, winds, dust storms, floods, wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and tornadoes. As people go about their daily activities they produce residues and waste. These residues and waste include, urine and feces, trash and garbage, clippings and tree branches, scrap wood and metal, contaminated water solvents, excess heat, animal dung, runoff from feedlot operations, crop residues, animal carcasses, carbon monoxide, gaseous pollutants, used motor oil, mining waste, electrical power waste, nuclear power wastes, and weapons production waste. As you can see the list is very large, meaning there is a lot of waste and pollution!

There are several different types of waste, solid wastes, hazardous wastes, air pollution, water pollution, radiation, and noise pollution. Each of these groups have a source, a way to manage the waste, collect the waste, recycle the waste and dispose it.

Solid waste can be traced to four sources, mining and gas and oil production; agriculture; industry and municipalities. Mining generates about 38% of solid waste production. Agriculture makes up 51% and industrial makes up about 8%. Solid waste management involves the collection, transportation, and storage and disposal of waste by incineration or in a landfill. However now it includes source reduction, reuse of products, recycling and composting. About 80% of the money spent on waste management is spent on the collection process. The main approach is to limit its creation in the first place. Avoiding nonreusable products is key in this step.

America produces a lot of waste and we have to deal with the waste we produce, which hasn’t always been done efficiently. There are many steps to take to make sure waste and pollutants are taken care of properly. The cost is also of great concern, but waste pollution effects our health so we need to make sure we are taken care of it so it doesn’t affect our healthy negatively.

Chapter 14: Health Care System: Function

Health Care System: Function

Health care provided in the United States is arguably the best in the world, however the services offered in the United States aren’t available to everyone, because of the cost. An alarming concern is minorities in the United States often receive a “lower quality of care than do their white counterparts.” There are several ways to gain access to the health care system, even with all the different ways to gain access to the health care system, 46.6 million Americans were uninsured in 2005. The chance of being uninsured goes up for younger people, people with less education, people with lower incomes.

Payments for the U.S. health care bill comes from four sources, the consumers themselves, private insurance companies, public or government insurance programs, and a small portion are paid by private funds. There are two ways of payment, fee-for-service and prepaid health care. Fee-for-service the more traditional of the two is an arrangement based on the “assumption that services are provided in a set of identifiable and individually distinct units such as doctors office visit or a specific medical procedure.” In this process the consumer selects a provider, receive care from the provider, incur a expense for the care, the provider is reimbursed for the covered services, and the consumer is responsible for the remaining.

The language of a health insurance policy can be very confusing, and there are several terms everyone should be familiar with. Deductible is the amount of expenses the consumer must pay out of pocket before the insurance company will pay for covered services. Fixed indemnity is the maximum amount an insurer will pay for a certain service. Exclusion is written into a policy, and it means that a specified health condition is not included in the coverage.

Health care is a very controversial topic, and the debate about it can get very heated. Should everyone be giving insurance even if they can’t afford it, how good should their coverage be? How much should people who can afford coverage have to pay? When lives are at risk as seen in the movies Johnny Q we watched in class, insurance policy can change without notice and the consumer can be left in the dark.

Chapter 12: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs

Alcohol, tobacco and other drug use is the biggest community health issue in the US. People that choose to use drugs pose a significant threat to society in the form of economic liability, loss of productivity, unnecessary drain on the healthcare system and mental health services. Drug use and potential for addiction is determined by environmental factors as well as possible inheritance. Genetics, home and family life, school and peer groups, and the sociocultural environment are the factors that effect drug and alcohol use.

Drug use is a non-evaluative term  referring to drug taking behavior in general. Drug misuse refers to inappropriate use of legally purchased prescription or nonprescription drugs. Drug abuse can mean taking a prescription or nonprescription drug for something other than what it was intended for, taking a legal drug after being aware that it's detrimental to your health, and use of any illicit drug.

Drug abuse is prevented by first off teaching kids and adults about the dangers about using drugs as well as taking any measures that deter people from buying the product such as raising prices/taxes on products, arresting/ stopping drug dealers, and destroying crops before that ever end up on the market.
Secondary prevention programs are usually implemented in high school when users are not chronic users yet.
Tertiary prevention is designed to provide drug abuse treatment and aftercare.
More of the prevention strategies that we're implementing in this country need to be toward primary prevention considering that everything rolls down hill. If there were more programs that stopped kids from starting use, then we would have more money saved from unnecessary healthcare expenditure.

Chapter 11: Community Mental Health

Mental illness is the leading cause of disability in the US, Canada and western Europe. Some of the issues that college students and other youth deal with includes: anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, sexual assault, and personality disorders. Origins to these mental health issues are usually attributed to heredity or environmental factors. Adults in good mental health are able to function under adversity, change or adapt to change, maintain control over tension or anxiety, find more satisfaction in giving than receiving, show consideration, curb hate and guilt, and love others.

Prior to the 1950's and 60's, labotomy and shock therapy were the norms for dealing with mental health patients. After this, came about antipsychotic drugs. The deinstitutionalism of mental health facilities started after this point and thousands of patients were removed from state-owned mental hospitals to more community based settings. There was a push to reduce spending for mental hospitals, and an economic pull towards profits from providing outpatient and inpatient services.

Today there is a steady increase of people with mental health problems that get stuck in jail because there's no where else to house them, and there's a limitation of services that are open. They have problems getting their medication,and when they do get it, they have no support system, and often stop taking the meds. This coincidentally lands them back in jail. The community needs to recognize that a lot of the people with mental illness also suffer from not having certain resources like housing, transportation, food, medical care and adequate income.