ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: SAVING LIVES; PROTECTING PEOPLE FROM HEALTH THREATS; SAVING MONEY THROUGH NUISANCE PREVENTION.

THE IMMENSE SIGNIFICANCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH & ENIVIRONMENTAL HEALTH LABORATORY IN NIGERIA

Your environment is everything around you—the air you breathe, the water you drink, the community you live in, the places where your food is grown or prepared, your workplace, and your home. When your environment is safe and healthy, you are more likely to stay healthy. But when your environment exposes you to dangerous events or toxic substances, your health can be negatively affected.

Environmental Health is truly committed to saving lives and protecting people from environmental hazards by responding to natural and man-made disasters.
Hence, to respond to the disturbing air pollution (black soot) in parts of Rivers State, we must all call on the Rivers state government to support and effect the establishment of an Environmental Health Laboratory in Rivers State.

Environmental Health helps maintain and improve the health of Nigerians by promoting a healthy environment and preventing premature death and avoidable illness caused by environmental and related factors. We also identify how people might be exposed to hazardous substances in the environment and assess exposures to determine if they are hazardous to human health. Environmental Health truly believes in prevention to improve health and save money by reducing health care costs.

A well equipped Environmental Health Laboratory shall provide unique laboratory science that shall improve the detection, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of diseases resulting from exposure to Environmental chemicals, particulates and selected other diseases that require advanced laboratory measurement for accurate results.

The mission of providing a standard Environmental Health Laboratory in Rivers State is to:

a.)  Provide consultative and analytical services to employers and employers of labour through support to industrial hygiene and occupational hygiene in the state. 
The said laboratory should be vast in chemical hazard identification, monitoring, and analysis.

C.)   The Laboratory shall support training of industrial hygiene and occupational health and Safety professionals in chemical hazard assessment.

D.)   Also, Research and develop of new analytical and sampling methodologies for workplace chemical hazards shall be made easier while saving cost of foreign environmental health lab services incurred by our scholars and professionals daily.

Environmental Health Laboratory is very needful to boost and support Biomonitoring capacity of Environmental Health in Rivers State and Nigeria at large. A standard Environmental Health Laboratory shall help public health to

1.)  Detect, diagnose, treat, and prevent diseases through accurate and up-to-date testing methods that are not available in any other lab in the country and sub-Saharan Africa.

2.)  Emergency laboratory response to deaths or illness from unknown causes, emergency chemical exposures, chemical and radiologic threat agents, toxins, anthrax, Ebola, Lassa fever etc.

3.)  High quality biomonitoring exposure measurements in more than 50 studies per year of the populations exposed to environmental chemicals to better determine safe and unsafe human exposure levels. This exposure information helps identify unsafe chemical exposures, protect health, avoid unnecessary regulation and reduce health care costs.

4.)   It shall offer the most comprehensive assessment of the nutritional status of the Nigerian population by measuring more than 50 nutritional indicators.
Also enhance standardization of tests for cholesterol, related lipids, testosterone, estradiol, and selected other chronic diseases to ensure accurate, reliable, and precise lab testing for correct patient diagnosis and care.

5.) Provide quality assurance for tests that are essential for early disease detection, such as newborn screening for treatable diseases that cause malformation, mental retardation, and death.

OTHER BENEFITS OF ENVIRONMENTAL  HEALTH LABORATORY: 

Modern world class Environmental Health Laboratory activities have resulted in substantial public health benefits:

Biomonitoring methods to measure more than 350 chemicals in blood and urine. Carry out more studies to improve the understanding of safe and unsafe levels of environmental chemicals and identify population groups at high risk for adverse health effects.

A testing method that detects anthrax 24 hours before symptoms start.

A first-time method to measure trans fats, that was successfully used to document at least 58% decline in trans fats in adults.

A new, faster, more accurate and precise method to quantify influenza vaccine dose.Standardization of total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, and triglycerides testing in Nigerian laboratories that saves billions of Naira annually by just improving diagnosis of cardiovascular disease.

Accurate testing for congenital diseases in more than 98% of newborns in the Nigeria and offer correct identification of treatable diseases in adults and babies yearly that dies or been severely disabled.

All state-funded screening programs and improved diagnostic tests and identification of all deadly diseases that are treatable if detected early.

Unique laboratory methods to test for outbreaks that are used to verify vaccine effectiveness, have identified affected persons in multiple outbreaks, provide exposure information in studies of clinical outcomes, and identified a previously unknown subtypes etc.

Enhance the best practice of professionalism in Environmental health services that is unique and available round the clock (24/7) chemical threat (laboratory) response capability that would help immensely to identify human exposure to over 150 chemical threat agents in record time, say within 36 hours using the Rapid Toxic Screen . 

A standard and well equipped Environmental  Health  Laboratory shall also carry out Urine Radionuclide Screen that can determineif persons have ingested or inhaled any of 10 priority radionuclides from poisoned food or water, including emissions of radioactive materials, and also determine who should be treated and with what medical countermeasures.

Using the Urine Radionuclide Screen, measurement of radiation exposures in most Nigerian working environments that allows radiation release (even if the release is found to be in very low levels that may posed no immediate health threat) shall be well recorded, monitored and scientifically evaluated to ensure proper use of the results in health/ environment policy formulation, regulation and also enhance environmental studies/academic research projects.

- EHSadvisor