Environmental Health Sciences (EHS)

The living environment is very crucial to human health. This module covers basic sciences and environmental sciences; students can realize the mechanisms of adverse health effects, the environmental fate (distribution and transformation) of contaminants, potential exposure and resulting health risks, as well as aspects of environmental analysis.

 

This module includes the following six required courses, which account for 15 credits. (for students starting Fall 2023)

 

1. Food Safety and Life (3 credits): This course  will include: (1) Basics of food microbiology and its effects on food safety. (2) The control and detection of microorganisms in foods. (3)The basics of integrating microbial monitoring, genetic modification, and process improvement to promote the safeness of food consumption. (4) Sources and toxicities of chemicals in food.  (5) Emerging food safety issues.

 

2. Principles of Environmental and Occupational Toxicology (2 credits): The course introduces the principles of toxicology, including toxicokinetics, toxicodynamics, and mechanisms of toxic actions. Examples of environment toxicological studies and lab tours will also be provided.

 

3. Basic Environment Principles (2 credits): This course introduces the roles of physical, chemical, and biological reactions on the stability and equilibrium of the environment and ecosystem. The content covers the aspect of ecology, environmental structures, energy flow in the environmental system, the transport/transformation and the decisive factors in the fate of pollutants, and issues of land use and global climate changes.

 

4. Environmental Chemistry (3 credits): This course illustrates changes of pollutants and their impact on the environmental quality based on their environmental transportation, distribution, and transformation. The course content includes crucial chemical knowledge of chemical equilibrium, chemical kinetics, acidic/basic reactions, and oxidation/reduction, then how they will influence the fate of environmental pollutants.

5. Risk Assessment (3 credits): This course introduces students to search for the best available scientific information, to integrate the info with updated methods used by the international community, to predict the probability of harms caused the chemicals of interests, and interpret results with potential uncertainties. The assessment can be the basis for making scientifically-sound public policies.

 

6. Analytical Practice of Environmental Contaminants(2 credits): This course utilizes the knowledge of analytical chemistry and instrumental analysis for determining physical and chemical pollutants in air, water, and food. Both lectures and hands-on operations are provided.

 

This module integrates comprehensive aspects of environmental health sciences from the emission of pollutants, their hazards and mechanisms, to the human exposure and health risk assessment, plus how to determine them in different matrixes. The expertise is extremely desirable in the field of environmental consulting services, which can handle jobs in chemical administration, investigations of environmental distribution, management of chemical release, and health risk assessment. The knowledge will be very helpful for passing the qualification exams of civil services in environmental administration, environmental techniques, environmental analysis, and the exam of certified chemical safety technicians.