Focus area: Environmental Health Sciences (EHS)

The Environmental Health Sciences focus area provides a research-based graduate education centered on the fundamentals that underlie health effects due to exposure to environmental agents. The core of the EHS curriculum offers coursework that emphasizes molecular mechanisms of interactions between biological, chemical and physical agents and biological systems. This provides a foundation from which students can develop expertise in environmental toxicology, environmental health microbiology, exposure assessment, risk assessment, industrial hygiene, and occupational health in accord with their own interests and career goals.

The foundation for EHS-related studies is presented in two courses:

ENVR 130 introduces the general principles underlying the health effects of environmental agents. The course covers basic concepts in environmental infectious agents and their effects, exposure to environmental agents, biotransformation and bioactivation of xenobiotics, genetic toxicology, systemic toxicology and environmental health risk assessment. The course stresses mechanisms at the molecular level with the aim of preparing students to utilize information from fundamental microbiology and toxicology studies in assessment of health hazards associated with exposure to environmental agents, as well as in prediction of health effects of novel agents.

ENVR 131 is a companion laboratory course to ENVR 130 that serves as a practical introduction to the measurement of biological end-points, and emphasizes adverse effects of environmental agents, using laboratory and field techniques. Students both inside and outside the EHS focus area will find ENVR 131 valuable in gaining an appreciation of the experimental component of the input into risk analysis and/or policy making.

The core EHS curriculum:

ENVR 130 Health Effects of Environmental Agents

ENVR 131 Techniques in Environmental Health Sciences

ENVR 232 Health Effects of Indoor and Outdoor Air Pollutants

The environmental toxicology emphasis:

ENVR 132 Biochemical Toxicology

ENVR 231 Advanced Toxicology

ENVR 230 Chemical Carcinogenesis

The environmental health microbiology emphasis:

ENVR 133 Environmental Health Microbiology

ENVR 176 Quantitative Risk Assessment in Environmental Health Microbiology

EPID 215 Emerging and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases

EPID 218 Introduction to Methods in Infectious Disease Epidemiology

The exposure assessment emphasis:

ENVR 139 Theory and Practice of Exposure Assessment

ENVR 233 Biological Monitoring

ENVR 246 Advanced Methods of Exposure Assessment

ENVR 277 Stochastic Environmental Health Modeling

The occupational health/industrial hygiene emphasis:

ENVR134 Air and Industrial Hygiene

ENVR135 Industrial Toxicology