Environmental Health Is Going to Get Very Personal

Earth Day 2022 has come — and gone. Gone, because the day has passed, and for many, so has the message. Earth Day is a call to action not just for a day but for a lifetime.

If you reflect on the awful global events that we've witnessed in recent years — cataclysmic floods, wildfires, extreme heat waves, melting of polar ice — you're probably thinking that governments need to act, and hopefully the Greta Thunbergs of this world or the Paris Agreement will eventually have an impact.

Beyond these more obvious consequences of climate change, there are environmental effects on our everyday health. As healthcare providers, we see these effects daily in the work we do, but maybe we don't recognize them — perhaps because we are often trained to see them as a consequence of the lifestyles people lead, as genetic predispositions, or maybe just as bad luck