If you are bitten by a tick and come down with Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever or the newest tick-borne threat, HGE, is it a health issue or environmental issue? What if you come down with a tick-borne disease because the environment has been altered to allow ticks to proliferate? Health or environment?
If you contract cancer because you were exposed to radiation from a nuclear power plant leak is it health or environment? What about if you get cancer because you were exposed to dental or other medical X-rays?
If you are exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) or mercury in the workplace and become ill, is it health or environment? What if your exposure is to PCBs or mercury in fish that you caught in your local river?
If you contract skin cancer because you were exposed to too much Ultraviolet sunlight because the ozone layer has been thinned by air pollution, is it a health or environmental issue?
The answer seems to be: "It all seems to depend on who regulates the issue." Different issues are regulated by different federal agencies and sometimes it is difficult to tell where the dividing line is between health and environment. Maybe there is no line. Maybe anything that causes a health problem by way of exposure to something in the environment constitutes an environmental issue.
But what if something doesn't affect human health? What if something only affects wildlife? If water pollution causes cancerous growths in fish and shellfish, why isn't it a health issue? Why is it "environmental"? Because it takes place "in" the environment? If some form of pollution affects the ability of whales to navigate and swim properly, is that health or environment? What if instead of affecting wildlife, it affects plants or trees? Clearly that is environment. Or is it so clear?
When you get down to it, everything that has an impact on the environment in some way comes back to health; ours or that of the biodiversity in the ecosystem in which we live (Earth). And somewhere within the big scheme of things, even though we don't know how, everything is connected to everything else.
Well, not so fast. What about when a forest is logged? You might just say that all you destroy is wildlife habitat. But if this is true, then you aren't counting having put an end to recreational opportunities such as bird watching, hiking, camping, fishing enjoying scenery and fresh air. Don't these activities contribute to human health? Psychological and physical at least? Caught again! This sounds like environment too. What are we to make of all this circularity, this connectedness?
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