Instructor and class,

Within the past decade, we are beginning to recognize that our environmental public health infrastructure is quite weak and that the United States is susceptible to many of the same problems that burden the rest of the world (Nies & McEwen, 2019).This week I would like to look at the water in my area of Pennsylvania.I live in a town known as South Pymatuning Township.When I plugged in that zip code the public drinking water was not assessed.This could be because most of us have well water.At least that is my assumption.However, what I didn’t know was that in a nearby creek, Escherichia (E. Coli) has been detected.I also did not realize that there was little oxygen in this creek which made it next to nothing for aquatic life to survive. I believe there could be many factors related to these circumstances.Maybe from the creek beds drying up in areas over time.Chemical run offs or pesticides soaking into the grounds.Global warming could even play a role.

References

Nies, M. A., & McEwen, M. (2019). Community/Public health nursing: Promoting the health of populations(7th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Saunders/Elsevier.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2016). MyEnvironment. Retrieved from https://www3.epa.gov/myem/envmap/find.html