A key component of public health, environmental public health focuses on preventing and controlling human diseases caused or impacted by our environment. Many aspects of our environment, both built (pools, sidewalk, and park access) and natural (water, air, soil, and food), can impact our health.

Environmental public health professionals work to prevent disease and create healthy environments that promote well-being, fostering healthy, and safe communities by ensuring the safety of what we eat, breathe, touch, and drink.

Statewide activities focus on prevention, preparedness, and education through routine monitoring, outreach, surveillance, and sampling of facilities and other environments that may contribute to injuries and the occurrence or transmission of disease

Environmental health is the branch of public health that is concerned with all aspects of the natural and built environment that may affect human health. Other terms that refer to the discipline of environmental health include environmental public health and environmental health and protection. Environmental health addresses all the physical, chemical, and biological factors external to a person, and all the related factors impacting behaviors. It encompasses the assessment and control of those environmental factors that can potentially affect health.

We also investigate complaints concerning nuisances injurious to public health and respond in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.