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Environmental Health (for GSICS)
Last update: 6 October 2026
1. Overview
Environmental health is one of the core curriculums in the Master of Public Health programs (Since 2026, Kobe University has started MPH course as Future Social Medicine in the Graduate School of Medicine, having integrated Health Sciences and Medicine; but this class is mostly given for the foreign students in GSICS). It is very important to understand the human health and survival in relation to their environmental conditions, any of physical, chemical, biological. This lecture outlines the relationships between human health and environmental factors and discuss them. The items shown below are not fully covered, but at least outlined.
Contents include the topics shown below.
- Overview:
- Orientation and Introduction
- Methods and paradigms:
- Ecology and environmental health
- Toxicology
- Environmental and occupational epidemiology
- Exposure assessment, industrial hygiene and environmental management
- Environmental psychology, Genetics and environmental health
- Environmental health ethics, environmental justice
- Environmental health on the global scale:
- Population pressure
- Climate change
- Developing nations
- Environmental health on the regional scale:
- Air pollution
- Energy production
- Healthy communities
- Water and health
- Environmental health on the local scale:
- Solid and hazardous waste
- Pest control and pesticides
- Food safety
- Healthy buildings
- Workplace health and safety
- Noise and Radiation
- Injuries
- Environmental disasters
- Nature contact
- Children and environment
- Practice of environmental health:
- Prevention in environmental health
- Environmental health practice
- Geographic information systems
- Risk assessment and risk communication
- Environmental health policy, Legal remedies
2. Plan
The lecture is done in the second semester on Thursday, 15:10-16:40 (Period 4) at GSICS Presentation Room with Zoom for the students who cannot come to the campus.
Detailed information is given at BEEFPLUS [3I633].
- Orientation and Introduction (1. presentation in pdf) (8 Oct.)
- Ecology and environmental health (2. presentation in pdf; See, Materials and Energy in an Ecosystem, YouTube movie, As part of lecture series "General Ecology", Ecosystem Matter & Energy Flow Patterns in YouTube) (22 Oct.)
- Toxicology (3. presentation in pdf. See, R code for LD50 estimation from the MHLW data) (29 Oct.)
- Environmental and occupational epidemiology, exposure assessment (5 Nov., handout)
- Genetics (GMO), biodiversity, agriculture and food production (12 Nov., handout)
- Environmental psychology (19 Nov., handout, Movie for the explanation of affordance and design, Movie for explaining proxemics)
- Risk assessment, management and communication (26 Nov., handout)
- Environmental health ethics, environmental justice (3 Dec., handout, including homework theme to get a credit)
(Until here, methodologies and paradigms in environmental health were explained. Hereafter, some specific topics in environmental health will be given.)
- Population pressure (10 Dec., handout)
- Climate change (17 Dec., handout)
- Environmental disasters (24 Dec., handout, see, prevention web with UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction)
- Water and health (7 Jan., handout)
- Solid and hazardous waste (14 Jan., handout)
- Food safety (21 Jan., handout)
- Noise and radiation (28 Jan., handout)
3. Evaluation
Based on the final report and some mini-reports from BEEF+.
4. Reference
Frumkin H [Ed.] (2010) Environmental Health: From Global to Local, 2nd Ed. Jossey-Bass, John Wiley and Sons.
5. Office hour
Basically on Thusday, 17:00-18:00 at Frontier Building Room 717. Taking appointment by e-mail is recommended.
6. Message to the students
Done in English.
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