HLT 555 Discussion Question Week 1 Module 1 DQ 2

In my opinion, I feel that drinking water, basic sanitation and nutrition are the top threeenvironmental health issues that take priority.These three things can adversely affect the health ofadults and children.Drinking water:According to Triple Pundit (2013), the importance of clean drinking preventsinfection, illness and death in developing countries. Nearly 1 billion people in developing countriesworldwide do not have access to safe drinking water.For example, in Africa, usually women and girls,walk miles every day to collect water for their families. It takes so long to collect the water that theyoften do not have time for anything else in the day, meaning that girls especially miss out on education,further trapping them into a cycle of poverty. When they finally do collect the water, the only source isoften streams and ponds containing dirty, contaminated water. Animals often use the same water todrink and wash in, meaning that the water is full of disease. When faced with dehydration or dirty water,many will take the risk and drink (Triple Pundit, 2013).Lack of water goes further than leading to life-threatening dehydration. Little to no water meansthat crops will not grow, resulting in malnutrition leading to weakened immune systems, making theenvironment ripe for infection and disease. Many people still take the risk and drink contaminated wateroften leading to many children dying from the illnesses they contract from drinking dirty water.(TriplePundit, 2013)Basic sanitation: Sanitation is important because a variety of harmful or deadly bacteria wouldotherwise infect people and potentially start a disease. The increase in lifespan and the improved qualityof life over the past few centuries is partially due to improvements in sanitation procedures.Forexample, surgeons in pre-industrial societies would often operate on patients without washing theirhands because they did not understand the concept of bacteria. Therefore, bacteria would be