Environment and Human Health

Catalog description

Human activities are adversely affecting ecosystems throughout the world. Some of these changes may be deleterious to human health. The purpose of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the relationship between the environment and human health. Specific topics that will be covered are the importance of biodiversity to human health, the relationships between global warming and vector-borne diseases, microbial evolution and resistance of pathogenic organisms, persistent pollutants and toxicity, and the effect of environmental disasters on human health. A focus of this course will be to integrate several areas of biology including microbiology, toxicology, and environmental science.