The community health aspects of the water quality of Chocolate Bayou

Date

1973

Authors

Jackson, GB
Davis, EM

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

University of Texas at Houston, School of Public Health, Institute of Environmental Health

Abstract

Human environment may be designated as the surrounding of man as an individual or of a society as a whole. The term surroundings may refer to an immediate environmental or microenvironment, which is the ambient state of an individual. When such an environment is extended to a distance beyond the scope of the sense perceptions, it is referred to as the meso-environment. One's living quarters comprise his immediate or microenvironment, whereas the entire community he lives in constitutes his extended or meso-environment. In addition, another aspect of man's surroundings which must be considered is the remote or macro-environment. When the characteristics of a surrounding are taken into consideration, one may refer to the following terms of the physical environment, the biological environment, or the social environment. In reality, of course, the various systems of the human environment are inseparable in a given space and a given time. For a comprehensive understanding of any system of the environment, it is vital that one observes it in context of the whole - the total environment. Air, water, and land compromise the physical surroundings of man. Collectively, they may be called the Geosphere or the earth's physical environment, including the three components: atmosphere (the gaseous envelope), hydrosphere (the watery envelope), and lithosphere (the solid crust of the earth). The Chocolate Bay-Bayou ecosystem is but a very small, yet significant part of the physical ecosystem that compromises part of the water environment. This report is directed to the evaluation of various aspects of the aforecited systems in regard to the Chocolate Bay-Bayou ecosystem and the application of data pertaining to those aspects to community health.

Description

192 pages

Keywords

environmental health, pollution, public health, water quality

Citation