What do environmental health scientists study?
The field of environmental health science is very broad. Some environmental health scientists perform “basic” research to understand the fundamental mechanisms of living organisms while others study patterns of disease in people exposed to certain environmental agents. Basic research may involve learning how DNA repairs itself or how cells signal each other. Only by understanding how an organism functions normally can we begin to learn how environmental agents can disrupt those functions causing disease and even aging. Toxicologists perform research to understand the mechanisms by which environmental agents cause damage to an organism. For example, a toxicologist may study exactly how dioxin enters a cell, how UV light causes gene mutations and thus skin cancer, or how antioxidants provide cancer protection. Once the fundamental mechanism of a process is understood and the toxicity of an environmental agent is known, the information can be used to evaluate potential human health effect
