Maintaining a healthy environment is integral to increasing quality and years of healthy life and eliminating disparities. Environmental health encompasses preventing or controlling disease, injury, and disability related to the interactions between people and their environment. Environmental health is central to preventing the adverse health effects of exposure to toxic substances, combating the societal and environmental factors that increase the likelihood of exposure and disease, preventing injuries and diseases resulting from natural or technological disasters, and preventing birth defects and developmental disabilities resulting from nutritional deficiencies or exposure to environmental toxins in utero or during early childhood.

The objectives in the Environmental Health focus area are grouped into six topical sections. The first section concerns outdoor air quality and reducing the proportion of persons exposed to air that does not meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) health-based standards for harmful air pollutants.¹ Surface and ground water quality comprises the second section. Improving water quality monitoring and surveillance will reduce exposure to contaminants in drinking water, fish and shellfish, and recreational waters. The focus of the third section, toxics and waste, is to track the Nation's success in reducing exposures to toxic substances and hazardous waste, thus minimizing their effects on the population's health.

Healthy homes and healthy communities comprise the fourth section. The focus of this section is to provide a healthy environment within the Nation's communities and places where people spend the most time: their homes, schools, and worksites. Section five, infrastructure and surveillance, seeks to establish and maintain methods for monitoring the population to detect environmental hazards (for example, chemical, biological, radioactive, mechanical, and other factors that may adversely affect health), any exposures to those hazards, and the diseases potentially caused by the hazards. Finally, the last section considers global environmental health. These objectives seek to reduce the global burden of disease due to poor water quality, sanitation, and personal and domestic hygiene and to increase the proportion of the population in the U.S.-Mexico border region that has adequate drinking water and sanitation facilities.

Progress toward environmental health objectives relies on continued tracking of exposure to hazards, collaborative efforts to implement surveillance systems, and effective public health interventions.