Modeling Atmospheric Dust for a Public Health Decision Support System

Environmental health and public health are often linked in the scientific and popular literature even though they require different scientific skill sets, technologies, and models for their study. Environmental health includes not only the health and sustainability of natural ecosystems, but the environments of built landscapes, home and building environments, and of the Earth system processes that promote or retard environmental change. To study them, one needs education in atmospheric physics and chemistry, water chemistry, geophysics, and biology. Public health is related in large measure to degraded environmental parameters (mostly induced by modern economic, social, and human pressures on landscapes). To study public health, one needs medical training and an appreciation of those processes that impact environments and that may in turn influence populations whose health might be at risk. Using satellite-acquired data and imagery to study environmental health has many immediate attractions; however, the extension of these studies for better understanding public health patterns and outcomes lags far behind, and does not yet embrace medical communities. This paper describes an engineering system for linking atmospheric dust episodes to specific public health outcomes that can be verified and validated in medical terms. It requires forging new scientific partnerships from the environmental and medical professions.