Different chemicals can impact human health in different ways, and often, exposure to dangerous or foreign substances creates health vulnerabilities. The chemical safety field is concerned with minimizing the effects of both natural and synthetic chemicals. More specifically, chemical safety seeks to safeguard human and environmental health from exposure to potential toxins; it focuses on chemicals that exist in the ambient world, as well as synthetic chemicals that are used in industrial processes or are the by-products of manufacturing activity.
Public health officials who work in chemical safety often focus on toxicology, which is the study of substances that have a toxic effect on the human body, whether when ingested or when absorbed through natural surroundings. Another important aspect of public health is chemical risk assessment, which involves scientists and clinicians working to determine a substance’s full biological effects.
This is a critical field of public health: According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1.6 million deaths in 2016 were due to exposure to selected chemicals. Some examples of dangerous chemicals in the environment are heavy metals and toxins that find their way into the water supply and harmful pesticides that make their way into the food supply chain.