EHPLE Environmental Health flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Environmental planning

The process of guiding land use, siting, and infrastructure decisions so that environmental effects, resource limits, and exposure patterns are considered before development is approved and built.

Carrying capacity

The maximum population or development intensity an area can support indefinitely without irreversible degradation of its air, water, soil, and ecological resource base.

Cumulative effects

Impacts on the environment that result from the incremental addition of a proposed action to past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions, assessed at a regional scale.

Scoping

The stage of environmental assessment that determines which issues, geographic boundaries, alternatives, and data are examined in detail, and which are excluded with justification.

No-action alternative

The baseline scenario describing what would happen if the proposed project were not undertaken; every other alternative is compared against it during impact assessment.

Mitigation hierarchy

A ranked sequence for handling impacts: avoid the effect first, then minimize it, then restore the affected resource, and finally offset only the residual impact.

Sensitive receptor

A location or population especially vulnerable to pollution, such as residences, schools, hospitals, and parks; planning separates these from industrial and heavy-traffic sources.

Source-pathway-receptor

A risk framework linking the release of a contaminant, its transport through air, water, or soil, and the exposed population or ecosystem that completes the exposure chain.

Buffer zone

A transitional land area kept between a pollution source and a sensitive use to allow dispersion and attenuation before the pollutant reaches the receptor.

Performance standard zoning

A zoning approach that limits measurable outcomes such as noise level, odor, or emission rate rather than naming permitted land uses, allowing flexibility for industry.

Strategic environmental assessment

Assessment applied to policies, plans, and programs rather than individual projects, so environmental limits are built in at the earliest decision tier.

Environmental baseline

The documented pre-project condition of air, water, soil, ecology, and community health against which predicted changes and later monitoring results are compared.

Smart growth

A planning approach concentrating development in compact, mixed-use, transit-served areas to reduce vehicle travel, infrastructure cost, and land consumption at the urban fringe.

Transit-oriented development

Higher-density mixed-use development sited within walking distance of a transit station, intended to increase transit ridership and reduce automobile dependence.

Green infrastructure

A network of natural and engineered systems such as wetlands, permeable pavement, and rain gardens that manages stormwater and delivers environmental services instead of pipes alone.

Impervious surface

Paving or roofing that prevents infiltration; increasing its fraction in a catchment raises stormwater runoff volume, peak flow, and pollutant loading to receiving waters.

Brownfield

Abandoned or underused property where real or perceived contamination complicates redevelopment; remediation and reuse reduce greenfield sprawl and infrastructure demand.

Environmental justice

The principle that no population should bear disproportionate environmental burdens because of race, income, or political power; planning must examine the distribution of impacts.

Exposure assessment

The estimation of how many people contact a contaminant, by what route, at what concentration, and for how long, forming the link between emission and health risk.

Dose-response relationship

The quantitative association between the magnitude of exposure to an agent and the probability or severity of the resulting health effect in a population.

Airshed

A geographic region sharing a common air mass, within which emissions from one area affect air quality in another, so management must be regional rather than site-specific.

Watershed

All the land area draining to a common water body; pollution controls and land-use rules are applied at this boundary because upstream activity determines downstream quality.

Total maximum daily load

The maximum pollutant quantity a water body can receive and still meet its designated uses, allocated among point and nonpoint sources in the watershed.

Nonpoint source pollution

Contamination carried by runoff from diffuse areas such as farms, streets, and construction sites, rather than discharged from a single identifiable pipe.

Groundwater recharge area

Land where precipitation infiltrates to replenish an aquifer; land-use restrictions there protect drinking-water supply from contamination and over-extraction.

Wellhead protection area

The surface and subsurface zone around a drinking-water well through which contaminants could reach the well, managed to prevent contamination of the supply.

Land-use compatibility

The degree to which adjacent land uses coexist without one imposing unacceptable noise, odor, traffic, or contamination burdens on the other.

Environmental monitoring plan

A documented program specifying which indicators, locations, frequencies, and thresholds are measured after approval to verify predicted impacts and trigger corrective action.

Adaptive management

A structured process of implementing an action, monitoring outcomes, and adjusting the plan when results depart from predictions, treating decisions as testable experiments.

Precautionary principle

The rule that lack of full scientific certainty should not delay cost-effective measures to prevent serious or irreversible environmental harm where threats are credible.

Polluter pays principle

The economic rule that the party generating pollution bears the cost of preventing, controlling, and remediating it, rather than shifting that cost to the public.

Environmental indicator

A measurable variable, such as particulate concentration or impervious cover, used to track the state of the environment and judge whether planning objectives are being met.