Nitrate Pollution in Private Wells in the Yakima Valley
This was a project I was involved with for approximately one full year at UW. This project was in the UW School of Public Health, and my work focused around making educational documents focusing on the health issues associated with nitrate contaminated water, as well as the private well testing process. Overall, this project greatly broadened my understanding of effective science communication, and how to communicate with a diverse audience. This experience has helped me in future endeavors as well, as I continue outreach with underserved communities, and convey important environmental issues.
Introduction
While at UW I have had the opportunity to see how interdisciplinary engagement can effectively address many issues regarding our environment and societal well-being. This project has given me a hands-on understanding of how to work across disciplines in order to help promote positive change on complex issues. Through my efforts in assisting this project, my understanding of the relationship between environmental and public health issues was greatly broadened. This has helped me gain a better understanding of how to address our most common, yet pressing environmental issues in the future, in my intended career in environmental policy. This project has also greatly opened my eyes to the complexity of scientific communication, and has provided me with valuable tools I hope to use in the future to help convey my own research.
The Process
More than anything, this project has greatly enhanced my understanding of environmental justice, and the complex factors at force that cause so many of our environmental and health inequities. While I have had exposure to issues of water quality in agricultural communities through my coursework, my involvement in this project significantly increased my understanding of the barriers rural communities face regarding access to safe, clean water. As someone who has been fortunate enough to have easy access to clean water, and has not needed to be overly concerned about the safety of my water, this project has opened my eyes to how often I take my access to safe water for granted. My understanding of equity, and the methods needed to address complex issues like nitrate pollution in private wells has been very valuable for me, particularly as I move into further research projects focusing on environmental justice with my own senior capstone project.
The creation of community outreach materials that focused on improving literacy of private well testing was a very rewarding, but sometimes challenging process. Overall, my expectations for the difficulty involved in creating effective, informative community outreach materials were underestimated. Many steps along the way required careful planning, and many revisions, just to create what to outsiders would likely seem to be pretty simple documents. There were many factors involved with the creation of these materials that I did not previously think of when originally becoming involved with this activity. Firstly, there were various design hurdles to overcome, and a great deal of planning involved in order to find methods that were both feasible in a short time frame and also effective at displaying the necessary information. Along with this, the actual time and efforts involved in creating text for these documents was sometimes difficult for me, and I learned a great deal about the process of making readable texts, at an appropriate reading level for a broad community audience. I have already used the skills I learned from creating readable texts in my own capstone research as I create surveys and educational outreach materials for a multicultural audience. Once these hurdles were faced, creating the next outreach document was much easier, and enabled me to utilize the understanding I had gained with the first outreach document. Despite there being more hurdles than I originally anticipated, this entire process was very valuable, and in the end, the documents created are easy to understand and visually appealing. It is also especially rewarding knowing that my efforts in this project have the ability to increase private well water testing awareness among an underserved group in our state.
Moving Forward
Through my courses in the College of the Environment, I have only become exposed to human health issues on a rather introductory level, yet so many environmental issues have human health impacts, further promoting the idea that broadly speaking, in order to have healthy people, we also need a healthy planet. This project, while in a field I am mostly unfamiliar with, has already been very valuable in my understanding of my environmental studies courses, and my ongoing capstone research. I have found the skills I learned in creating the community outreach documents to be valuable in my own capstone project, as I work to create environmental engagement materials for underrepresented communities. I have also found the 'human focused approach' used from this issue to be very useful as I begin my own research. Often in my courses, while we consider human impacts, it can often be difficult to focus on these impacts when we are also concerned with ecological concerns. However, I again am finding a more human focused approach to be very valuable in my own research, and the experience I had through this project has provided me with a great platform of understanding. More broadly, I think overall, being engaged with an environmentally related project focused on public health is a great learning experience, and something that is valuable for students like me who are interested in helping create positive environmental action. Personally, I often am frustrated about the ways in which environmental issues are addressed in our society, and often, unfortunately I fall under the presumption that others will be convinced to take action on issues like improved water quality, based solely off of ecological impacts alone, as myself, or others in my bubble in the College of the Environment might be. However, in order to create effective change, it seems necessary that we address issues from multiple perspectives, and public health is undoubtedly an important factor in many environmental issues, that seemingly, nearly everyone, has some value being concerned about. I hope to integrate this health minded focus in my studies more in the future, as many of the issues I am passionate about involve many health concerns, which I often do not consider as much as I should. I hope through this understanding, and through further related engagements, I am able to continue to promote environmental equity and positive change in my last quarters at UW, and in my future career.
While at UW I have had the opportunity to see how interdisciplinary engagement can effectively address many issues regarding our environment and societal well-being. This project has given me a hands-on understanding of how to work across disciplines in order to help promote positive change on complex issues. Through my efforts in assisting this project, my understanding of the relationship between environmental and public health issues was greatly broadened. This has helped me gain a better understanding of how to address our most common, yet pressing environmental issues in the future, in my intended career in environmental policy. This project has also greatly opened my eyes to the complexity of scientific communication, and has provided me with valuable tools I hope to use in the future to help convey my own research.
The Process
More than anything, this project has greatly enhanced my understanding of environmental justice, and the complex factors at force that cause so many of our environmental and health inequities. While I have had exposure to issues of water quality in agricultural communities through my coursework, my involvement in this project significantly increased my understanding of the barriers rural communities face regarding access to safe, clean water. As someone who has been fortunate enough to have easy access to clean water, and has not needed to be overly concerned about the safety of my water, this project has opened my eyes to how often I take my access to safe water for granted. My understanding of equity, and the methods needed to address complex issues like nitrate pollution in private wells has been very valuable for me, particularly as I move into further research projects focusing on environmental justice with my own senior capstone project.
The creation of community outreach materials that focused on improving literacy of private well testing was a very rewarding, but sometimes challenging process. Overall, my expectations for the difficulty involved in creating effective, informative community outreach materials were underestimated. Many steps along the way required careful planning, and many revisions, just to create what to outsiders would likely seem to be pretty simple documents. There were many factors involved with the creation of these materials that I did not previously think of when originally becoming involved with this activity. Firstly, there were various design hurdles to overcome, and a great deal of planning involved in order to find methods that were both feasible in a short time frame and also effective at displaying the necessary information. Along with this, the actual time and efforts involved in creating text for these documents was sometimes difficult for me, and I learned a great deal about the process of making readable texts, at an appropriate reading level for a broad community audience. I have already used the skills I learned from creating readable texts in my own capstone research as I create surveys and educational outreach materials for a multicultural audience. Once these hurdles were faced, creating the next outreach document was much easier, and enabled me to utilize the understanding I had gained with the first outreach document. Despite there being more hurdles than I originally anticipated, this entire process was very valuable, and in the end, the documents created are easy to understand and visually appealing. It is also especially rewarding knowing that my efforts in this project have the ability to increase private well water testing awareness among an underserved group in our state.
Moving Forward
Through my courses in the College of the Environment, I have only become exposed to human health issues on a rather introductory level, yet so many environmental issues have human health impacts, further promoting the idea that broadly speaking, in order to have healthy people, we also need a healthy planet. This project, while in a field I am mostly unfamiliar with, has already been very valuable in my understanding of my environmental studies courses, and my ongoing capstone research. I have found the skills I learned in creating the community outreach documents to be valuable in my own capstone project, as I work to create environmental engagement materials for underrepresented communities. I have also found the 'human focused approach' used from this issue to be very useful as I begin my own research. Often in my courses, while we consider human impacts, it can often be difficult to focus on these impacts when we are also concerned with ecological concerns. However, I again am finding a more human focused approach to be very valuable in my own research, and the experience I had through this project has provided me with a great platform of understanding. More broadly, I think overall, being engaged with an environmentally related project focused on public health is a great learning experience, and something that is valuable for students like me who are interested in helping create positive environmental action. Personally, I often am frustrated about the ways in which environmental issues are addressed in our society, and often, unfortunately I fall under the presumption that others will be convinced to take action on issues like improved water quality, based solely off of ecological impacts alone, as myself, or others in my bubble in the College of the Environment might be. However, in order to create effective change, it seems necessary that we address issues from multiple perspectives, and public health is undoubtedly an important factor in many environmental issues, that seemingly, nearly everyone, has some value being concerned about. I hope to integrate this health minded focus in my studies more in the future, as many of the issues I am passionate about involve many health concerns, which I often do not consider as much as I should. I hope through this understanding, and through further related engagements, I am able to continue to promote environmental equity and positive change in my last quarters at UW, and in my future career.