New Zealand Institute of Environmental Health Interview

[00:00:00] Welcome to Great.com speaks with the New Zealand Institute of Environmental Health, and I am here with the national president, Tanya Morrisson. And if you’re new here and to this podcast, Great.com talks with will introduce you to interesting organizations and experts who are dedicated to making the world a better place. And today is special because we’re coming up towards the Global Environmental Health Day, which is on the 26th of September. So today I thought it would be really fun to speak with the New Zealand Institute of Environmental Health and look at everything ranging from between food safety, clean water, housing, air quality, pollution. And. Yeah, hi, Tanya. How are you doing today?

[00:00:54] I’m good. How are you?

[00:00:56] I feel excited about this episode. I’m personally I’m very much into health myself, and I want to learn more and more about what challenges we’re going through in our environment. So before we get there, how would you describe your organization to someone that might not be familiar with it or the challenges that you’re facing?

[00:01:16] Why? Well, there’s probably a couple of sorts of things there in New Zealand. Our institute has been going for actually one hundred years. We actually had a centennial year this year, so we were actually founded in nineteen twenty. So per very small island nation of five million people, that’s not bad. Going for one hundred, one hundred years. Probably to answer the question of who we are as a New Zealand institute, it’s probably pertinent to kind of explain what environmental health is because a lot of people generally don’t always understand what that actually means. So environmental health has been called a number of things and still is around the world. I guess the most common way to describe this is the health department or the health inspector. But even here in New Zealand, back in nineteen twenty, we started as a sanitary inspector. But we have the term environmental health comes from is actually to do with the pillars of the environment, if you think of it that way. So you’ve got your food, water, shelter. So really key things for human health and life. And our job really is basically to deal with how those environmental things actually affect human health. So making sure we have clean water to drink and, you know, say to breathe and your food is safe to eat.

[00:02:31] So that’s that’s really where we come into play. And then New Zealand Air Institute is not for profit non- governmental organisations. So really, we’re professional institute that looks after the health inspectors of New Zealand, the environmental health officers and our wider colleagues, regional public health hospital based. It’s a quite broad and really our focus is just to to transport any industry training and ongoing professional development. That’s really what our primary focus is.

[00:03:04] Right, and now with the Environmental Health Day coming up, what would you say is the biggest challenges you’re going through in New Zealand and maybe even in the world?

[00:03:17] I think globally, environmental health, some people call it the forgotten profession, that perhaps it’s more the unknown profession of people not always knowing what we do. We’re quite a broad and generalist skillset, so we tend to be good problem solvers. We can generally turn a hand at most things. And whatever the world, whether it’s a global pandemic or natural disasters and just the way things are evolving, we generally tend to be involved in most facets of it. I guess in New Zealand we have a wee bit of a challenge with arguably some outdated legislation that doesn’t always help us do it. We’ve got some legislation that was written in the nineteen forties, nineteen

fifties, and it doesn’t always match up with how we live in today’s world. I guess if you’re looking for an example of it, maybe something like, like hoarding is quite pertinent. I think when our health it to New Zealand was written in the 50s, it wasn’t written to tackle an issue like that, but we have to somehow make it work.

[00:04:21] So you see hoarding. Yeah. So if you’ve seen the classic American, I think TV shows it’s collecting a lot of. Yeah.

[00:04:31] Yeah. I’ve personally stood in one of those houses that would be straight out of one of those TV shows. And and, you know, you have to find a way to to look after that person, but also the effects on the wider surrounding receiving environment, the neighbours and you know, what’s best for everyone all around. And that’s a really tricky one. And there’s multiple organisations involved and we’re just one of them. But when you look at challenges, it’s it’s you know, are we going in there as the health police officers to try and just clean it up? Or that doesn’t necessarily help the issue if it’s a mental health crisis. So we can have a lot of different organisations as a real twichell, but sometimes we’re a little bit bound by framework. And and what we can actually achieve is we can only do so much. You know, there’s always challenges and the way we live these days, it’s more and more challenges every day.

[00:05:26] Right.

[00:05:27] And so if you look at how humans live today at sea, we put pollution in the water, in the air, we’re putting out the waste. What is the biggest challenge, would you say, if you could solve one of these problems?

[00:05:40] I think the waste is a big one. We’ve seen the impacts. We’re seeing them gradually. We care a lot about climate change and the opposition leader in your neck of the woods as well. It’s quite well known term around the world.

[00:05:56] The reality is it’s going to creep up on us. It already is. A great example of that is with the pollution is as is say, the temperatures rise in the next few decades, you’re going to see more possible communicable diseases, food security, how we grow and can store our food and water availability. Things are all going to dry out. But what what is happening with the waste and the pollution is where we would have a throwaway society probably across the world, is fair to say. So we’ve got to find a way to re-use. And if we can do that, it can slow down that global warming of rising temperatures, which has knock-on domino effects to every other thing. So there’s a lot to be said for trying to make use of the resources we have and protect the environment. Unfortunately, if we if we continue to abuse it, arguably the environment is going to keep throwing things back at us. And you say that for extreme weather events, for rising temperatures, water availability is getting harder in some parts of the world with severe drought. These things are all part of it. It’s easy to say let’s just reduce waste. And that’s not all there is to it. But it’s certainly a key element for us.

[00:07:10] Right. So all of this waste is putting out stuff in nature everywhere that shouldn’t be there. What effect did you see that have on human health and our immune systems?

[00:07:23] I think it’s it’s across multiple platforms. You see it in the food and the water, trying to get clean drinking water to places. I mean, more developed countries. You know, we have these systems in place, but our environmental health officers, even around the world will go to least developed countries. And, you know, it’s not a case of here we live, we’ve got a luxury. You turn the tap outcomes, you don’t think about you clean water, you just drink it. But other places, you really have to be weary before you just go and get water from the river or the stream and drink away. So we have offices around the world who work with the Red Cross and other organizations and trying to get some basic sanitation in place. So as pollution rises, these challenges get more and more is how do we clean our water? How do we clean things up and make it safe for people to live so that we don’t get sick so that we can live and survive.

[00:08:21] Right, and to shine a light back on your organization, you’ve been along from our lot around for a long time, like you mentioned, what is some accomplishments that you are proud of during that time?

[00:08:37] Definitely staying the distance, I think, to make it to one hundred years compared to a lot of similar organizations like ours around the world, it’s no mean feat. And with a membership base here, so we have round about three hundred members here, which, again, remember, we’re a small country that’s probably about 70 percent of their applicable industry are actually members here. And it’s spread across public government agencies, local governments and councils, private industry specialists, defence force. It covers quite a wide grass. So we’ve always kind of maintained quite a broad membership base. So we’re quite proud of that. It’s a little bit tied into

accomplishments, but also things we’re still pushing for and really want to work on. So it’s a little bit of a challenge at the moment. So to keep pushing for updated legislation and to grow our membership base and to keep working with their broader professions, those that are not true environmental health office, but may be offshoots of different elements of the health profession. But the fact that we’re still here, we’re doing right. So that’s a good thing.

[00:09:46] That is quite impressive. One hundred years. Yeah. Let’s say you got one 100 more years.

[00:09:53] What would be.

[00:09:56] What would you like to accomplish? Let’s start with 10 years, that’s a bit more realistic. What would you like to accomplish in the next 10 years?

[00:10:05] There’s a there’s a big one here. I’ve mentioned a couple of times about legislation changes. And I guess there’s a real example here. This is updating things that are now 50, 60, 70 years old to make it current to the way we live our lives, just to try and make sure there’s an even playing field. Legislation is good for holding people to account. I mean, people generally want to do the right thing, whether it’s cooking safe food or whatever it might be. But unfortunately, people sometimes make mistakes or they get it wrong or they simply just don’t know. So when we signed that legislation, one thing in New Zealand we actually don’t have here is any national legislation towards tattooing, for tattooing.

[00:10:48] So to get a tattoo. OK, yes.

[00:10:52] So many other places in the world have this and tattoos are getting really popular worldwide. And we’re quite a Pacific nation. Obviously, we’ve got the Pacific influence. It’s quite a always has been a big thing in this part of the world, but there’s a high risk of disease transmission and hepatitis and other things like that can come from it. We would love to see some legislation here. Most other countries in the world, developed countries have it and we don’t. And that’s not to say that we just want more and more rules. It’s not about that.

[00:11:28] It’s about making sure that people are doing things safely if it’s growing in popularity and people are going to do it anyway and it’s going to be more and more happening than we want to make sure it’s happening safe so that people are not getting sick from these things and how we choose to live. If we could achieve that within the next 10 years, we would be very, very happy. Besides that, it’s really just continuing to grow and build more relationships with our other government agencies and stakeholders and really just try to be more collaborative as we’re going to roll with the punches as things develop in the world.

[00:12:04] Twenty twenty has been quite the roller coaster year for the whole world as it is. So, you know, it’s just about adapting and surviving, really.

[00:12:13] I can’t really see the benefit of your organization, and I really loved what you said, that people generally want to do the right thing, but they don’t have time to have all the information to do everything right and make sure their health is up to par. So it’s really important that some kind of organization like yours is having their back and is looking into, OK, tattoos. How can we make that safely? Because they might not be thinking of it on their own. So do you have any data on let’s say I have environmental health concerns, but I see other people in my surroundings not having the same awareness. Do you have data on how can we reach people in an efficient way?

[00:12:59] It is a hard one there, because, as I said before, we’re often called the forgotten profession, but it’s more the unknown. But the fact of the matter is, this is almost not a bad thing to be unknown, because if we’re doing our job properly in the background, if we are checking the restaurants to make sure they make safe food, you as a customer, you should never have to walk into a restaurant thinking to yourself, am I going to walk away very, very ill from this experience if I go swimming in this poll? Am I is my swimsuit going to be completely bleached and falling off me? Is my hair going to turn green? Am I going to get very red sore eyes? I mean, is this water coming out of my tent? Can I drink this day to day? People do not give that a second thought. Well, to the point they shouldn’t they shouldn’t have to worry about these things. We worry. So you don’t have to. That’s kind of our profession. So it’s really hard to quantify how any doctor about being more well known. Well, no one in the right circles to make sure there’s decisions being made with what government agencies or whoever it might be to make sure we have a seat at the table because our skillset is so broad that we can turn hand to food safety, air quality, water safety, anything really. We’re quite handy people to have, particularly after a big natural disaster or a civil defense emergency alongside many other provisions, without a doubt. But because we’re quite generalists and all

these things we’re handy to have. But day to day, I think that’s why we don’t really know when we’re there, when when things go wrong, we’re definitely there when we have to be. From a reactive point of view, I guess we’re just trying to be bit more proactive in terms of spreading who we are and what we do.

[00:14:46] Right. I really liked what you said that you were, so we don’t have to. So let’s look at being proactive then, because. Still, you can’t cover everything that is a hazard in today’s society, so if you were to give your top three recommendations to someone, some the average Joe listening to this and how they can make sure they are staying as healthy as possible in a suboptimal environment, what would those three things be?

[00:15:17] A lot of it is actually just trusting your intuition and what we call your gut feeling here, you know, if you walk into a restaurant and you think that it’s not looking the cleanest or you get a bit of a vibe about it, that it’s not probably going to be a good, safe experience for you, I’d probably turn around and walk back, walk back out. I think there’s little things everyone can do. You can do one thing a day. And that’s something I’ve heard said to me before, listening to other people talk in conferences and things in the context of waste management. So, I mean, if you can overhear I don’t know what it’s like in other parts of the world, but before covid hit, we obviously we’re on quite a campaign in New Zealand here to have less plastic straws. So if you go and get a drink, you don’t need a plastic straw trying to reduce their waste going into the environment. Let’s do one thing a day said trust in your intuition. Do one thing. Small things make the most of resources. Don’t take food and water and things for granted. I’m going to use what you need to use. Don’t abuse it because there are limited resources in the world and they are getting harder and harder to keep safe and make is enough safe resources to go around everyone beautiful.

[00:16:30] So have common sense and small steps every day and be grateful for what you got. I think those are real solid advice. So I imagine someone listening to this feeling passionate about wanting to do something to help you help our environment. What can someone do to help the New Zealand Institute of Environmental Health?

[00:16:53] Well, because we’re not for profit, I mean, we we rely heavily on when we hold professional development conferences and things, we do rely heavily on sponsorship from a lot of trade industries and things here we work with who give us the tools of the trade, whether it’s a noise meter or consultants on food safety and things. So our purpose as an institute is to try and look after our members, to extend their knowledge, to equip them with the tools to keep rolling with the punches as this crazy world keeps evolving and we’re trying to keep everyone safe on it with their food and water and everything else from the environment. So really, how people can help us is just spreading the message about what environmental health is in New Zealand. Here we definitely want to grow our membership base and just continue to keep growing and continue to offer more and more and more training. Just it sounds like training is quite an easy thing to provide, but it’s not this again. Twenty twenty is a case in point. We need to learn on the fly what this global pandemic could mean for things. We’re a small island nation, but we’re a heavy exporting nation. So when your borders are closed, it has a bit of implications of things coming and going, and that includes people. So we’ve got to learn to deal with it.

[00:18:13] Tanya, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. I learned a lot about the importance of public health and I hope our listeners to the same. Thank you. Not a problem. And hey, if you are listening to this and you thought this was a meaningful conversation that you would like for more people to listen to, the best thing you can do to help us out is to going to your podcast app and press subscribe because we are still a tiny podcast. But if you have a lot of subscribers compared to your number of viewers, that can really help us climb into different top lists and then more people can hear these conversations. So that would really help us out. And we see you in the next episode.

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