Blogs - Environmental Health Interns

Final Reflections from my internship at PVH

My internship experience at Poudre Valley Hospital (PVH) was both enriching and enjoyable. My mentors, Sherry and Claire, were helpful and supportive and challenged me with many interesting assignments. I really liked the wide array of internship projects and daily tasks, which provided me with a taste of many environmental health specialties. Although there were some elements of the internship that were frustrating, my overall experience was quite positive. Sherry and Claire have been exceptio… Continue

Added by Dan Autenrieth on August 5, 2009 at 8:46pm — No Comments

The First Day of Vessel Sanitation (7/25/09)

We woke up early in the morning to meet the rest of the VSP team at the cruise ship. When we arrived, we met CAPT Jaret Ames and went through security—a lot like airport security, which makes sense, but easier when equipped with a PHS uniform and official government badge! I was absolutely stunned about how BIG these ships are. I had seen cruise ships in the distance before, but never up close, and it truly is mindblowing. Once we boarded the ship, we were assigned to various locations to assist… Continue

Added by Samantha Kantrowitz on July 30, 2009 at 5:11pm — No Comments

Coor's roof tops

I went with Kate to Coor’s today to do smoke tests. She measures the smoke coming out of the baskets that catch the dust particles from the malt house and germination house. We got to walk around the roof tops of the Coor’s facility. It was a maze trying to find where we were supposed to be to measure them. We would go up a man-lift then up more stairs then pop our heads out on the roof and see the plume/vent two buildings over. It amazes me how they keep track of all that equipment and all the… Continue

Added by Shanan Gronewoller on July 22, 2009 at 1:10pm — No Comments

July 17 Journal Entry

Back in the office, kind of. Today was technically a field trip day, but instead we spent the morning teaching a portion of the EHTER course to the CLEH interns. I think this was a really good experience for them—so far, most of the speakers we’ve had have focused on sustainability, so this gave them a chance to see a new aspect of environmental health. CAPT Mark Miller decided to cover the shelters section of the course, which was exciting for me because of my Norovirus project. We split the s… Continue

Added by Samantha Kantrowitz on July 21, 2009 at 9:28pm — 2 Comments

July 10 Journal Entry

Today was definitely the best Field Trip Day yet. We met this morning at the Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta for a behind-the-scenes tour. I had been to the aquarium twice before—once on a crowded Saturday the first weekend I got here and once for a special NEHA event—but getting to go behind the scenes was truly a fantastic experience. We started off by going to the top of the exhibit called “Ocean Explorer.” This exhibit is enormous—over 55 million gallons. We got an overview of all that… Continue

Added by Samantha Kantrowitz on July 21, 2009 at 9:27pm — No Comments

Week 8 Entry III

So far, creating a rough draft of a Baseline Inventory Report has not been to bad. There are some sections that I have not been taught how to do are giving me a hard time. I am trying to learn about where I need to go to get information about water rights on specific properties, and how to identify certain vegetation that we notated out in the field. I feel that it is better that I try to do these types of things on my own so I can become more independent in a professional atmosphere. That is wh… Continue

Added by Brandon Martin on July 12, 2009 at 4:30pm — 1 Comment

Week 8 entry II

I am beginning to make some progress on one of the final reports that I will be working on. So far, I have had to create a soil description, document photographic location, maps that will be included in the easement that will need a specific color key, and various other projects. The most tedious thing that I do not like to do is proofreading some the paragraphs in the report. This is time consuming and everything has to be perfect. If there are errors in the report, it takes away from the profe… Continue

Added by Brandon Martin on July 8, 2009 at 3:00pm — No Comments

Week 8 entry I

Here we are. it is already the 8th week and this internship is flying by. I cannot believe how fast everything is going. I am having a great time learning in this environment. This week I am currently working on transferring all of my files on my laptop to a desktop computer provided by Dr. Kross. This is kinda of a pain since I have been using my personal computer to do work on. Over the past couple of weeks I have noticed my ability to do things that are now expected of me having gotten a lot… Continue

Added by Brandon Martin on July 7, 2009 at 7:30pm — No Comments

Hellman And Associates Update

I've been keeping busy here at H&A. shadowing many of the consultants to their different clients. My favorite to date has been water testing at Coor's where I got an intense tour of the underbelly of it all and learned a lot about the process. In the production area we were investigating some chemical smells and walked in areas where it was raining (dripping) beer, what a wonderful perfume for the rest of the day! My least favorite has been the Meat Packing Plant where I witnessed some very… Continue

Added by Shanan Gronewoller on July 6, 2009 at 2:44pm — No Comments

Week 7 Entry II

I have just received word that we are going to be working on an 8th property that encompasses 6,000 acres. This is by far the largest report and basically doubles the work load. We will have to divide that into two amendments which basically means two different reports. Since this property is in Morgan County, I will had to contact NRCS (National Resource Conservation Services) to inquire about soil maps. Morgan County has a different system for documenting the types of soil types, and this is s… Continue

Added by Brandon Martin on July 3, 2009 at 5:30am — No Comments

Week 7 Entry

This was the start of an interesting week. I have been having to do some different things that are more entailed with energy conservation. On one of the properties that had a land conservation easement created last year, I am looking into getting quotes for a solar powered water well pump. This is teaching me a lot about solar panels and how they are more efficient at saving energy. The hold up with solar powered is that it cost a lot of money. The solar powered system will be replacing a windmi… Continue

Added by Brandon Martin on July 2, 2009 at 11:30am — No Comments

Norovirus, Emergency Response, EPA, and the Beatles on Pandora

We had another brown bag lunch today with a man named Stan Meiburg. He is currently a district director in the EPA and used to be the liason between the EPA and the CDC. He gave us a history of the EPA and explained some of the current issues facing the EPA. For a while, the discussion centered on the benefits of being regulation-based (unlike the CDC) but that this is a drawback in that they have a hard time developing incentive-based programs. These could potentially be more effective, but the… Continue

Added by Samantha Kantrowitz on July 1, 2009 at 8:15pm — No Comments

Second week 6 entry: Geology Reports:

Out of the seven reports that are going to be finished in the next couple of week. I have made astounding progress on 5 of them by finishing, documented photographs, soils reports, multiple maps of the properties that describe (land elevations, photograph locations, existing improvements, etc), editing reports. There is a little bit more I need to learn before I have gone through everything one time. My next task that I am working on consists of editing Mineable Resource Investigation. This is a… Continue

Added by Brandon Martin on June 26, 2009 at 12:30pm — No Comments

June 21 Journal Entry

Today was the first day of NEHA! My uniform is finally complete, so I started off my morning by driving to LTJG Cory Moore’s (a relatively new USPHS officer who runs the CLEH and SUPEH programs) house to make sure I had everything good to go. I was so lucky that she was willing to help me out because pretty much everything I had on was askew in some way or another. Cory has been a huge help to me with getting my uniform together and pretty much everything. NEHA started with the keynote speaker w… Continue

Added by Samantha Kantrowitz on June 25, 2009 at 9:29pm — 2 Comments

Week 6 Entry

Today I am currently documenting photographs of properties that we visited last week. When I was out in the field, I had a map that I used to mark a rough location of where each photograph was taken. I also utilized a map when I had to identify existing improvements on the land such as two-track ranch roads, 3-strand barb wire fences (abandoned or relatively new), local electric service power lines, natural gas line corridors, and other various items that are man made. Regarding photo location,… Continue

Added by Brandon Martin on June 24, 2009 at 3:24pm — No Comments

June 18th's Journal Entry

This is the first day I’ve been able to really dedicate my whole day to my project. I read and took notes on several papers and spent a lot of time on Google Scholar. Many articles have been written on Noro on cruise ships and in the hospital setting, but very few papers are out there specifically on shelter outbreaks, so it’s been interesting to figure out what is applicable and what is not. One paper was particularly interesting (although gross)—they purposely contaminated peoples’ hands with… Continue

Added by Samantha Kantrowitz on June 22, 2009 at 5:42am — No Comments

Field Day

On Thursday June 18 me and Dr. Kross evaluated two properties in Northern Weld County near the town of Grover, CO. The properties combined has a total of approximately 1100 acres that we photographed. Access to the properties was limited so we had to drive an ATV in order to take photographs from every corner. The weather recently has been very rainy as everyone probably has noticed and the land is very green. After speaking with a few ranchers in the local area, they are saying the crops (winte… Continue

Added by Brandon Martin on June 21, 2009 at 11:36am — No Comments

Week 5 overview

This week I have been working on printing out "exceptions" for each property that we are working on a Baseline Inventory Report. The purpose of this task is to see if there has been any prior work done on the land such as natural gas digging, oil well excavation, uranium mining, fiber optic cable installation amongst many other things. An exception is way of separating a part of the land that has undergone and developmental purposes that will not be included in the conservation easement. When I… Continue

Added by Brandon Martin on June 17, 2009 at 9:30am — No Comments

week 4

Lindsay Davis Journal 4 I have now been in Granada for about a month. It is interesting to me how the dynamic of being in this country has changed from the beginning and how much I am starting to notice the shift in my own mentality. We were walking in El Fortin today and Doug mentioned how at the start of our research all of the houses looked run down and shabby but that many of them now look really nice. If you take the time to look at the details the houses that initially look like they are… Continue

Added by Lindsay Davis on June 16, 2009 at 8:42pm — No Comments

Interning at Larimer County

Can't really complain about the internship. The people I work with are great and the job itself is pretty straight forward. I feel the best part of the internship is the hands on aspect. You really get to see what it is like to work at a health department, from what I hear it is were most EH majors end up for a little bit. Three weeks in I have been introduced to food inspections, child care inspections, ISDS inspections, CFC and Air quality monitoring, and vector borne disease. So far the most… Continue

Added by Ian Cartwright on June 15, 2009 at 7:35am — No Comments

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