Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh.h.edu.

That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.

This is Lindsay Smith Rogers.

Today, the state of environmental protection and climate action in the coming Trump administration.

Stephanie Desmond talks to Tom Burke, a Johns Hopkins Emeritus professor who has led environmental

organizations on the state and federal level about what we can expect.

The news is not good for public health, he says.

Let's listen.

Tom Burke, thanks so much for joining me.

It's great to be back.

Thanks for having me.

So I want to remind people that you were the head scientist of the EPA,

the Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration.

And I just wanted to start by talking about the environment and its links to public health briefly.

Well, thanks for asking that, because public health really has its foundation in protecting the environment and providing a clean environment.

Though the efforts of John Snow in London to address cholera really started with understanding drinking water as a vector for disease.

And the environment is so essential to our health and well-being.

A clean environment is essential to a healthy community.

So you saw what happened as the Obama administration became the Trump administration the first time.

What kind of effects did that have on the environment?

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