Sustainability is an important aspect to think about when traveling. After all, the earth is in a climate crisis right now. While we already tend to do things like shut our lights off, not waste water, or litter; as travelers, we can help to lower our carbon footprint by doing a few other simple things while you are traveling to be more sustainable.

Bring Your Own Bottles

In North America alone, over 60 million plastic bottles are thrown away every day. One can only imagine how many that means around the globe. That is why one great way to be a more eco-friendly traveler is to always carry a water bottle of some sort on you. They have collapsible ones if you wish to put them in a bag until you need them. They have small ones, and large ones, depending on what your preferences are. Many can even double as travel mugs for coffee, so you can grab your coffee without the paper cup and stirrer.

Avoid Tourist Traps

When you are visiting a certain destination, you may want to venture off the beaten path a little bit. The big cities tend to be home to plenty of “tourist traps.” These areas tend to have a lot more people in them, and may even mar the experience a little bit because of that. Not to mention that there are so many ways that you can spend your money there, it can get easy to get carried away. If you do want to visit these places, it is best to do it in the off-peak months, that way you shouldn’t run into too many other travelers.

Shop Local

Try looking into more hyper-local areas in your destination, and give them a look. Try to shop locally, helping out a local market, rather than a large chain store. Perhaps venture into an eco-friendly boutique where you may find some fun souvenirs that were created by the local craftsmen and women instead of at one of the said tourist traps. Doing all of this can help to keep more of the money in the local’s pockets.

Visit Longer If You Can

When traveling, it can be really hard to cram every single activity that you want to do within a span of say, three days. Not to mention that airplanes create an awful lot of air pollution. Instead of visiting every little nook and cranny of one spot, try expanding your view. You can even see if you can stay in a sustainable hotel.

Volunteer If You Can

Volunteering in the area that you are staying in can help you become a more sustainable traveler. You never know, a farmer may ask you to help their vegetables, contributing to their local food source. You never truly know what will happen when you are traveling. Volunteering doesn’t even have to be a big to-do either. You can start with something simple, for example, World Expedition’s 10 Pieces Litter Collection Initiative, where tourists pick up ten pieces of litter during their hike in various areas across the world. Couple your efforts to collect litter with groups of other tourists, and that is a lot of litter taken off walking and hiking paths!

Planning a trip? Make sure you are prepared with Passport Health. Call or book online to schedule your appointment today.

Jennifer Passmore is a stay-at-home mom, writer and beader. She loves creating art with her words and through her jewelry. She is also a passionate mental health advocate. You can find more writing at her website Positivity In Pain.

Airplanes can be crowded as it is. The prospect of getting up and using the bathroom is pretty drab. Honestly, no one really wants to squish inside of a bathroom that is the size of a small coat closet, but we have to do what we have to do. When traveling on an airplane, many people wonder about where the waste on an airplane goes after you flush the toilet. Here’s how it all goes down.

For many years, a lot of people believed that there was a “secret trap door” that opened when the toilet is flushed, leaving it to fall below onto unsuspecting people. But, that could not be further from the case.

The modern airplane toilet was actually designed in 1975, by James Kemper. It uses a pneumatic vacuum when one flushes an airplane toilet. It made its way onto its first airplane, a Boeing, in 1982, and that is when all planes began to put this new waste management system into place.

It was created with a nonstick bowl with a Teflon-like coating, to help assist in waste being vacuumed out. Finally, it has a small amount of Skychem, which is a disinfecting liquid. The Skychem is used in place of water in the bowl. When one flushes the toilet, the waste is sucked out by the vacuum, and placed into a large holding tank. While the vacuum system in use is loud, it is nothing to be afraid of. Waste is sucked out with the power of what experts said, is a velocity faster than that of a Formula 1 race car.

During the flight, the waste remains inside of the sealed tank, which also has an exterior latch to make certain that no sewage leaks out. When the plane lands, the ground crew will end up coming over to the plane in a special truck that is used to siphon out the waste and into the underground sewage system of the airport.

While not a pleasant experience, using the bathroom on an airplane doesn’t have to be scary or strange. You can rest assured that on your next flight when you use the restroom, the plane will not be dumping the waste into the sky! That is one more myth about flying dispelled. If you plan on heading out to the vacation of your dreams, let Passport Health help you with your travel health concerns.

Have an upcoming trip? Make sure your protected against common infections like typhoid and yellow fever. Call or book online to schedule your appointment today.

Jennifer Passmore is a stay-at-home mom, writer and beader. She loves creating art with her words and through her jewelry. She is also a passionate mental health advocate. You can find more writing at her website Positivity In Pain.

Yellow fever is a disease that has a storied past, one that’s intertwined with the mosquito. The Aedes aegypti mosquito is usually associated with the spread of yellow fever, but the Haemagogus mosquito can also be a vector of the disease. Yellow fever transmission is higher in tropical and subtropical areas, such as Africa and South America. Symptoms for humans can include fever, chills, headaches, backache, weakness, nausea, and vomiting. Some people could develop more severe symptoms. However, many people infected with yellow fever will experience no symptoms at all.

But how does the mosquito carrying the virus fare? Surprisingly, these mosquitoes seem to carry the virus with little to no burden. You could argue the only downside for mosquitoes carrying yellow fever is that they have yet another target put on their backs by public health officials. The Aedes aegypti mosquito is also notorious for carrying other infamous diseases like Zika and Dengue so to say that they’re massive liabilities to human health is a bit of an understatement.

In terms of yellow fever transmission, mosquitoes are the messengers. But they have to be infected by another human or primate that already has yellow fever to transmit it. The virus has three transmission cycles: sylvatic, savanna, and urban. In the sylvatic cycle, a primate will infect a mosquito through the mosquito feeding on the primate’s blood. The virus is then transmitted to humans who are passing through jungles. The savanna cycle involves mosquitoes to humans living just outside of jungle areas. And the urban transmission is usually through a human infected in the jungle or savanna and travels to an urban area, passing it to the mosquitoes.

We can see from these cycles that primates and humans serve a significant role in the transmission of yellow fever not just in their populations but also in mosquito populations. Any person infected with yellow fever is known as viremic, or infectious, up to about five days after the onset of a fever.

While it might seem that yellow fever has little to no effect on mosquitoes as a whole, it certainly hasn’t done much for their public relations. Mosquitoes are still considered one of the world’s major pests, and when it comes to diseases, getting them under control is arguably one of the essential tasks for us. So does yellow fever kill mosquitoes? Not quite: but they aren’t the only species with blood-lust in this situation. Their ability to transmit some of humankind’s deadliest diseases has done nothing but encourage us to find new and improved ways to eradicate them as a means of protection.

Passport Health offers mosquito repellents, vaccinations and more to keep you protected from mosquito-borne infections. Call or book online to schedule your appointment today.

Written for Passport Health by CJ Darnieder. CJ is a freelance writer and editor in Chicago. He is an avid lover of classical music and stand-up comedy and loves to write both in his spare time.

While both chickenpox and shingles come from the same varicella zoster virus, they are two very different illnesses. One tends to affect children more, while shingles affects older adults.

The first time that you encounter the varicella zoster virus, you will get chickenpox. Children, for the most part, are the ones that are more likely to contract chickenpox. But it can also be seen in adults, too. Chickenpox can be a little more serious then.

The illness is characterized by small red blisters that appear on the skin, usually all over the body. They are very itchy and contagious, especially the liquid inside the blister. Not only that, but with chickenpox, you can spread it via droplets in the air, by coughing or sneezing. Some symptoms of chickenpox include:

• general feeling of tiredness
• fever
• body aches
• red, itchy rash
• fluid filled blisters that will break open and scab over

In shingles, you will often see that the people who are most affected are usually aged 60 and older. With this illness, it comes from the same virus, but causes a more painful rash than the chickenpox does. The rash usually does not typically cover the whole body, but instead will appear as red bumps on one side of the body. Some symptoms of shingles are the same as chickenpox, they include:

• headache
• fever
• red rash
• fluid filled blisters that will also break open and scab over
• nausea
• diarrhea
• upset stomach

While it is not possible to contract shingles from another person, if someone comes into contact with the fluid in the blisters, then it is possible that they can contract chickenpox. But, as long as a person who has shingles covers their rash properly, then the risk of catching anything is relatively low.

Both of the illnesses can be prevented with vaccines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that children should receive two chickenpox shots. The first should be around 12 to 15 months, and then again between the ages of 4 to 6 months old.

The same goes for shingles, as well. There is a vaccine, Shingrix, that is created to help prevent a flare-up. Adults should receive two doses of the vaccine, separated between anywhere from 2 to 6 months. If you are missing any vaccinations, you can contact Passport Health today to schedule your shingles vaccine.

When we break it down, while both illnesses are from the same core virus, the ensuing illnesses from them are very different from each other.

Make sure you are protected against chickenpox and shingles through vaccination. Call or book online to schedule your appointment today.

Jennifer Passmore is a stay-at-home mom, writer and beader. She loves creating art with her words and through her jewelry. She is also a passionate mental health advocate. You can find more writing at her website Positivity In Pain.

When most people hear that a disease is eradicated or eliminated, they often think these two terms mean the same thing. While both terms do have a similar meaning, those who work in public health know that there is a difference in meaning.

So, what is the difference between eradication and elimination? And when is a disease considered one of the two terms?

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