EHP Science Education Program
The EHP Science Education Program offers high-quality science and interdisciplinary lessons based on selected news and research articles published in Environmental Health Perspectives, the leading environmental health science journal. Lessons advance critical basic skills through the context of engaging, current environmental health topics.
Lessons are aligned with National Science Education Standards in biology, chemistry, environmental science, geology, and physical science, and are targeted at students in high school and undergraduate college. All lessons and corresponding articles can be downloaded here FREE.
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Students interpret and analyze data from a scientific study that attempted to characterize use of illicit drugs in a community by sampling wastewater and testing for the presence of key metabolites.
Objectives: By the end of this lesson students should be able to
- interpret data from three different graphs with the same units but with different scales on the y-axis
- identify how the body's metabolism of a compound impacts excretion, and what and how much is measured
- describe the concept of a correction factor
- describe how the research reviewed in this lesson can be validated
- describe trends in illicit/street drug use on the basis of metabolites of specific drugs found in wastewater
- identify ways in which the research methods discussed in this lesson could be applied to benefit society
EHP Article:
Getting Straight on What's Flushed: "Sewage Epidemiology" Measures Community Drug Consumption
Environ Health Perspect 116:A351 (2008)
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2008/116-8/ss.html#gett
Students read an article about food deserts and develop a usable definition of food desert for the purposes of their own research. Students then identify and map the locations of food stores within their own community, as well as graph and use census data to determine if their community is a food desert.
Objectives: By the end of this lesson students should be able to
- define food desert
- identify and define different types of food stores
- create a map of food stores in their community
- obtain data from the U.S. Census Bureau website
- graphically present these data
EHP Article:
The Sprawl of Food Deserts
Environ Health Perspect 116:A335 (2008)
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2008/116-8/forum.html#thes
