Human Health and the Environment
This section of the unit will focus on having students come to the realization of the dangers of pesticides to their health and gain an understanding of the mechanisms that drive the behavior of pesticides in the environment. Students will also now apply the pesticide knowledge gained in the first week of the unit to the decision making process when determining the type of product to apply to the landscape.
The first day of this portion of the unit will have the students reading a summary of scientists' opinions on what is known on endocrine disruption theory. This will follow with a PowerPoint and discussion on the endocrine system. Students will then be grouped and they will research the links between endocrine disrupting chemicals and health, the pesticides that are considered endocrine disrupting chemicals, how widespread these chemical pollutants are in the environment, and how long these chemicals persist in the environment. The next period will start out with the student groups reporting on their findings and leading into a discussion on the need to protect the environment from these chemicals. During a subsequent period, I will go over the mechanisms that drive how pesticides move through the environment. We will also discuss and engage in how to derive the essential information on pesticides in order to calculate their potential for contamination. Students will then be put into student groups and given the scenarios with which they will determine all relevant information on the chemicals and determine the greenest synthetic approach to alleviate the pest in question, supporting their choice with sound, detailed evidence on each of the chemical options.
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