1. BES: Environmental Health
Please grab the handout and get out your journal!

2. Warm Up
How do you think toxins placed in the Queen City Farms Superfund toxic site are affecting where you live? Give specific examples.

3. Success Criteria: What will I be able to do?
I can investigate different ways to remediate (clean up) toxic waste spilled/dumped in our environment.

4. What will be doing in this unit?
You will learn about your connection to toxins in the environment and how we can use plants to take out those toxins through a process called phytoremediation
You’ll get to design your own experiment to see how plants might be able to survive in toxic environments, and test the water in your own communities for various chemicals.
Along the way, you’ll learn about all of the really amazing things that plants do to make life on Earth possible.

5. What do you remember about Queen City Farms…our local Superfund Toxic Site?
325 acres
3 ponds that has toxic waste dumped in it
Barrels/Drums of toxic waste was buried there.
Boeing was one of the dumpers, but Shell Oil contributed the most.
The site was noticed by the EPA in 1977
Clean up didn’t start until 1989
Heavy metals, PCB’s, and VOC’s were found there.

6. Let’s review what we learned last time…Make this chart and fill it in!
Module 1 3/28/19
What do you know?
What do you need to know?
PCBs
VOCs
Heavy Metals
Let’s review what we learned last time…Make this chart and fill it in!

7. What are Fast Plants?
Plants are powerful. They turn sunlight into the food they need to survive and release oxygen for people to breathe. Some plants also clean toxins from the soil. In this part of the module, you will plant Fast Plant seeds to prepare for the unit project, which focuses on plants and their possible use in toxin clean-up.
Watch this video to learn more about the plants you will be using in this unit. Answer the questions!

8. Fast Plant Video Questions (Tape this in your journal)
How did Dr. Williams get interested in studying plants?
What are Brassicas?
What are some examples of Brassicas that you might have eaten or heard of?
What are rapid-cycling Brassicas?
What kinds of research questions have Brassicas helped scientists answer?
Why do you think we should learn about phytoremediation?

9. Let’s survey our community.
Using the Post-it notes, write at least three questions that we can ask our community about the following three topics:
Details about the people you survey (demographic information): Age? Gender? Level of education? Where do they live?
Thoughts about chemicals in the environment: Which chemicals? How do they get into the air/water/soil?
Chemicals and human/environmental health: What effects do these chemicals have on health? What can humans do about it?

10. Log in to Educurious https://educurious.instructure.com
Bookmark it!

11. If you haven’t finished your pre-assessment quiz…do it now!
If you are done with the pre-assessment and you have changed your password:
Go into Module 1, Lesson 1.1: Course introduction and scroll down to “Explore More” and watch the videos.

12. 2.2 Investigating Technology Use and Chemicals in our Environment
Remember, this unit focuses on the connection between humans, chemicals in the environment, and how to get chemicals out of the environment to improve the health of living things.
In this part of Module 2, you will explore how our use of technology impacts the environment. You will then look into the technology practices of others in your community using a common scientific tool—a survey. Based on the survey results, you will draw conclusions and make hypotheses about the effects of technology use on the environment.
Watch this video to learn more about the plants you will be using in this unit. Complete the Worksheet and turn in.