Chemicals, how they are made and how they get into the environment.
Exposure, how chemicals get from the environment into our bodies and
how we measure them.
Toxicology, what chemicals do in our bodies and
what our bodies do to them.
Public health impacts,
how chemicals impact the health of the entire population.
And policy implications: what laws,
regulations, and policies govern chemicals.
This course is taught at the college level,
it assumes basic knowledge of biology and chemistry.
It has a total of 15 lectures that are about 20 minutes each across six modules.
We engage you with videos, a discussion board,
two quizzes, and two writing assignments.
Before we even begin,
we ask that you complete a short peer reviewed writing assignment,
describing your current understanding of chemicals, and how they impact our health.
This assignment only counts for 5% of your grade and
serves as an introduction to peer reviewed writing.
We also hope it will serve as an interesting comparison to the last writing
assignment, which will ask a similar question.
Getting to the actual course material.
The first modules provide an introduction to chemicals in our environment and
attempt to answer the question, what is a chemical and how are we exposed?
You're listening to the first speaker now.
My goal is to cover an introduction to the course and an overview of the syllabus.
One of my heroes, Professor Tom Burke will define the word chemical,
explain how populations are exposed to chemicals, and
describe how chemicals get into our bodies.
Then you'll hear from me again, and
I'm going to talk about things like chemophobia, which is fear of chemicals.
And what happens when we substitute one chemical for
another when we often don't know anything about the second chemical?
And lastly, some other myths about chemicals and health.
Then you have your first homework assignment.