Week 8, Chapter 15 -- Digging Deeper Course home | Weekly schedule | Announcements | Instructor Info | Desire2Learn | MasteringBiology® | Honor Code | FAQs | HELP!

Instructions

For this assignment, you have two choices. Choice 1 is to write a letter to the President of the United States; choice 2 is to research a potential toxin in the pesticide of your choosing.

Choice 1: Write a Letter to the President

This chapter contains a lot of information about environmental issues facing the nation and world. Many of these issues have at least two legitimate – and often opposing – points of view. In this assignment, your job is to write a letter to the President of the United States in which you take a stand on your choice of one of the following issues:

• Saving a particular endangered species in Oklahoma or the state of your choice; is it important to save this particular species, and/or endangered species in general?
• Funding for science to catalog unknown species in the United States and/or worldwide; do you support it or not? why or why not?
• Residential or economic development policies that encourage habitat destruction or fragmentation; do economic benefits outweigh environmental concerns?
• Actions you recommend to halt/prevent the ongoing (sixth) mass extinction; do economic costs outweigh environmental benefits?
• Global climate change; do you recommend we take action, or should we “wait and see?”
• Funding for, and/or recommended changes in, the Endangered Species Act

In your letter, describe at least one credible argument that refutes your position, and explore at least two arguments in support of your position.

Your post should be a minimum of 500 words.

Also, you will need to find at least three internet sources on the topic you have chosen (you may also use your textbook as a fourth source, especially for factual information). Make sure to list your references, cited correctly. In one or two sentences, ANNOTATE your list of internet references to tell what facts you got from the site or to describe the argument the site is advancing.

You can view a sample assignment here; it includes the correct way to cite and annotate websites.

Choice 2: Pesticide Analysis

A "pesticide" is any product that kills pests. A "pest" is any critter that causes disease, spreads disease, and/or damages our crops, bodies, or stuff. Pests therefore include insects (e.g. ants and roaches); arachnids (e.g. mites, spiders, and ticks); mollusks (e.g. slugs and snails); fungi; bacteria; weeds; worms; and even birds, rodents, and fish. If you're the kind of person who puts flea medicine on your pet or who reaches for the nearest can of Raid whenever you see a bug in your house, read on.

The overuse of pesticides in private homes, yards, and gardens can pose serious environmental and public health problems.  To study this issue, choose any over-the-counter product that you or your family uses on a regular basis and that contains any pesticide (that is, an insecticide, weed killer, fungicide, disinfectant, slug/snail bait, etc.). If you have multiple types of pesticides, try to choose one other than ant or roach killer, otherwise we'll end up with a bunch of discussion board posts on the same topic. Or, if you don't have anything like that in your home, visit a local store and copy the information you need (below) from the label. (You do not have to buy the product; in fact, we discourage it!).

Collect the following information from your product's label:

• Product name
• Percentage of inert ingredients
• List of inert ingredients if available
• Percentage of active ingredients
• List of active ingredients
• Summary of the health or environmental hazards listed on the warning label

Next, visit the website of the company that produces the product (list the site's URL in your report) and conduct a broader internet search of one or more active ingredients to identify any known or suspected toxicities.

Write a report about your chosen product. Your report should begin by listing the information you collected from the label, and then it should answer the following questions:

1. Does the company's website provide toxicity information related to their product?
2. What other product information is provided?
3. What toxicity information did you find in your broader internet search? Does the product information from the company, particularly toxicity information, agree or conflict with information from your other sources?
4. Were there any problems collecting toxicity information?
5. Describe how, where, and how often you might use a product like this.
6. Based on your use of the product and what you now know about its toxicity to human health and the environment, do you feel confident that the product is safe to use?  Explain why or why not.

Your post should be 500 words or more, not including references, and you can view a sample assignment here. Be sure to cited references correctly.

Some sites that you may find useful in your search include:

Material Safety Data Sheets: An MSDS is a technical data sheet that tells about the hazards of being exposed to a particular chemical. It is meant to inform people who work with the chemicals for a living, not so much for occasional exposure in household use. But there may be some information useful to you in crafting your reports. If you go to this site, scroll down about 1/4 to 3/4 of the way down the site to find a throng of useful links.

Household Products Database: This site contains information about health effects of all kinds of household products, from flea and tick control (for pets) to brake fluid to toilet bowl cleaners to chewing gum remover. Entries for some of the products include links to relevant MSDS's as well.

Pesticide Action Network Pesticides Database: The Pesticide Action Network maintains a searchable database of chemicals found in pesticides and some other household products. One of their search options requires you to type in only the beginning of the name of your chemical, which is a huge help -- chemical names can be very long indeed!

[Activity adapted by from Sarikas, Stephen N.  Fall 2006.  Pesticide Analysis.  In: Strategies for Success Newsletter No. 46.  Benjamin Cummings.]

Plagiarism Reminder ...

Remember, cutting and pasting from another website, without quotes or citation, is PLAGIARISM -- so is using a cut-and-pasted passage and just changing a few words. Plagiarism is a serious form of academic misconduct. If you have any questions about whether your work constitutes plagiarism, please visit the resources at week 1's plagiarism assignment, or ask your instructor.

Part 2: Post it

Use D2L's spell checker (or the one on your word processor software, which will give you a word count as well). Proofread it yourself too, because spell checkers don't catch everything. When you are satisfied, post your completed assignment in the Digging Deeper forum for this week at the D2L discussion board.

Part 3: Peer review

Respond to the Digging Deeper posts of at least two other students. (If you are the first or second person to post, you will have to check back later to complete this part of the assignment).

• Just as you spell checked and proofread your original post, you should do the same for your responses.
• Please respond to posts with 0 responses first; once every post has at least one response, you are free to choose any post to respond to.
• When you respond, please use the name of the student you are responding to. That is, say "Hi Trudy" or "Hi Paul" so that you can get used to the names of the people in class. (You can find a list of "real" names and preferred names at D2L).
• If the person wrote a letter to the President, be sure to answer the question of whether the letter is good enough to send on (along with justification). No matter which assignment he or she chose to do, be sure you mention something specific that the writer did well. Also, specifically address anything you find that seems incorrect to you (phrased in a constructive way -- use the same language you would want someone else to use in telling you something you did wrong). You may wish to argue with (or critique) what the student wrote, request supporting evidence, evaluate the student's argument, add new information, make a factual correction, or explain why you agree. At a minimum this response should be at least 50 words and 50-100 is preferable. Check out this page for more on the topic of good and bad responses.

After you have posted your assignment AND responded to two other students, go to Desire2Learn and complete the Gradebook Declaration for this week's Digging Deeper assignment. (Your Gradebook Declaration is subject to the Honor Code.)

Here is the text of the Desire2Learn Gradebook Declaration: (8 points) I have posted my spell-checked, proofread Digging Deeper assignment at D2L. My assignment contains all the components listed in the assignment instructions. (2 points) I have responded constructively to the posts of at least two other students (1 point per response; 50-100 words for each).

Contemporary Issues in Biology -- BIOL 1003 Mariëlle H. Hoefnagels, Ph.D. © 2004-2015. biology1003 at OU dot edu (at = @, dot =.) Last Updated August 5, 2014 11:02 PM