Baxter: Geog 3432

Jamie Baxter
Associate Professor - UWO Geography

Geography 3432 - Environmental Hazards and Human Health

MISCELLANEOUS

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GEOGRAPHY

SYLLABUS
Environmental Hazards and Human Health

This syllabus is "dynamic", it will change throughout the term. Though the basic structure of the course (e.g., weighting of evaluation components) will not change, topics and readings may need adjusting along the way. Please return to this section for important updates.

2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour, half course, Fall term

Prerequisite

none, but both Geog 3250 and Geog 2152 are assets

News

Nov. 30/11
First Nations Environment and Health - Last day I mentioned the case of Kashechewan where, in 2005, a combination of factors led to e-coli contaminated water from sewage leachate making its way into the drinking water. See the story here. If you want to learn more about such issues, consider Dr. Richmond's course Indigenous Environments.
Peer to Peer study group - the Geography Students Association has put together an initiative to help with studying for exams.

Nov. 28/11
Feedback about your TA - You will soon be receiving an email from the ITS survey system asking you to provide feedback to your TAs. It will go to your uwo email. Please fill it out, the TAs and instructors very much appreciate your thoughts. If you liked your TA, let them know! You can find the evaluations directly at the following links:
Link to Chad Walker's TA evaluation
Link to May Ung's TA evaluation

Nov. 14/11
New tutorial reading - As promised, I posted a new tutorial reading for this week - one that more explicitly links social capital to the built environment.

Nov. 9/11
Interim feedback survey - An automated email went out yesterday asking for your feedback on the course so far. Since there is a link in the email there is a good chance the email got caught by one of your spam filters so here is a direct link to the survey just in case. You need your uwo username and password to log in. I have already passed on the 5 responses so far to the TAs.

Nov. 1/11
Tutorial Changed Readings - Since we will be talking about health and the built environment in the next two lectures, the next tutorial will also be about this topic - specifically, the relationship between obesity and access to food. This will replace the session on wind turbines and health.
Speaker Series of Interest - What happens to the health of communities when they are exposed to "natural" hazards? Find out through the case study of Katrina and New Orleans in this week's talk by Dr. Craig Colten from Louisiana State University.

Sept. 20/11
Tutorial Switch Incentive - We still have a large imbalance. We have about 24 students in the Wed tutorial and about 13 in the Thursday session. The TAs and I would greatly appreciate if more would move from Wed to Thurs. The incentive is pedagogical small groups provide better opportunities for interaction and learning.
Tutorial format - Based on a close reading of comments from past year's students, I have reorganized the structure of the tutorials (click the relevant link to the left).

Sept. 14/11
Grade Distribution 2010 - As requested I found the grade distribution for last year and posted the graph as a slide in lecture 1 - the introductory lecture we had today - 72% avg 73% median. See the lecture schedule below.

Sept. 6/11
Text - There are 40+ copies of the text in the Bookstore and 31 students currently regisitered. We will be using the fourth edition, but if you have a copy of the third edition already that should work fine.
Switch labs? - We currently have 25 students in the Wed lab and 6 in the Thursday lab. Please consider switching to even up the numbers. We will discuss this on the first day.
First Class - The first class will not have a lecture per se, rather we will go over the syllabus and I will give you a "Cooke's tour" of the lectures to help you decide if the class is right for you.

Aug. 30/11
Welcome - If you are not enrolled you are still more than welcome to come to the first class to determine if the class indeed fits your needs.
No Tutorial in week 1 - they will start in week 2. See the schedule below.
Web CT Owl - Web CT will be used to post grades and readings. I will also post notices there, but I will use this news section (the one you are looking at now, right here) to post important information too, so come back to this page often.

Description

Calendar Description
This is a survey course regarding the links between human health to environmental hazard exposure. Issues will include the health impacts of water pollution, air pollution, solid and hazardous waste, toxic substances, pesticides, and radiation. The limitations of models and methods will be discussed.

Format
This course consists of two lecture hours per week and one tutorial hour per week. The lecture hours will consist of a mixture of lectures and discussion. Some lecture class time may even be devoted to tutorial-style discussion. The tutorial will involve discussion of selected readings, these readings may be unique to the tutorial (see tutorial schedule) or may also be associated with the lectures (see lecture schedule). Though students are responsible for completing readings prior to each lecture and tutorial, this is especially true for the latter since this is where most of the participation marks will be awarded. The format of the tutorials is described above the tutorial schedule.

Contact Information

Instructor/TA	Room	Email	Office Hour
Jamie Baxter	SSC 1407	jamie.baxter@uwo.ca

Timetable and Turnitin Information

Once logged in to Turnitin copy the id and pass from the table below (for YOUR TA) to the appropriate fields at the Turnitin website. The user id does not get copied when you click the link. If you are not registered with Turnitin, you will have to do that first. Click either Turnitin ID link below to get started.

Lect/Tut	Day	Duration	Start Time	End Time	Room	Instructor/TA	Turnitin ID	Turnitin Pass
Lecture		2hrs				Jamie Baxter	N/A	N/A
Tutorial 1		1hr						moeller
Tutorial 2		1hr						moeller

Evaluation

Component	Weight
Participation (tutorial and lecture)	10%
Assignments (two)	35%
Midterm Exam	20%
Final Exam	35%

You must complete all course components to pass the course.
No electronic devices - e.g., phones, calculators are allowed at the midterm or exam.

Midterm

Weight: 20%
Duration: 1.5 hours
Date:
Location:
Possible Format: mixed, all answers on exam paper.

Multiple choice and true/false - 20
MC usually 1 of 5 choices (a - e)
NOT scantron, circle on exam paper
no "correction factor" (i.e., NO subtraction of incorrect answers from correct answers)

Definitions

Short Answer

Material Covered:
All lectures and readings up until the end of the class immediately prior to the midterm date. The focus will be on lectures, but the readings typically overlap the lectures considerably. Generally speaking you do not have to know specifics like who said what in what year for the multiple choice, but it could not hurt to know some of the more important figures mentioned in class to round out your definitions and short answer.

Final Exam

Weight: 35%
Duration: 3 hours
Date:
Location:
Format: mixed, all answers on exam paper. (100 marks)

Multiple choice and true/false - (15 marks)
- MC usually 1 of 5 choices (a - e)
- NOT scantron, circle on exam paper
- no "correction factor" (i.e., NO subtraction of incorrect answers from correct answers)

Definitions

Short Answer

Essay

Material Covered:
All lectures and readings since the midterm date. You are also responsible for material you might use in an essay answer. That is, the essay question will be quite general and will allow you to draw on material from the entire course. The focus will be on lectures, but the readings typically overlap the lectures considerably. Generally speaking you do not have to know specifics like who said what in what year for the multiple choice, but it could not hurt to know some of the more important figures mentioned in class to round out your definitions and short answer.

Readings

Course Text:

Moeller , D. (2011) Environmental Health (Fourth Edition) Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press.

Other readings will be made available via the links in the schedule and/or WebCT Owl

Lecture Schedule

Date	Topic	Reading
	Scope of Course	None
	Introduction - Key Concepts Discussion Assignment 1	Moeller Ch 1
	Measuring Health-Environment Links: Toxicology Field camp week - some students will be absent	Moeller Ch 2
	Measuring Health-Environment Links: Epidemiology	Moeller Ch 3
	Contaminants in Air	Moeller Ch 5
	Risk Assessment and Management Assignment 1 Due	None
	MIDTERM EXAM	None
	Built Environment and Health I Discussion Assignment 2	Frank et al. Chs. 1 & 3
	Built Environment and Health II	Putnam (2000) Chs. 1 & 20
	Environmental Equity and Policy	Cutter 1995
	Environment and Health and the Media Course instructor evaluation	Beseley and Shanahan 2004
	Video - Nature of Things - Playing with Poison (examinable) Assignment 2 Due	Guillette et al. (1998)
	Review

Tutorial Format Schedule

Here is the class list as student numbers divided into the two tutorials sessions (pending).

NEW: Each student is required to complete the readings and have responses to the "think questions" posted by the TAs on WebCt. The think questions will be posted at least a day before tutorial. All are expected to participate in the tutorial discussions. In general you will be critically appraising the readings by summarizing key themes, findings, methods, deficiencies, and directions for future research. Avoid the pitfall of too much summary, focus on critical commentary (e.gs., What might a different method reveal? Who was studied, and would it matter if a different group was studied? What is the strength of the evidence relative to the conclusions?). You may find the following critical appraisal form helpful.

Date	Topic	Reading
	No Tutorial	none
	Introduction and ice-breaker, signup for tutorial facilitation	none
	No Tutorial - field camp week	none
	Epidemiology in Contaminated Communities Case Study: Love Canal	Heath et al. (1984) Bari Kolata (1980) Holden (1980)
	Water Contamination by Pathogens Case Study: Walkerton	Hrudey et al. (2003), Parr (2005)
	Limits to Epidemiology	Taubes (1995), Taubes (1997)
	Built Environment and health (obesity): Case Studies: USA vs Canada	Morland and Evenson (2009) Seliske et al. (2009)
	Built Environment and Health (social capital) Case Studies: Wales and Ireland	Araya (2006) Leyden (2003)
	Environmental Equity Case Study: England and Wales	Wheeler (2004)
	Pesticides and health Case Study: Mexico	Guillette et al. (1998)

And now some messages from our lawyers (same as on assignments page)...

Plagiarism
The Department of Geography has a zero tolerance policy towards plagiarism. If a student commits plagiarism, the instructor will assign a grade of zero to the assignment. A second instance of plagiarism is regarded as a scholastic offense and will be dealt with according to The University of Western Ontario policy for Scholastic offenses - more on our policy on plagiarism via this link. The most common offense is failing to cite properly - if you quote directly, cite the author! You do not get the benefit of the doubt (you are not presumed innocent until proven guilty) when such offenses are committed. That is, the burden of proof is reversed. Can you prove "it was an accident" (this is a rhetorical question)? The following is an excerpt from the university secretariat:

“Scholastic offences are taken seriously and students are directed to read the appropriate policy, specifically, the definition of what constitutes a Scholastic Offence, at the following Web site:
http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/handbook/appeals/scholoff.pdf.
For a full set of regulations please visit this website: http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/handbook/exam/crsout.pdf"

See next...

Turnitin.com
Unfortunately turnitin has "caught" several offenders in my classes, please do not be the next one - it is awkward for everyone involved. If you do original work and write and cite properly you have nothing to worry about. The univerisity has provided this mandatory wording: "All required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to the commercial plagiarism detection software under license to the University for the detection of plagiarism. All papers submitted will be included as source documents in the reference database for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of papers subsequently submitted to the system. Use of the service is subject to the licensing agreement, currently between The University of Western Ontario and Turnitin.com"

Copyright: This material is for students registered in this class. Others, particularly instructors, please do not use without permission.