Pesticide exposure represents a significant occupational health hazard for farmworkers, and handwashing is one strategy to reduce exposure via the dermal route. After learning about recent research findings regarding the lack of handwashing utilized by North Carolina farmworkers in the field, the North Carolina Farmworker Health Program approached…

Deborah Blum's New York Times bestselling nonfiction book "The Poisoner's Handbook" was used as supplementary reading in our first-term General/Organic/Biochemistry course. This course serves as both the first course for our Allied Health chemistry sequence and a core science course. Our goal was that, through reading this book, students…

University of Minnesota educators use an integrated pest management (IPM) survey conducted during private pesticide applicator training as an educational, needs assessment, and evaluation tool. By incorporating the IPM Assessment, as the survey is called, into a widely attended program and using TurningPoint audience response devices, Extension…

A laboratory experiment was developed to target analytical chemistry students and to teach them about insecticides in food, sample extraction, and cleanup. Micro concentrations (sub-microgram/mL levels) of 12 insecticides spiked into apple juice samples are extracted using liquid-liquid extraction and cleaned up using either a primary-secondary…

Since 1997, Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) has published the Newark Kids Count Data Book, a one-stop source for child well-being data on the state's largest city. Newark Kids Count includes the latest statistics, along with five-year trend data, in the following areas: demographics, family economic security, child health, child…

As part of a university-wide project to explore Shakespeare's classic play, "Romeo and Juliet," from a variety of perspectives, an interdisciplinary talk was presented to the university community on the chemistry of the potions and poisons referenced in "Romeo and Juliet." To draw the multidisciplinary audience in and to teach…

The storyline of operas, with historical or fictional characters, often include potions and poisons. This has prompted a study of the chemistry behind some operatic plots. The results were originally presented as a lecture given at the University of Minho in Portugal, within the context of the International Year of Chemistry. The same lecture was…

The University of Florida Cooperative Extension conducted a statewide program with a dual role during 2013 and 2014 to enhance efficiency. The program provided in-service training to county Extension agents and provided continuing education to meet requirements needed by licensed pesticide applicators. Using Polycom distance technology, the event…

During the past two decades, historians have been brought into legal cases in unprecedented numbers. As the courts have tried to adjudicate responsibility for environmental and occupational diseases, history and historians have played an increasingly central role in shaping decisions in the cases themselves as well as in related social policy. In…

A university course project was developed and implemented in a biology course, focusing on environmental problems, to assess community awareness of childhood lead poisoning. A set of 385 questionnaires was generated and distributed in an urban community in North Carolina, USA. The completed questionnaires were sorted first into yes and no sets…

Exposure to lead can be devastating for children, and federal regulations established in 2001 are forcing local governments to mitigate this risk. This essay discusses the creation of the Lead Alliance, a university-community coalition created to address lead hazards facing children from low-income households in South Bend, Indiana. Among the…