The Griess assay is widely used by regulation agencies as an official method for nitrite quantification in water and food samples. In Brazil, the official method, which has been used to determine nitrite in food, was described by Instituto Adolfo Lutz (283/IV) in 1984. It uses 8 mL of reactants and provides 50 mL (reactants plus sample) of waste…

Environmentally overburdened communities need information and resources to cope with hazards. We describe, and use a case study to depict, a participatory process of engaging Detroit stakeholders with academic researchers in the co-production of environmental health communication tools to enhance their capacity to address the unjust conditions.…

Child environmental health (CEH) science has identified numerous effects of early life exposures to common, ubiquitous environmental toxicants. CEH scientists have documented the costs not only to individual children but also to population-level health effects of such exposures. Importantly, such risks are unequally distributed in the population,…

A laboratory experiment was developed to introduce systems thinking and green chemistry concepts through the synthesis of the antidepressant and smoking cessation aid, bupropion hydrochloride. The traditional synthesis has several issues from a green chemistry perspective: it uses the toxic solvents N-methylpyrrolidinone (NMP) and dichloromethane…

Teaching through experiments has always been an indispensable teaching method in chemistry and other STEM disciplines. Letting more students have access to experiments at the frontier of scientific research is essential to stimulating students' interest in chemistry. With the advancement of computer technology, virtual simulation experiments…

We describe a series of three experiments in which students develop a model system for measuring the LC50 of household substances, using grass seed as the model organism. Students use statistical methods to compare two samples (using chi-square and Student's "t"-tests), conduct a two-level multifactor experiment to look at multiple…

RAMP is an acronym for the process "recognize hazards, assess risk, minimize risk, and prepare for emergencies". This paper describes these four steps in the context of undergraduate instruction about chemical health and safety.

Epidemiological studies, which can have inherent methodological limitations, are used to study the relation between endocrine disrupting chemicals and autism spectrum disorder. The objective is to systematically review the treatment of methodological limitations and assess the quality and strength of the findings in the available literature. The…

In this laboratory activity, students were tasked with determining the heat of combustion for each of three common sugar substitutes: saccharin, aspartame, and sucralose. The heats of combustion were determined via three different methods: bomb calorimetry, heats of formation derived from semiempirical calculations, and tabulated average bond…

Early care and education (ECE) environments influence children's lifelong health behaviors, growth, and development. Although the number of interventions to improve health in ECE environments is increasing, few have been designed for and tested in family child care homes (FCCHs). This study reports the process evaluation of two interventions to…

Home to nine Tribal Nations, the northeastern corner of Oklahoma (US) is a place of immense resilience, cultural beauty and attachment to place. Horrifically, however, this same area is also home to massive environmental assaults that have occurred as a result of decades of lead and zinc mining. The improperly managed mine waste that has…

This work presents a simple protocol that demonstrates the use of an inexpensive household carbon monoxide detector as a useful tool to detect the release of carbon monoxide gas from thermal cheletropic decarbonylation reactions. The carbon monoxide detection method described has been employed in a short series of reactions used in a university…

Lead exposure has been linked to neurological, reproductive, and developmental effects, and approximately 3.5% of Chicago children under the age of 3 years have elevated blood lead levels. The aim of this research was to provide outreach opportunities to address the issue of lead exposure in water and soil. A series of seven community-based health…

We created a 2-week, dual-module summer course introducing high school students to environmental toxicology by teaching them quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) as a way to quantify gene expression of chemical defense proteins in response to exposure to environmental pollutants. During the course, students are guided through the various…

This study aimed to investigate the effect of the analytical chemistry laboratory (ACL) course, designed, and conducted according to the flipped learning approach (FL) on prospective science teachers' (PSTs) meaningful understanding and interpretation of knowledge in the context of the environment. Seventy-three second grade PSTs participated in…