Some medical post-secondary schools and classes are beginning to offer courses on environmental health and environmental justice, but this OER may be one of the first efforts to provide an Environmental Humanities approach to the topics.
If your students are in the health sciences, there are many resources listed in the Explorations section of the model, such as the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments’ E-Textbook for nurses. More and more resources are emerging along with the peer reviewed science, so having students choose a health-related aspect that resonates with them and research it for a presentation to share with the class would be an effective way for all the students to learn.
Healthcare Without Harm advises hospital settings on how to reduce toxic hazards in a medical setting. Students could present to the rest of the students on this NGO’s various programs.
Some of the ideas below will work well for group projects as well as for individuals. Have students share their work with the rest of the class.
- If your students are interested in public health, occupational health, or epidemiology, have them identify a location. If they are in the U.S., they can go to the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) database and look at reported emissions in that location. They can then look for public health information for that location to see if there are incidences of health impacts linked to the substances in the TRI reporting. In Canada, they can look for toxics in the National Pollutant Release Inventory and then search for health impacts linked to the pollutants in a location.
- Puzzling out toxic exposures in health can be a good critical thinking process. Consider assigning students Pro/Con topics posing questions about the variety of factors that can be implicated in illness and injury in addition to toxic exposures, such as genetics and harmful behaviours.
- For another critical thinking exercise, ask students to try to assess costs associated with health impacts from toxic exposures. Then compare this with costs involved with halting the exposures, what might be lost from health protective measures, such as reduced production of plastic, higher costs for car and truck fuels, other things we’d either no longer be able to have or that would become so expensive that few could afford them.
Check out the additional Explorations, and assignment pages.Most of all, remember it is OK to say, “I don’t know,” and to actively learn alongside your students. An Environmental Humanities treatment of these subjects is just beginning to emerge. In this light, consider artistic expressions and reflections from what students learn, with creative response such as poetry, prose, visual and audio art, and other forms that enable