Toxicology & Risk

Objective:
The objective for this exercise is for students to gain experience in critically examining materials and succinctly reporting their reactions to various types of evidence or arguments.

Instructions:
Using the material presented in class over the past two weeks, as well as that presented in chapters 3 and 4 of your textbook, examine the film Blue Vinyl in terms of the risk of vinyl chloride to human populations and to the environment. In framing your response, please consider the following questions.

1. What EH concepts that we've covered so far are integral to the topic---the vinyl industry---on which this production focuses?
2. Who are the stakeholders in the "vinyl" issue and how is each (group; individual) portrayed? What are the biases in the portrayals and why?
3. How might this video be used as a tool? And by whom? Do you think it would be effective? Why/why not?
4. In what situations featured in the documentary might Risk Communication be effectively applied?
5. How credible is the documentary? Why? How would you ascertain the credibility?
6. Each character in the movie has a fairly evident worldview. Briefly describe two of the main characters and suggest what his/her worldview---as applied to the vinyl issue---might be. What might have been the influences on their individual worldviews?

Date Due: Due in class on January 20.

Grading Criteria:
A successful paper will be about 2 pages in length; it will have a clear assessment of both the weight of the evidence and the coherence of the argument presented; and it will be free from grammatical and spelling errors, and if any sources are cited, it will contain the appropriate references.