Module 8

Information from Course Outline
Module 8, Closes Monday, October 22th [Minimata discussion closes on Wednesday, 24 October]

Introduction
The liver and kidneys are major organs for toxicological study. The liver is the major biotransforming organ, but the kidney also is active in biotransforming chemicals. The kidney is the major excretion organ, although the liver also excretes xenobiotics. Here we will only cover some general principles, because in our upcoming discussions of toxic agents, we will cover details as they relate to those organs. Alcohol rates a separate chapter because its toxicology and social effects warrant it and because it illustrates several types of organ damage to the liver. The vast majority of cancers in lab animals involve those two organs. Risk Communications and Ethics are two subjects I try to teach in all my courses, and this is the week for them. Risk communications because engineers and scientists often have trouble when they deal with the public on issues relating to toxic chemicals. Ethics because it is the one thing I hope my students remember after they have forgotten the technical details I taught.

Reading from Stine and Brown
Chapters 11 and 12. For this module, the student should read submodules 8A and 8C before reading the respective chapters of Stein and Brown.

Homework.
There are 25 points for this module's homework. a.) 10 points for individual written assignment, b.) 10 points for the discussion, and c.) 5 points for the message to the instructor.

a.) Individual written assignment. Review the IRIS sheets on your chemicals. (See below if there is not an IRIS sheet for you.) Scan them and look at the target organs. Almost surely one or two will have liver or kidney as a target organ. Review in three or four paragraphs the nature of the toxic effect on those organs. From the submodules and the text, you should be able to understand most of the details of the effects described. Your goal is to describe them, using both the technical biomedical words and either the common words or otherwise explain them such that a college graduate with a degree in poetry or drama could understand what you are describing. Besides the effects, note in what species the effects were seen. Were they observed in one species and not another? Was an explanation provided? One gender or both? For some of you, just one of your chemicals will provide enough material. For others, you may need two or three of your chemicals. For some, you may not have enough liver or kidney damage for this essay. In that case, Go to the IRIS list and choose any chemical that is not on this list.

b.) Discussion. The question for discussion is at the end of Submodule 8D page 3.

c.) Write a message to the instructor and ask at least one question about the material in this module, or something that pertains to your paper. Include the outline of your paper, preliminary results of literature search, and questions about the topic noted in Module 7. Also, look at the Topic Outline. You'll see the remaining topics, as currently planned. Note that Module 14 is "Special Topics." What you see there now were the topics selected last class. Module 14 is any topic the class wants. Also, since you will not be quizzed on it, it could be topics that are specific to one or two students. Usually there are several topics that come up. So as part of your message to the instructor, please let me know what you might want for a special topic.

ENVE 652 Homepage