Environmental Chemistry

1. Environmental Chemistry The environment is made up of chemicals that can support or harm living things.

2. Learning Objective For Today: • Students will describe processes by which chemicals are introduced into the environment.

3. But First An Inspirational New Year’s Speech and Review of Class Rules:

4. As I was correcting your exams over Christmas break and weeping…

5. I decided that unfortunately you do need a mommy to teach you Science.

6. Routine, Routine, Routine • Every Monday I will post a Check & Reflect assignment on the class website. • It will be due on the following Monday. • You will hand it in THAT DAY with your NAME ON IT (emailing is fine). • I will record your mark and hand it back to be corrected on Tuesday.

7. Vocabulary words and study resources are posted for the new unit. • Try to review for 10/15 per day.

8. And now for the Inspiration

10. When will an interior decorator/designer every use Chemistry? • Why don’t you use chemistry to create some new amazing, beautiful, desirable, tres cool colour and gain a propriety patent miss fancy pants? Then every crazy rich client will want what you exclusively control, and you will be queen of the world. • So there.

11. What makes us happy?

12. I don’t think my job as a teacher is to teach you the “stuff” in the curriculum. • Life is not a little box • You can create • You should care • What makes life good is a passion for learning, empathy, wonder.

13. Gratefulness…

14. Excellence is a habit of the mind… • Do it because if feels good!

15. And Now, back to our regularly scheduled learning… • The environment is made up of chemicals that support or harm living things. • Interesting fact: an estimated 80 to 90 per cent of cancers can be attributed to environmental factors. • What makes chemicals unique is that there's only so much we can do as individuals to reduce our exposure to chemicals in the environment.

16. Chemicals can linger in our environment and eventually make their way into our bodies. • Without even knowing it, and despite our best efforts, we come in contact with these pollutants everyday — in our water, soil, air, food, and manufactured products. • Many industrial contaminants can be measured in our tissues and blood. • Traces of these chemicals have even been found in the blood of Inuit in northern Canada, although they live thousands of kilometers away from the original sources.

17. Water is one of the chemicals that is essential for life. • Can only live a few days without it. • Life-supporting substances dissolve in water and are transported to all parts of your body. • Water carries waste materials to your kidneys for removal. • Is it possible to die from drinking too much water?

18. “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” • In January 2007, hours after competing in a radio station contest to win a Nintendo Wii, 28 Jennifer Strange was found dead in her home. • She died from drinking too much water too quickly, resulting in a condition called water intoxication. • Water intoxication causes an electrolyte imbalance that affects concentrations of the ion sodium, and it leads to a condition called hyponatremia.

19. The exact amount of water intake that can lead to water intoxication is unknown and varies with each individual. • Symptoms of water intoxication actually look a lot like the symptoms of alcohol intoxication, including nausea, altered mental state, and vomiting. • Other symptoms include severe headaches, muscle weakness and convulsions. In severe cases of water intoxication, coma and death come fairly quickly as a result of brain swelling.

20. Medicine from the environment • When you look at a willow tree, you probably just see a tree… a pharmaceutical chemist sees an important chemical- salicylic acid. • Some environmental chemicals can interact to cure sickness and improve health in organisms. • First Nations people made use of chemicals in their environment for food and medicine.

21. Willow bark tea • Used by First Nations, and in Europe at least as far back as 400 B.C. • Hippocrates- Known as the Father of Medicine- recommended it to treat pain and fever. • Active ingredient in willow bark was identified in the 1800s as salicylic acid.

22. Bayer Company • 1898, German company used a synthetic version of this chemical, acetylsalicylic acid, to develop a new medicine under the brand name Aspirin.

23. Racism • There was a period of time in history (ethnocentrism/colonialism) when Europeans rejected knowledge coming from societies they considered inferior… from First Nations, Asians, even other Europeans.

24. Aspirin is just one example of the many medicines we use today that were originally derived from naturally occurring chemicals in the environment. • E.g. Many people use an extract made from the purple coneflower (Echinaciap.) to help stimulate their immune systems. • Plants can be made up of hundreds of different chemicals. When a potentially useful chemical is found, it must be tested for safety and effectiveness.

25. Thanks Bill! • Thanks to the science guy… we now know that the trees, mountains, the air we breathe- everything that makes up the environment is made up of chemicals. • Not all chemicals in the environment support living things. Naturally produced substances can be harmful. • Forest fires and volcanoes (or as we learned from Kuwait- burning oil) release large amounts of chemicals such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and ash.

26. Human activities can also cause chemical changes in the environment. • We benefit from using products such as gas, electricity, and pesticides, but by using them we may be harming both the living and non-living environment. • Right now, we don't have a very good relation with creation. (Pope Francis)

27. The Nitrogen Cycle • P.S. I hate the nitrogen cycle.

28. Elements are pure substances that cannot be broken down into other substances. • All chemical compounds are made up of elements. • Some elements, such as oxygen & carbon are always moving through ecosystems. • They form chemical compounds that are used and reused by living things.

29. The chemical compound water changes state as it moves through ecosystems • The repeating changes of these elements and water as they move through ecosystems is called a cycle. • The element nitrogen cycles this way.

30. Nitrogen Fixation • Plants require nitrogen to make substances necessary for life. • However, plants can use nitrogen only when it is combined with other elements, such as hydrogen and oxygen. • Air is about 78% nitrogen in the form of Nitrogen gas (N2(g)) but plants can’t survive using this “free” nitrogen directly.

31. Nitrogen Fixation • It has to be “fixed” in compounds with other elements. • Nitrogen fixation is the process of changing free nitrogen so that the nitrogen atoms can combine with other elements to form compounds that organisms can use.

32. Certain types of bacteria do most of the nitrogen fixation in the soil. • Some of these bacteria are located in the root nodules of specific types of plants, such as beans, clover, and alfalfa.

33. The bacteria are able to separate the two atoms that form nitrogen gas (free nitrogen). • Once separated, the nitrogen atoms can form compounds with other elements, such as hydrogen and oxygen. • Lightening also converts nitrogen in the air to nitrogen compounds that plants can use.