Module VI

Explain:

Ahh, memories . . . this week's module brought me back to my freshman year in college some twenty years ago.  I entered college as an atomopheric science (meteorology) major.  After a year and a half I realized that most meteorologists sit in front of computers and maps all day, and I would much rather be outside experiencing the weather than inside predicting it.  Long story short, I changed my major to biology and here I am. 

Anyway, many of the concepts like air pressure, jet stream, and atmospheric structure were things that I had learned and could actually remember from college - wow!  However, the relationship between atmospheric conditions and pollution was eye opening.  I had never heard of arctic haze before.  I didn't realize that pollution will sit during sunless winter months in the arctic because sunlight is the main driver of chemistry in the atmosphere.  I found further information on arctic haze from Siberian smoke in an article by Ned Rozell, my favorite Alaskan science writer.

I was saddened to learn in the TD videos that Alaska Natives as well as subsistence hunters in other countries are being told not to eat certain mammals or fish because of high levels of contaminants.  They're just supposed to stop what they’ve been doing for thousands of years because of what people in industrial population centers thousands of miles away have done?  I was not aware that the pollutants could travel so far.

Extend:

The YouTube video where ice was made after boiling water in a vacuum dome was neat.  I'm certain I'll show that one to my students.  At the end, the narrator said this process is often used in the pharmaceutical and food packing industries, but he didn’t elaborate.  I googled around a little, looking to connect it to prescriptions the kids take or food they eat, as a way to make the science relevant to them.

I ended up sort of off on a tangent, learning about vacuum distillation and its use in the refining of crude oil.  It's a little complex for 7th grade, but it's good to know, especially with the importance of the oil industry here in Alaska.

Evaluate:

Usually when I evaluate the week's module I feel I am doing so from a professional standpoint, wearing my "teacher hat".  This week I found myself reflecting on the module more personally rather than professionally.  I couldn't help but keep thinking back to the town where I grew up in Wisconsin.

Google Earth view of the Fox River from the College Ave. bridge

My hometown of Kimberly was originally built as a company town for a paper mill (Kimberly-Clark).  The banks of the river it sits next to, the Fox River, are dotted with many other mill towns.  When I was a kid, no one swam, fished, or boated in the river, and I never really questioned why.  The river was just this thing I saw when we drove over it on the bridge.  I had no connection to it.

As I got older, I learned that no one went in the river or ate fish from it because of the PCB pollution from the paper mills.  Eventually it was designated as an EPA Superfund site.  Dredging has been going on for years in the river to remove hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of contaminated sediment.

I feel emotional about this issue, but I'm not sharing this simply as a tale of woe.  The mills are still in operation and have cleaned up their act somewhat.  I realize that people need paper and that the economy in those towns is somewhat dependent on the mills.  However, I do think this story is relevant for people who live along rivers in Alaska.

As the TD videos have shown, many Alaska Natives are intricately connected to their rivers.  But that connection will be weakened if food from those rivers is no longer safe to eat.  There is already concern over how much fish should be consumed by Alaskans due to levels of mercury.  There is even a fish consumption calculator for women and children, along with a lot of other useful information, on the State of Alaska Epidemiology webpage  (look for this icon):

I know that Alaskan rivers don't have the concentration of industry along them that rivers in the Midwest do.  Thank goodness.  But as we learned in this module, pollutants can travel a long way through the atmosphere.  I would hate for there to be Alaskan kids someday who no longer had a connection to a river that was right in their own backyard, like I did.  And as the saying goes, we all live downstream.

Other Blogs I Commented On:

Martha had a commentary on village garbage dumps like the one in Barrow and the pollution they
 contribute.

Marilyn's blog had an informative diagram of a beluga whale that showed what pollutants it carried in its tissues and where they were concentrated.

Tracy shared a visual for understanding the chinook wind as well as how the chinook has affected her farm in North Pole.