Contaminants in the Environment

Catalog description

In this course students will gain familiarity with contaminant sources, their fate in the environment, transport through air/water/soil, and impact on humans and ecosystems. The physical and chemical properties of contaminants will be applied to explain their environmental behavior. Risk assessment and remediation examples will be used to demonstrate solutions to difficult environmental problems. Past environmental contaminant challenges, how these issues were resolved, and the emergence of new contaminants posing a threat to human and environmental health will be discussed. Labs will include benchwork, fieldwork, and data science applications to teach students important skills in sample/data collection, sample analysis, and data analysis. This course is suitable for science and engineering majors.