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Contaminated Sediments

Unit Stats |
Key Themes |
Threads |
Objectives |
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Unit Stats

Grade levels 9-10 (7-8 and 11-12 w/modifications)
About 13 days, in toto

Key themes

Pollution and environmental cleanup
Bioaccumulation and bioavailability in food webs
Scientific methods

Stanford Researcher: Professor Richard Luthy

This unit contains classroom materials based on Richard Luthy’s work with contaminated sediments. Students who complete the entire unit will learn about persistent organic pollutants and partitioning of pollutants in an ecosystem. They will explore issues of environmental justice with regards to pollution. Students will understand bioaccumulation and bioavailability in a food web. Finally, students will design experiments to answer real-world questions and write a research proposal. The clean-up of contaminated sediments at Hunter’s Point in San Francisco, CA serve as a backdrop for these lessons.

Alternate threads through these materials:

Thread 1: Social Studies Thread: 1 → 2 → 3
Explores issues of pollution and environmental justice
Thread 2: Life Sciences Thread: 1 → 5 → 6 → 8
Pollution, bioavailability, bioaccumulation, food webs, and in situ stabilization of pollutants
Thread 3: Physical Sciences Thread: 4 → 5 → 7 → 8
PCBs, partitioning and in situ stabilization of pollutants

Learning objectives, lesson by lesson

Lesson Title	Lesson Objectives - after completeing this lesson students will ...
Lesson 1 Cleaning up messes	Identify a problem (messy desks), find available resources to address the problem, and attempt to fix the problem. Trace the movement of pollution from desks to trashcans and sinks and relate this movement to real pollution situations. Recognize that an inherent problem with cleaning up pollution is finding a new location for the pollutants.
Lesson 2 Superfund Sites	Understand the purpose of The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund). Use maps to locate Superfund sites in their state. Research some of the pollutants found at a nearby Superfund site, the source(s) of those pollutants, who is responsible for the pollution, and the pollutants' effects on human health. Consider why a particular Superfund site is being cleaned and identify some of the ways cleanup is being addressed at that site.
Lesson 3 Hunters Point	Identify low-income communities as frequent sites of hazardous waste disposal Identify the environmental concerns faced at Hunters Point Shipyard Be introduced to Professor Richard Luthy as a scientist working to clean up contaminated sediments at HPA.
Lesson 4 Dilution and PCBs	Understand how solutes can be diluted by adding more solvent Model and calculate dilution factors using food coloring. Engage in a jigsaw to understand the nature, behavior and sources of PCBs in the environment
Lesson 5 Sediment Contamination	Understand how different types of substances behave in a water column Understand why PCBs partition into sediments Model the sampling of sediments using by taking core samples Become familiar with some of the invertebrates that live in the sediments of the San Francisco Bay
Lesson 6 Food Chains	Create a food web that shows the movement of energy within a representative food web in the SF Bay See how an aquatic food chain can cause toxins to accumulate in organisms at the highest trophic levels
Lesson 7 Cleaning Up Contaminated Sediments	Understand that a significant challenge with environmental clean up efforts lies in the difficulty of keeping hazardous material contained during the clean up. Experiment with different ways to clean up contaminated sediments using the models created in lesson 5. Appreciate and articulate the limitations of capping and dredging as methods for cleaning up or containing contaminated sediments. Propose an ideal method for addressing the problem of contaminated sediments and support their proposal with evidence from their experiments.
Lesson 8 In Situ Stabilization	Observe the ability of activated charcoal to bind to a chemical without making it actually disappear Refine their definition of “cleaning” to include making a toxin less bioavailable Explain Professor Luthy’s definition of “ecological recovery” of a PCB-contaminated site
Lesson 9 Richard Luthy’s Lab	Articulate the steps involved in a scientific investigation and design controlled experiments to answer a research question Read graphs of original data from Luthy's lab to interpret the results of an experiment
Lesson 10 Writing a Proposal for Funding	Report results from controlled experiments designed in Lesson 9 Write a research proposal for funding to implement a large-scale sediment clean-up project using in situ stabilization at Hunter's Point

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