Contents:
This course gives an overview of different aspects playing a role in the challenging field of environmental toxicology. Toxicology itself already is very interdisciplinary, but environmental toxicology even adds (environmental) chemistry, earth sciences, biology of a wide range of species and ecology to this. The course is set-up as an integration between lectures, practicals, computer sessions, videos and excursion. The book 'Principles of Ecotoxicology' is used to develop a basis for the rest of the subjects in the course. About half of the lectures will focus on a variety of timely additional issues. In the practical part of the course you will use a set of experiments to identify two unkown chemicals based on their toxicity profiles. Applying a set of modern in vitro and in vivo assays you will address the toxicity of the unknown and compare this with literature data/ Based on this, the identity of the chemicals can be assessed. This will be presented both orally as well as in a small report.
Learning outcomes:
After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:
- summarise the most relevant terms, principles and methods in environmental toxicology;
- distinguish the main sources and types of environmental pollutants and assess their potential environmental fate;
- evaluate the characteristics of compounds, organisms and ecosystem for their consequences for environmental fate and effect propagation:
- design and execute toxicological dose-response experiments in a comprehensive way and analyse and critically discuss the results (written);
- create an experimental approach with meaningful endpoints to assess the environmental and human risk for a topical environmental contamination case.
