Questiоns 19-30 аre bаsed оn the fоllowing pаssage Toxic Agents in the Environment 1 Determining what types and levels of risk a potential toxicant might pose requires diligent scientific work, both in the laboratory and in the field. Shortly we will look at how scientists study the effects of toxicants in the lab, but first let's quickly survey what kinds of toxic agents exist around us and how they behave and move through the environment. Toxicants come in many different types 2 Toxicants can be classified into different types based on their health effects. The best-known arecarcinogens, chemicals or types of radiation that cause cancer. In cancer, certain malignant cells growuncontrollably, creating tumors, damaging the body's functioning, and often leading to death. In our society today, the greatest number of cancer cases is thought to result from carcinogens contained in cigarette smoke. Carcinogens can be difficult to identify because there may be a long lag time between exposure to the agent and the detectable onset of cancer. Historically, much toxicological work focused on carcinogens. Now, however, we know that toxicants can produce many different types of effects, so scientists have many more endpoints, or health impacts, to look for. 3 Mutagens are chemicals that cause mutations in the DNA of organisms (Chapter 4). Although mostmutations have little or no effect, some can lead to severe problems, including cancer and many otherdisorders. Mutations can harm the individual exposed to the mutagen, or if the mutations occur in sperm or egg cells, then the individual's offspring may suffer the effects. 4 Chemicals that cause harm to the unborn are called teratogens. Teratogens that affect the development of human embryos in the womb can cause birth defects. One example involves the drug thalidomide, developed in the 1950s as a sleeping pill and to prevent nausea during pregnancy. Tragically, the drug turned out to be a powerful teratogen, and its use caused birth defects in thousands of babies. Even a single dose during pregnancy could result in limb deformities and organ defects. Thalidomide was banned in the early 1960s once the connection with birth defects was recognized. Ironically, today the drug shows some promise in treating a wide range of diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, AIDS, and various types of cancer. 5 Some toxicants cause harm by affecting the immune system, which protects our bodies from disease. Allergens over-activate the immune system, causing an immune response when one is not necessary. One hypothesis for the increase in asthma in recent years is an increase in allergenic synthetic chemicals in our environment. Other toxicants may weaken the immune system, making the body less able to defend itself against bacteria, viruses, allergy-causing agents, and other attackers. 6 Neurotoxins are also harmful to the body. Neurotoxins, however, assault the nervous system.Neurotoxins include various heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and cadmium, as well as pesticides and some chemical weapons developed for use in war. A famous case of neurotoxin poisoning occurred in Japan, where a chemical factory dumped mercury waste into Minamata Bay between the 1930s and 1960s. Thousands of people in and around the town on the bay were poisoned by eating fish contaminated with the mercury. First the town's cats began convulsing and dying, and then people began to show odd symptoms including slurred speech, loss of muscle control, sudden fits of laughter, and in some cases death. The company and the government eventually paid out millions of dollars in compensation to affected residents. 7 Most recently, scientists have recognized the importance of endocrine disrupters, toxicants thatinterfere with the endocrine system. The endocrine system consists of a series of chemical messengers(hormones) that travel through the body. Sent through the body at extremely low concentrations, thesemessenger molecules have many vital functions. They stimulate growth development and sexual maturity, and they regulate brain function, appetite, sexual drive, and many other aspects of our physiology and behavior. Hormone-disrupting toxicants can affect an animal's endocrine system in various ways, including blocking the action of hormones or accelerating their breakdown. Many endocrine disrupters possess molecular structures that happen to be very similar to certain hormones in their structure and chemistry. If a molecule is similar enough, it may mimic a hormone and interact with the receptor molecules for that hormone, just as the hormone would. --Brennan, Withgott, Environment, Pearson, 2005, pp. 299-300 29. According to the information in the seventh paragraph, the endocrine system
Greаt wоrk! Freebie! (1.2 pоint) Reflect оn the concepts we've discussed so fаr this semester. How do the concepts we've discussed in our course relаte to what you're studying in other courses? Share any connections you've noticed.
Belоw there аre 7 primаry sоurce dоcuments (written аccounts and pictures) that pertain to this period of history (post WWII is when the Civil Rights Movement played out in the USA.) Use all 7 of the documents (and the rest of your knowledge from the course resources) to answer the prompt in an essay. Prompt you will answer: To what extent did the principles of democracy expand and contract during the Civil Rights Movement? Hint: You must address AT LEAST THREE of the Principles of Democracy ( justice, liberty, domestic tranquility, general welfare) and analyze how they apply to the documents provided in relation to the prompt (use all 7 documents in your essay.) You may bring in any other evidence you have learned about in the course in your explanations. Document 1 People are always saying to me, you are in the University of Mississippi, and that’s the important fact. But so many unusual unique things have been a part of my stay here that I seriously doubt that I am in a true sense a student of the university. I'm inclined to go along with the diehard segregationists on this point. Just having a Negro in residence does not mean that the university has been integrated. Most of the time, I am perhaps the most segregated Negro in the world If a white student sits down and drinks a cup of coffee with me, or walks with me across the campus, he is subjected to unhampered intimidation and harassment. I have been denied my privileges all along, but these whites have not been. Now they have lost a simple freedom. This sets back the Negro, because anytime you move backward, the person already down suffers more. This campaign, which apparently has been permitted to go on, really results in a reduction of everybody's rights.-James Meredith, First Negro admitted to University of Mississippi, 1963 Document 2 And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. -Martin Luther King Jr., Excerpt from "I Have a Dream," 1963 Document 3Recounting her experience at a 1963 Sit-in at Woolworths: At noon, students from a nearby white high school started pouring in to Woolworth's. When they first saw us they were sort of surprised. They didn't know exactly how to react. A few started to heckle and the newsmen became interested again. Then the white students started chanting all kinds of anti-Negro slogans. We were called a little bit of everything. The rest of the seats except the three we were occupying had been roped off to prevent others from sitting down. A couple of boys took one end of the rope and made it into a hangman's noose. Several attempts were made to put it around our necks. The crowd grew as more students and adults came in for lunch.The mob started smearing us with ketchup, mustard, sugar, pies, and everything on the counter. Soon Joan and I were joined by John Salter, but the moment he sat down he was hit on the jaw with what appeared to be brass knuckles. Blood gushed from his face and someone threw salt into the open wound. About ninety policemen were standing outside the store; they had been watching the whole thing through the windows, but had not come in to stop the mob or do anything. -Anne Moody, 1968 Document 4 Image: Police use dogs to quell civil unrest in Birmingham, Ala., in May 1963. Birmingham's police commissioner "Bull" Connor also allowed fire hoses to be turned on young civil rights demonstrators. These measures set off a backlash of sentiment that rejuvenated the flagging civil rights movement. -AP photo, 1963 Document 5 AN ACT To enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes. SEC. 2. No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color. -Excerpt from the 1965 Voting Rights Act Document 6 One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to this point there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghettos and the black-belt South. There has been only a "civil rights" movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of middle-class whites. It served as a sort of buffer zone between that audience and angry young blacks. It claimed to speak for the needs of a community, but it did not speak in the tone of that community. None of its so-called leaders could go into a rioting community and be listened to. In a sense, the blame must be shared--along with the mass media--by those leaders for what happened in Watts, Harlem, Chicago, Cleveland, and other places. Each time the black people in those cities saw Dr. Martin Luther King get slapped they became angry. When they saw little black girls bombed to death in a church and civil rights workers ambushed and murdered, they were angrier; and when nothing happened, they were steaming mad. We had nothing to offer that they could see, except to go out and be beaten again. We helped to build their frustration. -Stokely Carmichael, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, 1967 Document 7 Reaction to last summer's disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division. Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American.[Change] will require a commitment to national action--compassionate, massive and sustained, backed by the resources of the most powerful and the richest nation on this earth. From every American it will require new attitudes, new understanding, and, above all, new will-Excerpt from the Kerner Report, following an investigation of urban riots and unrest in the summers beginning in 1964, released in 1968