Critical and Creative Thinking Questions 95✓✓THE PLANNER
- Which risk—an extremely small amount of a cancer-causing
chemical in drinking water or smoking cigarettes—tends to
generate the greatest public concern? Explain why this view
can be counterproductive. - Should public policy makers be more concerned with public
risk perception or with risks as calculated by experts?
Explain your answer. - Describe what you would expect to find in a risk
characterization. - What is the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic
Pollutants? - Is the absence of scientific certainty about the health effects
of an environmental pollutant synonymous with the absence
of risk? Explain your answer. - Explain how toxicology and epidemiology contribute to risk
assessment. - Describe how a persistent pesticide might move around in
the environment. - Why is air pollution a greater threat to children than it is to
adults? - Distinguish among persistence, bioaccumulation, and
biological magnification. - How do acute and chronic toxicity differ?
- Provide two arguments for and two against using the
precautionary principle to reduce climate change.
12–15. The figure to the right shows the organisms sampled in
the Long Island salt marsh study of DDT (also see Figure 4.8).
- If DDT is sprayed on land to control insects, how does it get
into the bodies of aquatic species? - Why does the Atlantic needlefish (5) contain more DDT in its
body than an American eel (4)?
Critical and Creative Thinking Questions
345621- How does high concentration of DDT cause reproductive
failure in birds at the top of the food chain? - In the figure, identify where human activities have
the greatest disruptive potential. Which parts have
the greatest potential to affect human health or well-
being? What does this suggest about the relationship
between your activities or consumption and the global
environment?
Sustainable Citizen Question