PREFACE:

In 1980, the town of Love Canal, in the United States, was declared a "disaster" area and more than 900 families were evacuated. This exercise is concerned with assessing potential community exposures to multiple chemicals at a toxic dump site and then determining if those exposures may have human biologic effects. Many different environmental and epidemiologic studies were performed at Love Canal over a five-year period by government agencies and community groups. Precise and objective measures of human exposure were difficult to develop. Many kinds of acute and chronic illness received attention, especially reproductive abnormalities and cancer.


The exercise covers the development of a community exposure/health effects survey, analysis of survey results, and use of methods available for studying long-term, delayed health outcomes and for assessing potential sub-clinical effects.

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Postgraduate Diploma in Occupational Health (DOH) - Modules 3: Occupational Medicine & Toxicology (Basic) by Profs Mohamed Jeebhay and Rodney Ehrlich, Health Sciences UCT is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 South Africa License. Major contributors: Mohamed Jeebhay, Rodney Ehrlich, Jonny Myers, Leslie London, Sophie Kisting, Rajen Naidoo, Saloshni Naidoo. Source available from here. For any updates to the material, or more permissions beyond the scope of this license, please email healthoer@uct.ac.za or visit www.healthedu.uct.ac.za. Last updated Jan 2007.
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