UNIT 1: Activities

Pre-activity

1. Brainstorm a list of all the items you use in your home that go down the drain.
2. Brainstorm common household products or items that you think may contain harmful chemicals. Reflect on how people use these products and what people do with them when they no longer use the product (e.g. electronics, cleaning products, old/unused medications, paint). How do your friends, family, and neighbors dispose of the products you brainstormed? Answers may include: dumping in the trash; washing down a storm drain; pouring down the sink or toilet; dumping on the ground or in a backyard; recycling; reusing (i.e. pass it on to a friend or neighbor); or disposal at a household hazardous waste collection site. 
3. Explore three of these disposal scenarios using paper and pencil to draw the path you think the product will take for each disposal option. Will the harmful chemicals stay where they were dumped or will they move through the environment? If the latter, how will the chemicals (pollutants) be transported? Rain? Wind? Truck?

Activity 1:

How Safe Are Your Personal Care Products?

Find 3 to 4 shampoo, soaps, cleaning products, or other personal care product bottles. Does each bottle have an ingredient list? Look up the product and/or chemical ingredients on Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Database. You can search by product name or by looking up the specific chemicals listed on the ingredient list. Assess the rank of the chemicals or products you use.

Discussion Questions:

• Did all of your products have an ingredient list? Discuss concerns related to lack of labeling and transparency?
• What assumptions are you able to make and not make about your product if data is limited?
• What challenges might different people face with limiting or eliminating toxic chemicals in household products?
• Who should be responsible for making sure products are safe?

Activity 2:

Pharmaceutical-Wastewater Simulation

Supplies: glass jar, water, sugar, coffee filter

1. Place one cup of water in a glass jar or cup.
2. See how many sugar cubes or teaspoons of sugar you can dissolve in one cup of water. Be sure to stir the water and dissolve each teaspoon or cube one at a time.
3. In this experiment, the sugar is the solute, and the water is the solvent. How many sugar cubes were you able to dissolve in one cup of water? Is water an effective solvent? 
4. Create a hypothesis: will the water filter remove the sugar from the sugar-water solution? 
5. Place a coffee filter above an empty jar. Pour each cup of the sugar-water solution through the coffee filter (you can also use a water pitcher filter for this activity).
6. While the water drips through the filter, explain that the sugar represents pharmaceutical waste and chemicals in personal care products that go down the drain through normal use or improper disposal. Explain how these chemical wastes can pass through wastewater treatment processes and enter waterbodies like the Columbia River.
7. Use this diagram to trace the different ways pharmaceutical waste can enter water sources. 
8. Taste the filtered water.
9. Was the filter effective in removing the dissolved sugar from the water? Why or why not? 

Discussion Question:

• Who is responsible for cleaning up the hazardous substances that leak into the environment: consumers, producers, towns, or cities? 
• Explore options for safe disposal of pharmaceuticals

This lesson is adapted from https://www.productstewardship.us/.

Additional Resources:

• List of essential vocabulary terms for Columbia Riverkeeper's Pollution Prevention Curriculum
• Watch our Homebodies & Waterbodies Webinar with Dr. Arlene Blum to learn about some of the chemicals found in household products.
• Check out our tips (en Español) on how to keep the Columbia safe from household pollutants.
• Watch the Six Classes videos to better understand chemicals of concern and how to avoid them.

This project has been funded wholly or in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under assistance agreement RB 01J73501 to Columbia Riverkeeper. The contents of this website subpage do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Environmental Protection Agency, nor does the EPA endorse trade names or recommend the use of commercial products mentioned in this document.