Environmental toxicology is the study of the nature, properties, effects, and detection of toxic substances in diverse environments and those exposed. In this unit, you will study an introduction to basic toxicology from a public health perspective, focusing on developing an understanding of the principles of the discipline and the concepts relating to environmental exposures. Topics that will be covered include routes of exposure, the concept of dose, dose-response relationships, absorption and distribution of toxicants, biotransformation and elimination, target organ toxicity, carcinogenesis, mutagenesis, teratogenesis and risk assessment. You will examine toxicants of interest within community and occupational environments as well as how they are tested and regulated. You will practise your professional skills by reviewing case studies and special topics of interest.
Level | Undergraduate |
---|---|
Unit Level | 2 |
Credit Points | 6 |
Student Contribution Band | SCA Band 2 |
Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.125 |
Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
Prerequisites:
48 credit points AND SCIE11022 OR ENVH11001 OR CHEM11041 OR CHEM11042 OR CHEM11044 Students who have completed other Chemistry or Biochemistry units should contact the Unit Coordinator. Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
Residential School | No Residential School |
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Each 6-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Assessment Task | Weighting |
---|---|
1. Online Quiz(zes) | 20% |
2. Written Assessment | 40% |
3. Take Home Exam | 40% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site .
Term 2 - 2023 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 60.00% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 38.46% response rate.
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
Bachelor of Public Health (Environmental Health)
Foundation and applied environmental toxicology (LOs 1, 2, 3, 4 & 6) are identified as underpinning skills and knowledge in Part 2 of the Environmental Health Australia Skills & Knowledge Matrix, used as the basis for accreditation of the Bachelor of Public Health (Environmental Health) course. Methods of risk assessment and management (including as applied to toxicological issues) (LO 5) and the use of evidence in regulatory practice (LO7) are also identified as underpinning knowledge. Additionally, toxicology is an integral part of many of the activity-specific skills and knowledge identified in Part 3 of the Matrix.
Bachelor of Occupational Health & Safety
An understanding of toxicology is also important to support studies in Occupational Hygiene, considered a core knowledge area in the Safety Institute of Australia's Body of Knowledge, proposed to be used for accreditation of OHS courses within Australia.
Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | |
1 - Online Quiz(zes) | • | • | • | ||||
2 - Written Assessment | • | • | • | ||||
3 - Take Home Exam | • | • | • | • |
Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | |
1 - Communication | • | • | • | • | • | • | |
2 - Problem Solving | • | • | • | • | • | ||
3 - Critical Thinking | • | • | • | • | • | • | • |
4 - Information Literacy | • | • | • | • | • | • | |
7 - Cross Cultural Competence | • | • | |||||
8 - Ethical practice | • | • | • |
Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | |
1 - Online Quiz(zes) | • | • | • | |||||||
2 - Written Assessment | • | • | • | • | • | • | ||||
3 - Take Home Exam | • | • | • |