The UltraViolet Impacts Network: Linking atmospheric education and health risk assessment

An ongoing project funded by the NSF Geoscience Education program is designed to create new interactions between college/school course activities and community interests, by focusing on measurements and assessment of ozone depletion and the resulting influences on ultraviolet (UV) climatology and health risk. Workshops and web-based interchange of data have been developed as a means of linking colleges, schools, agencies and the public in region-specific assessment of the environmental trends in UV exposure and associated health impacts. Workshops for college and high school instructors during summer 2000 and 2001 are providing hands-on training with UV and ozone instrumentation, information on accessing numerous databases, instruction on the scientific aspects of ozone variability and atmospheric transmittance of UV radiation, and demonstration of epidemiological methods for health impacts assessment. The combined data and interpretive information will be used for student inquiry projects with field measurements and database research related to spatial and temporal trends in the environmental and health indicators. Curriculum plans for monitoring UV flux and exposure risk include involvement of local and regional health and environmental agencies, and the research activities give students greater knowledge of the interdisciplinary aspects of atmospheric sciences. The participating colleges and schools form a "distributed knowledge" resource by exchanging course plans, data, analyses and discussion via Internet, which also allows examination of key geographic differences between ozone climatology, UV flux and public risk.