CONTAMINANTS
What can this be?
And what does it have
To do with me?

These lyrics might not sound like anything that you would hear on a Top 40 hit, but when they are backed up by a rolling beat, even a song about contaminants can be entertaining. The Contaminants Found Me CD, released in 1999, is part of a curriculum project designed to teach Yukon students about problems with contaminants in the Yukon environment.

CONTAMINANTS
They're everywhere
They don't belong
You'd best beware.

Topics like long-range atmospheric transport, biomagnification and bioaccumulation can be hard to pronounce, much less understand, but this CD shows the sort of friendly upbeat approach used to deal with these issues.

The CD, put together by the students in the 1998 MAD (Music, Art and Drama) class, is just one of the materials produced during the last two years to deliver information about contaminants. Students also helped make two videos, one on contaminants and the other on acid rock drainage. Curriculum guides have been developed for students in Grades Three to Ten, and several wildly colourful posters illustrate key concepts.

Jeanne Burke, a curriculum developer, says that her role was really to be the traffic director for this undertaking. A former teacher, she says that she relied heavily on input from other teachers and students to develop the guides. Local artists and musicians also worked on the project, giving it the creative flair that marks all of the materials.

Experiments were tested extensively in classrooms before they were included in the guides. One of her favourite experiments is on long-range atmospheric transport, and she uses materials pulled out of a large plastic box loaded with paraphernalia for a demonstration.

Burke fills the "tropic" plastic bottle with hot water, and pours in a bit of red dye. The "polar" bottle is filled with cold water and placed upside down on top of the tropical bottle. As the plastic card separating the mouths of the two bottles is slowly pulled away, the red dye drifts up into the cold water of the polar bottle.

"See how it moves up in clouds," says Burke. "Visually it shows how a contaminant like an organochlorine will move north. It also shows how the North can act as a sink for contaminants."

In the last decade, organochlorines -- especially toxaphene, PCBs and DDT -- have been found in fish, polar bears and marine mammals throughout northern Canada. While many of these synthetic chemicals are banned in this country, they are still used in tropical countries, and transported north on the wind.

Local issues are also addressed. In one of the videos, two students muck about in the orange-coloured runoff from an abandoned mine and talk about problems with acid rock drainage.

In just eight not-too-technical minutes, this video covers pH levels, the differences between natural and human-caused acid rock drainage, and a range of other topics specific to mining in the Yukon. To Jeanne Burke, all Yukoners should have some understanding the Yukon's complex geology.

Mark Palmer, the head of the Yukon Contaminants Committee, thinks that Yukon kids might relate more easily to local issues such as this one than to some of the global issues. "The subject of contaminants is not just about long-range transport; there are also a lot of local concerns with mines and that sort of thing, and they are something that Yukoners can do something about more quickly," he says.

The committee, which is part of the National Contaminants Program, initiated the curriculum project. Palmer says that numerous efforts have already been made to provide information on contaminants, but getting the issues into the schools was seen as a priority.

"This was something that we had identified as important for the future of the Yukon, and an area that needed special attention. So really it is probably our biggest effort ever and also the most important," he says.

"Contaminants are still a good news story in the Yukon as things are still pretty darn good here. But we have to monitor it to make sure that it stays that way. We have to make informed choices," he says.

The first stage of the curriculum project was finished last June, but the contaminants group still has more ideas that they would like to develop. Other possibilities include board games, adapting the curriculum for younger children, and creating a web page for the information.

For more information on the contaminants curriculum, contact Jeanne Burke at 668-2506 or jbsk@yukon.net.