Risk and Risk Assessment
Activities
| Ideas | Activities |
|---|---|
a | Ways of expressing risk |
a, d, e | Prevention of Cancer |
b, c | Risk - your personal choices |
b, d, e | Mobile phones and the precautionary principle |
b, c, d | Nuclear Waste Disposal |
a, d, e | Risks of Radon |
a, e | Estimating your radiation dose |
b, e | Xeno day - risk |
1. Ways of expressing risk
This set of calculations illustrates different ways of expressing the same risk and points out the difference between absolute risk and relative risk.
It could be used in two parts or the whole done as a revision exercise at the end of the topic. The difference between absolute and relative risk is an important one in the critical interpretation of media reports.
Teacher notes and student sheets (
, 546 KB)
2. Prevention of Cancer
The main activity is discussion in small groups, to evaluate information on the best way of reducing cancer deaths and to reach decisions on priorities.
Teacher Notes and Student sheets (, 61 KB)
3. Risk - your personal choices
This is a short introductory activity on risk to illustrate the factors that affect our risk decisions.
Teacher notes and student sheets (, 517 KB)
4. Mobile phones and the precautionary principle
Activity and information written for the SPU course by the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Manchester University .
This activity uses class activity and news reports and considers the whole issue of uncertainty of evidence of harm and the use of the Precautionary Principle, in the context of mobile phones.
5. Nuclear Waste Disposal
This activity reminds students of the issues surrounding the disposal of nuclear waste and asks them to take the role of a number of different parties on the disposal debate.
Teacher Notes and Student Sheets (, 37 KB)
6. Risks of Radon
(estimated time: 45 minutes)This activity is similar to the discussion in the textbook on pages 181-183 but includes more studies and more questions on decision making.
Teacher Notes and Student Sheets (, 24 KB)
7. Estimating your radiation dose
(estimated time: 50 minutes)In this activity students have to consider all the different sources of ionising radiation to which they are exposed and to calculate their total dose. The dose will depend mainly on where they live and what medical exposure they have had in the last year. The activity should give students a better feel for the relative contributions to the total made by natural and artificial sources and would make a good preparation for discussions of risk from ionising radiation.
Teachers notes and Students Sheets (, 217 KB)
8. Xeno day - risk
(estimated time: 100 minutes)This activity is adapted from the session run by Robert Doubleday at the
SPU Xenotransplantation conference Feb 2002. The separate sections could be
run as successful short activites in their own right. The main activity is
a role play of a government committee advising the Secretary of State for
Health on applications to hold clinical trials of xenotransplantation.
Teacher Notes and Student Sheets (, 508 KB)