Panhandle Health District

                                                            8500 N. Atlas Road         Hayden, Idaho  83835

www.phd1.idaho.gov

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                      Date:     October 22, 2010                       

Contact:                                                                        Released by: Lora Whalen, Director                     

Cynthia Taggart

Public Information Officer

(208) 415-5108

(208) 818-7288 (cell)

Health District Makes a Difference with Atlas Students

Hayden – Atlas Elementary students studied the ground under their shoes in wonder Thursday as environmental health specialists from the Panhandle Health District (PHD) explained the Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer to them using ice cream and breakfast cereal.

              “There’s ice cream under me?” a second-grade boy said, giggling as he studied his mock aquifer made from cereal, milk, chocolate ice cream and green sugar sprinkles.

              PHD participated in Make a Difference Day, which is actually Saturday, by teaching Atlas Elementary students about the importance of keeping the Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer clean and the damage tobacco does to the body.

              About 100 students started their Make a Difference Day experience feeling pigs’ lungs and seeing the amount—one quart—of tar that builds up in the lungs of a one-pack-a-day smoker over a year’s time. They moved on to a container with two cups of hair gel that represents the amount of phlegm a person with emphysema coughs up in one day.

              The pigs’ lungs were real. One was pink and healthy. The other was blackened to show tobacco’s toll—emphysema, a tumor, the accumulation of tar. Kids wore protective gloves and touched the lungs gingerly with one hand as they held their nose with the other.

              Natalie Forsyth from the American Lung Association and three students from Lake City High and Coeur d’Alene High in Teens Against Tobacco Abuse (TATU) answered questions and encouraged the children to feel the lungs.

              The children will follow up the lesson by writing encouraging letters to someone they hope will quit smoking and by designing posters for the Great American Smoke-Out.

              The children concluded their Make a Difference Day experience shouting answers in the sunshine outdoors about where their water comes from and how they can protect it.

              “It comes from the faucet,” one boy said confidently while other children guessed the ocean, lakes and underground.

              PHD’s environmental health specialists told the children they were standing over the aquifer, then gave them each cups half-filled with cereal puffs that represented rocks. Milk poured on the cereal symbolized water and chocolate ice cream on top served as dirt. Green sugar sprinkles over everything represented grass and plants.

              Children inserted straws for the wells that deliver the water to the surface. But before kids could dive into their ice cream treats, environmental health specialists poured about a teaspoon of red cherry pomegranate juice over the top. Kids watched as red veins trickled through the ice cream and cereal puffs and mixed with milk.

              “I just contaminated your aquifer,” PHD’s Dick Martindale, Environmental Section Manager, told a group of children. “It’s just juice. It’s not really contamination,” he added quickly after he saw the uncertainty on their faces. “But that’s how chemicals and bad stuff reach our water when we dump them on the ground.”

              Children received Aquifer Atlases with maps, history, study results and more information to share with their families.

              “This is the best aquifer I ever tasted,” one girl told the environmental health specialists as she thanked them for the Make a Difference Day experience.