A new course titled Consequences of a Chemical World is being offered to both science and non-science majors in their freshman year in the university. Novel and innovative aspects of this course include an assumption that a course on chemicals in the environment does not depend on a pre-existing base of chemical facts, and is best introduced at the start of a university curriculum, a belief that laboratories associated with the course should be completed outside of the university itself, in the arenas in which the real business of environmental assessment, monitoring, and regulation is achieved, that continued involvement of the students in environmental issues, and magnification of the impact of the course, can be accomplished through presentations by the students of selected aspects and topics of the course to others in local school and community forums. The course is divided into parts so that sub-sections, or even individual lectures and demonstrations, can be repeated in other universities, in high schools, and in community meetings.
