Renewed Sense of Commitment
Environmentalists were rallying for more stringent enforcement of environmental policies, but the Reagan administration failed to express the same level of enthusiasm and support that had characterized the Nixon and Carter presidencies. Economic and political decisions that once involved environmental organizations now seemed to undermine the very spirit and intent of NEPA by sidelining environmental efforts. The membership ranks of environmental groups grew in response to these political...
The International Movement
Europeans were struggling with their own environmental disasters. Swedish scientists had been studying the connection between common air pollutants like sulfur and nitrogen dioxides and high levels of acidity in many of their waters. Documenting an overall decline in the biological diversity of Scandinavia, the scientists hoped to capture international attention. The 1972 U.N. Conference on the Human Environment, hosted by Sweden, was the perfect place to present their findings. Air pollutants...
Legal Support for Environmentalists
Special-tactic groups began to emerge to accommodate the transition of environmental issues onto the national agenda. One such group was the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). A generous grant from the Ford Company led to the creation of the NRDC, a science-based initiative dealing with the new legal aspects of the movement. Even local citizen groups began to focus their interests. The Brookhaven Town Natural Resources Committee (BTNRC), a coalition of scientists and residents of Long...
The Advent of Pollution Policies
The public's environmental agenda and steady pressure to create national pollution laws led U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson to make a bold move. He had an idea for a national teach-in on environmental issues. A task force calling itself Environmental Action was formed to develop the idea. By seeking official support, avoiding confrontation, and scattering events across the United States, the committee hoped to involve the entire society. Many established environmental groups refused to participate,...
The New National Agenda
If the 1960s arrived with a compelling or infamous start, it exited in the same fashion. In 1967 an oil tanker off of Great Britain ran aground, spilling 40,000 tons of oil. Attempts to contain the accident and salvage the remaining oil were useless. The tanker spilled another 77,000 tons of oil that washed Crew of the Japanese whaling ship Kyo Maru 1 using water cannons to disperse activists during an antiwhaling demonstration in the waters of the Antarctic Ocean, December 16, 2001. ( AFP...
The Power of Activism
By the time the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union was signed in 1963, citizens were learning about chemical fallout right in their own backyards. In 1962 Rachel Carson's Silent Spring introduced a public dialogue about the impacts of toxic chemicals, specifically DDT, on wildlife and the environment. C sar E. Ch vez, leader of the United Farm Worker's Union, raised awareness of the diseases farmworkers suffered due to chemical exposure. Eventually...
Environmental Movement
History is marked by movements that challenge the dominant political ideology in ways that cannot go unnoticed. Civil rights, women's rights such movements are often rooted in small beginnings, the passion of few, which becomes the cause of many. Born from late-nineteenth-century concern over resource exploitation, the environmental movement has become an overarching term for the growing public interest in protecting Earth and its natural resources. Naturalists like John Muir, in the late 1800s...
Environmental Justice
Environmental justice is broader in scope than environmental equity (equal treatment and protection under statutes, regulations, and practices), emphasizing the right to a safe and healthy environment for all people, and incorporating physical, social, political, and economic under the heading of environments. It is also a less incendiary term than environmental racism, which can be intentional or unintentional, and suggests discrimination in A rally before the march to Laidlaw dump in...
Environmental Impact Statement
National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (NEPA) requires that all federal agencies prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) prior to making decisions that could have a significant impact on the environment. An EIS includes a description of the proposed action alternatives to the action, including the null (no action) alternative a description of the environmental context expected impacts and irreversible use of resources and ways to potentially lessen such impact. Impacts are...
Environment Canada
Canada's Department of the Environment, commonly known as Environment Canada, was founded in 1971. It was created to bring the different aspects of Canadian environmental policy, which had until then been split between several different departments, under the control of one main body. Environment Canada has primary, but not exclusive, control of implementing Canada's environmental policies (the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, for instance, still has control of fisheries protection)....
Investigation Case Development and Litigation
At the EPA, and in many U.S. states, enforcement cases typically go through three phases inspection and information-gathering, administrative case In the largest Clean Air Act settlement in history, The Virginia Electric Power Co. agreed to spend 1.2 billion between 2003 and 2013 to install new pollution control equipment and upgrade existing controls at eight VEPCO generating plants in Virginia and West Virginia. The company, one of the largest coal-fired electric utilities in the nation, was...
Control of Indoor Air Pollution
Basic approaches to control indoor air pollution include source control, source isolation, increased ventilation, dehumidification, and the use of filters (see the table). Possible sources of contamination are eliminated in a source-control strategy. Examples include banning smoking in public buildings, using carefully selected building materials to avoid the emission of toxic or irritating substances, and limiting the use of fibrous materials. Source-isolation strategy is used in situations...
Health Effects of Indoor Air Pollutants
Health effects due to indoor air pollutants may be short- as well as long-term. Short-term problems include a stuffy, odorous environment and symptoms such as burning eyes, skin irritation, and headaches. Long-term health problems have a longer latency period or are chronic in nature. The magnitude and duration of detrimental health effects are influenced by the time of exposure, concentration, presence of a preexisting unhealthy condition, and age. Health conditions involving some allergic...
Causes of Indoor Air Pollution
There are a variety of causes of poor indoor air quality. A NISOH study based on over five hundred complaints found that inadequate ventilation and the release of contaminants from indoor and outdoor sources are the primary reasons for indoor air quality problems (see pie chart). Inadequate ventilation may be defined as insufficient air to remove pollutants that are degrading the quality of air. Thus, the air quality in a building is the result of a contest between the pollutants and the...
Combustion
Waste incineration involves the application of combustion processes under controlled conditions to convert waste materials to inert mineral ash and gases. The three Ts of combustion (temperature, turbulence, and residence time) must be present along with sufficient oxygen for the reaction to occur The burning mixture (air, wastes, and fuel) must be raised to a sufficient temperature to destroy all organic components. The combustion airflow is reduced to the minimum level needed to provide the...
Incineration
Incineration is the thermal destruction of waste. It is as old as throwing food wastes on a wood fire, and in many developing nations, garbage is still routinely burned in drums and boxes on city streets. Modern incineration systems use high temperatures, controlled air, and excellent mixing to change the chemical, physical, or biological character or composition of waste materials. The new systems are equipped with state-of-the-art air pollution control devices to capture particulate and...
Avoiding Exposure and the Use of Green Products
There are several steps one can take to reduce exposure to household chemicals. An adjacent table provides a list of alternative products. One can bring unused and potentially harmful household products to a nearby chemical The styrene-butadiene (SB) latex backing that is used on most new carpets is a source of styrene and 4-phenyl cyclohexene (4-PC). Styrene is a known toxic and suspected carcinogen. 4-PC is not known to be toxic, and it continues to be emitted at measurable levels for a...
Household Pollutants
Household pollutants are contaminants that are released during the use of various products in daily life. Studies indicate that indoor air quality is far worse than that outdoors because homes, for energy efficiency, are made somewhat airtight. Moreover, household pollutants are trapped in houses causing further deterioration of indoor air quality. Hazardous household products fall into six broad categories household cleaners, paints and solvents, lawn and garden care, automotive products, pool...
Chemical Pollution
In 1984, 30 tons of lethal methyl isocyanate gas were released into the air in Bhopal, India, from a Union Carbide plant. Thousands of people (estimates range from 2,500 to well over 8,000) died immediately. Deaths and disabilities continued to plague the populace for years following what was termed, at the time, the worst industrial accident in history. A year later, in Institute, West Virginia, another Union Carbide plant released toxic gas into the atmosphere, resulting in illnesses among...
Air Pollution
The growth of population centers coupled with the switch from wood-burning to coal-burning fires created clouds of smoke over cities as early as the eleventh century. Air pollution regulations first appeared in England in 1273, but for the next several centuries, attempts at controlling the burning of coal met with notable failure. The problem was not confined to London, nor was it confined to England. As the Industrial Revolution swept across countries, and as coal became common in private...
Water Pollution
That is why most human settlements always began near a water source. Conflicts over control of such sources started in ancient times and continue today, as evident in the Middle East, for example. Israel's National Water Carrier project was the target of attacks by neighboring Arab countries and an escalating factor in the tensions that led to the 1967 Six-Day War. Unfortunately, the importance of clean water was not understood until the second half of the nineteenth...
History
In fact, it is older than most people realize. Archeologists digging through sites of Upper Paleolithic settlements (settlements of the first modern humans, between forty thousand and ten thousand years ago) routinely find piles of discarded stone tools, and the litter from the making of these tools. One could even argue that the first use of wood-burning fire ushered in the era of air pollution. Lead pollution from Roman smelters can be traced all across...
Heavy Metals
The heavy metals, which include copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), nickel (Ni), cobalt (Co), and chromium (Cr), are common trace constituents in the earth crust. Their concentrations in the ambient environment have increased dramatically since the Industrial Revolution, as have lead and copper since Roman times. Many of these metals play an essential role in human physiology. For example, the enzymes that synthesize DNA and RNA contain zinc ions, and cobalt is an integral part of...
Difficulties in Determining Environmental Health Effects at Low Exposure Levels
Pollution levels in most of the industrialized world are now relatively low. Lowering these levels further will be more expensive and, in the absence of convincing public health need, it will be more difficult to create the public will for additional reductions. At the same time, the health consequences of low levels of pollutants are undeniably more difficult to determine. This difficulty arises from two facts. The first is that people differ, often significantly, in their response to...
Environmental Health in the Postindustrial World
Pollution itself, particularly from human activities, is not a modern phenomenon. The preindustrialized world certainly offered many opportunities for a polluted existence. Wood fires, the close proximity of livestock, and mining and smelting operations all would have presented conditions for polluting either the air or water, or both. Following the Industrial Revolution, however, the combined concentrations of people and industrialized processes conspired to create pockets of intensely...
Environmental Health in the Preindustrial World
Human health and human disease have always been intimately connected to the environment. The environment contains the positive, in the form of air, water, and nutrients, and the negative, in the form of bacteria, viruses, and toxins. Humans have developed elaborate defense systems to protect against adverse environmental effects. These include immune systems that attack bacteria and other foreign bodies, DNA repair enzymes that defend the integrity of genetic structure, and metabolizing enzymes...
Disposal Options and Problems
Disposal options for hazardous waste include landfills, injection wells, incineration, and bioremediation, as well as several others. The greatest concern with the disposal of hazardous waste in landfills or injection wells is that toxic substances will leak into surrounding groundwater. Groundwater is a major source of drinking water worldwide and once it is contaminated, pollutants are extremely difficult and costly to remove. In some instances, it is impossible to remove groundwater...
Waste Minimization and Recycling
Recycling and waste minimization may be the best ways to deal with hazardous waste. Waste minimization reduces the volume of waste generated, whereas recycling means that less hazardous waste requires disposal. Techniques for waste minimization may include audits, better inventory management, production process equipment modifications, and operational maintenance procedures. Raw material changes, volume reductions, nonhaz-ardous material substitutions, reuse, or recovery also reduce hazardous...
Hazardous Waste
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), enacted in 1976, defines hazardous waste as a liquid, solid, sludge, or containerized gas waste substance that due to its quantity, concentration, or chemical properties may cause significant threats to human health or the environment if managed improperly. U.S. legislation considers a waste hazardous if it is corrosive, flammable, unstable, or toxic. Sources of hazardous waste may include industry, research, medical, household, chemical...
Hayes Denis
AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALIST ORGANIZER OF FIRST EARTH DAY (1944-) Denis Hayes, at the time a twenty-five-year-old Harvard law student, organized the first Earth Day celebration on April 22, 1970. Earth Day inspired the grassroots participation of twenty million people in the United States and marked the coming-of-age of the environmental movement. It brought concerns about pollution and the environment into the awareness of the American public, and Congress responded by passing a series of...
Hamilton Alice
During the Progressive Era, Alice Hamilton became part of the revolution of thought about the causative factors of disease, explicitly linking environmental From left to right Mrs. F. Louis Slade, Marion Edward Park, and Alice Hamilton. ( Bettmann Corbis. Reproduced by permission.) From left to right Mrs. F. Louis Slade, Marion Edward Park, and Alice Hamilton. ( Bettmann Corbis. Reproduced by permission.) factors to serious illnesses or epidemics. To satisfy her passion for social activism,...
Halon
Halons and other halocarbons (carbon- and halogen-containing compounds), such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), are responsible for the breakdown of stratospheric ozone and the creation of the Antarctic ozone hole. Halons are a subset of a more general class of compounds known as halocarbons. Halons contain carbon, bromine, fluorine, and, in some cases, chlorine. Halons are entirely human-made and are used primarily in fire extinguishers. One of the most common halons has the chemical formula...
Groundwater
Groundwater is the water that exists below the land surface and fills the spaces between sediment grains and fractures in rocks. A geologic formation saturated with groundwater is considered to be an aquifer if it is sufficiently permeable as to allow the groundwater to be economically extracted. It is replenished naturally through the infiltration of rainfall and artificially through the irrigation of crops. Soluble chemicals in rainwater (like NOx in acid rain) or at the land surface (like...
Greenpeace
Biodiversity refers to the variety and variability among living organisms and the ecological complexes in which they occur for biological diversity, these items are organized at many levels, ranging from complete ecosystems to the biochemical structures that are the molecular basis of heredity thus, the term encompasses different ecosystems, species, and genes Greenpeace is the largest environmental organization in the world with 2.8 million supporters worldwide and national as well as regional...
Greenhouse Gases
Anthropogenic human-made related to or produced by the influence of humans on nature Greenhouse gases are trace gases in the atmosphere that absorb outgoing infrared radiation from Earth and thereby, like a greenhouse, warm the planet. Naturally occurring greenhouse gases (primarily water vapor and carbon dioxide) make the planet habitable for life as we know it. Anthropogenic greenhouse gases contribute to further warming, referred to as global warming. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is both a natural...
Green Revolution
The green revolution refers to the widespread introduction of industrial agriculture into developing countries that began in the 1940s. As seen in Norman Borlaug's work on world hunger, its early promoters led by the Rockefeller Foundation assumed that increased food production would alleviate hunger in poor countries and thereby help prevent red (i.e., communist) revolutions. Although the green revolution has led to impressive increases in agricultural production over the years, critics such...
Green Party
The Green Party movement is rooted in sustainable environmental democracy, which derives historically from the early confederacy of five Native-American nations in New York state called the Iroquois Confederacy. The confederacy was matriarchal, cooperative, tribal, and regionally based. As Donella and Dennis Meadows note in their book Beyond the Limits (1993), the concepts of environmental stewardship and intergenerational sustain-ability originated in the confederacy. American revolutionaries...
Green Marketing
Green marketing is a way to use the environmental benefits of a product or service to promote sales. Many consumers will choose products that do not damage the environment over less environmentally friendly products, even if they cost more. With green marketing, advertisers focus on environmental benefits to sell products such as biodegradable diapers, energy-efficient light bulbs, and environmentally safe detergents. People buy billions of dollars worth of goods and services every year many...
The Principles of Green Chemistry
Chemists and chemical engineers applying green chemistry look at the entire life cycle of a product or process, from the origins of the materials used for manufacturing to the ultimate fate of the materials after they have finished their useful life. By using such an approach, scientists have been able to reduce the impacts of harmful chemicals in the environment. Research and development in the field of green chemistry are occurring in several different areas. Alternative feedstocks....
Green Chemistry
The term green chemistry, coined in 1991, is defined as the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. This approach to the protection of human health and the environment represents a significant departure from the traditional methods previously used. Although historically societies have tried to minimize exposure to chemicals, green chemistry emphasizes the design and creation of chemicals that are not hazardous to people...
The Function of Government in Society
The role of government in a society rests on the answer to one question Are humans essentially good or bad A society that views humans as essentially good sees little need for government (hence, the government would be limited and inactive). A society answering essentially bad sees the need for a large and active government. Environmental issues center on this question. Are people and corporations self-interested (or bad) and thus in need of governmental regulation Or are people able to act for...
Comparative Democratic Governments
The movement to harmonize legislation and open borders in Europe under the European Union (EU) is a confederated system similar to the THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT The Legislature The branch of government that proposes and enacts laws. Usually comprised of one or more chambers or houses, whose members are usually elected, though sometimes they may be appointed. A legislature debates and decides what laws to enact. In the United States, the national legislature, the U.S. Congress, has two houses...
The Development of the US Government
The first U.S. government, established in 1781, was a treaty of friendship called The Articles of Confederation. This treaty among independent nation states (the thirteen colonies) allowed each state to establish its own laws, coin its own money, and tax import goods. Jointly, each state was obliged to assist the others in defense and to pay a share of the Revolutionary War costs. Common laws were to be enacted only when state delegates to a Congress agreed on them unanimously. There was no...
Democracy and Representation
The U.S. system of government is a representative system rather than a pure democracy. In a pure democracy, citizens decide together what actions the government should take. The New England town meeting reflects this concept most closely. Generally, the U.S. representative system, also called republican (after the Roman form of government), functions by agents Relatively few citizens elected periodically by the populace at large make decisions about what the government should act on....
Government
Government is the set of formal institutions used by a society to organize itself government sets rules for general conduct by citizens. These rules are usually based on customs that have evolved in that society. Most governments include formal organizations that serve legislative, executive, or judiciary functions. These are called branches of government. Government may also be organized into levels national government and subordinate governments such as states or provinces, counties, and...
Responses to Climate Change
These effects are likely to be beneficial in some places, but disruptive in most, and as a consequence, governments around the world have begun planning responses to climate change. These fall into two categories mitigation, which involves taking action to prevent climate change (usually by cutting greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptation, which involves adapting to the effects as and after they happen. For example, if sea levels rise in the next century due to thermal expansion of the oceans,...
Climate in the Twentyfirst Century
Climate forecasts are inherently imprecise largely because of two different sorts of uncertainty incomplete knowledge about how the system works understandable for a system governed by processes the spatial scales of which range from the molecular to the global and uncertainty about how important climate factors will evolve in the future. A variety of factors affect temperature near the surface of the earth, including variability in solar output, volcanic activity, and dust and other aerosols,...
Causes
Gases such as water vapor, methane, and carbon dioxide allow short-wave radiation from the sun to pass through to the surface of the earth, but do not allow long-wave radiation reflected from the earth to travel back out into space. This naturally occurring insulation process dubbed the greenhouse (Departure from 1880 to 1920 base period) (Departure from 1880 to 1920 base period) PERCENT REDUCTION IN JUNE-AUGUST SOIL MOISTURE effect keeps the earth warm In its absence, the earth would be about...
Global Warming
Global warming is the gradual rise of the earth's near-surface temperature over approximately the last hundred years. The best available scientific evidence based on continuous satellite monitoring and data from about 2,000 meteorological stations around the world indicates that globally averaged surface temperatures have warmed by about 0.3 to 0.6 C since the late nineteenth century. Different regions have warmed some have even cooled by different amounts. Generally, the Northern Hemisphere...
GIS Geographic Information System
A geographic information system (GIS) is an integrated computer system that allows the storage, mapping, manipulation, and analysis of geographic or spatial data. It can present many different layers of information, all of which may be turned on or off depending on the user's needs. Several components are required for a GIS to function properly. A GIS typically consists of computer hardware, software, and the people operating the system, as well as the spatial or geographic data being...
Gibbs Lois
Grassroots individual people and small groups, in contrast to government GRASSROOTS ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST AND Lois Gibbs is a leading activist in defending the public from the dangers of toxic waste. In 1978, she discovered that her neighborhood of Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, was built on top of 21,000 tons of hazardous chemical waste. Faced with the health threat to her family and community, Gibbs transformed from a shy housewife to the antipollution activist now known as the...
Fuel Economy
Variable vale control a system for automatically adjusting engine valve timing for better fuel efficiency The fuel economy of an automobile, measured in miles per gallon (MPG), is the distance it can move using one gallon of fuel. In 1975, in the midst of concerns about oil consumption, the U.S. Congress passed a law establishing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which required an increase in the fuel economy of all new cars and light trucks starting in 1978. The law required...
Fossil Fuels
Coal, petroleum, and natural gas are referred to as fossil fuels. Their common origin is as living matter, plants, and, in particular, microorganisms that have accumulated in large quantities under favorable conditions during the earth's long history. They have been preserved (fossilized) through burial under younger sediments, to great depths and over many millions of years. The organic elements hydrogen (H) and carbon (C) are the primary source of their heat content (hence the derivation of...
Suffocation
Suffocation occurs when the oxygen concentration in the water falls below the level at which fish can survive. A common cause is eutrophication, which is the artificial stimulation of plant growth by pollution with fertilizers, sewage, or atmospheric fallout. When the excess plant growth decays, it lowers the oxygen concentration. The discharge of dead organic matter into a watercourse from a sewer or from an industrial operation has the same effect. The accidental spilling of a herbicide into...
Disease
In natural environments, disease alone does not usually result in mass mortality, but under the artificial conditions of a hatchery or an aquaculture operation, disease can spread rapidly and cause a fish kill. The disease may be caused by viral infections, bacteria, fungi, or internal or external parasites. In these same natural environments, it is more common for fish to be weakened by disease and then killed en masse by some stressful environmental situation, such as low-oxygen...
Poisoning
Fish may be poisoned by a wide range of polluting substances, including pesticides, acids, ammonia, phenols, cresols, compounds of metals, detergents, or cyanides. Many of these substances are used in industrial processes or in agriculture and are released through drains or are accidentally spilled into waterways. Acid rain, derived from industrial pollutants in the atmosphere, causes rivers to become toxic for various kinds of fish. Some types of toxic algal blooms kill fish. During the 1990s...
Fish Kills
When a number of dead fish are found in one place, the incident is referred to as a fish kill, and there is significant reason to suspect pollution. The three main causes of fish kills are poisoning, disease, and suffocation. Sanitation worker using a rake to remove dead fish from the Rodrigo de Freitas lake in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. ( Reuters New Media Inc. Corbis. Reproduced by permission.) aquaculture practice of growing marine plants and raising marine animals for food
Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide
The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) is the principal governmental statute that regulates the use of pesticides to destroy, mitigate, or repel insects, pathogens, weeds, rodents, and other pest organisms. It licenses the use of these pesticides for intentional release into the environment. The law, first enacted in 1947 and amended in 1959 and 1961, requires that chemical pesticides be registered before they can be sold or distributed in interstate commerce. The rules...
T
Tableware, disposable, 2 212 Tailings, defined, 2 48 Taking Stock, 2 22 Takings, 2 149-150 Takings Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain, 2 150 Takings impact analysis, defined, 2 150 Tangible costs and benefits, 1 114 Tankers, oil, 1 138-139, 1 141, 1 202-203, 2 104-405 See also Oil spills Tax reforms, ecological, 2 27 Taxes landfill, 2 174 on plastic bags, 2 181 TBT. See Tributyltin TCA (Trichloroethane), 1 99 TCDD (2,3,7,8-tetrachloro dibenzo 1,4 dioxin), 1 122-123 TCE. See...
R
Rachel Carson Witness for Nature, 1 83 2 154, 2 203 Racism, environmental, 1 196-198, 1 206, 1 208-210, 1 219 Radar equipment, cancer and, 1 67 Radiation exposure, 2 162-163, 2 333 See also specific types of radiation Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, 1 40 Radio frequency (RF), 1 67 Radioactive fallout, 2 160-161 Radioactive pollution, 1 134-137, 1 187, 1 188, 1 264-265, 2 286 Radioactive wastes, 1 40, 1 183, 1 188, 1 265, 2 161-166, 2 162, 2 164, 2 290, 2 330-331 See also Hazardous...
P
See Pollution prevention PACCE (People Against a Chemically Contaminated Environment), 2 61 Packaging, plastic, 2 110-114, 2 113 hydrocarbons Paine, Thomas, 1 239 Paints lead, 1 276, 2 14, 2 249 recycling, 2 172 reuse, 2 183 Palmerton, Pennsylvania, 1 59 Palo Alto Hardware, 2 176 Paper products, 2 212, 2 213 as energy source, 2 176 recycling, 2 171, 2 215 Paracelsus, 2 250 Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow, 1 294 Paraquat, 2 98 Parathion, 2 96 Park, Marion Edward, 1 246 Parkinson's disease, 1...
M
Macerals, defined, 1 101 MacInnes, Scott, 1 161 Macroeconomics, 1 153 Macroscopic, defined, 2 312 Control Technology Magna Carta, defined, 2 149 Malaria, DDT and, 1 118-119, 1 211-212 Malleability, defined, 2 14 Malnutrition, 2 139 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 2 32, 2 32-33, 2 137-138, 2 139, 2 328, 2 333 Malthusian hypothesis, 1 164, 2 32, marine, 2 314-315 oil spills and, 1 138-139 Man and Nature, 2 228, 2 327, 2 330 Managed bioremediation, 1 54 Management adaptive, 1 21 environmental, 1 295-296,...
L
1 169, 1 190 FIFRA and, 1 213 of green products, 1 238 laws and regulations on, 2 184 of plastics, 2 112, 2 172 Labor, farm, 1 88-89, 1 202, 2 1-2 Labor market, defined, 2 56 Labor reform, 1 22 Labor unions, 1 88-89, 2 1-2, 2 121, 2 325, 2 326 Ladies of the Canyon, 2 133 LaDuke, Winona, 2 2-3, 2 3 Laidlaw dump, 1 197 Lake acres, defined, 2 117 Lake Erie pollution, 1 7-8, 2 306 Lake Malawi, 1 291 Lake Michigan, 2 306 Lake Nyasa. See Lake Malawi Lake Ontario, PCBs in, 1 51 Lakes, polluted. See...
K
Kanawha Valley, 1 125 Karabache, Russia, 2 210 Karr, James, 2 197 Katonah, New York, 1 146 Kauai, Hawaii, 2 30 Keep America Beautiful, 2 132, 2 133 Keith, Carl, 2 198 Kennedy, John F., 1 84, 2 62 Kerr-McGee, 2 133 Kesterson Slough, California, 2 252 Kettleman City, California, 1 209 Keynes, John Maynard, 1 153 Khian Sea, 2 291 KI (Potassium iodide) pills, 1 134 King Jr., Martin Luther, 2 154 Kinlaw, D.C., 2 135 Kitt Peak National Observatory, 2 29 Kluczewo, Poland, 1 94 Knudson, Tom, 2 36 Koch,...
H
HAA (Hormonally active agents), 1 254 Habit modification, 2 74-75 Habitat. See Commission on Human Settlements (United Nations) Habitats, recycling and, 2 170 La Hague, France, 2 165 Hague Convention, defined, 2 282 Hale Telescope, 2 29 Half-life, 1 134, 2 94, 2 161 Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2 174, 2 313-314 Haloacetic acids, 2 195, 2 270 Halocarbons, 1 87, 1 245, 2 87 Halogenated organic compounds, defined, 1 255 Halons, 1 245, 2 87 Hamilton, Alice, 1 200, 1 245-246, 1 246, 2 148, 2 202, 2 327, 2...
G
Gaia hypothesis, 2 231 Gal pagos Islands, 1 141 Galena, Kansas, 2 48 Gamma radiation, 2 162, 2 167 Garbage, 2 289, 2 313 barrel burning of, 1 65 collection, 1 21-22, 1 200, 1 231, 2 202 See also Landfills Municipal solid wastes Gas chromatography, 2 193-195, 2 194 1 166-167 Gaseous wastes, 2 290 Gasification, 1 167 Gasoline acid rain and, 1 3 bioremediation of, 1 54, 1 55 as carcinogen, 1 67 engines, 1 180-181, 1 189 fuel economy and, 1 218-219 underground storage tanks for, 2 266, 2 268-269...
F
See Manufacturing Fallout, from hydrogen bombs, 1 39 Fallout, radioactive, 2 160-161 Farm labor. See Labor, farm Farming. See Agriculture Farmworkers. See Labor, farm Far-UV See UV-C radiation Fatalistic, defined, 2 32 Fauntroy, Walter, 1 220, 2 288 FBI. See Federal Bureau of Investigation FDA. See U.S. Food and Drug Administration Fecal matter, defined, 1 117 Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations, 1 199 Federal agencies....
E
Orbital debris and, 2 220 oxone image, 2 85 Earth Charter, 2 72 Earth Day 1970, 1 146-149, 1 147, 1 262 Clearwater at, 1 201 direct action groups at, 1 9 Hayes, Denis and, 1 246 mass media and, 2 35, 2 120 Nelson, Gaylord and, 1 11, 1 204, 2 62 New Left and, 2 63 recycling and, 2 169 Earth Day 1990, 1 149, 1 247, 2 35 Earth Day 2000, 1 149 Earth Day Network, 1 149 Earth First , 1 16, 1 19, 1 149-151, 1 150, 1 160-161, 1 204, 1 206 Earth First The Radical Environmental Journal, 1 150 Earth in...
C
See Clean Air Act Cabinet level, defined, 2 147 Cadmium health hazards of, 1 248 as priority pollutant, 2 117 from smelting, 2 205 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2 235 CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards, 1 189-190, 1 218 CAFOs (Concentrated animal feeding operations), 1 26, 2 308 Calcium carbonate, acid rain and, asthma studies in, 1 49 Corona, 2 223 pervious concrete use in, 2 77 regulatory agencies, 1 23 See also Los Angeles smog California...
B
2 197-198 in bioterrorism, 2 238 chlorination for, 2 320-321 in wastewater treatment, 2 300 Bacterial infections, 1 251 indoor air pollution and, 1 277, 1 278 Legionnaires' disease, 1 278 Baghouses, defined, 1 274 Bald eagles, 1 82 Ballschmiter, K., 2 91 Bangladesh cholera in, 2 311 climate change and, 1 227 Bari, Judi, 1 161 Barnes Aquifer, Massachusetts, 2 310-311 Barrels, burn, 1 65 Barry Commoner's Contribution to the Environmental Movement, 1 104 Basel Convention on the Transboundary...
A
Abalone Alliance, 1 40 Abandoned mines, 2 47 Abatement, 1 1-3, 1 94 dioxins, 1 123-124 education for, 1 162-164 electric power generation, 1 169-170 of freshwater pollution, 2 310 of sedimentation, 2 201-202 Thames River, 2 312 of thermal pollution, 2 242-243 See also Cleanup Pollution prevention Aberfan, South Wales, 1 132 Absorption, for indoor air pollution, 1 278 Absorption spectra, 2 195-197, 2 197 Accidents. See Disasters Acetylcholine, defined, 2 96 Acetylcholine (ACh), 2 96-97 AcH...
Glossary
24-hour standard in regulations the allowable average concentration over 24 hours absorption spectrum fingerprint of a compound generated when it absorbs characteristic light frequencies absorption the uptake of water, other fluids, or dissolved chemicals by a cell or an organism (as tree roots absorb dissolved nutrients in soil) acetylcholine a chemical that transmits nerve signals to muscles and other nerves acute in medicine, short-term or happening quickly adherence substances sticking to...
Ishimure Michiko
The methyl-mercury poisoning in Minamata Bay first became apparent in 1953, with sick children and dancing cats, cats so frenzied they would dance and die. Initially it was thought that this was a contagious disease, and the victims were spurned by other villagers. It became obvious in the late 1950s that the release of methyl mercury from the Chisso chemical plant in Minamata Bay had caused high levels of mercury in fish, which resulted in the health problems of the local community, especially...
Integrated Pest Management
Integrated pest management (IPM) refers to strategies used to minimize the application of chemical pesticides and to combat plant pests, such as insects and other arthropods, pathogens, nematodes, weeds, and certain vertebrates, without incurring economic plant damage. All plant pests (as well as other life-forms) have natural enemies, and the use of such biological control agents is commonly thought to form the basis of IPM. Biological control can be practiced through the introduction,...
Injection Well
Sedimentary related to or formed by deposition of many small particles to form a solid layer porosity degree to which soil, gravel, sediment, or rock is permeated with pores or cavities through which water or air can move impermeable not easily penetrated the property of a material or soil that does not allow, or allows only with great difficulty, the movement or passage of water aquifer an underground geological formation, or group of formations, containing water are sources of groundwater for...
Use of Information
Environmental management is a shared responsibility of the public, business, and government. The public continuously makes consumer choices such as where to reside and what herbicides to use based on available information. Citizens also participate as partners in local pollution monitoring and environmental restoration projects. Businesses use pollution data to improve competitiveness through better manufacturing practices. Governments use the data for advancing the scientific understanding of...
Formats of Information
Most federal and state environmental data are now available in a digital format. Typically, the data have two components spatial (map) location, and descriptive data table attributes such as date, chemical type, and amount or concentration. Initially, each pollution program such as air emissions or Superfund, was managed with an independent database. This presented major difficulties in combining information across programs. The establishment of a mandated Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) was a...
Kinds and Sources of Information
In response to the factors that shape the government's ability to collect data, a variety of alternative approaches have been developed to facilitate the creation of pollution-related information. First party data are acquired directly by a government agency. This approach is well suited to long-term programs designed to assess environmental change. For example, New York state operates a network of air pollution monitoring stations. Much pollution emissions data, however, are second party. That...
Public Access to Information
Elected officials and agency administrators are accountable to the public. As government grew, program complexity hindered information access. In 1946 the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) required agencies to make public for review and copying its organization description, decision processes, data collection procedures, and lists of data sets (record series). In practice, however, data access was often denied. Requestors were required to document their intended uses (need to know). Rachel...
Information Access to
The generation and distribution of public information play a central role in the evolution of a strong democracy. Quality information is essential for effective governmental programs. The U.S. Constitution mandates a population census every ten years to apportion congressional representation. Land and water maps were necessary for defense, navigation, and planning the development of the frontier. By the late 1800s the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce were charged with...
Infectious Waste
Infectious waste is that portion of medical waste that is contaminated with pathogens that may be able to transmit an infectious disease it is also referred to as regulated medical waste. Infectious waste represents a small percentage (usually between 5 and 15 percent) of a health care facility's total waste stream. In the United States each state defines and sets standards for management, treatment and disposal of infectious waste. Most definitions concur that the following wastes should be...
Unchanged Industry Behavior
Sometimes, polluting companies have not succumbed to social, political, and governmental pressures. Several companies have denied responsibility for pollution even when faced with strong evidence to the contrary. Other companies, after admitting responsibility, promise strong action, but deliver nothing. Still other companies have performed admirably when it comes to being environmentally friendly. However, industry, for the most part, is only responding to the general demand for a higher...
Environmental Business Costs
Environmental advancements have been made over the past 150 years regarding industrial behavior. In the past, companies had been able to regard the air, land, and water as free goods. Often, companies saw the pollution they generated as something they could externalize. That is, since air, land, and water pollution usually affects areas that businesses do not own, then it was not their responsibility to address and consequently there was no need to increase costs in order to limit their wastes....
Evolution of Industrial Perspectives and Pollution
Pollution first became a persistent problem during the Industrial Revolution. The introduction of the factory system, the substitution of hand labor by machine labor (which led to dramatic rises in productivity), the application of power (mainly coal) to industrial processes, and the use of the railroad all helped to accelerate the pollution problem. Early small-scale industries resulted in local concentrations of air and water pollution and land contamination. The area of London, England, is...
Common Industrial Polluters
Many of the largest polluters come from the chemical, pesticide, oil refining, petrochemical, metal smelting, iron and steel, and food processing industries. All are major users of energy that produce large amounts of waste products and pollution. Other industries have less potential impact but are still considered highly problematic when it comes to pollution. These industries include the textile, leather tanning, paint, plastics, pharmaceutical, and paper and pulp industries. Industries that...
Public Perception
The public is becoming increasingly aware of the interactions and conflicts between industry and the environment. Events such as the 1989 oil spill from the tanker Exxon Valdez off Prince William Sound in Alaska one of the most publicized and studied environmental tragedies have highlighted the growing significance of maintaining a healthy environment while improving how corporations operate. Business responses to environmental influences fall within a wide spectrum of actions and inactions. On...
Industry Groups
An industry is a collection of companies that operate in a related set of goods or services, which are eventually sold to purchasers. In any country, numerous industries work together to produce the necessary goods and services needed and desired for its people. By convention, industries are divided into three groups Primary industries are involved in the collection, utilizing, and harvesting of resources directly produced by physical processes (e.g., mining and smelting). Secondary industries...
Early History
Human contamination of the earth's atmosphere has existed since humans first began to use fire for heating, cooking, and agriculture, approximately one-half million years ago. The mining and smelting of ores that accompanied the transition from the Stone Age to the Metal Age (roughly 5,000 years ago) resulted in wastes that spread potentially toxic elements such as lead, mercury, and nickel throughout the environment. Professor Clair Patterson, a geochemist at the California Institute of...
Environmental Racism
Up to the late 1960s, racism was defined as a doctrine, dogma, ideology, or set of beliefs. The central theme of this doctrine was that race determined culture. Some cultures were deemed superior to others therefore, some races were superior and others inferior. During the 1960s the definition of racism was expanded to include the practices, attitudes, and beliefs that supported the notion of racial superiority and inferiority. Such beliefs and practices produced racial discrimination. However,...
Industrial Ecology
Industrial ecology aims to reduce the environmental impact of industry by examining material and energy flows in products, processes, industrial sectors, and economies. Industrial ecology provides a long-term perspective, encouraging consideration of the overall development of both technologies and policies for sustainable resource utilization and environmental protection into the future. It emphasizes opportunities for new technologies and new processes, and those for economically beneficial...
Crusade for Reform
As the nation grew, the gap between people and the natural environment was widening. The introduction of railroads, telegraphs, and stockyards, helped transform cities into major industrial centers. Populations within cities increased, as immigrants flocked to them seeking employment. The resulting noise, grit, and industrial waste compelled women in the cities to take action. In Chicago, social worker Jane Addams was prepared to do just that. Coupled with the efforts of Alice Hamilton and Mary...
An Age of Abundance
At the end of World War II, the United States underwent rapid economic growth. The postwar abundance could be easily pinpointed by the mass consumption of everything from energy and detergents to plastics and pesticides. Goods were created and marketed to provide convenience, and amenities were plentiful. As Samuel Hays observed, a greater distance between consumption and its environmental consequences increasingly depersonalized the links between the two (Hays, p. 16). If people couldn't see...
D
Dahlberg, Kenneth, 1 240 DaimlerChrysler, 1 216 Dams, 2 74 hydroelectric, 1 9-10, 1 61 Serre de la Fare, demonstration against building of, 2 120 Darwin, Charles, 1 141 Data collection, 1 288-291 Databases, environmental data, 1 290-291 Davis, Devra Lee, 2 330 Dazomet, 2 97 2 270, 2 316, 2 320 DDE (Dichlorodiphenyl dichloroethylene), 1 252 DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane), 1 118-120, 1 119, 2 94, 2 250 chemical structure of, 1 118 defined, 1 176, 2 1 discovery of, 2 96 EPA and, 2 262-263...
Deterrent Enforcement vs Cooperative Enforcement
In the 1990s, a controversy arose regarding the most effective and appropriate approach to enforcing environmental laws in the United States. One view favors deterrent enforcement, which is based on the premise that regulated entities will comply with environmental standards when economic (and other) costs of noncompliance are greater than those of compliance. Under this approach, the task for environmental regulators is to make noncompli-ance penalties sufficiently high, and the probability...
Managed Bioremediation
When bioremediation is applied by people, microbial biodegradation processes are said to be managed. However, bioremediation takes place naturally and often it occurs prior to efforts to manage the process. One of the first examples of managed bioremediation was land farming (refers to the managed biodegradation of organic compounds that are distributed onto the soil surface, fertilized, and then tilled). Many petroleum companies have used it. High-molecular-weight organic compounds (i.e., oil...
S
Sabadilla, 2 97 Sachsman, David B., 2 34 Sacramento (CA) Bee, 2 36 Safe Drinking Water Act (SWDA) of 1974, 1 244, 2 62, 2 122, 2 123, 2 263, 2 304, 2 309, 2 316-317, 2 321, 2 322-323 Sagebrush Rebellion, 2 149, 2 324 St. Gabriel, Louisiana, 1 71 St. Helena Bay, South Africa, 1 215 St. Lawrence River, 2 314 Salvage, space, 2 222 Salvage yards, 2 183 Salvation Army, 2 182 San Cristobal Island, 1 141 San Francisco Bay, 1 258 San Joaquin Valley, California, 2 252 Station, California, 2 240 A Sand...
Indoor Air Pollutants from Other Household Activities
From time to time, homeowners complete a variety of remodeling projects to improve the aesthetic look of their house. These include new flooring, basement remodeling, hanging new cabinets, removing asbestos sheets, scraping off old paint (which might contain lead), and the removal or application of wallpaper. Such activities could be a significant source of indoor air pollutants during and after the project. Asbestos, formaldehyde, benzene, xylene, toluene, chloroform, trichloroethane and other...
Bibliography
Variations on a Theme Interplay of Genes and Environment Elevates Cancer Risk. Science News 147(187) 280. Extremely Low Frequency Electromagnetic Fields W.H.O. Classifies The Cancer Risk (Update). (2002). Journal of Environmental Health 65(5) 47. Munshi, A., and Jalali, R. (2002). Cellular Phones and Their Hazards The Current Evidence. National Medical Journal of India 15(5) 275-277. Richter, E.D. Berman, T. and Levy, O. (2002). Brain Cancer with Induction Periods...
The s Silence and Shouting
In 1962 American biologist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, an account of the environmental damage that had been caused by widespread use of the pesticide DDT. Like Thoreau, Carson was regarded by many critics as little more than a philosophical and scientific crank. But Carson's book put forth serious charges in scientific detail. The use of DDT had been hailed for saving millions of lives in Europe by killing insects that spread typhus and malaria. At the same time, she pointed out,...
Scientist Ecologist Writer Of Silent Spring
In 1963 an important national symbol almost became extinct. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, only 417 pairs of bald eagles nested in the continental United States that year. Eagle eggs cracked open easily because the parents ate prey containing the chemical dichlorodiphenyl trichloro-ethane (DDT), a pesticide widely used to kill insects that fed on field crops. In 1972, the use of DDT was banned in the United States, and the outcome was remarkable. By 1995, the bald eagle...
