Pollution A to Z

POLLUT ION A to Z E D I TO R I A L B O A R D Editor in Chief Richard M. Stapleton Senior Policy Advisor U.S. Environm...

Author: Richard M. Stapleton

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POLLUT ION A to Z

E D I TO R I A L B O A R D Editor in Chief Richard M. Stapleton Senior Policy Advisor U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Washington, D.C. Associate Editors Patricia Hemminger, Ph.D. New York, N.Y. Susan L. Senecah, Ph.D. Associate Professor State University of New York College of Environmental Science & Forestry E D I TO R I A L A N D P R O D U C T I O N S TA F F Frank V. Castronova, Shawn Corridor, Project Editors Mark Mikula, Angela M. Pilchak, Richard Robinson, Elizabeth Thomason, Contributing Editors Marc Borbély, Patti Brecht, Copyeditors Amy Loerch Strumolo, Proofreader Synapse, the Knowledge Link Corporation, Indexer Michelle DiMercurio, Senior Art Director Wendy Blurton, Senior Manufacturing Specialist Margaret A. Chamberlain, Permissions Specialist Leitha Etheridge-Sims, David G. Oblender, Image Catalogers, Imaging and Multimedia Content Dean Dauphinais, Image Acquisition Senior Editor, Imaging and Multimedia Content Lezlie Light, Imaging Coordinator, Imaging and Multimedia Content Dan Newell, Imaging Specialist, Imaging and Multimedia Content Randy Bassett, Imaging Supervisor, Imaging and Multimedia Content Macmillan Reference USA Frank Menchaca, Vice President and Publisher Hélène Potter, Director, New Product Development

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POLLUT ION A to Z volumes Richard M. Stapleton, Editor in Chief

1&2

Pollution A to Z Richard M. Stapleton, Editor in Chief Patricia Hemminger, Ph.D., Associate Editor Susan L. Senecah, Ph.D., Associate Editor

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Pollution A to Z / Richard Stapleton, editor in chief. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-02-865700-4 (set : hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-02-865701-2 (v. 1) — ISBN 0-02-865702-0 (v. 2) 1. Pollution—Encyclopedias. I. Stapleton, Richard M. TD173.P65 2003 363.73'03—dc21 2003000078

This title is also available as an e-book. ISBN 0-02-865905-8 (set) Contact your Gale sales representative for ordering information. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents VOLUME 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix TOPICAL OUTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv FOR YOUR REFERENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxv Abatement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Acid Rain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Activism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Adaptive Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Addams, Jane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Agencies, Regulatory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Agenda 21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Air Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Air Pollution Control Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Antinuclear Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Arbitration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge . . . . . . . . . 41 Arsenic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Asbestos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Asthma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Beneﬁcial Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Bioaccumulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Biodegradation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Bioremediation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Biosolids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Bottle Deposit Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Brower, David . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Brownﬁeld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Brundtland, Gro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Burn Barrels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Cancer Alley, Louisiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Carbon Dioxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Carbon Monoxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Careers in Environmental Protection . . . . Carson, Rachel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carver, George Washington . . . . . . . . . . . . Catalytic Converter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CFCs (Chloroﬂuorocarbons) . . . . . . . . . . . Chávez, César E. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Citizen Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Citizen Suits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clean Air Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clean Water Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cleanup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Coal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Colborn, Theo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Commoner, Barry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Composting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Consensus Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Consumer Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cost-beneﬁt Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cousteau, Jacques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cryptosporidiosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane) Diesel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dilution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dioxin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills . Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Disasters: Natural . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Disasters: Nuclear Accidents . . . . . . . . . . Disasters: Oil Spills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Donora, Pennsylvania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dredging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73 75 82 84 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 100 103 104 105

109 110 111 114 116 117 118 120 121 121 124 129 130 134 138 142 142

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Table of Contents

Dry Cleaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Earth Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Earth First! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Earth Summit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ecoterrorism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ehrlich, Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Electric Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Electromagnetic Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emissions Trading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Endocrine Disruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Energy, Nuclear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Energy Efﬁciency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Enforcement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Environment Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Environmental Crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Environmental Impact Statement . . . . . . Environmental Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Environmental Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . Environmental Racism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fish Kills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fossil Fuels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fuel Cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fuel Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gauley Bridge, West Virginia . . . . . . . . . . Gibbs, Lois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GIS (Geographic Information System) . . Global Warming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Green Chemistry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Green Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Green Party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Green Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Greenhouse Gases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Greenpeace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Groundwater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Halon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hamilton, Alice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hayes, Denis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hazardous Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Health, Human . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

vi

145 146 149 151 153 159 162 164 165 171 172 173 176 179 185 189 190 193 194 196 196 200 208 211 213 213 215 216 218 219 220 222 224 229 235 237 239 240 242 242 243 245 245 246 247 251

Heavy Metals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Household Pollutants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hypoxia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Incineration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indoor Air Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Industrial Ecology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Infectious Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Information, Access to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Injection Well . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Integrated Pest Management . . . . . . . . . . Ishimure, Michiko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ISO 14001 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

256 258 266 270 270 274 279 281 287 288 292 293 294 295

GLOSSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 VOLUME 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix TOPICAL OUTLINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv FOR YOUR REFERENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxv Labor, Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LaDuke, Winona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Landﬁll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Laws and Regulations, International . . . . . . Laws and Regulations, United States . . . . . . Lead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Legislative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Life Cycle Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lifestyle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Light Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Limits to Growth, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Litigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Malthus, Thomas Robert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mass Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mediation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Medical Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mercury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methane (CH4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources (La Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 2 3 5 9 13 16 18 19 28 31 32 32 33 34 37 38 42 43

44 45

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Mining Law of 1872 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mixing Zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mold Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Montréal Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nader, Ralph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Park Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) . . . . . . . . National Toxics Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . Natural Resource Damage Assessment . . . Nelson, Gaylord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Left . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NOx (Nitrogen Oxides) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Noise Control Act of 1972 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Noise Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nonaqueous Phase Liquids (NAPLs) . . . . Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) Nonpoint Source Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) . . Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ocean Dumping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ocean Dumping Ban Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oxygen Demand, Biochemical . . . . . . . . . . Ozone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Particulates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls) . . . . . . . Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic Chemicals (PBTs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) . . . . Pesticides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Petroleum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phosphates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Plastic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Point Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pollution Prevention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pollution Shifting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Popular Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Population . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Poverty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Precautionary Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

51 51 52 54 55 56 57 58 59 59 60 61 62 62 64 65 66 69 69 73 77 78 78 83 84 84 88 91 93 94 95 101 108 109 115 119 124 129 131 136 140 145

President’s Council on Environmental Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Progressive Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Property Rights Movement . . . . . . . . . . . Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Public Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Public Policy Decision Making . . . . . . . . Radioactive Fallout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Radioactive Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Radon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Recycling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Regulatory Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Renewable Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Resource Conservation and Recovery Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reuse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Right to Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act . . Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scrubbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sedimentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Settlement House Movement . . . . . . . . . . Smart Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Smelting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Smog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Snow, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Soil Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Solid Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Space Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sprawl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Strong, Maurice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sulfur Dioxide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Superfund . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sustainable Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . Swallow, Ellen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Systems Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Technology, Pollution Prevention . . . . . . Terrorism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thermal Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Times Beach, Missouri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tobacco Smoke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Todd, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Toxic Release Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) . . . Toxicology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tragedy of the Commons . . . . . . . . . . . . .

146 147 149 150 151 157 160 161 166 169 174 175 180 181 183 185 191 192 199 200 202 204 204 206 208 209 211 219 222 223 224 225 227 229 230 232 234 240 243 244 245 246 249 250 253

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Treaties and Conferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . U.S. Army Corps of Engineers . . . . . . . . . U.S. Coast Guard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . U.S. Department of Agriculture . . . . . . . . U.S. Department of the Interior . . . . . . . U.S. Environmental Protection Agency . U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . U.S. Geological Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ultraviolet Radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Underground Storage Tank . . . . . . . . . . . Unintended Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . Union of Concerned Scientists . . . . . . . . . Vehicular Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Visual Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) . . . War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Warren County, North Carolina . . . . . . . Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

viii

254 258 259 259 260 260 264 265 266 266 269 271 272 278 280 281 287 288

Waste, International Trade in . . . . . . . . . . Waste, Transportation of . . . . . . . . . . . . . Waste Reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Waste to Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wastewater Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Water Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Water Pollution: Freshwater .......... Water Pollution: Marine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Water Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Whistleblowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wise-Use Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Workers Health Bureau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . World Trade Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yucca Mountain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zero Population Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . .

291 292 294 296 297 304 305 312 316 322 323 325 326 327 330 333

GLOSSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

Preface Can you see the Great Milky Way where you live? Most Americans cannot. The greatest vista known to humankind is obscured by the veil of light pollution that shrouds all but the least developed regions on Earth. From the quality of life to life itself, there is not one person who is not affected in some way by pollution. Pollution affects our ability to swim in local waters or enjoy clear views in our national parks. More critically, pollution is responsible for waterborne diseases, birth defects, increased cancer incidence, and neurological problems ranging from loss of intelligence to madness itself. Pollution can kill instantly—over 8,000 died in just three days when methyl isocynate leaked from the Union Carbide facility in Bhopal, India—or it can take decades for the full impact to be known. Indeed, the number of lives cut short by the radiation released when the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in the Ukraine in 1986 is still being counted. The other fundamental truth about pollution is that we have no one to blame for it but ourselves. Yes, there are natural causes of pollution, and we include an article on Natural Disasters, but the preponderance of pollutant threats are anthropogenic—caused by man. From lead in paint to mercury in water, PCBs in rivers to VOCs in the atmosphere, from CFCs to greenhouse gases, the sources of pollution can be traced to the decisions of industry, government and, ultimately, the individual consumer/voter. With that in mind, one entry deserves special mention. Lifestyle is less an article than an opinion essay. Its inclusion is meant to challenge the reader’s social choices, to ask you to consider how your own personal lifestyle affects the environment. Do you use bottled ketchup or individual packets? Do you ride to school in an SUV or take a bus? The fact is that just as every person on the planet is affected by pollution, so each of us directly and indirectly creates pollution. Some of us just create more of it than others. One caution: if you are looking to these volumes for the answers to all questions about pollution and its effects on human and environmental health, you will be disappointed. There are dozens—perhaps hundreds—of toxic substances, for example, for which we do not have health-based standards, meaning we do not know what is a “safe” level of exposure. And if we know little about these contaminants individually, we know virtually nothing about the cumulative (synergistic) impact of multi-contaminant exposure. Perhaps the most important thing we have learned in the last half-century is how little

ix

Preface

A map of London, England, showing locations of pumps and deaths from cholera during the epidemic, 1854. See Health, Human; Snow, John; Water Treatment.

Pump sites Deaths from cholera

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we know. There is no shortage of discovery left for the next generation to undertake.

Organization of the Material As its title would suggest, Pollution A to Z is organized alphabetically with 264 articles presented in two volumes. Articles are cross-referenced. Authors were aware of (and sometimes wrote) related articles and, for the fullest understanding, the reader is encouraged to explore at least one level beyond the subject ﬁrst selected. This is made easier with the inclusion of crossreferences at the end of many articles. You will ﬁnd that articles are balanced between hard science and social science. You can research the contaminants that pollute a river, learn the health impacts of the pollution, and then trace society’s response, from activism through the political process required to enact legislation to the enforcement that ultimately slows or reverses the pollution. Each entry has been commissioned especially for this work. Our contributors are drawn primarily from the ranks of academia and government, each chosen for his or her particular experience and expertise. Who better, for instance, to write about the ﬁrst Earth Day than Denis Hayes, the man who organized it. Equally important, our authors were chosen for having the

x

Preface

uncommon ability to make their knowledge accessible to advanced high school students and university undergraduates. We also provide a glossary in the back matter of each volume, summarizing the deﬁnitions of the terms in the margins throughout the set. The two volumes are richly illustrated with charts, tables, maps, and line drawings. Each, along with the many photographs, was selected to amplify the text it accompanies. Historic photographs such as the one taken at noon during Donora, Pennsylvania’s, killer smog are especially important; they convey far more about the state of our environment at its nadir than any words could. Finally, articles include selected lists of additional resources. The lists focus on materials that students can reasonably expect to locate, and each contains at least one Internet reference.

Clean-up efforts underway at Love Canal, May 22, 1980. See Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA); Environmental Movement; Gibbs, Lois; History; Laws and Regulations, United States; Mass Media; Politics. (©Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Acknowledgements There are so many people to thank for their commitment, encouragement, and patience along the way. First, the editorial team at Macmillan Reference

xi

Preface

Boats approaching the oilcovered beach of Green Island, Alaska, following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. See Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills; Disasters: Oil Spills; History; Industry; Mass Media; Petroleum. (©Natalie Fobes/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

xii

USA and the Gale Group. In particular, my thanks to Hélène Potter for her unﬂinching support, and to Marie-Claire Antoine, Michael J. McGandy, Shawn Corridor, Patti Brecht, and Frank Castronova. Their gracious patience, from the initial vision through searching for just the right authors to the endless tweaking of content, has been a much-appreciated constant. No one, of course, has been more patient than my wife, Andrea, and son, Matthew, who forgave me so many nights at the computer. I trace my appreciation for the environment to growing up on a small New England dairy farm. To work the land is to connect with it; the intimate relationship between air, water, land, and life is seen every aspect of life. I have left the land behind now, both ﬁguratively—I work in the city—and literally—for relaxation, we sail. It is the sailing that now seeds me with the environment, and it is a bittersweet connection. We sail by the grace of nature, propelled by balancing the forces of wind and water. But we sail in a nature disgraced by humans. To depart the harbor, we must ﬁrst breach the

Preface

trash line, a ﬂoating windrow of plastic bottles, styrofoam cups, paper trash, old tires and worse. And the return means putting the clear ocean sky behind us to head instead for the orange-brown smudge that heralds yet another urban ozone-alert day.

Petroleum storage tanks, New Haven, Connecticut. See Industry; Petroleum. (©David Zimmerman/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

My son, Matthew, is thirteen as I write this. He and his generation are making their own connections with the environment. My hope is that the information presented here will in some small way help them to be better stewards than their parents were. Richard M. Stapleton

xiii

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Topical Outline AIR

BIOGRAPHIES

Acid Rain Air Pollution Air Pollution Control Act Asthma Burn Barrels CFCs (Chloroﬂuorocarbons) Clean Air Act Coal Diesel Disasters Donora, Pennsylvania Electric Power Emissions Trading Energy Energy Efﬁciency Fuel Cell Fuel Economy Global Warming Greenhouse Gases Halon Household Pollutants Incineration Indoor Air Pollution Methane (CH4 ) Montréal Protocol NOx (Nitrogen Oxides) Ozone Petroleum Point Source Radioactive Fallout Radon Scrubbers Smelting Smog Tobacco Smoke Ultraviolet Radiation Vehicular Pollution Visual Pollution

Addams, Jane Brower, David Brundtland, Gro Chávez, César E. Carson, Rachel Carver, George Washington Colborn, Theo Commoner, Barry Cousteau, Jacques Ehrlich, Paul Gibbs, Lois Hamilton, Alice Hayes, Denis Ishimure, Michiko LaDuke, Winona Malthus, Thomas Robert Nader, Ralph Nelson, Gaylord Snow, John Strong, Maurice Swallow, Ellen Todd, John C AREERS

Careers in Environmental Protection Economics Enforcement GIS (Geographic Information System) CLEANING UP POLLUTION

Abatement Biodegradation Bioremediation Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) Dilution Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills Incineration

xv

Topical Outline

Phytoremediation Science Scrubbers Superfund

CULTURAL ISSUES

Consumer Pollution Education Environmental Movement Green Marketing Lifestyle Mass Media Popular Culture Population Poverty Public Participation Sprawl Writers

ECONOMICS

Consumer Pollution Cost-beneﬁt Analysis Economics Emissions Trading Energy Enforcement Green Chemistry Green Marketing Industrial Ecology Industry ISO 14001 Labor, Farm Life Cycle Analysis Limits to Growth Pollution Shifting Smart Growth Sprawl Sustainable Development Tragedy of the Commons World Trade Organization

ENERGY

Antinuclear Movement Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coal Diesel Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents Disasters: Oil Spills Economics Electric Power Energy Energy, Nuclear Energy Efﬁciency Fossil Fuels Fuel Cell Fuel Economy Global Warming Green Chemistry Greenhouse Gases Lifestyle Light Pollution Mining Radioactive Waste Renewable Energy Vehicular Pollution Waste to Energy ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

Acid Rain Air Pollution Bioaccumulation DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane) Electric Power Endocrine Disruption Energy Fish Kills Hypoxia Oxygen Demand, Biochemical Pesticides Phosphates Sedimentation Smart Growth Sprawl Water Pollution Water Pollution: Freshwater Water Pollution: Marine

EFFECTS OF POLLUTION

Acid Rain Cryptosporidiosis Endocrine Disruption Fish Kills Global Warming Health, Human Hypoxia Smog

xvi

GLOBAL ISSUES

CFCs (Chloroﬂuorocarbons) Disasters: Nuclear Accidents Earth Summit Global Warming Greenhouse Gases Halon ISO 14001

Topical Outline

Laws and Regulations, International Laws and Regulations, United States Montréal Protocol Ozone Politics Population Poverty Public Participation Public Policy Decision Making Sustainable Development Terrorism Ultraviolet Radiation War Waste, International Trade in World Trade Organization Zero Population Growth GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

Agencies, Regulatory Cleanup Emergency Planning and Community Right-toKnow Dredging Environment Canada Environmental Crime GIS (Geographic Information System) Government Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources (La Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA National Park Service Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) President’s Council on Environmental Quality U.S. Army Corps of Engineers U.S. Coast Guard U.S. Department of Agriculture U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Environmental Protection Agency U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) U.S. Geological Survey Workers Health Bureau HISTORY OF POLLUTION

Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents Disasters: Nuclear Accidents Disasters: Oil Spills Donora, Pennsylvania Earth Day Earth Summit Gauley Bridge, West Virginia

History Times Beach, Missouri Warren County, North Carolina

HUMAN HEALTH

Air Pollution Arsenic Asbestos Asthma Bioaccumulation Burn Barrels Cancer Cancer Alley, Louisiana Cryptosporidiosis Dioxin Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills Disasters: Nuclear Accidents Donora, Pennsylvania Electric Power Electromagnetic Fields Endocrine Disruption Energy Energy, Nuclear Groundwater Hazardous Waste Health, Human Heavy Metals Household Pollutants Indoor Air Pollution Infectious Waste Ishimure, Michiko Lead Mercury Mold Pollution Ozone Particulates PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls) Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic Chemicals Persistent Organic Pollutants Radioactive Fallout Radon Risk Smog Times Beach, Missouri Tobacco Smoke Toxicology Vehicular Pollution Wastewater Treatment Water Pollution Water Pollution: Freshwater Water Pollution: Marine Water Treatment

xvii

Topical Outline

L AND

LEGAL PROCESS

Antinuclear Movement Brownﬁeld Citizen Science Citizen Suits Dry Cleaning Hazardous Waste Injection Well Landﬁll Mining Phytoremediation Smart Growth Smelting Superfund Underground Storage Tanks Waste

Arbitration Citizen Suits Emergency Planning and Community Right-toKnow Consensus Building Enforcement Environmental Crime Environmental Impact Statement Environmental Justice Government Laws and Regulations, United States Litigation Mediation Natural Resource Damage Assessment Regulatory Negotiation Right to Know Toxic Release Inventory Whistleblowing

L AWS AND REGUL ATIONS

Air Pollution Control Act Clean Air Act Clean Water Act Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents Disasters: Natural Emergency Planning and Community Right-toKnow Environmental Crime Ethics Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act Laws and Regulations, International Laws and Regulations, United States Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act Mining Law of 1872 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) National Resource Damage Assessment Noise Control Act of 1972 Ocean Dumping Ban Act Precautionary Principle Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act Soil Pollution Solid Waste Sprawl Superfund Times Beach, Missouri Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Unintended Consequences

xviii

MAJOR POLLUTION EVENTS

Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents Disasters: Natural Disasters: Nuclear Accidents Disasters: Oil Spills NON-POINT SOURCE POLLUTION

Agriculture Cryptosporidiosis Household Pollutants Pesticides PETROLEUM

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Diesel Disasters: Oil Spills Petroleum Plastic Underground Storage Tanks POINT SOURCE POLLUTION

Acid Rain Catalytic Converter Coal Diesel Electric Power Fossil Fuels POLITIC AL PROCESS

Arbitration

Topical Outline

Consensus Building Earth Day Education Environmental Justice Environmental Movement Environmental Racism GIS (Geographic Information System) Government Green Party Information, Access to Legislative Process Litigation Mediation National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) New Left Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) Politics Progressive Movement Property Rights Movement Public Interest Research Groups Public Participation Public Policy Decision Making Regulatory Negotiation Right to Know Unintended Consequences Whistleblowing Wise-Use Movement

Sulfur Dioxide VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) POLLUTION PREVENTION

Beneﬁcial Use Bottle Deposit Laws Catalytic Converter Composting Energy Efﬁciency Enforcement Environmental Impact Statement Green Chemistry Industrial Ecology Integrated Pest Management Life Cycle Analysis Pollution Prevention Pollution Shifting Recycling Renewable Energy Reuse Science Systems Science Technology, Pollution Prevention Toxic Release Inventory Waste Waste Reduction Waste to Energy

POLLUTANTS

Adaptive Management Arsenic Asbestos Carbon Dioxide Carbon Monoxide CFCs (Chloroﬂuorocarbons) Coal DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane) Dioxin Fossil Fuels Greenhouse Gases Halon Heavy Metals Household Pollutants Infectious Waste Lead Mercury Methane (CH4) NOx (Nitrogen Oxides) Nonaqueous Phase Liquids (NAPLs) Particulates PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls) Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic Chemicals (PBTs) Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) Phosphates

RADIATION

Disasters: Nuclear Accidents Electromagnetic Fields Energy, Nuclear Radioactive Fallout Radioactive Waste Radon Yucca Mountain SCIENCE

Carson, Rachel Carver, George Washington Citizen Science Colborn, Theo Cousteau, Jacques GIS (Geographic Information System) Green Revolution Politics Risk Science Systems Science Technology, Pollution Prevention Toxicology Union of Concerned Scientists

xix

Topical Outline

SOCIAL ACTION

Activism Consensus Building Earth Day Earth First! Ecoterrorism Education Environmental Impact Statement Environmental Justice Environmental Movements Environmental Racism Ethics GIS (Geographic Information System) Gauley Bridge, West Virginia Green Party Greenpeace Information, Access to Labor, Farm Legislative Process Lifestyle Mass Media National Toxics Campaign New Left Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) Popular Culture Poverty Precautionary Principle Progressive Movement Property Rights Movement Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) Public Participation Public Policy Decision Making Settlement House Movement Toxic Release Inventory Union of Concerned Scientists Warren County, North Carolina Wise-Use Movement Writers Zero Population Growth SOURCES OF POLLUTION

Agriculture Consumer Pollution Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents Disasters: Natural Disasters: Nuclear Accidents Disasters: Oil Spills Dry Cleaning Electric Power Electromagnetic Fields Energy, Nuclear Incineration Industry

xx

Lifestyle Mining Nonpoint Source Pollution Pesticides Petroleum Point Source Smelting Terrorism Vehicular Pollution TREATIES AND CONFERENCES

Agenda 21 CFCs (Chloroﬂuorocarbons) Earth Summit Environmental Crime Ethics Global Warming Greenhouse Gases Halon Montréal Protocol NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) Precautionary Principle Treaties and Conferences T YPES OF POLLUTION

Air Pollution Light Pollution Medical Waste Mold Pollution Noise Pollution Plastic Radioactive Waste Soil Pollution Space Pollution Thermal Pollution Vehicular Pollution Visual Pollution War Water Pollution Water Pollution: Freshwater Water Pollution: Marine VEHICUL AR POLLUTION

Catalytic Converter Diesel Energy Efﬁciency Fuel Cell Fuel Economy Ozone Petroleum Smog Vehicular Pollution

Topical Outline

WASTE

Beneﬁcial Use Biosolids Burn Barrels Hazardous Waste Injection Well Landﬁll Medical Waste Ocean Dumping Plastic Pollution Shifting Recycling Reuse Solid Waste Superfund Waste Waste Reduction Waste to Energy Waste, International Trade in Waste, Transportation of Yucca Mountain WATER

Acid Rain Agriculture Biosolids Clean Water Act Cryptosporidiosis Disasters: Oil Spills

Dredging Dry Cleaning Energy Fish Kills Groundwater Hypoxia Infectious Waste Injection Well Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act Mixing Zone National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Nonpoint Source Pollution Ocean Dumping Ocean Dumping Ban Act Oxygen Demand, Biochemical PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls) Petroleum Phosphates Point Source Sedimentation Superfund Thermal Pollution Underground Storage Tank Wastewater Treatment Water Pollution Water Pollution: Freshwater Water Pollution: Marine Water Treatment

xxi

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For Your Reference Below is a list of selected symbols, abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms that are used regularly throughout the articles in this book. ACh

acetylcholine

ACM

asbestos-containing materials

ACTION

Activists’ Center for Training in Organizing and Networking

AEC

Atomic Energy Commission

AFL

Afﬁliated Federation of Labor

AFT

American Federation of Teachers

AHERA

Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act

AHERA

Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Amendment

AMD

acid mine drainage

ANILCA

Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

ANWR

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

AOC

Area of Concern

APA

Administrative Procedures Act

APCA

Air Pollution Control Act

APHIS

Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service

As

arsenic

ATCA

Alien Torts Claims Act

ATSDR

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

BCC

bioaccumulating chemical

BCC

bioaccumulative chemical

BCF

bioconcentration factor

BEAR

Business and Environmentalists Allied for Recycling

BHC

benzene hexachloride

BMP

best management practice

xxiii

For Your Reference

xxiv

BOD

biochemical oxygen demand

BTNRC

Brookhaven Town Natural Resources Committee

BTU

British Thermal Unit

C

carbon

C

Celsius

C-BA

Cost-beneﬁt analysis

C2H6

ethane

C3H8

propane

(CH3)2Hg

mercury—methylmercury compound

C4H10

butane

CAA

Clean Air Act

CAAA

Clean Air Act Amendments

CAFE

corporate average fuel economy

CAFO

concentrated animal feeding operation

CAP

Campaign Against Pollution

CCA

chromated copper arsenate

CCHW

Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes

Cd

cadmium

CDC

U.S. Centers for Disease Control

CEC

North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation

CEQ

[President’s] Council on Environmental Quality

CERCLA

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act

CFC

chloroﬂuorocarbon

CFR

Code of Federal Regulations

CGIAR

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

CH3Hg+

mercury—methylmercury compound

CH4

methane

ChE

cholinesterase

CHEJ

Center for Health, Environment and Justice

CHP

combined heat and power

CITES

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora

CLEAR

Environmental Working Group Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research

CO

carbon monoxide

For Your Reference

Co

cobalt

CO2

carbon dioxide

CPAST

Corporation for Public Access to Science and Technology

Cr

chromium

CRJ

United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice

CSD

Commission on Sustainable Development

CSISSFRRA

Chemical Safety Information, Site Security and Fuels Regulatory Relief Act

CSO

Combined Sewer Overﬂow

CSO

Community Service Organization

Cu

copper

CWA

Clean Water Act

CWS

community water system

DBP

disinfection by-product

DDT

dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane

DEA

Drug Enforcement Agency

DES

diethylstilbestrol

DHHS

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

DNA

deoxyribonucleic acid

DNAPL

dense nonaqueous phase liquid

DO

dissolved oxygen

DOA

U.S. Department of Agriculture

DOE

U.S. Department of Energy

DOJ

U.S. Department of Justice

DOL

U.S. Department of Labor

DOT

U.S. Department of Transportation

E-coli

Escherichia coli

E-FOIA

Electronic Freedom of Information Act

EC

European Community

ECOSO

U.N. Economic and Social Council

ED

effective dose

EDA

Emergency Declaration Area

EDC

ethylene dichloride

EDF

Environmental Defense Fund

EEA

European Environment Agency

EF

ecological footprint

xxv

For Your Reference

xxvi

EF!

Earth First!

EFA

ecological footprint analysis

EIA

Energy Information Administration

EIS

environmental impact statement

ELF

Earth Liberation Front

ELF

extremely low frequency

EMF

electromagnetic ﬁeld

EPA

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

EPCRA

Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act

EPI

efﬂux pump inhibitor

EPR

extended producer responsibility

ERNS

Emergency Response Notiﬁcation System

EU

European Union

F

Fahrenheit

FBI

Federal Bureau of Investigation

FDA

U.S. Food and Drug Administration

FeS2

iron sulﬁde (incl. marcasite and pyrite)

FICAN

Federal Interagency Committee on Aviation Noise

FIFRA

Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act

FOIA

Freedom of Information Act

FTC

Federal Trade Commission

FTIR

Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

FWPCA

Federal Water Pollution Control Act

FWS

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

GAC

granular activated carbon

GASP

Group Against Smog and Pollution

GATT

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

GDP

gross domestic product

GEF

World Bank’s Global Environmental Facility

GEO

geosynchronous Earth orbit

GHG

greenhouse gas

GIPME

Global Investigation of Pollution in the Marine Environment

GIS

Geographic Information System

GLOBE

Global Learning and Observations to Beneﬁt the Environment

For Your Reference

GMA

Grocery Manufacturers of America

GPS

Global Positioning System

H

hydrogen

H2SO4

sulfuric acid

HAA

hormonally active agent

HAP

hazardous air pollutant

HC

hydrocarbon

HFC

hydroﬂuorocarbon

Hg

mercury

HGP

Human Genome Project

HgS

cinnabar

HHS

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

HHW

household hazardous waste

HPLC

high-performance liquid chromatography

HSWA

Hazardous and Solid Wastes Amendment

HYV

high-yielding variety

IADC

Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee

IAEA

International Atomic Energy Agency

IAP2

International Association for Public Participation

IARC

International Agency for Research on Cancer

IBI

Index of Biotic Integrity

ICC

International Chamber of Commerce

ICP-AES

inductively coupled plasma emission spectra

IDA

International Dark Sky Association

IEGMP

Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones

IIED

International Institute for Environment and Development

IMF

International Monetary Fund

INPO

Institute of Nuclear Power Operations

IOS

International Organization for Standardization

IPCC

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

IPM

integrated pest management

IR

infrared

ISO

International Organization for Standardization

IWI

index of water indicators

LC

lethal concentration

xxvii

For Your Reference

xxviii

LC-72

London Convention 1972

LCA

life cycle analysis

LCA

life cycle assessment

LD

lethal dose

LEO

low Earth orbit

LEPC

Local Emergency Planning Committee

LNAPL

light nonaqueous phase liquid

LQG

large-quantity generator

LUST

leaking underground storage tank

MACT

Maximum Achievable Control Act

MACT

Maximum Achievable Control Technology

MARPOL

International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ship 1973

MASSPIRG

Massachusetts Student Public Interest Research Group

MCL

maximum concentration load

MCL

maximum contaminant level

MEO

middle Earth orbit

MGD

million gallons per day

Mha

million hectare

MIT

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MNA

Monitored Natural Attenuation

MPG

miles per gallon

MSDS

Material Safety Data Sheet

MSW

municipal solid waste

MSWLF

municipal solid waste landﬁll

MTBE

methyl tertiary-butyl ether

MTD

maximum tolerated dose

MW

megawatt

MWTA

Medical Waste Tracking Act

N

nitrogen

N2

atmospheric nitrogen

N2O

nitrous oxide

NAAEC

North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation

NAAEE

North American Association for Environmental Education

NAAQS

National Ambient Air Quality Standards

For Your Reference

NAFTA

North American Free Trade Agreement

NAPL

nonaqueous phase chemical

NAPL

nonaqueous phase liquid

NAS

U.S. National Academy of Sciences

NASA

U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NCA

Noise Control Act

NEA

National Education Association

NEMO

Nonpoint Education for Municipal Ofﬁcials

NEPA

National Environmental Policy Act

NESHAP

National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants

NFWA

National Farm Workers Association

NGO

nongovernmental organization

NH3

methane

NHGRI

National Human Genome Research Institute

Ni

nickel

NIEHS

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

NIH

National Institutes of Health

NIMBY

not-in-my-backyard

NIOSH

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

NO

nitric oxide

NO2

nitrogen dioxide

NO3

nitrate

NOx

nitrogen oxide

NOAA

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration

NOEL

no observable effect level

NORM

Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material

NPDES

National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System

NPL

National Priorities List

NPL

National Priority List

NPPR

National Pollution Prevention Roundtable

NPRI

National Pollution Release Inventory

NPS

National Park Service

NRC

Nuclear Regulatory Commission

NRCS

Natural Resources Conservation Service

NRDA

Natural Resource Damage Assessment

xxix

For Your Reference

xxx

NRDC

Natural Resources Defense Council

NSR

New Source Review

NSRB

Nuclear Safety Regulatory Board

NSTA

National Science Teachers Association

NTC

National Toxics Campaign

O

oxygen

O&M

operations and maintenance

O2

molecular oxygen

O3

ozone

ODA

Ocean Dumping Act

OECD

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

ONAC

Ofﬁce of Noise Abatement and Control

OPA

Oil Pollution Act

OPEC

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries

OPP

Oil Pollution Prevention Act

OSHA

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

OTEC

ocean thermal energy conversion

P2

pollution prevention

PAC

polycyclic aromatic compound

PACCE

People Against a Chemically Contaminated Environment

PAH

polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon

Pb

lead

PBB

polybrominated biphenyl

PBT

persistent bioaccumulative and toxic chemical

PCB

polychlorinated biphenyl

PCC

primary combustion chamber

PCDD

polychlorinated dibenzo dioxin

PCDF

polychlorinated dibenzo furan

PCE

perchloroethylene

PCN

polychlorinated naphthalene

PCP

pentachlorophenol

PCP

Principia Cybernetica Project

PCSD

President’s Council on Sustainable Development

PEM

proton exchange membrane

PERC

perchloroethylene

For Your Reference

PET

polyethylene terephthalate

PIC

Prior Informed Consent

PIRG

Public Interest Research Group

PM

particulate matter

PO4

3-

phosphate ions or groups

POP

persistent organic pollutant

POTW

publicly owned treatment works

PPA

Pollution Prevention Act

PPCP

pharmaceutical and personal care product

PPE

personnel protective equipment

PrepCom

preparatory committee

PS

polystyrene

PSAC

President’s Science Advisory Committee

PV

photovoltaic

PVC

polyvinyl chloride

RCRA

Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

RDF

refuse-derived fuel

ReDo

Reuse Development Organization

RF

radio frequency

RMP

recommended agricultural practice

RRA

Resource Recovery Act

RTK

Right to Know

S

sulfur

SANE

Sane Nuclear Policy

SARA

Superfund Act

SARA

Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act

SB

styrene-butadiene

SCC

secondary combustion chamber

SDS

Students for a Democratic Society

Se

selenium

SEED

Schlumberger Excellence in Educational Development

SEJ

Society of Environmental Journalists

SEP

Supplemental Environmental Project

SERC

State Emergency Response Commission

SF6

sulfur hexaﬂuoride

xxxi

For Your Reference

xxxii

SHAC

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty

SIP

State Implementation Plan

SLAPP

Strategic Litigation against Public Participation

SMCRA

Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act

SO2

sulfur dioxide

SO4

sulfate

SOC

soil organic carbon

SQG

small-quantity generator

Superfund

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act

SUV

sport utility vehicle

SWDA

Safe Drinking Water Act

TBT

tributyltin

TCDD

tetrachloro dibenzo dioxin

TCE

trichloroethylene

TEF

Toxicity Equivalency Factor

TEPP

tetraethyl pyrophosphate

THM

trihalomethanes

TMDL

Total Maximum Daily Load

TMI

Three Mile Island

TOMS/EP

Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer on the Earth Probe Satellite

TRI

Toxic Release Inventory

TSCA

Toxic Substances Control Act

TSP

total particulate matter

TT

Treatment Technique

U

uranium

UCC

United Church of Christ

UCS

Union of Concerned Scientists

UFW

United Farm Workers of America

UK

United Kingdom

UN

United Nations

UNCED

U.N. Conference on Environment and Development

UNCHE

U.N. Conference on the Human Environment

UNEP

U.N. Environmental Programme

US

United States of America

For Your Reference

USDA

U.S. Department of Agriculture

USGAO

U.S. General Accounting Ofﬁce

USGS

U.S. Geological Survey

UST

underground storage tank

UV

ultraviolet

VOC

volatile organic compound

WET

Whole Efﬂuent Toxicity

WHB

Workers Health Bureau of America

WHO

World Health Organization

WPA

Works Progress Administration

WRI

World Resources Institute

WSP

Women Strike for Peace

WTC

World Trade Center

WTE

waste to energy

WTO

World Trade Organization

ZID

zone of initial dilution

Zn

zinc

ZPG

zero population growth

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Contributors David E. Alexander University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts Paul T. Anastas Executive Ofﬁce of the President Washington, D.C. Sarah Anderson Institute for Policy Studies Washington, D.C. Mary Jane Angelo St. John’s River Management District Palatka, Florida

Dave Brian Butvill Fontana, Wisconsin Julie Hutchins Cairn Seattle Public Utilities Redmond, Washington George Carlson Canterbury, New Hampshire Elizabeth L. Chalecki California State University Hayward, California Ron Chepesiuk Rock Hill, South Carolina

Phillip Anz-Meador Viking Science and Technology, Inc. Houston, Texas

Christos Christoforou Clemson University Clemson, South Carolina

Matthew Arno

Allan B. Cobb Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

William Arthur Atkins Atkins Research and Consulting Normal, Illinois Jay Austin Environmental Law Institute Washington, D.C. Pamela Baldwin Owings, Maryland Anne Becher Boulder, Colorado Elizabeth D. Blum Troy State University Troy, Alabama Brigitte Bollag Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania Jean-Marc Bollag Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania Arline L. Bronzaft Lehman College, City University of New York New York, New York Joanna Burger Rutgers University Piscataway, New Jersey

Christopher H. Conaway University of California Santa Cruz, California Stacie Craddock U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Washington, D.C. James L. Creighton Creighton and Creighton, Inc. Los Gatos, California José B. Cuellar San Francisco, California Raymond Cushman New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services Canterbury, New Hampshire Kenneth A. Dahlberg Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan Heinz H. Damberger Illinois State Geological Survey Boulder, Colorado Lawrence C. Davis Kansas State University Manhattan, Kansas

Joseph E. de Steiguer University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona Larry Deysher Ocean Imaging Solana Beach, California Thomas D. DiStefano Bucknell University Lewisburg, Pennsylvania Bruce K. Dixon National Association of Science Writers American Association for the Advancement of Science Naperville, Illinois Clive A. Edwards Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio Robert M. Engler U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center Vicksburg, Mississippi Christine A. Ennis National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Aeronomy Laboratory Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences Boulder, Colorado Larry Eugene Erickson Kansas State University Manhattan, Kansas Gary R. Evans SE4 Consulting Potomac Falls, Virginia Jess Everett Rowan University Glassboro, New Jersey John P. Felleman State University of New York Syracuse, New York Adi R. Ferrara Bellevue, Washington

xxxv

Contributors

Linda N. Finley-Miller U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento, California

Craig R. Humphrey Pennsylavania State University University Park, Pennsylvania

Lois Levitan Cornell University Ithaca, New York

A. Russell Flegal University of California Santa Cruz, California

Susan M. Jablonski Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission Austin, Texas

Deena Lilya Boise, Idaho

David Frame Oxford, United Kingdom Ralph R. Frerichs University of California Los Angeles, California David Friedman Union of Concerned Scientists Washington, D.C. David Goldberg Decatur, Georgia Janice Gorin Kevin Graham Windom Publishing Denver, Colorado Robert F. Gruenig Reynolds, Illinois Janet Guthrie National Institute of Environmental Health Services Research Triangle Park, North Carolina Charles Hall State University of New York Syracuse, New York Dan Hamburg Voice of the Environment Ukiah, California Ian Scott Hamilton Texas A&M University College Station, Texas Burt Hamner Seattle, Washington Donald J. Hanley Bechtel SAIC Company, LLC Las Vegas, Nevada Donald R. Hastie York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada Richard A. Haugland U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Cincinnati, Ohio

Corliss Karasov Madison, Wisconsin James P. Karp Syracuse University Syracuse, New York Sara E. Keith State University of New York Syracuse, New York Suzi Kerr Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Wellington, New Zealand Leeka Kheifets World Health Organization France Stephen M. Kohn Kohn, Kohn, & Calapinto Washington, D.C. Philip Koth William Kovarik Radford University Radford, Virginia Michael E. Kraft University of Wisconsin Green Bay, Wisconsin Ashok Kumar University of Toledo Toledo, Ohio Rishi Kumar Global Educational and Consulting Services Mississauga, Ontario, Canada J. Michael Kuperberg Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida Rattan Lal Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio

Tim Lougheed Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Adrian MacDonald Long Island City, New York Peter S. Machno Peter S. Machno LLC Seattle, Washington Daniel Barstow Magraw Center for International Environmental Law Washington, D.C. Kenneth H. Mann Bedford Institute of Oceanography Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Jack Manno State University of New York Syracuse, New York Michael Mansur The Kansas City Star Kansas City, Missouri Burkhard Mausberg Environmental Defense Canada Toronto, Ontario, Canada Michael J. McKinley U.S. Geological Survey Reston, Virginia Glenn McRae CGH Environmental Strategies, Inc. Burlington, Vermont Martin V. Melosi University of Houston Houston, Texas Peter Michaud Gemini Observatory Hilo, Hawaii Bruce G. Miller Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania Joel A. Mintz Nova Southwestern University Davie, Florida

Denis Hayes Bullitt Foundation Seattle, Washington

Deborah Lange Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Patricia Hemminger New York, New York

Denise M. Leduc West Bloomﬁeld, Michigan

Paul Philip Hesse NCI Information Systems, Inc. Washington, D.C.

Terra Lenihan Denver, Colorado

Ofﬁce of Solid Waste/U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Washington, D.C.

Peggy Leonard King County Wastewater Treatment Seattle, Washington

Sunil Ojha University of Toledo Toledo, Ohio

Annette Huddle San Francisco, California

xxxvi

Betsy T. Kagey Frostburg State University Cumberland, Maryland

David Lochbaum Union of Concerned Scientists Washington, D.C.

John Morelli Rochester Institute of Technology Rush, New York

Contributors

Kenneth Olden National Institute of Environmental Health Services Research Triangle Park, North Carolina Christine Oravec University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah Tim Palucka Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Lee Ann Paradise Lubbock, Texas David Petechuk Riﬂe, Colorado P.A. Ramachandran Washington University St. Louis, Missouri Stephen C. Redd Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Atlanta, Georgia William E. Rees University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Kevin Anthony Reilly New York State Supreme Court New York, New York Joseph Richey Boulder, Colorado Heather V. Ritchie Tallahassee, Florida Marin Sands Robinson Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, Arizona Mary Elliott Rollé National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Department of Commerce Vermont Law School Silver Spring, Maryland Walter A. Rosenbaum University of Florida Gainesville, Florida Joan Rothlein Oregon Health and Science University Portland, Oregon Natalie Roy The Environmental Council of the States Washington, D.C.

Joseph N. Ryan University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado Karen M. Salvage State University of New York Binghamton, New York Joseph J. Santoleri RMT-Four Nines Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania Michael G. Schechter Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan Susan L. Senecah State University of New York Syracuse, New York Hollie Shaner CGH Environmental Strategies, Inc. Burlington, Vermont William E. Sharpe Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania Lynne Page Snyder National Academies of Science, Institute of Medicine Washington, D.C. Gina M. Solomon University of California San Francisco, California James J. Stapleton University of California Parlier, California Richard M. Stapleton U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Washington, D.C. Donald Stedman University of Denver Denver, Colorado Richard S. Stein University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts Diana Strnisa Five Rivers Environmental Education Center Delmar, New York Jacqueline Vaughn Switzer Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, Arizona Dorceta E. Taylor University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan

Kender Taylor Seattle, Washington Christopher M. Teaf Tallahassee, Florida Valerie M. Thomas Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey Nathan Thrall Iris Udasin Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences Institute Piscataway, New Jersey Johan C. Varekamp Wesleyan University Middletown, Connecticut Stephen J. Vesper U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Cincinnati, Ohio Margrit von Braun University of Idaho Moscow, Idaho Frank A. von Hippel University of Alaska Anchorage, Alaska Ted von Hippel Paul Wapner American University Washington D.C. Linda Wasmer Andrews Albuquerque, New Mexico Richard J. Watts Washington State University Pullman, Washington Stefan Weigel University of Hamburg Hamburg, Germany Laura Westra York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada Ross Whaley State University of New York Syracuse, New York Christine M. Whitney Watertown, Massachusetts

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Abatement Abatement is a general term used for methods or technologies that reduce the amount of pollutant generated in a chemical or other manufacturing facility. In contrast, the terms cleanup and remediation refer to removal or appropriate disposal of the pollutants after they have been generated; these methods are also often referred to as end-of-the-pipe treatment. Current industrial practice places more emphasis on abatement (also known as pollution prevention) and follows the following simple rule: “If you don’t make it, you don’t treat it.”

A

Pollution abatement involves source reduction, in-process recycling, inplant recycling, design modiﬁcations, off-site recycling, and treatment to make the waste less hazardous. Source reduction refers to the examination of various processing units in detail to determine if wastes can be minimized. The step involves several layers of study: (1) Waste inventory is generated. (2) Critical processes leading to waste are identiﬁed. (3) Alternative processing strategies are studied to reduce the amount of waste generated in these processes. The collection of waste inventory is an important part of such an analysis. In addition, the inputs that generate these wastes are identiﬁed. These data then suggest ideas for source reduction. In batch reactors, for example, especially in the manufacture of dyestuffs, rinsing of the reactors in between batches is needed to avoid the contamination of the product made in the next batch. This generates a stream of wastewater. The quantity can be reduced by optimal batch scheduling, that is, making similar dyes for a while before switching to a different color. This requires less rinsing between batches since the next dye to be made is of the same color. Another example is the use of solvents. Contaminated solvent from one part of the process may still be good enough for another part of the plant, and the overall generation of the contaminated solvent can be reduced by properly identifying the solvent needs of the entire plant. In-process recycling refers to the reuse of unreacted materials (after suitable puriﬁcation) in the same process. Chemical reactions, for example, cannot always be driven to completion due to thermodynamic limitations. In such cases, one needs to separate the product from the unconverted raw material, the latter ending up as a waste stream. The waste generation is abated by recycling the raw materials back to the process. The recycling of spent solvent after some needed puriﬁcation (e.g., carbon adsorption or steam stripping) is another example of this strategy.

The term abatement is often used in nontechnical communication to cover a broad range of activities that eliminate or reduce exposure to contamination or toxic substances. Abatement may leave contamination in place, but install some barrier to prevent its migration or exposure to it. Thus, the abatement of lead paint in a home may involve the installation of paneling, new wallboard, or a sealant coating over the old paint. The more specific terms cleanup and removal are used literally; the contamination is physically cleaned up, removed, and properly disposed of.

1

Abatement

In-plant recycling refers to the use of waste generated in one part of the production as a raw material for another part of the plant. Examples of inplant recycling include solvent reuse and water reuse in the chemical industry.

ambient surrounding or confined; air: usually but not always referring to outdoor air

Design modiﬁcations play an important role in waste minimization. Often, minor modiﬁcations in the existing equipment can result in considerable waste reduction. The better design of cyclone separators can reduce the number of dust particles exiting a process. For storage tanks, ﬂoating roofs are often used in place of ﬁxed roof tanks to avoid “breathing” losses, or losses from a tank when the ambient conditions (temperature and pressure) change. For example, if the atmospheric pressure drops, some vapor escapes from the tank in order to equilibrate the pressure, leading to air pollution. Proper insulation can reduce the waste sludge formation in distillation column reboilers because these may now be operated at a lower temperature. A distillation column reboiler is a component of a distillation column and is widely used in reﬁneries and other chemical plants. Off-site recycling applies to the situation where the waste generated in one plant is a raw material for another industry. For example, gypsum (calcium sulfate) is a waste from stack gas (sulfur dioxide) cleaner in the coal industry, but a raw material in the cement industry. The proximity of industries is an important consideration in off-site recycling since transportation costs can then be minimized. Waste exchange agencies are often able to provide a geographical proﬁle of generated wastes and a description of their potential use in other industries. Once a proper match is established, both parties beneﬁt economically in addition to the reduction in pollution.

adsorption removal of a pollutant from water or air by collecting the pollutant on the surface of a solid material, e.g., an advanced method of treating waste in which activated carbon removes organic matter from waste-water

If any of the methods suggested here are not applicable, the next step is to examine how to make the waste stream less hazardous. Often, this is an important consideration since the costs for disposal of hazardous wastes are signiﬁcantly higher than those for nonhazardous wastes. An example is the wastes from a wastewater stream. A single “catch-all” facility is used to collect all the wastewater from different parts of a plant or factory, and this stream is treated or sent to a publicly owned treatment works (POTW) facility. If the wastewater contains hazardous material, then this step may not be followed since the POTW would not accept such a stream. An overlooked solution is the segregation of wastewater (rather than one catch-all combined treatment) and in-process puriﬁcation. For example, carbon adsorption can be used in certain streams before sending it to a catch-all stream. A second example is the treatment of water condensate from chemical reactors. These often contain a signiﬁcant amount of valuable (but hazardous) raw material. Examples of such contaminants are benzene, toluene, and a variety of lowboiling hydrocarbons. The raw material may be recovered by steam stripping followed by condensation, which recovers it. The raw material is then recycled, and the wastewater from the reactor becomes less hazardous. In summary, a number of techniques discussed here can be used to reduce pollution in manufacturing facilities. Success often depends on engineering experience, insights into the process, and multidisciplinary team efforts. The rewards are a cleaner environment and, in many cases, the added beneﬁt of cost savings and increased proﬁts. S E E A L S O Bioremediation; Brownfield; Catalytic Converter; Cleanup; Technology, Pollution Prevention; Scrubbers; Superfund; Wastewater Treatment.

2

Acid Rain

Bibliography Allen, D.T., and Rosselot, K.S. (1997). Pollution Prevention in Chemical Industries. New York: Wiley-Interscience. Allen, D.T., and Shonnard, David R. (2002). Green Engineering. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Rossiter, A.P., ed. (1995). Waste Minimization through Process Design. New York: McGraw-Hill. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ofﬁce of Research and Development, Risk Reduction Engineering Laboratory. (1992). Pollution Prevention Case Studies Compendium. EPA/600/R-92/046. Cincinnati. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov.

P.A. Ramachandran

Acid Rain Acid rain is any form of atmospherically deposited acidic substance containing strong mineral acids of anthropogenic origin. It was reportedly ﬁrst described in England by Robert Angus Smith in 1872. Acid rain is more properly called acidic deposition, which occurs in both wet and dry forms. Wet deposition usually exists in the form of rain, snow, or sleet but also may occur as fog, dew, or cloud water condensed on plants or the earth’s surface. Dry deposition includes solid particles (aerosols) that fall to the earth’s surface. Condensation of fog, dew, or cloud water is referred to as occult deposition.

anthropogenic human-made; related to or produced by the influence of humans on nature

The most common acidic substances are compounds containing hydrogen (H+), sulfates (SO4=), and nitrates (NO3-). The chief source of these compounds is the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, and petroleum by-products, primarily gasoline. Agriculture is also a major source of nitrates. Power plants that burn coal contribute over 50 percent of sulfates to the atmosphere and 25 percent of nitrates. Prior to the Clean Air Act of 1970, acid deposition was mostly a local problem conﬁned to the immediate vicinity of the pollution source. After 1970, emitters of acidifying pollutants increased the height of smokestacks to reduce local pollution by diluting pollutants in larger volumes of air. The result was the regional transport of acid deposition to remote locations. Acid rain has adversely affected large areas of the mountainous regions of the eastern United States and Canada, Scandinavia, central and Eastern Europe, and parts of China. Areas that are downwind of heavy concentrations of power plants receive the most deposition. Acid rain acidiﬁes soils with low calcium carbonate levels, which results in the acidiﬁcation of water passing through the soil to streams and lakes. Calcium carbonate soil-buffering capacity is related to soil origin. Soils weathered from rocks high in calcium carbonate have high calcium carbonate buffer capacity. Fish and other aquatic life have been eliminated from streams and lakes by acid deposition. Continued acid deposition leaches calcium and magnesium from the soil and results in the increased mobility of aluminum, which is toxic to both animals and plants. Aluminum is always present in soils, but it is innocuous until mobilized into soil water by acidic deposition. Its presence in water in small amounts will cause the outright

3

Acid Rain

S PA TI AL P A TTE RNS OF S ULFUR DI OX I DE A ND NI TROGEN OX IDE E M I S S IONS I N THE EA S TERN UNI TED S TA TE S

Hubbard Brook, NH

SO2 in million short tons 3.3 2.75 2.2 1.65 1.1 0.55 0

1992–1994

1995–1997

Hubbard Brook, NH

NOx in million short tons 1.38 1.1 0.83 0.55 0.28

1992–1994

0 1995–1997

SOURCE: Driscoll, C. T.; G. B. Lawrence; A. J. Bulger; T. J. Butler; C. S. Cronan; C. Eager; K. F. Lambert; G. E. Likens; J. L. Stoddard; and K. C. Weathers. (2001). Acid Rain Revisited: Advances in Scientific Understanding since the Passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments. Hubbard Brook Research Foundation. Science Links™ Publication, Vol. 1, No. 1.

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Acid Rain

L ON G - T E R M T RE N D S I N S U L F A TE , N I TR ATE, A ND A MMONI UM CO N C E N T R AT I O N S A N D pH I N W E T D E PO SI TI ON A T THE HBE F, 1963– 1994

SO4

NO3

NH4

80

µeq/L

60 40 20 0 1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

1980

1985

1990

1995

Year

pH

4.4

4.2

4.0

1960

1965

1970

1975

Year Driscoll, C. T.; G. B. Lawrence; A. J. Bulger; T. J. Butler; C. S. Cronan; C. Eager; K. F. Lambert; G. E. Likens; J. L. Stoddard; and K. C. Weathers. (2001). Acid Rain Revisited: Advances in Scientific Understanding since the Passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments. Hubbard Brook Research Foundation. Science Links™ Publication, Vol. 1, No. 1.

SOURCE:

death of ﬁsh and other aquatic life, disrupt normal ﬁsh spawning, and reduce populations of many species of aquatic insects. Acid forest soils are thought to cause forests to decline and grow more slowly. Soil acidity causes nutrient deﬁciencies in trees and other plants and predisposes them to attack by pathogens such as insects and fungi. Soil acidity also increases photo-oxidant stress in plants. Monuments and buildings made of marble or other forms of calcium carbonate and statuary made of certain metals such as copper are also damaged by acid deposition. The acidiﬁcation of waters leads to increases in mercury uptake by ﬁsh, causing them to be unsafe to eat. The governments of the European Economic Community, Canada, and the United States have taken steps to reduce the emissions of sulfate and nitrates. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 were designed to reduce U.S. emissions of sulfate by about 40 percent through a program of emissions trading between emissions generators, use of low-sulfur coals (fuel switching), and controls on power plant smokestack emissions. Although this program has signiﬁcantly reduced acidic deposition in many parts of the northeastern United States, many scientists agree that additional reductions will be required to prevent continued damage and allow for meaningful recovery of affected lakes and streams. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Coal;

5

Acid Rain

RECENT PATTERNS OF WET DEPOSITION BEFORE AND AFTER IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 1990 CAAA Sulfate Wet Deposition

Before 1990 CAAA 1983–85

After 1990 CAAA 1992–94

1995–97

kilograms/hectare/year Driscoll, C. T.; G. B. Lawrence; A. J. Bulger; T. J. Butler; C. S. Cronan; C. Eager; K. F. Lambert; G. E. Likens; J. L. Stoddard; and K. C. Weathers. (2001). Acid Rain Revisited: Advances in Scientific Understanding since the Passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments. Hubbard Brook Research Foundation. Science Links™ Publication, Vol. 1, No. 1.

SOURCE:

Electric Power; NOx (Nitrogen Oxides); Petroleum; Sulfur Dioxide; Vehicular Pollution. Internet Resource Environment Canada Web site. Available from http://www.ec.gc.ca/acidrain.

William E. Sharpe

6

Activism

Activism “In wildness is the preservation of the world,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, a nineteenth-century New England writer who became a founding ﬁgure of today’s environmental movement. His life and work ushered in a uniquely American perspective on nature, a philosophy that made an unprecedented defense of the value of wilderness. In so doing, he diverged dramatically from long-standing philosophical traditions that place human interests above the actions of the natural world.

Historical Roots: Running out of Wilderness, Running into Opposition Thoreau (1817–1862) showed that a sense of wonder and inspiration could be found in “raw” nature, which human beings had traditionally regarded as chaotic, foreboding, or downright dangerous. He relied on personal experience, monitoring seasonal changes in the plant and animal life around him, writing accounts of his trips to the mountains and rivers of Maine, and spending extended periods of time living in a primitive cabin on Walden Pond in Massachusetts. He made no apologies for ﬂouting society’s conventions. Instead, he offered his eccentric lifestyle as an example of how an appreciation of the natural world could enhance human existence. Nor was he afraid to challenge society’s rules, outlining the virtues of “civil disobedience” in a famous essay about a night he spent in jail over a matter of conscience. The natural world of Thoreau’s day needed little defending, in spite of the polluting factories of the industrialized northeast United States. The rest of North America contained vast amounts of unclaimed, unsettled land. Wilderness might be daunting, but it appeared to be inexhaustible, and our technology at the time did not seem to have the potential to exhaust it. It was a century after Thoreau’s death that the passion he embodied would evolve into a much more aggressive form of action. This evolution formed a response to the immense economic growth in North America during the period following World War II. People sought bigger houses and more cars, causing cities and road systems to sprawl across the landscape. The accumulation of material wealth exacted a price on the natural world, a toll that became increasingly visible during the 1950s. By the 1960s, environmental degradation was becoming obvious even to those who did not pay much attention to the natural world. The air and water in many places had become badly polluted, often by industrial wastes as well as by the garbage generated by rapidly growing urban centers. In 1966 some eighty New Yorkers died when warm summer air raised the city’s smog levels past what many people could tolerate. A year later an offshore oil rig in California fouled beaches with millions of gallons of spilled oil. In 1969 the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland, Ohio, spontaneously burst into ﬂames, so choked had it become with unstable chemical efﬂuents. Likewise boaters on Lake Erie had been encountering huge patches of ﬂoating algae, which were being fed by large volumes of industrial and agricultural runoff, especially phosphorus. The algae, in turn, robbed the lake bottom of oxygen, rendering the water incapable of sustaining ﬁsh life. In the early 1960s, scientists began measuring phosphorus levels dozens of times

7

Activism

Marion and Barney Lamm became known as the “Sacrificial Lamms” after they voluntarily closed their prosperous fishing lodge on Salt Lake, Ontario, to protest the coverup of mercury contamination. Mercury levels twenty-eight times the upper federal limit were found in lake fish and Minimata Disease was found in local Ojibway Indians. The Lamm’s twenty-year fight to protect the Ojibway is chronicled in fifty-nine boxes of documents now housed at the Harvard University Library.

higher than a typical, unpolluted lake. Their ﬁndings—coupled with the evidence of dead ﬁsh piling up on Erie shores—made for strident news stories citing local residents and politicians who declared the lake to be “dying.” In a foreshadowing of public outcries to come, a Cleveland car dealer named David Blaushild collected one million signatures on a petition to save the lake. He submitted the document to the Ohio governor’s ofﬁce in 1965, setting in motion a vigorous international campaign.

The 1960s: 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, residual amounts of this chemical were also killing beneﬁcial insects such as honeybees, as well as ﬁsh, birds, and other animals. By portraying the environmental consequences of this pesticide, Carson unleashed a ﬁerce controversy. Representatives of chemical and agricultural industries tried to discredit her work, insisting that the impact of DDT was not as signiﬁcant as she suggested. Others defended Carson, arguing that the long-term harm DDT caused to the natural world outweighed any short-term beneﬁts to human beings. Gradually, other scientists mustered evidence to echo the conclusions of Silent Spring. Within a decade the U.S. government— which had originally hailed the advent of DDT in the 1940s—banned its use. Carson’s book, and the legislation that emerged as a result, reﬂected the tenor of a turbulent decade. The iconic image of the 1960s is that of a young person carrying a protest sign, a sight that seemed to symbolize the coming of age for a populous, rebellious, and afﬂuent generation whose members began to be born immediately after the end of World War II in 1946. Although this image is a stereotype, many individuals and organizations lodged a wide range of public grievances with the authorities of the day. Such protests cultivated new attitudes toward civil rights, women’s rights, foreign policy, and military affairs, as well as toward the environment. Many of these topics were already being debated by political leaders and social commentators. Carson’s work appeared just as the calls for change were growing louder. Some tentative federal measures to address environment had already been implemented. The 1948 Federal Water Pollution Control Act sparked the beginning of active House and Senate Public Works Committee interest in this issue. Similarly, an Air Pollution Control Act went into effect in 1955. But a much more dynamic process began with a White House Conservation Conference in 1962. This event drew together ofﬁcials from all levels of government to consider matters of conservation, natural resources, and public health. The next few years would see the passage of a much more speciﬁc Clean Air Act, the Wilderness Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the creation of the National Wildlife Refuge System. This parade of legislation did not unfold smoothly, however. Even as protesters urged the passage of each new law, vested interests mounted their

8

Activism

own opposition. Battles that began in the street moved into the courts and occasionally spilled back into the streets. Some of the most contentious disputes dealt with air quality, spawning grassroots movements in major urban centers. Dubbed the “Breathers’ Lobby” by the Wall Street Journal, these groups included GASP in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Washington Coalition on Clean Air, and the Delaware Clean Air Coalition. One of their most memorable moments came during the ﬁrst Earth Day in 1970, when protesters marched through downtown Pittsburgh in gas masks carrying a cofﬁn to demonstrate against the poor quality of that city’s air.

The Rise of Rights The physical state of the world was beginning to emerge as a primary consideration for the protest movements of the 1960s. While a task like cleaning up a dirty river might seem to be relatively straightforward, Rachel Carson and other biologists were furnishing the public with graphic evidence of a much greater challenge. Their steadily advancing knowledge of the science of ecology was shedding light on the intricate web of biological connections that sustains any living environment. Even when outright pollution was not evident, human activities could damage this web in many different ways. This perspective came to the fore in 1966, when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced plans for two dams on the Colorado River that would ﬂood more than 100 miles of the Grand Canyon. Since the 1930s, dam building had been deemed to be a laudable sign of progress, bringing power into isolated rural communities and meeting the ever-increasing demand for electricity in cities. Compared with alternatives such as coal-burning generating stations, hydroelectric dams were a source of energy with few environmental consequences. Although ﬂooded valleys were among those consequences, ﬂoods were often cast in a positive light: the resulting artiﬁcial lakes offered new recreational uses. On the other hand, the Grand Canyon was not just another valley, but a sentimental favorite of casual tourists and die-hard naturalists alike. The proposal sparked unprecedented environmental ire. At the head of this backlash was the Sierra Club, the country’s oldest conservation organization. Founded in 1892, it had played a major role in shaping policies on forestry practice and the emerging national parks system at the beginning of the twentieth century. For several decades it had remained a much more passive organization, but the Grand Canyon controversy revived its active stance. David Brower, who had been the club’s executive director for fourteen years, made the issue a major focus. He took out newspaper advertisements outlining the dam proposal, complete with coupons and instructions for lodging complaints with appropriate members of government. The Sierra Club ordered two movies to be made, printed up bumper stickers and pamphlets, and reprinted its own colorful coffee table book on the Grand Canyon. By 1967 the New York Times had dubbed the organization’s members “gangbusters of the conservation movement.” The fracas led one senator to conclude, “Hell hath no fury like a conservationist aroused.” That fury became swiftly evident. Mail, telegrams, and phone calls ﬂooded government ofﬁces, so much so that the Internal Revenue Service revoked the Sierra Club’s tax exempt status because of its substantial lobbying efforts. That move only further galvanized public opinion, which would swell the club’s membership from 39,000 in 1966 to 67,000 by 1968. By then

9

Activism

the dam proposal had been irrevocably defeated, but much more than that had been accomplished. Dams could no longer be built without questions being asked; they had lost their unshakable status in public opinion. Rivers, too, had rights.

Giving the Earth Its Due The notion of “environmental rights” was sometimes characterized as a citizen’s right to a clean environment. Regardless of the speciﬁc wording, this perspective fueled efforts to give these issues a different kind of legal standing. Lawyers and ecologists found themselves working together through the Environmental Defense Fund, a body created in 1967. Its founders had successfully defeated a bid by the massive power utility Consolidated Edison to store water in a huge mountain reservoir on the Hudson River, where it could be released to provide hydroelectricity at times of excess demand. Opponents of the project cited the potentially negative environmental effects of such releases, and the court agreed. Moreover, when the company appealed on the basis of the fact that none of the people suing would be directly affected by any water releases, the court made life even more difﬁcult for companies such as Consolidated Edison. Not only did the appeal decision give citizen groups the right to protect the environment for noneconomic reasons, but it also made industrial ﬁrms responsible for drafting “environmental impact statements” before undertaking such major ventures. Buoyed by this outcome, the Environmental Defense Fund embarked on a concerted strategy of environmental legislation. Wielding lawsuits and court injunctions, they targeted everything from simple industrial pollution to the construction of nuclear reactors. Problems such as the contamination of soil with heavy metals, which had seldom had a high public proﬁle, were suddenly thrust into the limelight by the Environmental Defense Fund. Popular media began bandying about the term “ecology,” which previously had been familiar to only a few scientists. Subtle concepts such as the “food chain” became widely discussed, as did the assertion that humans now had the power to make the planet unable to sustain human life. Since the dawn of the cold war in the 1950s, the major threat to the existence of human life appeared to be the radiation that would linger after a major nuclear conﬂict. Now an equally gloomy picture was being drawn by those who accused humanity of ruining the natural systems that had nurtured us for millions of years. Astronauts provided the most poignant image to accompany this accusation, a photograph of the earth in its entirety, as seen from the moon. Reproduced in magazines, school textbooks, and posters, the sight of this “big blue marble” reinforced the argument that we dwelled in a world of ﬁnite resources, with natural boundaries that we ignored at our peril. Nor was this message lost on hundreds of thousands of people who began to join conservation groups like the Sierra Club. During the course of the 1960s, that organization saw its membership quintuple to 113,000. Similarly, the Wilderness Society doubled its membership to 54,000, the Audubon Society doubled its to 81,500, and the National Wildlife Federation doubled its to 540,000. For some observers, this widespread realization of our world’s boundaries had come none too soon. In 1968 Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei assembled a meeting of scientists, economists, educators, and government

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administrators to discuss this subject. That gathering spawned the Club of Rome, a think tank that soon issued a report called The Limits to Growth. The report sounded some of the most dire warnings yet that our population and technological capabilities could soon reach the “carrying capacity” of the planet. Without dramatic recycling and conservation initiatives, the report said, key resources such as petroleum, metals, and minerals would be in such scarce supply as to be all but gone. Similarly, we would ﬁnd viable farmland and clean water to be no less scarce unless we worked harder at preserving the integrity of our ecosystems. The call for a new relationship between human beings and nature prompted many people, including Gaylord Nelson, a senator from Wisconsin, to take action. Using his own funds, Nelson set about organizing Earth Day, a national event to promote a better understanding of environmental issues. Since young people were to play a critical role in the activities, the chosen day was April 22, 1970, when most of the nation’s college students could be expected to have completed their exam schedule. When it arrived, no fewer than 10,000 schools and 2,000 colleges and universities held special classes for the occasion. There were nature hikes, garbage cleanup campaigns, and formal presentations about pollution. Larger cities hosted huge rallies and street fairs. And although it was almost impossible to determine the total number of participants across North America, estimates ran as high as twenty million.

In 1972, the Club of Rome, an international think tank, published The Limits to Growth, warning that man-made damage to nature was expanding to such an extent that it might put at stake the very survival of humankind. The book was highly controversial, coming at a time of high public optimism following a period of immense economic growth in both the Western and Communist worlds. The Limits to Growth was based on one of the first efforts (at MIT) to apply computer modeling to economy and the environment. It sold twelve million copies in thirtyseven languages.

Earth Day is still marked every April 22, though with somewhat less fanfare than on that ﬁrst occasion. For many people, it was a proud and consummate expression of the protest movements that characterized the 1960s. Direct action in the name of the environment would seldom take such a massive and spontaneous form again. Instead, the decade opened by Earth Day would welcome a much more carefully planned brand of activism.

The 1970s: A Very Green Decade The legal achievements of the Environmental Defense Fund demonstrated the virtues of organized activism, pointing the way for other interested parties that wanted to follow suit. Organizations sprang up year after year, employing the talents of individuals with expertise in the rapidly developing ﬁeld of environmental law. Some of those individuals became famous in their own right, such as American lobbyist Ralph Nader—who founded the Public Interest Research Group in 1970 as one of the ﬁrst independent “watchdog” agencies on environmental regulation—and French mariner Jacques Cousteau, whose Cousteau Society drew worldwide attention to the state of the world’s oceans. Other agencies that were formed about the same time went on to become household names: Friends of the Earth, Union of Concerned Scientists, League of Conservation Voters, and the Worldwatch Institute. No such list would be complete without Greenpeace, which continually set higher standards for the most dynamic of these organizations. This deﬁnitive collection of environmental activists assembled in 1970 by way of responding to a somewhat different cause—the U.S. testing of nuclear weapons under Amchitka Island, part of the Aleutian Island chain off Alaska. The group consisted of antiwar protesters who feared the outcome of a nuclear arms race, many of them expatriate Americans who had moved to Canada to avoid being drafted into the war in Vietnam. Others were Sierra Club members, voicing their own fears of deep-sea seismic activity set off by

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an underground nuclear explosion, which could lead to tidal waves or earthquakes along North America’s west coast. Searching for a name at their initial meeting in a church basement in Vancouver, British Columbia, these distinct elements posed the words “green” and “peace,” until the connection was ultimately made. Following a fund-raising concert, Greenpeace chartered an old ﬁshing boat, and later, a retired minesweeper. In October 1971, members and news reporters sailed on these vessels up the west coast toward Amchitka, hoping to arrive before the next scheduled bomb test at the beginning of November. Some of the people who went on this voyage admit that it seemed like a crazy thing to do, and they had little idea of what would happen once they got there. Deteriorating fall weather prevented the ﬁshing boat from reaching the island, and the sturdier minesweeper failed to reach it before the test. Nevertheless, the trip succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. News outlets were able to provide gripping coverage of the adventure and, more importantly, the reason for that adventure in the ﬁrst place. Embarrassed by this extraordinary attention, the federal government subsequently abandoned its underground testing program. As it turned out, Greenpeace did not need to achieve its stated goal to achieve a much loftier objective: exposing problems that might otherwise elude public notice. Greenpeace learned this lesson well and began applying it elsewhere. The group chose whaling as its emblematic example of human assault on the natural world, a brutal slaughter of mammals whose intelligence was considered to be comparable to our own. Greenpeace became intimately associated with the expression “save the whales” after its ships began intercepting whaling vessels at work on the high seas. Taking great personal risks by maneuvering small boats in front of whales as they were being targeted by harpoons, Greenpeace activists ﬁlmed what they found and ensured that this visual record made its way to television news outlets. In some cases the very act of recording these encounters was enough to cause the whalers to stop what they were doing and leave. All too frequently, such daring tactics were met with mockery, anger, and the odd outbreak of violence, but they got results. By adding drama to the earlier legislative momentum, Greenpeace helped turn the 1970s into an era of groundbreaking environmental measures. The process was already well under way in 1970, when the U.S. federal government created the Environmental Protection Agency as the bureaucratic cornerstone for an emerging regulatory regime. Over the next few years, clean water and clean air laws would be repeatedly revised. New controls would be placed on all kinds of toxic substances. Legal protection would be provided to endangered species by safeguarding their habitat, even when such protection hampered business interests. And the activist posture born in the United States was being exported. “Green” parties, with political platforms explicitly premised on environmental topics, emerged in New Zealand in 1972 and in the United Kingdom in 1973. By the end of the decade similar parties would appear in four other European countries, most prominently in West Germany, where substantial numbers of members gained elected ofﬁce. This trend had a profound inﬂuence in Europe, where citizens were facing all of the same environmental challenges as in the United States, but where governments had done little to

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respond to these challenges. Green party politics, raising environmental issues in the very seat of a nation’s government, became an important means of prompting laws and regulations. But perhaps the most ambitious initiative arrived on the scene by way of the United Nations. In 1972, in Stockholm, the United Nations held a Conference on the Human Environment, endorsing a list of twenty-six environmental principles and creating a new body to oversee them. This agency, called the United Nations Environment Programme, was based in Nairobi, Kenya, and employed more than 1,000 people. It became the model and basis for creating thousands of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating in all parts of the globe, focusing on various aspects of environmental management. Many still do good work, but not all of these NGOs would be free of political inﬂuence, and some would prove to be ineffectual or downright incompetent. Yet they stood on the front lines of a growing number of international treaties for dealing with environmental issues. From 1930 to 1971, forty-eight such treaties were negotiated. Between 1971 and 1980, another forty-seven were added.

Greenpeace members handcuffed together and sitting on steel drums similar to toxic waste drums outside of the Mexican Office of Environmental Protection, calling attention to the toxic waste disposal facility at Guadalcazar, San Luis Potosi, owned by the U.S. company Metalclad Corporation, Mexico City, Mexico, July 19, 1995. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.)

The 1980s: The Pendulum Swings Just as the protests of the 1960s gave way to a more orderly environmental agenda in the 1970s, this agenda took a decidedly different turn in the 1980s. The decade opened with Congress introducing the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), known as

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Julia “Butterfly” Hill examining damage done to an ancient redwood, called Luna by activists, from a chainsaw. Supports were bolted into the tree. (Shaun Walker/ OtterMedia.com. Reproduced by permission.)

Superfund. This law created a tax on industries that would be dedicated to cleaning up releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances in the environment. Over the next ﬁve years CERCLA brought in some $1.6 billion for this purpose, creating a trust fund to deal with abandoned or uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. This kind of genuine environmental progress, resulting in well-deﬁned, well-enforced, and well-funded rules, had stemmed from a combination of grassroots activism and political pressure. Individuals were encouraged to “think globally, act locally” (i.e., interpret a general environment topic through actions they could take immediately, such as tackling water pollution by lobbying factory owners to clean up industrial runoff that was being dumped into a nearby river). At the same time, political leaders were eager to take action to address the dire warnings of pessimistic groups such as the Club of Rome. Harsh pollution rules, for example, often raised the operating costs and lowered the proﬁts of the industries that were doing the polluting. Many politicians were taking a long-term view of the environment, but it was costing them political support in the short term. In 1980 much of that support disappeared. In the wake of economic recessions throughout much of the 1970s, voters mounted a conservative backlash. Led by President Ronald Reagan, political ﬁgures stated bluntly that too much attention had been paid to environmental matters that affected

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few people at any time, while too little attention was being paid to economic problems that affected far more people on a day-to-day basis. The environment would not necessarily be ignored, but the needs of industry would be given much more weight. Little environmental legislation moved forward during Reagan’s deﬁnitive eight-year term, and a great deal of existing legislation was weakened or set aside. Grassroots support fared little better, as the focus in many communities became ever narrower. Where people were formerly being asked to reject water pollution in principle, local protests were increasingly premised exclusively on what was happening locally. Known as the “not in my backyard syndrome,” these actions might keep a polluting industry out of a particular region that could organize opposition to it, but they did not muster the broader political will to keep that industry from polluting anywhere at all. This fragmentation of protest ensured that environmental legislation would not move forward. Moreover, environmental science—which had given the initial push to the entire movement—was becoming bogged down in controversy. Qualiﬁed experts began sparring publicly with the pessimistic conclusions of the Club of Rome. These opponents maintained that the carrying capacity of our planet is much greater than The Limits to Growth suggested. And, they added, our own capacity for technological innovation is even more profound. Even were we to “run out” of some key resource, we are inventive enough to ﬁnd a way around this shortcoming. As for the damage we are inﬂicting on the earth’s ecology, some researchers began to compare it with the damage done by the earth itself. These investigations noted that a natural phenomenon like a volcano emits far more air pollution than any number of smokestacks, and that subtle climatic changes could alter water temperature enough to kill off far more aquatic species than any industrial waste. Even a decade-long $600 million study of acid rain, which drew on the work of some 2,000 scientists, proved to be inconclusive. The physical process appeared to be simple enough: human activities were emitting large amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere, which subsequently came down in highly acidic raindrops, which in turn led to the acidiﬁcation of lakes and rivers. Yet the research incorporated a great deal of competing evidence to show that these bodies of water often went acidic without any human inﬂuence, and had been doing so for thousands of years. When the ﬁnal report was presented in 1990, its conclusions were objective but so thorough and multifaceted that they failed to form the basis for any concrete action on the problem. Other major environmental matters met the same fate in public forums. Scientists wrangled over the meaning of huge “holes” that had been discovered in some parts of the earth’s atmosphere. The holes were deﬁned by the absence of ozone—airborne oxygen molecules that normally screen out harsh radiation from space. Some observers linked the holes with the use of chemicals that were being used in refrigeration and spray-can technology. Others countered that the holes came and went at random, implying that they were merely natural occurrences that we had ﬁnally discovered. The chemicals were eventually banned, but there is still no ﬁrm consensus on ozone holes. In contrast, a similar scientiﬁc controversy over global warming emerged in the 1990s. While doubters continued to be heard, enough of a consensus was

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established to draft an agenda for concerted international action that was enacted in several nations. Such muddles, combined with the conservative tenor of the times, vexed environmental activists. They wanted their issues back on the public agenda, even if truly radical action were required.

Violent Turns Some members of Greenpeace had seen the conservative backlash coming even before the presidential election of 1980. According to Canadian member Paul Watson, the essential response had to be increasingly militant protest actions. Among other things, he did not want merely to scare away whalers by ﬁlming them; he advocated placing explosives on the hulls of their ships in order to cripple their livelihood. Greenpeace rejected such tactics, and in 1977 it rejected him as well. He formed his own organization, called the Sea Shepherds, outﬁtted with a refurbished ship that had been renamed Sea Shepherd. Watson described the 200-foot trawler as “the ﬁrst ship in history dedicated to the enforcement of international marine wildlife conservation law.” Whales, he added, now had their own navy. That navy’s ﬁrst skirmish came off the coast of Portugal in 1979, when the Sea Shepherd rammed a ship that was illegally taking whales. Despite the attack, and Watson’s willingness to own up to it for the authorities, the owners of the ship refused to press charges because of the publicity a trial would generate. In this way, the Sea Shepherds attempted to augment the public exposure that Greenpeace had found so effective in quelling environmental offenses. Watson regarded himself as offending the offenders, daring them to strike back. Some members of Greenpeace might have admired his dedication and nerve, but they would not have been inclined to admit it publicly. Taunting authority was one thing, but menacing it with illegal action was a line that many conscientious members of society refuse to cross. Watson continued to cross it as often as he could. And as the political atmosphere of the 1980s began to wear down the environmental movement, he was joined by others. In 1980 American activist Dave Foreman felt the same frustration as Watson. “Too many environmentalists have grown to resemble bureaucrats,” said Foreman. “Pale from too much indoor light; weak from sitting too long behind desks; co-opted by too many politicians.” By way of response, he founded Earth First!, an organization aimed at putting activists like himself back in the middle of the fray. Earth First! led skirmishes that ranged from high-proﬁle pranks—such as hanging a symbolic “crack” down the face of an unwanted dam—to outright sabotage, such as wrecking logging or roadbuilding equipment in wilderness areas. These more serious offenses were labeled “ecotage,” and the group took great pride in making them as inventive and disruptive as possible. In particular, Earth First! was linked with a practice known as tree-spiking, randomly nailing large spikes deep into trees in a logging area. Loggers and mill workers were then warned that some of these trees might contain these large pieces of metal, which could cause serious injury if they were struck with a saw blade. Forestry workers felt threatened, and logging companies remained unsure of how to deal with this tactic, even though it appears that there has never been a proven case of personal harm caused by tree spiking.

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Julia Hill, atop an ancient redwood tree. (Shaun Walker/OtterMedia.com. Reproduced by permission.)

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Others have taken such radical action a step further. Citing a philosophy called deep ecology, these activists accord animals the same inherent rights as any human being. From this viewpoint, animals raised for food on farms or being used in laboratory experiments deserve to be “liberated.” Groups dedicated to this purpose have gone so far as to break into research facilities and remove the animals. When such vandalism became more common in the mid-1980s, the scientiﬁc community was shocked. Soon, however, that response gave way to a more concerted campaign to raise awareness of the ways in which animal experimentation can promote the well-being of both animals and humans. In addition, the use of animals has become subject to ever-closer scrutiny, fostering a regulatory framework that has steadily reduced their use, in favor of other experimenting and testing methods. While none of these initiatives may be enough to satisfy the most extreme elements of the animal-rights movement, members of that movement are highly diversiﬁed. Some criticize the extremists for idealizing animals, as well as for ignoring the violence and brutality that often mark the lives of creatures who already ﬁnd themselves “liberated” in the wild. In this way, moving from a purely philosophical outlook to a more broadly based scientiﬁc understanding of the issue, many environmental activists retreated from the most radical positions and began searching for more practical and effective.

The 1990s: Managing in the Mainstream When the environment initially entered the forum of public discussion in the 1960s, many of its ideas were profoundly novel. Some people did not welcome or even understand the argument that a river ﬂowing in the uninhabited wild could be more important to human existence indirectly than a dam that could deliver power directly to millions of human beings. Today many of us still have difﬁculty accepting the premise that a seldom-seen plant or animal might play a part in the global ecosystem that is every bit as crucial as our own. Activists continue to press for a wider appreciation of the complexities that abound in environmental science, even as the scientists continue to struggle with those complexities. For better and for worse, therefore, a great deal of the thinking of environmental activists has now entered the social and cultural mainstream. The language of environmental activism has been embraced by members of the political and business establishment. Action occasionally follows on the heels of these words, but the most appropriate course can be far from clear. A leading example of this dilemma was the debate over climate change that developed at the end of the twentieth century. Furious debate swirled around the possibility that human industrial activity was increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere sufﬁciently to cause a “greenhouse effect,” raising the average temperature. If so, major environmental changes could be expected, including the loss of major cropland and the raising of the sea level. For many observers, it remained unclear how climate change might be demonstrated or disproved. Nevertheless, a 1997 conference in Kyoto, Japan, offered an international set of protocols that would limit each country’s output of “greenhouse gases” according to the nature of its economy and its landmass. Only a handful of countries have so far endorsed the Kyoto Protocol, including Japan, Britain, Germany, New Zealand, and Canada. But Australia

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and the United States have rejected the terms of the agreement, severely hampering efforts to address a global problem with a global response. Similar difﬁculties have plagued grassroots initiatives. For instance, a ﬁveyear effort was carried out to persuade McDonald’s to abandon its use of foamplastic packaging, which does not break down in landﬁlls. In 1991 the Environmental Defense Fund struck a deal with the fast-food giant, which agreed to use paper wrapping. Although the decision was hailed as a victory, critics quickly pointed out that this alternative would lead to just as much waste and environmental damage. The fundamental problem—overpackaging—had not been resolved. Even Earth First! founder Dave Foreman eventually cut his ties with that organization and its methodology. In 1991 he began to lead the Wildlands Project, which works cooperatively with private and public landowners to set up buffer zones around park areas. Earth First!, for its part, still pulls off some occasional extreme action. Serious damage has also been carried out by a more shadowy organization called the Earth Liberation Front, which in 1998 took responsibility for burning down part of a Colorado ski resort near a designated wilderness site.

Going Global, Going Simple As the ideas voiced by environmental activists entered the mainstream, so too did a sense that those voices should also represent the mainstream. Groups such as Greenpeace have begun to examine the diversity of their own membership, which has traditionally been dominated by white males. Women have steadily joined, and a separate philosophical position known as ecofeminism appeals to both environmental activists and representatives of longstanding women’s groups. By recruiting women as well as individuals from various ethnic or cultural backgrounds, the environmental movement can also offset a perception that it speaks primarily for afﬂuent North Americans. That charge has followed lobbying efforts in developing nations such as Brazil, where activists have advocated limits on road building and logging in the Amazon rain forest. Many Brazilians resent the suggestion of economic restrictions coming from representatives of other nations that have already inﬂicted environmental damage on their regional ecosystems in order to further their own economic growth. In fact, much more attention is being paid to the suggestion that economic development may well be the best way to protect the environment. Economists argue that poor countries fare much worse in environmental terms, using less efﬁcient technology and lacking the transportation and communication systems to promote activities such as recycling. This assertion is still hotly debated, but it surfaces during discussions of globalization, the issue that now generates far more of the traditional style of protest activity than the environment. Young people who a generation ago marched in the street to announce their opposition to nuclear war or toxic waste can today be found marching in the streets to announce their opposition to a marketdriven economic model that became dominant in the 1980s. In this respect, therefore, the ambitions of environmental activists have returned to some of the original priorities of the 1960s, such as targeting major developments like dams rather than appealing to a desire to see rivers

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free of pollution. But an environmental consciousness continues to thrive, instilled in the popular imagination and often enshrined in law. Concerned citizens no longer need to commit outrageous acts in order to foster an appreciation of our impact on the natural world. As the twenty-ﬁrst century begins, our way of life is dominated by technologies that ensure that we can obtain as much information about the environment as we could ever want. The challenge that lies ahead is not that of becoming aware of the environment, but determining how we will act on that awareness. And perhaps the most revealing trend may be to act less. A movement known as voluntary simplicity has found favor among individuals who ﬁnd themselves accumulating more and more material wealth but gaining less and less satisfaction from it. The next stage of activism may amount to limiting this accumulation, reducing what we take from the natural world in order to beneﬁt both ourselves and the environment. That prospect contains an irony that would not be lost on Henry David Thoreau. “I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself,” he wrote, “than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” S E E A L S O Addams, Jane; Agenda 21; Air Pollution Control Act; Antinuclear Movement; Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Brower, David; Cancer Alley, Louisiana; Carson, Rachel; Chávez, César E.; Clean Air Act; Clean Water Act; Commoner, Barry; DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane); Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills; Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents; Disasters: Natural; Disasters: Nuclear Accidents; Disasters: Oil Spills; Earth Day; EarthFirst!; Earth Summit; Ehrlich, Paul; Environmental Justice; Ethics; Gibbs, Lois; Government; Green Party; Green Revolution; Hamilton, Alice; History; LaDuke, Winona; Laws and Regulations, International; Laws and Regulations, United States; Lifestyle; Limits to Growth; Nader, Ralph; National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); National Toxics Campaign; New Left; Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs); Ocean Dumping; Popular Culture; Population; Poverty; Progressive Movement; Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs); Public Participation; Treaties and Conferences; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Warren County, North Carolina; Writers; Zero Population Growth. Bibliography Bohlen, Jim. (2001). Making Waves: The Origin and Future of Greenpeace. Montréal: Black Rose Books. Brower, Michael, and Leon, Warren. (1999). The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices. New York: Three Rivers Press. Day, David. (1989). The Environmental Wars. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Newton, David. (1990). Taking a Stand against Environmental Pollution. New York: Franklin Watts. Pringle, Laurence. (2000). The Environmental Movement, from Its Roots to the Challenges of a New Century. New York: Harper Collins. Sale, Kirkpatrick. (1993). The Green Revolution. New York: Hill & Wang. Scarce, Rik. (1990). Eco-Warriors. Chicago: The Noble Press. Watson, Paul. (1994). Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas. Toronto: Key Porter. Zakin, Susan. (1993). Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement. New York: Viking.

Tim Lougheed

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Adaptive Management Adaptive management is a systematic process for continually improving management policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of operational programs. Traditionally, management plans for addressing the impacts of pollution, and addressing the risks of exposure of toxics to humans and ecosystems were strictly followed as written. If the plan needed to be changed, a complex policy process needed to be engaged to change it. However, managers have increasingly acknowledged the scientiﬁc uncertainty about what policy or practice is “best” for a particular management issue. A good example is restoring a polluted river system’s water quality and ﬁsheries. New understandings about ecosystems, human health, and the impacts of pollution and toxic exposure have led to management practices that can adapt along the way. Hence, adaptive management is being increasingly incorporated into agreements and decisions that mandate managers to address a problem using the best available science rather then an inﬂexible set of directives. Rather than being static, this repeating management cycle consists of 1) assessing the problem, 2) designing a management program designed to address the problem and reveal gaps in knowledge, 3) implementing the program, 4) monitoring the effects of it according to key indicators, 5) evaluating the program based on these indicators, and 6) adjusting the program in light of this. Often, this is done through a collaborative process that considers all the interests who have a stake in the resource. S E E A L S O Consensus Building; Health, Human; Mediation; Natural Resource Damage Assessment; Precautionary Principle; Public Policy Decision Making; Regulatory Negotiation. Bibliography Internet Resource AdaptiveManagement Practitioners’ Network Web site. Available from http://www. iatp.org/AEAM.

Susan L. Senecah

Addams, Jane Jane Addams (1860–1935) is remembered primarily as the feisty American founder of the Settlement House Movement, which sought to challenge the industrial and urban order of the period to achieve social and environmental reforms. Inspired by a visit to London’s East End and Toynbee Hall, a “settlement house” addressing the needs of the urban poor, Addams and her friend Ellen Starr cofounded Hull House in the slums of Chicago in 1889. Hull House became the central organizing hub and political force to provide social services to the exploding number of immigrants coming to Chicago to work in the unregulated factories. The living and working conditions around industrialized Chicago were horribly unsanitary, unhealthy, stinking, and crowded, and the politics were fairly corrupt. Addams’s Hull House confronted questions of housing, sanitation, and public health, areas not typically seen as being connected. A major campaign attacked the inadequate and inequitable garbage collection in the neighborhoods of crowded tenements. Addams’s unsuccessful bid for the contract to

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collect the city’s garbage gained so much publicity that the mayor appointed her to be Chicago’s garbage inspector. In this role, Addams was so successful in raising public awareness of the situation that restructuring the garbage collection system quickly rose to the top of the agenda of both City Hall and the reform movement. She was also a mover and a shaker in the areas of labor reform, especially around ﬁghting for industrial safety, humane worker conditions, and labor unions, and against child labor. Much of her work led to the right to vote for women. In 1910 Yale University awarded Addams the ﬁrst honorary degree ever bestowed on a woman. In 1931 she received the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the ﬁrst American woman to receive a Nobel Prize. S E E A L S O Activism; Settlement House Movement; Solid Waste. Bibliography Internet Resources Jane Addams Hull House Museum. Available from http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/ hull/hull_house.html

Susan L. Senecah Jane Addams. (©Bettmann/ Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Agencies, Regulatory There are large numbers of federal and state agencies in the United States that have been authorized by Congress or state legislatures to implement and enforce environmental laws. As a general matter, environmental regulatory agencies are responsible for establishing maximum allowable levels of pollutants in air, water, and soil to protect human health and the environment, and for developing programs to achieve such levels of protection. Most environmental regulatory programs are carried out through permitting programs under which releases of pollutants are allowed provided they meet established standards or limits, and other conditions imposed by the regulatory agency. On the federal level, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the primary regulatory agency responsible for pollution control. It was created in 1970 as an outgrowth of the environmental movement in the United States during the 1960s, although at that time a number of federal environmental programs already existed. These programs were scattered throughout several different federal agencies. The creation of the EPA was an attempt to consolidate these environmental programs under the control of one agency with clear-cut responsibility for environmental protection. The EPA is funded through congressional appropriation; it carries out wide-ranging duties related to environmental protection, including researching the causes and effects of speciﬁc environmental problems; regulating air pollution, water pollution, solid and hazardous waste disposal, pesticides and toxic substances; providing oversight of states that have assumed responsibility for federal environmental programs; and enforcing environmental laws. In addition to federal environmental regulation, virtually every state has an agency responsible for pollution control. Many of these state agencies were established by state legislatures shortly after the creation of the EPA. State environmental agencies may receive their funding from a variety of sources, including legislative appropriation, property taxes, and grants from the EPA and other federal agencies. The extent and type of state regulation

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Agencies, Regulatory

can vary widely. Some states, such as California, New Jersey, and Michigan, have very extensive pollution control programs, whereas others have minimal programs. The nature of such programs depends in large part on the kind of environmental issues facing the state and their magnitude, the size of the state, the economy of the state, and the political leanings of state residents. For example, California, a large progressive state with serious air quality problems, has extensive regulatory programs, particularly in the area of air pollution control. One California regulatory agency is the California Air Resources Board, a part of the California Environmental Protection Agency, which develops and implements regulations to reduce emissions from motor vehicles. Some states have all or most of their pollution control responsibilities concentrated in one agency, often called a state Department of Environmental Protection or Department of Environmental Quality. Pollution control responsibilities in other states may be shared by a number of agencies, including public health agencies, natural resources agencies, and ﬁsh and wildlife agencies, or in media-speciﬁc agencies such as California’s Department of Water Resources. In the case of many EPA regulatory programs, the EPA designs the programs and then delegates their implementation and enforcement to state agencies. In fact, this is true of the majority of federal environmental laws administered by the EPA. Most of the major permitting programs that the EPA oversees, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, contain speciﬁc provisions authorizing it to delegate administration of the programs to those states that have permitting systems which meet the minimum federal criteria. Through such delegation, the EPA limits its role to designing regulatory programs and issuing the rules to carry them out. EPA enforces regulations only in those states that have not adopted programs meeting federal standards. Even when the EPA delegates a program to a state, though, it maintains an oversight role, having the authority to enforce permit requirements and veto state permits. Outside of the United States, many other developing countries, particularly in the West, have agencies responsible for environmental protection that are very similar in structure and scope to the EPA. For example, Germany, France, and Great Britain all have national environmental agencies with primary responsibility for the regulation of air and water pollution, and public and hazardous waste disposal. S E E A L S O Environment Canada; Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources (La Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales); U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Bibliography Ferrey, Steven. (2001). Environmental Law: Examples and Explanations, 2nd edition. New York: Aspen. Government Institutes. (1994). How EPA Works: A Guide to EPA Organization and Functions. Rockville, MD. Information Resource Management. (1995/1996). United States Environmental Protection Agency, Access EPA 220-B-95-004. Lovei, Magda, and Weiss, Charles, Jr. (1998). Management and Institutions in OECD Countries: Lessons from Experience. Washington, DC: World Bank. Moya, Olga L., and Fono, Andrew L. (2001). Federal Environmental Law: The User’s Guide, 2nd edition. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company. Rodgers, William H., Jr. (1994). Environmental Law, 2nd edition. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.

23

Agenda 21

Internet Resources Clay.net Environmental Professional’s Homepage. “State Pollution Control Agencies.” Available from http://www.clay.net/statag.html. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Available at http://www.epa.gov/ html.

Mary Jane Angelo

Agenda 21

desertification transition of arable land to desert

consensus-building negotiation to create agreement

Agenda 21, agreed to at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (more commonly known as the Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, was the nonbinding plan of action that identiﬁed and prioritized environmental, ﬁnancial, legal, and institutional issues to serve as a guide for countries to direct their resources and energies. Among Agenda 21’s most notable elements were calls for the creation of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), whose functions include monitoring the agenda’s implementation and conducting negotiations toward a treaty on desertification, a high-priority concern of many developing countries. The language of Agenda 21 accommodated the more developed countries’ preferences for limiting environmental damage, as well as the developing countries’ concerns about economic growth and foreign assistance in support of that growth. Critics, however, contend that the agenda’s attention to global warming, population growth, and species extinction demonstrates its partiality to the concerns of developed nations. At the time of a subsequent Earth Summit, Rio + 5, in 1997, the consensus was that some progress had been made in terms of institutional development, international consensus-building, public participation, and privatesector actions, and that, as a result, a number of countries had succeeded in curbing pollution and slowing the rate of resource degradation. But, despite this progress, the global environment continued to deteriorate. Advocates of Agenda 21 persevere; they agreed that the CSD would be the central organizing body for Rio + 10, ofﬁcially called the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. S E E A L S O Earth Summit; Sustainable Development; Treaties and Conferences. Bibliography Bryner, Gary C. (1999). “Agenda 21: Myth or Reality.” In The Global Environment: Institutions, Law, and Policy, edited by Norman J. Vig and Regina S. Axelrod. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Dodds, Felix, ed. (1997). The Way Forward: Beyond Agenda 21. London: Earthscan.

Michael G. Schechter

Agriculture Agriculture, the deliberate raising of plants and animals to enhance and secure food production, evolved in the Near East about 10,000 years ago. It was this transition from hunting-gathering to settled agriculture that created civilization as we know it and led to a rapid increase in the human population from about ﬁve to six million at that time to six billion in 2000. Although the term agriculture literally means ﬁeld cultivation, in a broader context it

24

Agriculture

A worker wearing protective clothing is spraying crops with pesticides. (U.S. EPA. Reproduced by permission.)

implies the conversion of natural to managed ecosystems in order to produce adequate and continual food supply.

Traditional Agricultural Systems Demands for an increase in food production were initially met by expanding the area being cultivated or horizontal expansion. The cropland area increased from 265 million hectares (Mha) prior to the Industrial Revolution in 1700 to 1,500 Mha in 1980, representing an increase of 5.7 times in less than three centuries. (One hectare equals 2.47 acres.) The scarcity of new land for crop production necessitated increasing crop production per unit area and time from the same land. This need for agricultural intensiﬁcation, or vertical expansion, has been satisﬁed by the use of chemical fertilizers, supplemental irrigation, improved cultivars, and intensive cropping systems. Soil fertility refers to reserves of plant nutrients (e.g., N, P, K, Ca, Mg, Zn, Cu, Mo, S, and B) in the root zone and their availability to cultivated plants in accord with physiological needs. Most ancient civilizations evolved on soils with built-in fertility rejuvenation mechanisms. These included alluvial soils along the ﬂoodplains of major rivers (e.g., the Nile, Indus, Euphrates, and Tigris) or loess soils with a continuous source of plant nutrients through wind-blown materials (e.g., the Loess Plateau of China). With an increase in population, agriculture expanded into other regions where the nutrient supply was not renewed on a regular basis by ﬂood water or wind deposits. In regions with adequate water supply, nutrients stored in the forest biomass were released for crop production through the “slash and burn” method. Soil fertility was restored by land rotation or shifting cultivation in which a short cultivation period of two to three years was followed by long fallow or a rest period of fertility restoration. The land was used extensively and productivity was low.

cultivar a plant variety that exists only under cultivation

alluvial relating to sediment deposited by flowing water loess soil deposited by wind

In these systems, farms were small and based on mixed farming systems with the close integration of crops with livestock. This involved the

25

Agriculture

incorporation of hay or meadows in the rotation cycle. Crop residues and hay were fed to livestock and manure redistributed on the land.

monoculture large-scale planting of a single crop species

With the wide availability of fertilizers since World War II, farms in North America and other developed economies have become larger, leading to the increased predominance of monoculture and the elimination of hay and meadows from the rotation cycle. Animal production operations have become specialized, based on feedlot, creating a problem of manure management on the one hand and depletion of soil organic carbon (SOC) stock on the other.

Soil Fertility Enhancement by Chemical Fertilizers The use of supplemental nutrients to increase crop yield started as trial and error in the form of wood ashes, ground bones, salt peter, and gypsum. Justus von Liebig (1803–1873), a German chemist, laid the foundation for the use of chemical fertilizers as a source of plant nutrients starting in 1840. He recognized the importance of various mineral elements derived from the soil in plant nutrition and the necessity of replacing those elements in order to maintain soil fertility. Two British scientists, J.B. Lawes and J.H. Gilbert, in turn established the agricultural experiment station at Rothamsted, in the United Kingdom. They built on the work of Liebig and experimentally demonstrated the importance of chemical fertilizers in improving and maintaining soil fertility. In fact, the application of synthetic fertilizers was the basis of the global increase in agricultural production after World War II. Global fertilizer use was merely 27 million tons in 1959 and 1960; it increased ﬁve times to 141 million metric tons over the forty-year period ending in 2000. The projected fertilizer demand for the year 2020 is 220 million metric tons. Intensive fertilizer use on input-responsive cultivars grown on prime irrigated land was the basis of the green revolution in South Asia and elsewhere that saved millions from hunger and malnutrition. As the world population increases and cropland becomes more valuable, total cropland acreage is beginning to diminish, increasing the reliance on fertilizer. CAFOs or Concentrated animal feeding operations pose major environmental risks because of the large quantities of animal waste that they produce. A 10,000-hog CAFO produces as much waste in a single day as a town of 25,000 people. In 1997, a toxic algae called Pfiesteria, linked to manure from giant chicken factories, polluted the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, killed thousands of fish, sickened more than a dozen people, and put the bay’s entire seafood industry at risk. Pfiesteria has been implicated in more than 50 percent of the fish kills in North Carolina coastal waters.

26

Similar to fertilizer use, there has also been a rapid increase in global pesticide use. In fact, much of the success of the green revolution depended on the use of pesticides. Global pesticide use was four million tons in 1970, ﬁve million tons in 1985, and six million tons in 2001. As much as 85 percent of all pesticides are used in agriculture. The misuse of pesticides can cause severe environmental problems, especially in developing countries. It is estimated that chemical pollution in agriculture costs about $100 billion in diverse public health and environmental damage each year worldwide. The health risks are due to a lack of or inadequate occupational and other safety standards, insufﬁcient enforcement, poor labeling, illiteracy, and insufﬁcient knowledge about the hazards of pesticides and fertilizers. Supplemental irrigation has been used to raise crops in arid regions since 9500 to 8000 B.C.E. Irrigated agriculture developed in the Middle East, South Asia, China, and in Central and South America. Irrigation played a major role in increasing food production during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Irrigated land area had expanded to 275 Mha by 1998. Worldwide, 17 percent of irrigated cropland produces 40 percent of the world’s food. The leakage of fertilizers into the environment adversely impacts water quality (i.e., nonpoint source pollution) and exacerbates the greenhouse

Agriculture

effect (i.e., emission of N2O and NOx ). Fertilizer use efﬁciency can be enhanced by the adoption of conservation tillage and incorporation of cover crops in the rotation cycle. Cover crops include grass species sown between the main crops to improve soil quality and increase the SOC pool, or leguminous crops that enhance soil fertility through biological nitrogen ﬁxation. Species of Graminaceae and Cruciferae are nitrate catch crops and produce biosolids/residues to be used as mulch. Nitrate catch crops minimize the leaching of nitrates available in the soil, and undersown catch crops are more efﬁcient than those established after the harvest of main crops.

leguminous members of the pea family, or legumes nitrate catch crop crop planted to harvest soil nitrates

Agriculture and the Environment Inappropriate land use, soil mismanagement (especially the practice of plowing and growing monoculture with the subsequent need for large amounts of pesticides), and the adoption of fertility-mining practices can have adverse impacts on the environment, including the eutrophication of surface water, contamination of ground water, and emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from agricultural ecosystems into the atmosphere. Processes that lead to environmental pollution include accelerated erosion, leaching, volatilization, mineralization of organic matter, methanogenesis, and denitriﬁcation. These processes are accentuated by the conversion of natural to agricultural ecosystems, biomass burning, plowing and other excessive soil disturbance, indiscriminate use of fertilizers and other farm chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides, and drainage of wetlands. Nonetheless, these activities were deemed necessary to increase agricultural productivity to meet the demands of an increased population during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

eutrophication in nature, the slow aging process during which a lake, estuary, or bay evolves into a bog or marsh and eventually disappears; in pollution, excess algal growth or blooms due to introduction of a nutrient overload of nutrients, i.e., from un- or poorly treated sewage methanogenesis creation of methane gas by microbes

Intensive Commercial Agriculture in Developed Countries. Agricultural pollution in developed countries such as the United States is caused by the excessive use of chemicals. In the United States, the use of synthetic pesticides since 1945 has grown thirty-three-fold to about 0.5 billion kilograms (kg) per year or 3 kg per hectare per year. Further, the increase in hazard is even greater than it might appear because the toxicity of modern pesticides has increased by more than ten-fold over those pesticides used in the early 1950s. U.S. data show that 18 percent of all pesticides and about 90 percent of all fungicides are carcinogenic. In addition to humans, thousands of domestic animals are also poisoned by pesticides in the United States. The destruction of natural predators and parasites is costing the nation more than $500 million each year and resulting in the development of pesticide resistance. Ground and surface water contamination from pesticides is a serous issue. The excessive use of fertilizers and plowing can cause the eutrophication of water and transport sediment-borne chemicals into surface water. The average fertilizer use is about 100 kg per hectare per year in North America and 200 kg per hectare per year in western Europe. If use efﬁciency is less than 60 percent, a large proportion of the fertilizer applied ends up in surface and ground waters, or as a gaseous emission (N2O and NO2) into the atmosphere. Low-Input Agriculture in Developing Countries. The shifting cultivation and related bush-fallow systems, practiced in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the tropics, rely on cycling nutrients accumulated in vegetation and the soil surface during the fallow period. Deforestation and biomass burning emit large quantities of particulate matter and GHGs into the atmosphere. Further, the mineralization of SOC to release plant-available nutrients (e.g.,

bush-fallow practice of alternating between cultivating a piece of land and leaving it unplanted

27

Agriculture

Organic farming is the raising of crops and products using natural fertilizers and cultural and biological pest management. It excludes the use of synthetic chemicals in crop production and prohibits the use of antibiotics and hormones in livestock production. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) implemented national organic standards on organic production and processing in October 2002 and products meeting those standards are “certified organic.” USDA reports in 2002 that about 1 percent of oats, dry beans, tomatoes, grapes, and citrus were grown organically and about 2 percent of dry peas and lentils, 3 percent of apples, 4 percent of carrots, and 5 percent of lettuce was organic.

N, P, K, Ca, Mg, Zn, etc.) gives off CO2 and other GHGs into the atmosphere. The release of 50 kg of N per hectare through the decomposition of soil organic mater would lead to the emission of 500 kg of CO2-C, if we assume a conservative C:N ratio of 10:1. The problem is drastically exacerbated by accelerated soil erosion, which is a widespread problem due to harsh climate and fragile soils. Soil nutrient depletion at a continental scale continues to be a major problem in Africa, with severe economic and environmental consequences. The average annual nutrient loss on arable land in Africa was 22 kg N per hectare, 2.5 kg P per hectare, and 15 kg K per hectare.

Intensive Agriculture in Developing Economies. The rapidly growing human population in Asia (particularly in the southern or eastern regions of the continent) has jeopardized the environment and natural resources, which are already under great stress. Consequently, off-farm input (e.g., fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, plowing) plays an important role in food production in India, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. In India, approximately 59 million kg of pesticides are applied to agriculture annually. The average rate of fertilizer application in East Asia is 240 kg per hectare per year. Because of N subsidies, for example, farmers apply the cheap N pesticide and do not consider using the more expensive but less toxic P and K products. Consequently, there is a nutrient mining of soil in intensive rice-wheat areas. Further, highly soluble chemicals are quickly leached into the ground water. India is one of only two countries worldwide (along with the United States) to have applied more than 100,000 tons of dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT) since its initial formulation. Because of the excessive and indiscriminate use of pesticides in India, the total intake of organochemicals per person in that country is the highest in the world. Despite the problems outlined here, the adoption of recommended agricultural practices (RMPs) can enhance food production with minimal risks to the environment. In addition to the use of improved varieties responsive to input, RMPs include conservation-till or no-till farming involving cover crops in the rotation cycle, integrated nutrient management based on a judicious use of chemical fertilizers in combination with manures and other biosolids, precision farming to apply nutrient and chemicals based on soilspeciﬁc needs, soil-water management through drip irrigation/fertilization, or subirrigation through controlled water table management, etc. The objective is agricultural intensiﬁcation on existing land. It means cultivating the best soil with the best management practices to produce the optimum sustainable yield and save agriculturally marginal lands for nature conservancy.

Sustainable Agriculture There are numerous, diverse, and increasing demands on agriculture in the twenty-ﬁrst century. In addition to meeting the demands for the economic production of food, feed, ﬁber, and fuel, agriculture of the twenty-ﬁrst century must also address environmental concerns, especially in regard to water quality and the accelerated greenhouse effect. Soil is a bioﬁlter, and a reduction in the thickness of the topsoil layer through erosion has a direct negative effect on the buffering and ﬁltering capacity of the soil and on the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Soil erosion preferentially removes soil organic matter because it is light and is concentrated in the surface layer. A large fraction of the C thus displaced by water runoff may be prone to

28

Agriculture

mineralization, leading to its emission into the atmosphere as CO2. It is estimated that globally 1.1 billion tons of C may be emitted annually as CO2 because of displacement by water erosion. In addition, some of the organic matter deposited in depressional sites and aquatic ecosystems may lead to the emission of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). In comparison to CO2, the global warming potential is twenty-one for CH4 and 310 for N2O. Sustainable agriculture, therefore, is a viable production system based on environmentally benign agricultural practices. The objective of sustainable agriculture is to enhance and sustain production while improving soil fertility, soil tilth, and soil health. While enhancing production, sustainable agriculture must also address environmental issues with regard to water quality and the greenhouse effect. Rather than being the cause, improved agriculture is a solution to certain environmental problems. Sustainable agriculture implies proﬁtable farming on a continuous basis while preserving the natural resource base. It is not synonymous with lowinput, organic, or alternative agriculture. In some cases, low input may sustain proﬁtable and environmentally sound farming. In others, it might not. The addition of organic amendments might enhance soil quality, but may not eliminate the need for the judicious use of fertilizers. Large quantities (10 to 20 ton/hectare/year) of organic manures are needed to supply enough nutrients to produce the desired yields. Therefore, the use of organic manures, although desirable, may not be logistically feasible. In sub-Saharan Africa, low inputs on impoverished soils and low yields have been responsible for low standards of living, severe malnutrition, and widespread problems of soil and environmental degradation. Therefore, the adoption of RMPs is a necessary prerequisite to feeding the earth’s expected ten billion inhabitants by the year 2100. Judicious management includes the conversion of marginal agricultural soils to restorative land use and adoption of RMPs. Technological options differ among soils, ecoregions, and social and cultural settings, but the underlying basic principles remain the same. S E E A L S O Carver, George Washington; Cryptosporidosis; Green Revolution; Integrated Pest Management; Pesticides.

Raising poultry is big industry on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, but there’s a problem. The 600 million birds annually create about 800,000 tons of chicken manure. They may soon be creating electricity. Environmentalists, the poultry industry and local officials are enthusiastically studying plans to build a 40-megawatt power plant that would burn chicken manure mixed with wood shavings to generate electricity. Fibrowatt, the British company making the proposal, already operates three poultry-manurepowered generating plants in England and is currently building a plant in Minnesota to be powered by turkey manure.

Bibliography Bumb, B.L., and Baanante, C.A. (1996). “The Role of Fertilizer in Sustaining Food Security and Protecting the Environment to 2020.” IFPRI, Food, Agriculture and the Environment Discussion Paper 17, Washington, DC. Evans, L.T. (1998). Feeding the Ten Billion: Plants and Population Growth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. FAO. (1996). The Production Yearbook. Rome: Italy. FAO. (1999a). The Production Yearbook. Rome: Italy. FAO. (1999b). “The State of Food and Agriculture.” Paper presented at 30th Session of the FAO Conference, November 12–23, 1999, Rome, Italy. FAO. (1999c). “Assessment of the World Food Security Situation.” Report CFS: 99/2 presented at the 25th Session of the Committee on World Food Security, May 2–31,1999, Rome, Italy. FAO. (2000). The Production Yearbook. Rome: Italy. Field, W. (1990). “World Irrigation.” Irrigation and Drainage Systems 4:91–107. Framji, K.K., and Mahajan, I.K. (1969). Irrigation and Drainage in the World. New Delhi, India: Caxton Press. Hyams, E. (1952). Soil And Civilization. London: Thames and Hudson. IFDC. (1979). Fertilizer Manual. Muscle Shoals, AL.

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Air Pollution

IFDC. (1999). Global and Regional Data on Fertilizer Production and Consumption 1961–62 to 1997–98. Muscle Shoals, AL. Jauhar, P.P., and Khush, G.S. (2002). “Importance of Biotechnology in Global Food Security.” In Food Security and Environment Quality in the Developing World, edited by R. Lal, D.O. Hansen, N. Uphoff, and S. Slack. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, pp. 105–126l. Lal, R. (1995). “Global Soil Erosion by Water and Carbon Dynamics.” In Soils and Global Change, edited by R. Lal, J.M. Kimble, E. Levine, and B.A. Stewart. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, pp. 131–141. Lal, R. (2002). “Soil and Human Society.” In Encyclopedia of Soil Science, edited by R. Ral. New York: Marcel Dekker, pp. 663–666. Lowdermilk, W.C. (1953). Conquest of the Land through 7000 Years. Washington, DC: USDA-SCS. Myers, W.B. (1996). Human Impact on the Earth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Pimentel, D. (1996). “Green Revolution Agriculture and Chemical Hazards.” The Science of the Total Environment 188 Supplement: S86–S98. Pimentel, D. (2002). “Agricultural Chemicals and the Environment.” In Food Security and Environmental Quality in the Developing World, edited by R. Lal, D.O. Hansen, N. Uphoff, and S. Slack. Boca Raton, FL: CRC/Lewis Publishers, pp. 205–213. Postel, S. (1999). Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? New York: W.W. Norton. Scherr, S. (1999). “Soil Degradation: A Threat to Developing Country’s Food Security.” IFPRI Discussion Paper 7, Washington, DC. Stoorvogel, J.J., Smaling, E.M.A., and Janssen, B.H. (1993). “Calculating Soil Nutrient Balances in Africa at Different Scales. I. Supra-national Scale.” Fertilizer Research 35:227–335. Struever, S. (1971). Prehistoric Agriculture. Garden City, NY. Tandrich, J.P. (2002). “History to Early-Mid 20th Century”. In Encyclopedia Of Soil Science, edited by R. Lal. New York: Marcel Dekker, pp. 659–662. Williams, M. (1994). “Forests and Tree Cover.” In Changes in Land Use and Land Cover: A Global Perspective, edited by W.B. Meyer and B.L. Turner II. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 97–123.

Rattan Lal

Air Pollution Air pollution is a phenomenon by which particles (solid or liquid) and gases contaminate the environment. Such contamination can result in health effects on the population, which might be either chronic (arising from longterm exposure), or acute (due to accidents). Other effects of pollution include damage to materials (e.g., the marble statues on the Parthenon are corroded as a result of air pollution in the city of Athens), agricultural damage (such as reduced crop yields and tree growth), impairment of visibility (tiny particles scatter light very efﬁciently), and even climate change (certain gases absorb energy emitted by the earth, leading to global warming).

excess death deaths over the expected number

30

Air pollution is certainly not a new phenomenon. Early references to it date back to the Middle Ages, when smoke from burning coal was already such a serious problem that in 1307 King Edward I banned its use in lime kilns in London. More recently, there have been major episodes of air pollution, such as the 1930 catastrophe in the Meuse Valley, Belgium, where SO2 and particulate matter, combined with a high relative humidity, caused sixtythree excess deaths in ﬁve days. In 1948 similar conditions in Donora, Pennsylvania, a small industrial city, caused twenty excess deaths in ﬁve days,

Air Pollution

The New York City skyline on a smoggy day in the 1960s. (©Roger Wood/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

31

Air Pollution

U . S . N ATI ONA L P OLLUTA NT EMI S S I ON E S TI MA TES FOR 1 9 99 (thousand short tons)

Source Category

CO

NOx

VOC

SO2

PM10

PM2.5

Total

On-road Vehicles Non-road Vehicles Miscellaneous Fuel Combustion Electric Utilities Industrial Other Waste Disposal and Recycling Solvent Utilization Metals Processing Other Industrial Processes Chemical Manufacturing Storage and Transport Petroleum Industries

49,989 25,162 9,378 5,322 445 1,178 3,699

8,590 5,515 320 10,026 5,715 3,136 1,175

5,297 3,232 716 904 56 178 670

363 936 12 16,091 12,698 2,805 588

295 458 20,634 1,029 255 236 568

229 411 4,454 766 128 151 487

64,763 35,714 35,514 34,138 19,267 7,684 7,187

3,792 2 1,678

91 3 88

586 4,825 77

37 1 401

587 6 147

525 6 103

5,618 4,843 2,494

599 1,081 72 366

470 131 16 143

449 395 1,240 424

418 262 5 341

343 66 85 29

191 40 31 17

2,470 1,975 1,449 1,320

Total

97,441

25,393

18,145

18,867

23,679

6,773

190,298

SOURCE:

Adapted from http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/trends/trends99/tier3_1999emis.pdf.

and in the early 1950s in London, England, two episodes of “killer fogs” claimed the lives of more than 6,000 people.

Classification of Air Pollutants Not all pollutants are a result of human activity. Natural pollutants are those that are found in nature or are emitted from natural sources. For example, volcanic activity produces sulfur dioxide, and particulate pollution may derive from forest ﬁres or windblown dust. Anthropogenic pollutants are those that are produced by humans or controlled processes. For example, sulfur dioxide is produced by fossil fuel combustion and particulate matter comes from diesel engines. Air pollutants also are classiﬁed as primary or secondary. Primary pollutants are those that are emitted directly into the atmosphere from an identiﬁable source. Examples include carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide. Secondary pollutants are those that are produced in the atmosphere by chemical and physical processes from primary pollutants and natural constituents. For example, ozone is produced by hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen (both of which may be produced by car emissions) and sunlight. See the table for a listing of estimated pollutant emissions in the United States in 1999.

Air Pollution Control Laws and Regulations The earliest programs to manage air quality in the United States date to the late 1880s; they attempted to regulate emissions from smokestacks using nuisance law municipal ordinances. Little progress was made in air pollution control during the ﬁrst half of the twentieth century. In the 1950s there was a shift away from nuisance law and municipal ordinances as the basis for managing air quality toward increased federal involvement. The Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 established a program for federally funded research grants in the area of air pollution, but the role of the federal government remained a limited one.

32

Air Pollution

N AT IO N AL AM B I E N T A I R Q U A L I T Y S TA N DA RDS Standard Value*

Pollutant Carbon Monoxide (CO) 8-hour Average 1-hour Average Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) Annual Arithmetic Mean

Standard Type

9 ppm 35 ppm

(10 mg/m3) (40 mg/m3)

Primary Primary

0.053 ppm

(100 µg/m3)

Primary & Secondary

Ozone (O3) 1-hour Average 8-hour Average

0.12 ppm 0.08 ppm

(235 µg/m3) (157 µg/m3)

Primary & Secondary Primary & Secondary

Lead (Pb) Quarterly Average

1.5 µg/m3

Primary & Secondary

Particulate (PM 10) Particles with diameters of 10 micrometers or less Annual Arithmetic Mean 50 µg/m3 24-hour Average 150 µg/m3

Primary & Secondary Primary & Secondary

Particulate (PM 2.5) Particles with diameters of 2.5 micrometers or less Annual Arithmetic Mean 15 µg/m3 24-hour Average 65 µg/m3

Primary & Secondary Primary & Secondary

Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) Annual Arithmetic Mean 24-hour Average 3-hour Average

0.030 ppm 0.14 ppm 0.50 ppm

(80 µg/m3) (365 µg/m3) (1300 µg/m3)

Primary Primary Secondary

*Parenthetical value is an approximately equivalent concentration. SOURCE:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

It was the Clean Air Act (CAA) of 1963 that further extended the federal government’s powers in a signiﬁcant way, allowing direct federal intervention to reduce interstate pollution. The Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) of 1970 continued many of the programs established by prior legislation; however, several aspects of it represented major changes in strategy by expanding the role of the federal government. The 1970 CAAA deﬁned two types of pollutants that were to be regulated: criteria and hazardous pollutants. Criteria pollutants, regulated to achieve the attainment of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), including primary standards for the protection of public health, “. . . the attainment and maintenance of which, . . . allowing an adequate margin of safety, are requisite to protect public health,” and secondary standards for the protection of public welfare. The ﬁrst six criteria pollutants were carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), total suspended particulate matter (TSP), hydrocarbons, and photochemical oxidants. Lead was added to the list in 1976. In 1979 the photochemical oxidants standard was replaced by one for ozone (O3), and in 1983 the hydrocarbons standard was dropped altogether. In 1987 TSP was changed to PM10, and in 1997 PM2.5 was added to the ofﬁcial list and the ozone standard revised. National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) were established. A hazardous air pollutant (HAP) was deﬁned as one “to which no ambient air standard is applicable and that . . . causes, or contributes to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to result in an increase in mortality or an increase in serious irreversible or incapacitating reversible illness.” Examples include asbestos, mercury, benzene, arsenic, and radionuclides.

33

Air Pollution

E S TI M ATED P OLLUTA NT E MI S S I ONS I N THE UNI TE D S TA TES IN 2000 (Thousand short tons)

Source Category Fuel combustion Electric utilities Industrial Other Chemical manufacturing Metals processing Petroleum industries Other industrial processes Solvent utilization Storage and transport Waste disposal and recycling On-road vehicles Nonroad vehicles Miscellaneous Total SOURCE:

CO

NOx

VOC

SO2

PM10

PM2.5

445 1,221 2,924 1,112 1,735 369 620 2 74 3,609 48,469 29,956 20,806

5,266 3,222 1,161 134 91 146 487 3 17 89 8,150 5,558 576

64 185 957 407 79 433 480 4,827 1,225 582 5,035 3,404 2,710

11,389 2,894 593 268 411 346 432 1 5 35 314 1,492 21

270 244 483 67 152 30 355 7 87 544 273 436 21,926

141 157 458 41 107 17 198 6 32 514 209 400 5,466

109,342

24,899

20,384

18,201

24,875

7,746

EPA data available from http://www.epa.gov/ttn

Even though the CAAA of 1970 and 1977 placed deadlines on the dates for compliance with the NAAQS, as of 1990 in many areas of the United States, a variety of criteria pollutants existed in concentrations greater than the standards allowed. As a result, the CAAA of 1990 were passed. They contain eleven major divisions, referred to as titles, the most important of which are the following: Title I: Provisions for Attainment and Maintenance of NAAQS, Title II: Provisions Relating to Mobile Sources, Title III: Hazardous Air Pollutants, Title IV: Acid Deposition Control, Title V: Permits, and Title VI: Stratospheric Ozone Protection, Title VII: Provisions Relating to Enforcement, Title VIII: Miscellaneous Provisions, Title IX: Clean Air Research, Title X: Disadvantaged Business Concerns, and Title XI: Clean Air Employment Transition Assistance.

International Nature of the Problem Air pollution and the problems it causes are not conﬁned by any geopolitical boundaries. For example, the radioactive cloud resulting from the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 traveled as far as Ireland. A United Nations report warns that haze produced by the burning of wood and fossil fuels is creating a two-mile-thick “Asian browncloud” that covers southeastern Asia and may be responsible for hundreds of thousands of respiratory deaths a year. In the United States, federal pollution laws and regulations apply to all states, even though some states, such as California, have adopted more stringent standards. Similarly, in the European Union (EU) existing laws apply equally to all members. Countries such as Denmark and Germany, however, have elected to imposed stricter standards than those set by the EU. International agreements aimed at reducing various pollutants have been signed by various countries. The Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987; its purpose is the reduction of chloroﬂuorocarbons (CFC), a class of compounds that destroy the stratospheric ozone layer. More recently, in 1997, a conference convened in Kyoto, Japan, to discuss ways of reducing carbon

34

Air Pollution

dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases. The United States has not signed the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that such an agreement would impede its economic progress. It has, however, publicly stated its intention to embark on voluntary reductions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

greenhouse gas a gas, such as carbon dioxide or methane, which contributes to potential climate change

Air Pollutants In general, air pollutants are divided into two classes: those for which a NAAQS may be set (in other words, the criteria pollutants), and those for which NAAQS are not appropriate (the HAPs). If the ambient concentration of the criteria pollutants is kept below the NAAQS value, then there will be no health damage due to air pollution. The HAP (mostly known or suspected carcinogens), on the other hand, are those that, even in low concentrations, cause signiﬁcant damage.

Particulate Matter. Particulate matter (PM) is the term used to describe solid or liquid particles that are airborne and dispersed (i.e., scattered, separated). PM originates from a variety of anthropogenic sources, including diesel trucks, power plants, wood stoves, and industrial processes. The original NAAQS for PM was set in 1970. In 1987, the total suspended particulate matter, TSP, was revised, and a PM10 (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of 10 µm or less) standard was set. PM10, sometimes known as respirable particles, was felt to provide a better correlation of particle concentration with human health. In 1997 the particulate matter standard was updated, to include the PM2.5 standard. These particles, known as “ﬁne” particles, a signiﬁcant fraction of which is secondary in nature, are especially detrimental to human health because they can penetrate deep into the lungs. Scientiﬁc studies show a link between PM2.5 (alone, or combined with other pollutants in the air) and a series of signiﬁcant health effects, even death. Fine particles are the major cause of reduced visibility in parts of the United States, including many of the national parks. Also, soils, plants, water, or materials are affected by PM. For example, particles containing nitrogen and sulfur that are deposited as acid rain on land or water bodies may alter the nutrient balance and acidity of those environments so that species composition and buffering capacity change. PM causes soiling and erosion damage to materials, including culturally important objects such as carved monuments and statues.

Carbon Monoxide. Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless, odorless, and at high levels a poisonous gas that is fairly unreactive. It is formed when carbon in fuels is not burned completely. The major source of CO is motor vehicle exhaust. In cities, as much as 95 percent of all CO emissions result from vehicular (automobile) emissions. Other sources of CO emissions include industrial processes, nontransportation-related fuel combustion, and natural sources such as wildﬁres. CO has serious health effects on humans. An exposure to 50 ppm of CO for eight hours can cause reduced psychomotor performance, while CO is lethal to humans when concentrations exceed approximately 750 ppm. Hemoglobin, the part of blood that carries oxygen to body parts, has an afﬁnity of CO that is about 240 times higher than that for oxygen, forming carboxyhemoglobin, COHb. Moreover, the release of oxygen by hemoglobin is reduced in the presence of COHb. However, the effects of CO poisoning are reversible once the CO source has been removed.

35

Air Pollution

Sulfur Dioxide. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is colorless, nonﬂammable, nonexplosive gas. Almost 90 percent of anthropogenic SO2 emissions are the result of fossil fuel combustion (mostly coal) in power plants and other stationary sources. A natural source of sulfur oxides is volcanic activities. In general, exposure to SO2 irritates the human upper respiratory tract. The most serious air pollution episodes occurred when there was a synergistic effect of SO2 with PM and water vapor (fog). Because of this, it has proven difﬁcult to isolate the effects of SO2 alone. SO2 is one of the precursors of acid rain (the term used to describe the deposition of acidic substances from the atmosphere). Also, SO2 is the precursor of secondary ﬁne sulfate particles, which in turn affect human health and reduce visibility. Prolonged exposure to SO2 and sulfate PM causes serious damage to materials such as marble, limestone, and mortar. The carbonates (e.g., limestone, CaCO3) in these materials are replaced by sulfates (e.g., gypsum, CaSO4) that are water-soluble and may be washed away easily by rain. This results in an eroded surface.

Nitrogen Dioxide. Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a reddish-brown gas. It is a lung irritant and is present in the highest concentrations among other oxides of nitrogen in ambient air. Nitric oxide (NO) and NO2 are collectively known as NOx. Anthropogenic emissions of NOx come from high-temperature combustion processes, such as those occurring in automobiles and power plants. Natural sources of NO2 are lightning and various biological processes in soil. The oxides of nitrogen, much like sulfur dioxide, are precursors of acid rain and visibility-reducing ﬁne nitrate particles.

Ozone. Ozone (O3) is a secondary pollutant and is formed in the atmosphere by the reaction of molecular oxygen, O2, and atomic oxygen, O, which comes from the photochemical decomposition of NO2. Volatile organic compounds or VOCs (e.g., what one smells when refuelling the car) must also be present if O3 is to accumulate in the atmosphere. O3 occurs naturally in the stratosphere and provides a protective layer from the sun’s ultraviolet rays high above the earth. However, at ground level, O3 is a lung and eye irritant and can cause asthma attacks, especially in young children or other susceptible individuals. O3, being a powerful oxidant, also attacks materials and has been found to cause reduced crop yields and stunt tree growth.

Lead. The major sources of lead (Pb) in the atmosphere in the United States are industrial processes from metals smelters. Thirty years ago, the major emissions of Pb resulted from cars burning leaded gasoline. In 2002 only aviation fuels contain relatively large amounts of Pb. The United States is currently working with the World Bank to eliminate the use of leaded gasoline in all countries still using such fuel. Pb is a toxic metal and can accumulate in the blood, bones, and soft tissues. Even low exposure to Pb can cause mental retardation in children.

Hazardous Air Pollutants. Hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), commonly referred to as air toxics or toxic air pollutants, are pollutants known to cause or suspected of causing cancer or other serious human health effects or damage to the ecosystem.

36

Air Pollution

EPA lists 188 HAPs and regulates sources emitting signiﬁcant amounts of these identiﬁed pollutants. Examples of HAPs are heavy metals (e.g., mercury), volatile chemicals (e.g., benzene), combustion by-products (e.g., dioxins), and solvents (e.g., methylene chloride). HAPs are emitted from many sources, including large stationary industrial facilities (e.g., electric power plants), smaller-area sources (e.g., dry cleaners), mobile sources (e.g., cars), indoor sources (e.g., some building materials and cleaning solvents), and other sources (e.g., wildﬁres). Potential human health effects of HAPs include headache, dizziness, nausea, birth defects, and cancer. Environmental effects of HAPs include toxicity to aquatic plants and animals as well as the accumulation of pollutants in the food chain. Because of the potential serious harmful effects of the HAPs, even at very low concentrations, NAAQS are not appropriate. The EPA has set National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, NESHAP, for only eight of the HAP, including asbestos and vinyl chloride. The EPA regulates HAP by requiring each HAP emission source to meet Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards. MACT is deﬁned as “not less stringent than the emission control that is achieved in practice by the best controlled similar source.”

Control of Air Pollutants In general, control of pollutants that are primary in nature, such as SO2, NO2, CO, and Pb, is easier than control of pollutants that are either entirely secondary (O3) or have a signiﬁcant secondary component (PM2.5). Primary pollutants may be controlled at the source. For example, SO2 is controlled by the use of scrubbers, which are industrial devices that remove SO2 from the exhaust gases from power plants. SO2 emissions are also reduced by the use of low-sulfur coal or other fuels, such as natural gas, that contain lower amounts of sulfur. NO2 from industrial sources also may be minimized by scrubbing. NO2 from cars, as well as CO, are controlled by the use of catalytic converters, engine design modiﬁcations, and the use of cleaner burning grades of gasoline. Lead emissions have been reduced signiﬁcantly since the introduction of lead-free gasoline. Ozone and particulate matter are two of the most difﬁcult pollutants to control. Reduction of oxides of nitrogen emissions, together with a reduction of VOC emissions is the primary control strategy for minimizing ozone concentrations. Because a large portion of PM2.5 is secondary in nature, its control is achieved by control of SO2, NO2, and VOC (which are the precursors of sulfates, nitrates, and carbon-containing particulates). S E E A L S O Acid Rain; Carbon Dioxide; Carbon Monoxide; Clean Air Act; Coal; Electric Power; Global Warming; Greenhouse Gases; Lead; Ozone; Petroleum; Toxic Release Inventory; Vehicular Pollution. Bibliography Boubel, R., Fox, D., Turner, D., and Stern, A. (1994). Fundamentals of Air Pollution, 3rd edition. San Diego: Academic Press. Cooper, C., and Alley, F. (2002). Air Pollution Control: A Design Approach, 3rd edition. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. de Nevers, N. (2000). Air Pollution Control Engineering, 2nd edition. Boston: McGrawHill.

37

Air Pollution Control Act

Heinsohn, R., and Kabel, R. (1999). Sources and Control of Air Pollution. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Nazaroff, W., and Alvarez-Cohen, L. Environmental Engineering Science. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Wark, K., Warner, C., and Davis, W. (1998). Air Pollution, Its Origin and Control, 3rd edition. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley. Internet Resources U.S. EPA Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov/air.

Christos Christoforou

Air Pollution Control Act The Air Pollution Control Act (APCA) of 1955 was the ﬁrst legislation on air pollution enacted by the U.S. federal government. It resulted after a number of failed attempts, initiated by California’s representatives, in the Senate or Congress. Air pollution had long been regarded as a local problem, and the federal government was hesitant to interfere with states’ rights. As a result, APCA was rather narrow in scope and effect. According to the law, the Public Health Service was authorized to spend $3 million per year for ﬁve years to research the effects of air pollution and provide technical assistance, research, and training in the area of air pollution to state and local air-quality districts. No money was appropriated for the control of this problem. APCA was amended in 1960 and then again in 1962, with requests to the Surgeon General to conduct research on the relationship between motor vehicle exhaust and human health. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Laws and Regulations, United States. Internet Resource American Meterological Society Web site. Available from http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS.

Christos Christoforou

Allergies

See Health, Human

Animal Waste

See Agriculture

Antinuclear Movement “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.” Robert Oppenheimer, the “father” of the atomic bomb, muttered these Hindu words after the initial successful test of the new weapon during the summer of 1945. Although Oppenheimer’s scientiﬁc expertise produced the bomb, he grew increasingly uneasy over its application and destructive power. Oppenheimer became the ﬁrst of a long line of antinuclear activists and scientists to protest nuclear weapons and nuclear power. In the early 1950s, the United States began testing an even more powerful nuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, in Nevada and the islands of the South Paciﬁc. This testing came in the wake of the cold war, a struggle for power and survival between the United States and the Soviet Union following

38

Antinuclear Movement

World War II. With the Soviet Union’s development of its own atomic bomb in 1949, American policymakers became increasingly concerned that such a weapon could be aimed at the United States, and pressed for more powerful nuclear weapons. A thousand times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II, the hydrogen bomb also showered huge amounts of radioactive elements, called fallout, into the atmosphere. This debris affected the entire globe, falling with precipitation, and entering the food chain when absorbed by plants and eaten by animals like cows and humans.

Police wearing riot gear form a human barricade against antinuclear demonstrators in Germany, May 7, 1996. (© Regis Bossu/Corbis Sygma. Reproduced by permission.)

As concern mounted, citizens formed groups to protest. In 1957 the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) began pressing for a halt to weapons testing, with the help of prominent Americans like publisher Norman Cousins and child-care expert Dr. Benjamin Spock. Women also played an important role in this early antinuclear activism. Alarmed by prospective dangers to their children, a group called Women Strike for Peace (WSP) organized a nationwide protest against nuclear testing and radiation on November 1, 1961. In New York City, for example, WSP supporters marched outside the United Nations building. Antinuclear activists continued to pressure politicians, resulting in the 1962 ratiﬁcation of the AmericanSoviet treaty banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, space, and underwater. The late 1960s through 1980s saw a shift in the antinuclear movement toward protesting the development of nuclear power as an energy source. Although the government, through the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC),

39

Antinuclear Movement

had advocated for peaceful uses of nuclear power since the development of the atomic bomb, little impetus existed for new energy sources. With the energy crisis of the 1970s and increased public awareness of the environmental problems engendered by fossil fuels, the government pressed forward with the development of several nuclear power plants, ostensibly to reduce American dependence on oil and provide cheap sources of electricity. Several citizens’ groups emerged to confront nuclear power issues, raising concerns about adequate safety plans and the long-term effects of low-level radiation. Chief among these were the Clamshell Alliance and the Abalone Alliance. A coalition of New England activists formed the Clamshell Alliance in 1976. Using civil rights protest methods, it organized the sit-in of thousands at the Seabrook power plant in New Hampshire, beginning in August 1976 and continuing through early 1977. The Abalone Alliance mobilized paciﬁsts and environmental activists in a protest against the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California. More citizens joined these types of organizations after the 1978 release of The China Syndrome, a ﬁlm depicting a neardisaster at a nuclear power plant. A real accident, strangely similar to the event presented in the ﬁlm, occurred the following year at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania and caused the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes out of fear of radioactive contamination. A far more destructive nuclear power plant accident occurred in the Ukraine in 1986 at Chernobyl. In this catastrophe, radioactive waste spewed from a reactor explosion, and over 130,000 people were forced to leave the area. The contamination greatly increased many of their chances of developing cancer. The antinuclear movement succeeded in virtually halting the governments’ development of nuclear power, and also inﬂuenced further nuclear weapons reductions, especially as the Cold War began to wind down by the late 1980s. Government ofﬁcials, however, continued to search for ways to deal with the problem of the radioactive waste produced by the nuclear power plants. Despite citizen concern in the 1990s over the inherent dangers of transporting nuclear waste, over the summer of 2002, President George W. Bush authorized the development of a site at Yucca Mountain, a hundred miles outside of Las Vegas, to store nuclear waste. Scheduled to open in 2010, the Yucca Mountain site will store, in one place, waste that is currently scattered around the country. Also during the 1990s, increased information about radiation’s health hazards led to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, which attempted to compensate some of the cancer victims of 1950s nuclear testing. Renewed concerns about nuclear power plants have also surfaced in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. With rumors of possible terrorist attacks on nuclear power stations, access to plans and information has become more limited. The Yucca Mountain Web site, for example, removed the plans for its facility in the hopes of preventing terrorist attacks. S E E A L S O Activism; Industry; Politics; Public Participation; Radioactive Fallout; Radioactive Waste. Bibliography Divine, Robert. (1978). Blowing on the Wind: The Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1954–1960. New York: Oxford University Press. Price, Jerome. (1990). The Anti-Nuclear Movement. Twayne’s Social Movements Series. Revised edition. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

40

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Wittner, Lawrence S. (1993). Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970. The Struggle against the Bomb Series, Vol. 2. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Internet Resources Nuclear Regulatory Commission Web site. Available from http://www.nrc.gov. Yucca Mountain Project Web site. Available from http://www.ymp.gov. Sierra Club, Nuclear Waste Issues. Available from http://www.sierraclub.org/ nuclearwaste.

Elizabeth D. Blum

Aquifers

See Water Pollution: Freshwater

Arbitration Arbitration is a process in which disputing parties abandon their right to litigate or appeal to the judicial court and instead put their case before an impartial third party who renders an opinion or recommendation. If the arbitration is nonbinding, the parties may choose to accept it or not. If it is binding, the parties must abide by the decision, which has the force of law and can be enforced. Parties may voluntarily submit to arbitration rather than incur the costs of litigation. Courts may also force parties to go to arbitration. Examples of cases that have gone to arbitration concern the location of gas pipelines and liability for paying for pollution cleanup. S E E A L S O Consensus Building; Enforcement; Litigation; Mediation; Public Policy Decision Making; Regulatory Negotiation. Internet Resource U.S. Institute for Environmental Conﬂict Resolution Web site. Available from http://www.ecr.gov.

Susan L. Senecah

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge The Arctic National Wildlife Range was established in 1960 to conserve 8.9 million acres of Alaska’s remote northeast corner. This roadless area, north of the Arctic Circle, consists of arctic and alpine tundra, coastal lagoons and barrier islands, and boreal forest. It stretches along 110 miles of the Beaufort Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean) to the border with Canada’s Yukon Territory. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980 increased the size of the refuge to nineteen million acres (about the size of South Carolina) and renamed it the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Together with the adjacent Ivvavik and Vuntut National Parks in Canada, it comprises the second-largest international conservation area in North America (after the Wrangell-St. Elias and Glacier Bay National Parks in Alaska and the neighboring Tatshenshini-Alsek and Kluane Parks in Canada) and one of the largest protected natural areas in the world.

boreal northern, subarctic

To win passage of ANILCA, President Jimmy Carter compromised with Congress and left open the possibility of future oil and gas development in 1.5 million acres of ANWR’s coastal plain in what was called the 1002 Area. Such exploitation would require an act of Congress. Ever since, this has been

41

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

one of the most contentious environmental issues facing Congress, pitting prodevelopment legislators (primarily Republicans) against conservationists (primarily Democrats). For example, in 2002 the Bush administration advocated legislation to open the refuge to oil exploration, but this legislation was defeated by the Senate under Democratic control.

drilling waste material (soil, ground rock, etc.) removed during drilling

Oil companies argue that they can drill for oil in ANWR with minimal environmental damage. New technologies such as directional drilling allow for multiple wellheads on a minimal “footprint.” In ANWR, this means that the oil deposits could be exploited from an area about the size of a large airport. Drilling waste can be reinjected deep under ground in porous rock formations. Three-dimensional seismic surveys provide more accurate data about the location of oil reserves, and thereby reduce the number of dry holes. Oil companies contend that work can be completed during winter months on temporary roads and drilling pads built out of ice that simply melts away in the summer. The industry argues that drilling in ANWR would reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil and prices at the pump. Furthermore, oil development would bring tax revenues to the state of Alaska and the national government. Many Inupiat Eskimos in the coastal plain of the refuge favor oil development for the economic boom it will bring them, although they oppose drilling offshore where they hunt whales. Conservationists argue that 95 percent of Alaska’s North Slope is already open to oil development. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that ANWR likely holds enough oil to supply six months of U.S. consumption, and that these reserves would take ten years to develop. Conservationists point out that the United States could easily save more oil than can be extracted from ANWR by increasing automobile fuel efﬁciency standards. For example, a one-mile per gallon increase in U.S. automobile fuel efﬁciency for a thirty-year period would save more oil than the projected yield from ANWR. The refuge would not signiﬁcantly decrease U.S. dependence on foreign oil or reduce pump prices: Even with ANWR oil, the United States possesses only 3 percent of the world’s known oil reserves, but consumes 25 percent of world production. Oil in ANWR is thought to exist in several pockets, necessitating an industrial infrastructure of roads, pipelines, drill sites, processing facilities, power plants, utility lines, water reservoirs, airstrips, helicopter pads, gravel mines, landﬁlls, equipment sheds, and living quarters that would fragment the landscape like a net, even though the drilling platforms themselves would not cover a large area. Ice roads and pads would require introducing a great deal of water into the desertlike coastal plain, while drawing that water from surface ponds and lakes could lower water levels enough to lead to complete freezing in winter, killing resident ﬁsh populations. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that the 1002 Area has only enough usable water for ten miles of ice roads, necessitating the construction of permanent gravel roads. The refuge’s harsh climate leads to short growing seasons and slow life processes, which in turn make it vulnerable to human disturbance, including oil spills. Conservationists stress that in the nearby Prudhoe Bay oil ﬁeld the industry reports an average of more than one spill of oil products or other hazardous substances per day. Large spills from the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline occur occasionally, as happened in 2001 when a man shot a bullet through the pipeline, causing a 285,000 gallon spill.

42

Arsenic

ANWR is home to the greatest diversity of wildlife of any protected ecosystem in the Arctic, including forty-ﬁve species of land mammals and about 180 species of birds. Although one of the most isolated natural areas in the world, the refuge is ecologically connected to most of the continents and to every U.S. state except Hawaii by more than 130 species of migrating birds that nest or feed on the refuge. The greatest concentration of pregnant polar bears denning on land in Alaska occurs in the 1002 Area, and this area is also the most important calving area for the Porcupine caribou herd, the world’s largest international migratory herd, which in 2001 numbered about 130,000 animals. Every year the herd migrates 800 miles round-trip from its calving grounds in ANWR to the adjacent Ivvavik and Vuntut National Parks in Canada, where industrial activity is banned. The caribou provide subsistence to the Gwich’in Indians along the migratory route. The Gwich’in, whose name means “people of the caribou,” oppose drilling in ANWR because they believe it would ruin their traditional way of life. For them the coastal plain is sacred. The Gwich’in are supported by the majority of Americans, who over the years have consistently favored conserving the coastal plain from oil development. The League of Conservation Voters commissioned Democratic and Republican polling ﬁrms in May 2001 to survey 1,000 Americans; they found that 62 percent opposed drilling in the refuge while 34 percent favored it. S E E A L S O Petroleum. Bibliography Mitchell, John G. (2001). “Oil Field or Sanctuary?” National Geographic August 2001: 46–55. Internet Resource U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Web site. Available from http://www.fws.gov.

Frank A. von Hippel

Arsenic Arsenic (As) is a naturally occurring element that has been used in a variety of applications—in pesticides, as wood preservatives, and as a treatment for syphilis. Throughout history, arsenic was the most often used poison. Some historians believe that Nero used arsenic to poison Claudius in 54 C.E. Arsenic has also been the poison of choice in murder mysteries due to its easy availability in rat poison and insecticides. In its elemental form, arsenic is a steel gray metal-like material. Combined with carbon and hydrogen, it forms organic arsenic compounds. When combined with oxygen, chloride, and sulfur, it forms inorganic arsenic compounds. Organic arsenic is generally less toxic than inorganic arsenic. Chromated copper arsenate (CCA), a pesticidal compound, has been widely used as a wood preservative. In February 2002 industry announced a voluntary decision to remove arsenic-treated lumber products (play structures, picnic tables, deck wood, etc.) from the market. By January 2004 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will no longer allow CCA products for residential use. Although the EPA has not concluded that arsenic-treated wood poses an “unreasonable risk” to the public, arsenic is a known human carcinogen and any decrease in exposure from any source is desirable. Over 100,000 tons of arsenic are produced worldwide, most of which is a by-product of the smelting of metals such as copper and lead.

smelting the process in which a facility melts or fuses ore, often with an accompanying chemical change, to separate its metal content; emissions cause pollution

43

Arsenic

ingest take in through the mouth

Arsenic occurs naturally in soils, rocks, water, and air. The burning of high-arsenic coal, the use of arsenical pesticides, and metals manufacturing has redistributed arsenic throughout the environment. Human exposure to arsenic occurs through ingestion of water and food contaminated with arsenic or the inhalation of contaminated air. The greatest human exposure to arsenic is through consumption of contaminated seafood. However, the arsenic in seafood is organic arsenic, which is low in toxicity. Ingestion of inorganic arsenic in drinking water represents the greatest health hazard. Ingestion of large amounts of inorganic arsenic is extremely toxic and can be fatal. Although environmental levels of arsenic are much lower, exposure to arsenic in drinking water has been associated with increased risks of cancer of the bladder, kidney, skin, and lung. Noncarcinogenic effects include lesions of the skin; blackfoot disease, a peripheral vascular disorder; cardiovascular and neurological diseases; and possible adverse effects on the reproductive system. Recent research has shown arsenic to be an endocrine disruptor, blocking a steroid that regulates a number of biological processes. Arsenic contamination of drinking water supplies is a worldwide problem. Areas where drinking water is of speciﬁc concern include Bangladesh, India, Hungary, Chile, China, Argentina, Taiwan, Ghana, Mexico, the Philippines, New Zealand, and the United States (primarily the western states). The World Health Organization (WHO) has established a guideline of 10 micrograms (µg) of arsenic per liter, or ten parts per billion (ppb), in drinking water. In February 2002 the EPA announced the new arsenic drinking water standard of ten ppb. By 2006 community drinking water systems across the United States must be in compliance. There are several methods to removing arsenic from drinking water, including: • Coprecipitation, where iron binds with arsenic and the particles settle out or are removed. • Adsorption, where arsenic adheres to aluminum or iron and can be removed. • Membrane ﬁltration, where arsenic is ﬁltered out of the water. • Ion exchange, where a chemical process exchanges chloride for arsenic. The estimated cost for compliance of the new arsenic drinking water standard in the United States is approximately $177 million per year. The average cost per household is dependent upon the size of the community water system—the smaller the system, the higher the cost. Arsenic has also been identiﬁed in hazardous waste sites within the United States. Scientists at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences have identiﬁed the brake fern, Pteris vittata, which absorbs arsenic from the soil. The potential use of this fern to clean up arsenic from such sites is called phytoremediation, where plants and trees are used to extract contaminates from the soil. Many arsenic compounds dissolve in water, and thus, the cleanup of these waste sites would protect the underlying aquifers. S E E A L S O Bioremediation; Endocrine Disruption; Health, Human; Risk; Smelting; Water Treatment. Bibliography Chappell, W.R.; Abernathy, C.O.; and Calderon, R.L., eds. (1999). Arsenic Exposure and Health Effects. New York: Elsevier, 1999.

44

Asbestos

Internet Resources Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. “Public Health Statement for Arsenic.” Available from www.atsdr.cdc.gov. World Health Organization. “Arsenic in Drinking Water.” Fact Sheet No. 210. Available from www.who.org.

Betsy T. Kagey

Asbestos Asbestos is a mineral rock with a chemical composition of mostly silicon, water, and magnesium. Most asbestos ﬁbers are long, thin, strong, ﬂexible, ﬁreproof, and resistant to chemical attack. Of the six varieties of asbestos ﬁbers found in nature, only three are commonly found in construction materials: chrysotile, amosite, and crocidolite. Chrysotile, the variety most often found in building materials, absorbs water readily, which allows for easier removal. Chrysotile was commonly used as a binding and strengthening agent in plastics, cement, and insulation. Extremely long chrysotile ﬁbers were woven into ﬁre- and heat-resistant cloth. Asbestos is a carcinogen, and medical reports indicate a single ﬁber can cause lung cancer. There is little health risk if the material is fully intact and is properly maintained; but it can quickly turn dangerous if any of the ﬁbers become friable and airborne, and are inhaled. Asbestos has been used in a wide variety of products and materials. Its positive properties of heat and chemical resistance were discovered early in history: Egyptians wove asbestos ﬁbers into cremation shrouds and the Greeks made lamps with “inextinguishable” wicks of asbestos. Asbestos ﬁbers have been used in approximately 3,000 different applications. At asbestos’s commercial peak, the United States used nearly one million tons of asbestos per year. Common asbestos-containing materials (ACM) include thermal and acoustic insulation, ﬁreprooﬁng, concrete, ﬂooring, rooﬁng felts, building papers, shingles, electrical insulation, decorative sprays, gaskets, packing, and textiles. The principal sources of airborne asbestos ﬁbers are the quarrying, mining, milling, manufacturing, and application of asbestos products. Medical reports have documented laboratory and clinical evidence that inhalation of asbestos ﬁbers can lead to an increased risk of developing asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma. Epidemiological studies also show that the risk of lung cancer increases tenfold for smokers compared to nonsmokers exposed to asbestos. In the past, the individuals at greatest risk of developing these diseases were asbestos workers who were exposed to high concentrations of asbestos ﬁbers each working day with virtually no respiratory protection. The combination of cautionary medical reports and a better-informed public spurred the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to begin banning the manufacture of asbestos-containing products in the early 1970s.

carcinogen any substance that can cause or aggravate cancer friable capable of being crumbled, pulverized, or reduced to powder by hand pressure

asbestosis a disease associated with inhalation of asbestos fibers; the disease makes breathing progressively more difficult and can be fatal mesothelioma malignant tumor of the mesothelium, a cell layer within the lungs and other body cavities

The mineral vermiculite, mined in the United States and elsewhere, is also used as insulation and can be, though is not always, contaminated with asbestos. Asbestos-contaminated vermiculite mined in Libby, Montana, from 1963 to 1990 has caused hundreds of mine workers and family members in Libby to become sick or die from asbestos-related disease. According to the

45

Asbestos

A S B E S TOS I S : Y E A RS OF P OTENTI A L LI FE LOS T BY RA CE A N D G E N D E R, U. S . RES I DENTS A GE 1 5 A ND OV E R, 1 9 9 1 –1 9 9 2 White Year

Overall

Males

Black Females

Males

Females

Years of potential life lost to age 65 1991

1,015

845

30

130

0

1992

890

780

15

50

30

1991

11,883

9,294

466

664

28

1992

11,850

9,441

389

540

80

Years of potential life lost to life expectancy

SOURCE:

Adapted from National Center for Health Statistics multiple cause of death data.

EPA, about 70 percent of the vermiculite mined worldwide came from the Libby mine and most was sold as zonolite attic insulation between 1963 and 1984. The EPA recommends that vermiculite insulation in homes be tested for asbestos. The EPA regulates environmental exposure to asbestos while the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulates occupational exposure to asbestos. The most recent EPA regulation is the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA) for schools. This regulation became effective in 1987 and speciﬁcally outlines inspection, reinspection, periodic surveillance, and management plans for all schools to minimize exposure to asbestos. This regulation was considered state-of-the-art when it ﬁrst came out and it soon became applicable to all public and private buildings. The asbestos workers of today wear high-efﬁciency respirators and protective clothing to minimize the risk of developing one of the asbestos diseases. OSHA limits a worker’s exposure (over an eight-hour, timeweighted average) to no more than 0.2 ﬁbers per cubic centimeter. In the last ﬁfteen years, asbestos regulations have been put into effect, prompting the need for asbestos abatement policies. The current policies on asbestos are centered on the protection of the building occupants and maintenance and repair personnel. Many building occupants believe that any ACM must be removed immediately. In some cases, this is a reasonable choice, but in most situations, immediate removal is not required. To deal with an asbestos material in any building requires planning and continuous management. Improper removal can increase asbestos-related health risks signiﬁcantly. The ﬁrst step in developing an effective long-term asbestos management program involves deﬁning the nature and scope of the problem. This requires a complete building survey, including a walk-through of the entire building to include basements, crawl spaces, and attics. Bulk samples of suspected ACM material should be taken, including wallboard, insulation, roofing, ﬂoor tile, mastic, ﬁreprooﬁng, plaster, concrete, mortar, sprayed-on ceiling and ceiling panels, exterior siding, and ﬁre doors. The bulk samples of each suspect material should then be analyzed by a certiﬁed/accredited laboratory, and a management plan should be developed.

46

Asthma

The EPA endorses ACM management and recently released a regulation that endorses management versus blanket removal. An operations and maintenance (O&M) program describes the steps to maintain ACM in a building to minimize exposure to airborne asbestos ﬁbers, and to prevent uncontrolled disturbance of ACM. It describes what must be removed, what ACM is repairable, how repairs are performed, and how remaining ACM is maintained and/or repaired. Any ACM that must be removed from a building for offsite disposal will be subject to waste transportation and disposal regulations. Most states require haulers to have waste-transportation permits. Friable asbestos is considered a hazardous substance under the Federal Superfund Law, and therefore requires special handling. Building surveys should be an automatic requirement for any building erected before 1985. Recently, a city in northern California leased an existing movie theater with the intention of renovating it for use as a performing arts theater. Shortly before work was to begin, ACMs were identiﬁed in many portions of the facility. The city council was extremely surprised by the presence of asbestos in the building, even though the building was built in 1950. There was no asbestos survey conducted prior to the commencement of the renovation, and the building owner had verbally assured the council that the presence of ACMs was highly unlikely. The project continued, but at substantial, and unexpected, additional expense and delay. Building identiﬁcation surveys are being conducted by most building owners who want to prevent any costly confrontations with ACMs. The Army Corps of Engineers in Sacramento requires an identiﬁcation survey for any building that is scheduled for demolition or remodel. These surveys have indicated that mastic, boiler refractory, ﬂexible duct connectors, silver (heat-resistant) paint, and wall taping compound can also contain asbestos and must be tested. Each asbestos identiﬁcation survey has taught the Corps of Engineers new precautions to take when conducting the next one. All building owners need to have asbestos identiﬁed and located, and its condition recorded. An operation and maintenance plan needs to be developed for each building, and maintenance workers need to be educated before they come in contact with asbestos. Legislative and public attention has led to the requirement of a long-term approach aimed at ensuring the safety of those who come into contact with asbestos. S E E A L S O Cancer; Health, Human. Internet Resource Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry Asbestos pages. Available from http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ToxProﬁles/phs9004.html and http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ HEC/CSEM/asbestos/who’s_at_risk.html. EPA’s Asbestos and Vemiculite homepage. Available from http://www.epa.gov/asbestos. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Asbestos topic page. Available from http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/asbestos. OSHA Web site. Asbestos information pages. Available from http://www.osha-slc. gov/SLTC.

Linda N. Finley-Miller

Asthma Asthma is a chronic disease of the lungs that affects millions around the world, particularly in industrialized countries. The symptoms of asthma

47

Asthma

NUMBER OF PERSONS WITH ASTHMA IN THE UNITED STATES: NATIONAL HEALTH INTERVIEW SURVEY, 1980–1996

16 Age group (years)

Persons with asthma (millions)

14

0–4

5–14

15–34

35–64

65+

12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1980

1982

1984

1986

1988

1990

1992

1994

1996

Year

include shortness of breath, chest tightness, wheezing, and coughing; nighttime symptoms that interfere with sleep can be particularly troublesome. These symptoms are caused by inﬂammation, swelling, and constriction of muscles that surround the breathing tubes in the chest, the airways connecting the lungs to the mouth and nose. The hallmark of asthma is variability and reversibility in the inﬂammation and constriction of the airways. Although researchers have identiﬁed a number of chemicals in the workplace that can cause asthma, the cause of most cases of asthma is unknown. Genetic risk factors are important; adults who have asthma are more likely to produce children with asthma than adults who do not suffer from this ailment. Genetic risk cannot explain the increase in the number of persons with asthma in the United States, from 6.8 million persons in 1980 to about 15 million in 1996, because the genetic composition of the population changes much more slowly than that. Whether outdoor air pollution might cause asthma has not been sufﬁciently studied. Although many people are afﬂicted with asthma, determining exactly when an individual’s disease began—so the critical period of environmental exposures might be identiﬁed—is difﬁcult. Studies comparing the overall rate of asthma with air pollution levels have not produced data showing a relationship between asthma and outdoor pollution. For example, increases in the number of persons with asthma in the United States occurred while the overall levels of outdoor air pollution were declining. Despite the overall decline in air pollution, concentrations of ozone and airborne particles with a diameter less than 10 microns (abbreviated as PM10) have hardly declined at all. Nevertheless, these trends do not implicate outdoor air pollution as an important cause of the increase in asthma sufferers. Information comparing rates of asthma among children born in Germany before and after reuniﬁcation in 1989 also do not support a role for air pollution in causing asthma. Air pollution from industrial sources was greater in the former East Germany than in West Germany, yet the situation with asthma was the reverse, with a higher rate of asthma present in West Germany. The difference

48

Asthma

in asthma rates appeared to result from higher rates of allergy in West Germany. In contrast to these studies, one recent study conducted in southern California found an increased risk for developing asthma in children who participated in team sports, a surrogate for greater exposure, and who also lived in areas with higher ozone levels. Some outdoor air pollutants, such as ground-level ozone, PM10, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides, can worsen asthma. Related studies compare the rate of emergency department visits for asthma at times of high levels of air pollution with such visits at times of low levels of air pollution. In a study conducted during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, changes in trafﬁc patterns were associated with reduced levels of ozone and with fewer emergency department visits for asthma. Indoor air pollution probably plays a more signiﬁcant role in asthma than outdoor air pollution. On average, people spend much more time indoors than outdoors, and concentrations of some pollutants can be many times higher indoors. Indoor air exposures are classiﬁed as being biological, derived from living organisms, or chemical. Because no regulations exist for levels of indoor air pollutants, concentrations of these exposures are not measured with the same frequency and uniformity as those for outdoor pollutants. Among indoor exposures, exposure to house dust mites has been found to cause asthma and, for preschool-aged children, environmental tobacco smoke has been associated with the development of asthma. Some evidence exists that exposure to cockroaches and infection with respiratory syncytial virus also may be linked to the development of asthma. Researchers have correspondingly identiﬁed a much longer list of indoor exposures that can trigger or worsen asthma: besides the above factors, exposure to cat dander, molds, dogs, and nitrogen oxides. An individual can take many steps to reduce exposure to the factors that exacerbate asthma. Basic precautions include the following: Stop smoking and avoid tobacco smoke; vacuum the home once or twice a week (but with the asthma-affected person not present); avoid mold, making sure that moisture collections are addressed to prevent mold growth; and reduce exposure to house dust mites, cats, dogs, and cockroaches, depending on which of these are allergic triggers for the asthma sufferer. The importance of air pollution, whether indoor or outdoor, as a cause of asthma remains a subject of intense study. Exposure to house dust mites appears to be capable of causing asthma and environmental tobacco smoke has been associated with the development of asthma, but evidence linking these exposures to the increase in asthma cases is lacking. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Health, Human; Indoor Air Pollution. Bibliography Committee on the Assessment of Asthma and Indoor Air. (2000). Clearing the Air: Asthma and Indoor Air Exposures. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Pearce, Neal; Beasley, Richard; Burgess, Carl; and Crane, Julian, eds. (1998). Asthma Epidemiology: Principles and Methods. New York: Oxford University Press. Internet Resource National Asthma Education and Prevention Program. (1997). Facts about Controlling Your Asthma. Bethesda, MD: Public Health Service. Available from http:// www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health.

Stephen C. Redd

49

Automobiles

Automobiles

B

See Vehicular Pollution

Beach Washups

See Medical Waste; Water Pollution: Marine

Beneficial Use Beneﬁcial use is the productive use of water or solid material that is normally discarded or disposed of in a landﬁll or burned.

biosolid solid or semisolid waste remaining from the treatment of sewage

Throughout the years, more materials that have been disposed of in the past are ﬁnding new demands and uses. Economics have shifted to make these products more valuable for beneﬁcial use. The U.S. environmental laws and regulations in the 1970s established national policies to search for ways to recycle society’s discarded products. The National Resource Recovery Act of 1975 and the Clean Water Act of 1972 set goals for the beneﬁcial use of solid waste, wastewater, and biosolids, and the National Environment Policy Act of 1969 required public agencies to include beneﬁcial use in decision making. Wastewater from treatment plants is becoming more valuable in watershort areas of the country such as California. It is used for the irrigation of agricultural crops or residential landscaping as an alternative to the use of water that is normally reserved for drinking. Biosolids are being recycled as an alternative to commercial fertilizers. Used soda bottles are turned into fence posts and clothing. Dredge spoils are no longer disposed of in deepwater areas, but instead are used as a resource for a variety of beneﬁcial purposes, including beach nourishment, construction ﬁll, landscaping, and landﬁll cover. S E E A L S O Biosolids; Dredging. Internet Resource Northeast Waste Management Ofﬁcials’ Association. “Beneﬁcial Use of Waste Materials.” Available from http://www.newmoa.org/Newmoa.

Peter S. Machno

Benefit-cost Analysis

See Cost-benefit Analysis

Bioaccumulation Bioaccumulation is the accumulation of contaminants by species in concentrations that are orders of magnitude higher than in the surrounding environment. Bioaccumulation is the sum of two processes: bioconcentration and biomagniﬁcation. Bioconcentration is the direct uptake of a substance by a living organism from the medium (e.g., water) via skin, gills, or lungs, whereas biomagniﬁcation results from dietary uptake. Many synthetic contaminants are more soluble in fat than in water. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), for example, which can be present in lake or river water, tend to either adsorb to particles or to diffuse into cells of organisms. Thus, PCBs bioconcentrate in low trophic levels, for example, in phytoplankton by a factor of around 250. Fish that actively ﬁlter large amounts of water through their gills are subject to a much higher bioconcentration. Additionally, biomagniﬁcation takes place in predatory organisms. The PCB burden of the prey is transferred to the predator. Fish like smelt that consume large quantities of mysids and

50

Bioaccumulation

LAKE ONTARIO BIOMAGNIFICATION OF PCBs

Herring gull 25,000,000

Lake trout 2,800,000 Mysid 45,000

Smelt 835,000

Phytoplankton 250

Zooplankton 500

zooplankton magnify the PCB concentration. This leads to bioaccumulation factors as high as 2.8 million in predatory ﬁsh species such as lake trout and striped bass. Mammals—including humans that eat the ﬁsh, reptiles, and birds—further accumulate PCBs. Finally, in the leading predators among marine life—the seal and polar bear—PCBs and other persistent organic pollutants (POPs) reach concentrations that cause obvious impairments of the immune and reproductive system. A signiﬁcant proportion of these accumulated contaminants is transferred to the offspring by the mother’s milk, resulting in, for example, abnormal sexual development, behavioral dysfunctions, and cancer. Prerequisites for a substance’s strong bioaccumulation are its afﬁnity for fat and low biodegradability, or persistence in the environment. Bioaccumulating contaminants thus far identiﬁed are the ﬁrst-generation organochlorine pesticides (e.g., DDT, chlordane, and toxaphene), PCBs, dioxins, brominated ﬂame retardants, but also

51

Biodegradation

some organo-metal compounds, for example, methyl mercury and tributyltin (TBT). Because of their strong bioaccumulation and toxicity, some of these substances were banned in North America and Western Europe after 1970. The bioconcentration factor (BCF) often serves as a trigger for the hazard classiﬁcation of chemicals. In the European Union a BCF greater than one hundred leads to a substance’s classiﬁcation as “dangerous to the environment.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses a BCF of greater than 1,000 for environmentally harmful substances. In Canada chemicals with a BCF greater than 5,000 are recommended for “virtual elimination.” S E E A L S O DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane); Mercury; PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls); Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic (PBT) Chemicals; Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs); Pesticides. Bibliography Beek, Bernd. (2000). “Bioaccumulation: New Aspects and Developments.” In Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, Vol. 2: Reactions and Processes, Part J, edited by Otto Hutzinger. New York: Springer-Verlag. Colborn, Theo; Dumanoski, Dianne; and Myers, John Peterson. (1996). Our Stolen Future. New York: Dutton. Connell, Des W. (1990). Bioaccumulation of Xenobiotic Compounds. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Internet Resource “Bioaccumulation and Biomagniﬁcation.” Available from http://www.marietta.edu/ ~biol.

Stefan Weigel

Biodegradation

mineralize convert to a mineral substance

mole a chemical quantity, 6 × 1023 molecules. For oxygen, this amounts to 32 grams

52

Biodegradation is the decay or breakdown of materials that occurs when microorganisms use an organic substance as a source of carbon and energy. For example, sewage ﬂows to the wastewater treatment plant where many of the organic compounds are broken down; some compounds are simply biotransformed (changed), others are completely mineralized. These biodegradation processes are essential to recycle wastes so that the elements in them can be used again. Recalcitrant materials, which are hard to break down, may enter the environment as contaminants. Biodegradation is a microbial process that occurs when all of the nutrients and physical conditions involved are suitable for growth. Temperature is an important variable; keeping a substance frozen can prevent biodegradation. Most biodegradation occurs at temperatures between 10 and 35°C. Water is essential for biodegradation. To prevent the biodegradation of cereal grains in storage, they must be kept dry. Foods such as bread or fruit will support the growth of mold if the moisture level is high enough. The microorganisms need energy plus carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, and several metals to grow and reproduce. The oxidation of organic substances to carbon dioxide and water is an exothermic (heat-releasing) process. For each mole of oxygen used as electron acceptor (oxidant), about 104 kilocalories (435 kJ) of energy is potentially available. All organisms make use of only part of this energy. The rest is lost as heat. This can be seen in composting when the compost becomes hot. Biodegradation

Bioremediation

can occur under aerobic conditions where oxygen is the electron acceptor and under anaerobic conditions where nitrate, sulfate, or another compound is the electron acceptor. Bacteria and fungi, including yeasts and molds, are the microorganisms responsible for biodegradation. Environmental managers want to use biodegradation when it is needed and prevent it when preservation is important. Chemicals are commonly used to treat wood in buildings and other structures to prevent biodegradation. Wooden posts and pilings are treated with creosote or copper compounds to prevent rotting. Compounds that inhibit biodegradation are often added to automobile antifreeze solutions, aircraft deicer formulations, and other products to preserve the original qualities of the product. These products and chemicals can enter the environment and become contaminants. The inhibitors have a negative effect when the product becomes a waste and is to be biodegraded. For example, biodegradation of aircraft deicer formulations in airport runoff is often inhibited because of the benzotriazoles that are present to preserve the formulation. S E E A L S O Bioremediation; Solid Waste.

deicer chemical used to melt ice

Bibliography Alexander, Martin. (1994). Biodegradation and Bioremediation. New York: Academic Press. Gibson, David T., ed. (1984). Microbial Degradation of Organic Compounds. New York: Marcel Dekker. Internet Resources Kansas State University. Great Plains/Rocky Mountain Hazardous Substance Research Center Web site. Available from http://www.engg.ksu.edu/HSRC.

Larry Eugene Erickson and Lawrence C. Davis

Biohazard

See Medical Waste

Biological Control

See Agriculture; Pesticides

Bioremediation Bioremediation means to use a biological remedy to abate or clean up contamination. This makes it different from remedies where contaminated soil or water is removed for chemical treatment or decontamination, incineration, or burial in a landﬁll. Microbes are often used to remedy environmental problems found in soil, water, and sediments. Plants have also been used to assist bioremediation processes. This is called phytoremediation. Biological processes have been used for some inorganic materials, like metals, to lower radioactivity and to remediate organic contaminants. With metal contamination the usual challenge is to accumulate the metal into harvestable plant parts, which must then be disposed of in a hazardous waste landﬁll before or after incineration to reduce the plant to ash. Two exceptions are mercury and selenium, which can be released as volatile elements directly from plants to atmosphere. The concept and practice of using plants and microorganisms to remediate contaminated soil have developed over the past thirty years. The idea of bioremediation has become popular with the onset of the twenty-ﬁrst century. In principle, genetically engineered plants and microor-

microorganism bacteria, archaea, and many protists; single-celled organisms too small to see with the naked eye

53

Bioremediation

E S S E N T IA L FA CTORS FOR MI CROBI A L BI ORE MEDI A TI ON Factor

Desired Conditions

Microbial population

Suitable kinds of organisms that can biodegrade all of the contaminants

Oxygen

Enough to support aerobic biodegradation (about 2% oxygen in the gas phase or 0.4 mg/liter in the soil water)

Water

Soil moisture should be from 50–70% of the water holding capacity of the soil

Nutrients

Nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and other nutrients to support good microbial growth

Temperature

Appropriate temperatures for microbial growth (0–40˚C)

pH

Best range is from 6.5 to 7.5

ganisms can greatly enhance the potential range of bioremediation. For example, bacterial enzymes engineered into plants can speed up the breakdown of TNT and other explosives. With transgenic poplar trees carrying a bacterial gene, methyl mercury may be converted to elemental mercury, which is released to the atmosphere at extreme dilution. However, concern about release of such organisms into the environment has limited actual ﬁeld applications.

Natural Bioremediation Natural bioremediation has been occurring for millions of years. Biodegradation of dead vegetation and dead animals is a kind of bioremediation. It is a natural part of the carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles. Chemical energy present in waste materials is used by microorganisms to grow while they convert organic carbon and hydrogen to carbon dioxide and water.

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 sludges and wastes) are spread onto soil and then tilled into the ground with fertilizer, as part of the managed bioremediation process. Good conditions for microbial biodegradation are maintained by controlling soil moisture and soil nutrients. In 1974 R.L. Raymond was awarded a patent for the bioremediation of gasoline. This was one of the ﬁrst patents granted for a bioremediation process. 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

54

Since about 1980, prepared bed systems have been used for bioremediation. In this approach, contaminated soil is excavated and deposited with appropriate fertilizers into a shallow layer over an impermeable base. Conditions are managed to obtain biodegradation of the contaminants of concern.

Bioremediation

Composting Composting has been used as a bioremediation process for many different organic compounds. It is widely employed to recycle nutrients in garden and yard waste. A ﬁnished compost can be used as a soil conditioner. Extending composting technology to new bioremediation applications requires experiments. The biodegradation process must be effective within the context of existing environmental conditions, and odors and gases that are generated by the process have to be strictly controlled.

In Situ Bioremediation In situ processes (degrading the contaminants in place) are often recommended because less material has to be moved. These processes can be designed with or without plants. Plants have been used because they take up large quantities of water. This helps to control contaminated water, such as a groundwater contaminant plume, in the soil. Aerobic (oxygen-using) processes may occur in the unsaturated layer of soil, the vadose zone, which is found above the water table. The vadose zone is deﬁned as the layer of soil having continuously connected passages ﬁlled with air, while the saturated zone is the deeper part where the pores are ﬁlled with water. Oxygen moves in the unsaturated zone by diffusion through pores in the soil. Some plants also provide pathways to move oxygen into the soil. This can be very important to increase the aerobic degradation of organic compounds.

in situ in its original place; unmoved or unexcavated; remaining at the site or in the subsurface plume a visible or measurable discharge of a contaminant from a given point of origin; can be visible, invisible, or thermal in water, or visible in the air as, for example, a plume of smoke

Fate of Various Organic Contaminants Petroleum-contaminated soil has been remediated in situ with plants added to enhance the degradation processes. The biodegradation of phenol, oil, gasoline, jet fuel, and other petroleum hydrocarbons occurs in soil. When plants are present, soil erosion is reduced and more microbes are present in the plant root zone. Methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), used in gasoline to enhance the octane rating of the fuel, is difﬁcult to remediate because it is very soluble in water and is hard to break down using microbes normally present in soil. In vegetation-based bioremediation, MTBE is moved from the soil to the atmosphere along with the water that plants take up from soil and release to the air. The MTBE breaks down rapidly in the atmosphere. Benzotriazoles, used as corrosion inhibitors in antifreeze and aircraft deicer ﬂuids, are treated by plant-based bioremediation. The benzotriazole adsorbs or sticks to the plant roots and ends up as part of the plant biomass. Trichloroethylene (TCE) is a common chlorinated solvent that is biotransformed in the soil. It can be taken up by plants along with water. Then the TCE diffuses into the atmosphere where it is destroyed by atmospheric processes.

Bioventing Bioremediation requires good nutrient and environmental conditions for biodegradation. When oxygen is needed for oxidation of the organic contaminants, bioventing (pumping air into the soil) is often used. Sometimes, fertilizers are added to the soil. In certain places irrigation is necessary so that plants or microbes can grow. S E E A L S O Abatement; Biodegradation; Brownfield; Cleanup.

55

Biosolids

Bibliography Alexander, Martin. (1994). Biodegradation and Bioremediation. New York: Academic Press. Davis, Lawrence C.; Castro-Diaz, Sigifredo; Zhange, Qizhi; and Erickson, Larry E. (2002). “Beneﬁts of Vegetation for Soils with Organic Contaminants.” Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences. 21 (5):457–491. Eweis, Juana B.; Ergas, Sarina J.; Chang, Daniel P.Y.; and Schroeder, Edward D. (1998). Bioremediation Principles. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hannink, Nerissa K.; Rosser, Susan J.; and Bruce, Neil C. (2002). “Phytoremediation of Explosives.” Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences. 21(5):511–538. McCutcheon, Steven C.; Schnoor, Jerald L., eds. (2003). Phytoremediation: Managing Contamination by Organic Compounds. New York: Wiley-Interscience. Pilon-Smits, Elizabeth, and Pilon, Marinus. (2002). “Phytoremediation of Metals Using Transgenic Plants.” Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences. 21(5):439–456. Rittmann, Bruce E. (1993). In Situ Bioremediation: When Does It Work? Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Thomas, J.M.; Ward, C.H.; Raymond, R.L.; Wilson, J.T.; and Loehr, R.C. (1992). “Bioremediation.” In Encyclopedia of Microbiology, Vol. 1, edited by Joshua Lederberg, pp. 369–385. New York: Academic Press. Internet Resources Bioremediation Discussion Group. Available from http://www.bioremediationgroup .org. Natural and Accelerated Bioremediation Research Web site. Available from http:// www.lbl.gov/NABIR.

Larry Eugene Erickson and Lawrence C. Davis

Biosolids Biosolids are nutrient-rich organic materials that result from the treatment of wastewater. They are commonly recycled as a fertilizer for crops and as a soil amendment to improve depleted soils. However, because biosolids have low levels of pollutants and pathogenic organisms, their use in the U.S. is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Managing biosolids safely and effectively is an important issue for communities because of the quantities that are produced. The EPA estimates that the annual U.S. production of biosolids, recorded at seven million tons in 2000, will continue to increase. In developed countries, biosolids are produced at treatment facilities that receive wastewater from homes, businesses, and industries. Domestic wastewater carries organic matter from food preparation, cleaning of clothes and cookware, and human waste. Industrial wastewater may contain organic material, oils, metals, and chemical compounds, but it is usually pretreated at the industrial facility to reduce the concentration of pollutants. Raw materials pumped from rural septic systems are often transported to treatment plants. At the wastewater treatment facility, the solids from these various sources are ﬁrst concentrated by settling out (primary treatment). Then they are biologically degraded (secondary treatment) by bacteria and other microorganisms feeding on the organic matter. To encourage the growth of the bacteria, the wastewater is aerated. As the microbes consume the dissolved and suspended organic matter, it is incorporated into their cells. Most diseasecausing organisms (pathogens) are destroyed during this process. After further digestion or another equivalent treatment, the living and dead microbes form a stable residual material, biosolids.

56

Biosolids

U .S. B IO SO L I D S M A N A G E M E N T

Landfilling/ disposal 18%

Recycle 54%

Incineration 19%

Other 9%

In developing countries, lack of wastewater treatment is a serious problem. Raw sewage and other untreated organic wastes should not be confused with biosolids, whose treatment and use are regulated by environmental laws.

Using or Disposing of Biosolids Biosolids must be recycled or disposed of somewhere in the environment. The 1993 Federal Sewage Sludge (biosolids) Standards deﬁne and regulate the three legal ways to manage biosolids: They can be incinerated, buried in a landﬁll, or recycled on land. • Incineration—This is the method of disposal preferred by some eastern U.S. cities. Energy produced from burning biosolids can be captured and converted to electricity. Incinerators require technology to prevent the release of particulates and pollutants to the atmosphere. The biosolids are reduced to a small amount of ash, which is usually landﬁlled. About 22 percent of the biosolids in the United States are incinerated. • Landﬁll Disposal—Biosolids can be mixed or layered with municipal solid waste and buried. Landﬁlling of biosolids usually occurs where agricultural lands for recycling are not readily available or the quality of the biosolids does not meet the strict EPA standard for recycling. Approximately 15 percent of the nation’s biosolids are landﬁlled. • Ocean Disposal—Prior to 1990, ocean disposal was the preferred method of disposing of biosolids in the world’s coastal cites. The United States outlawed the ocean disposal of biosolids with the Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988. Europe and Australia then enacted similar bans.

57

Biosolids

N U TR I E NT A ND P OLLUTA NT CONTENT OF TY P I CA L BI OS OLI DS C O M PARED TO U. S . FEDE RA L S TA NDA RDS FOR BENE FI CI A L USE

Element

Biosolids1 (mg/kg dry)

Nutrients Ammonia Nitrogen Organic Nitrogen Total Phosphorus Total Potassium Total Sulfur Magnesium pH

14,500 60,500 32,400 3,100 10,700 5,510 8.78

Pollutants Arsenic Barium Boron Cadmium Chromium Copper Iron Lead Manganese Mercury Molybdenum Nickel Selenium Silver Zinc

7.07 3.08 15.1 3.71 46 529 16,500 141 667 2.71 11.1 35 5.98 42 800

U.S. Regulations2 (mg/kg dry)

41

39 1,500 300 17 420 36 2,800

1Biosolids

from King County (Seattle, WA) South Plant, 2000 data, annual means. mg/kg dry = parts per million. 21993 Federal Sewage Sludge Standards 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 503. Pollutant concentration limits for exceptional quality biosolids.

• Beneﬁcial Use—Biosolids can be used to fertilize agricultural crops and forests, reclaim mines and disturbed lands, cover landﬁlls, and make compost for soil amendment and landscaping. Most of the biosolids in this country, about 63 percent, are put to beneﬁcial use. The EPA predicts that this will increase to 70 percent by 2010. Biosolids are desirable soil amendments because they add nutrients and organic matter. All the elements essential for plant growth are found in biosolids, including the macronutrients (nutrients needed in large amounts) nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and sulfur and micronutrients such as boron, manganese, zinc, and copper. Organic matter beneﬁts the soil in many ways. It improves water inﬁltration and helps hold water and nutrients for use by plants, thereby reducing runoff and erosion.

Evaluating Risks and Benefits U.S. biosolids quality standards are based on risk assessments conducted by scientists at the EPA and the Department of Agriculture. After evaluating the pollutants in biosolids, scientists selected nine elements that had the greatest potential to harm humans, livestock, wildlife, or the environment. They used risk assessments to calculate the permissible increases in soil and crop pollutant levels from repeated applications of biosolids. The regulatory standards (see table) were then set below the level that would cause harm. However, not all scientists agree with the U.S. risk assessments and standards. They caution against allowing soil pollutant concentrations to rise above background levels. Several European countries use this precautionary philosophy as the basis for their regulations. Periodically, the EPA

58

Biosolids

Secondary Treatment Sedimentation basin Aeration basin

Wastewater Treatment Process From collection system or pumping station

Seed sludge

Bar screen

Grit chamber

Primary Treatment

Sludge Processing

Thickening

Sedimentation basin

Stabilization

Dewatering

Advanced Treatment Chlorination

Filtration

Wastewater products to beneficial use

Sedimentation basin

Nutrient removal

Dechlorination

Effluent discharge or reuse

BIOSOLIDS REMEDIATE METAL-CONTAMINATED SOILS The mining and processing of metal ores have contaminated soils in many countries. In the vicinity of lead (Pb) and zinc (Zn) mines and smelters, soils may have Pb and Zn concentrations as high as 20,000 mg/kg. These soils—with their high metals, low pH, and lack of nutrients and organic matter—are toxic to plants. Land around the mines is acidic and barren, often with blowing dust and metals leaching into ground and surface waters. Three such sites on EPA’s Superfund list— Palmerton, Pennsylvania; Leadville, Colorado; and Bunker Hill, Idaho—have demonstrated that biosolids mixtures can restore soils and vegetation. Biosolids combined with a calcium

carbonate material such as lime or wood ash create a fertile soil and vigorous, selfsustaining plant growth. Iron and phosphates in biosolids adsorb lead and convert it to an insoluble compound, chloropyromorphite. Wood ash raises soil pH and prevents Zn from being taken up by plants or leached. Biosolids supply nutrients and organic matter for rebuilding soil and soil microbial communities. Similar results have been reported in Upper Silesia, Poland, where lands have been contaminated by toxic coal and smelter wastes. New secondary treatment plants in the region will be producing a supply of biosolids for future restoration projects.

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has asked the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to review the federal regulations for biosolids. The NAS review in 1995 concluded that “the use of biosolids in the production of crops for human consumption when practiced in accordance with existing federal guidelines and regulations, presents negligible risk to the consumer, to crop production and to the environment.” The NAS reviewed the regulations again in 2002 and concluded, “There is no documented scientiﬁc evidence that the federal regulations have failed to protect public health.” Most researchers agree that the effects of organic compounds, metals, and microorganisms in biosolids are not harmful to humans or the environment if managed carefully. Many studies have shown that metals in biosolids are chemically bound in stable compounds and will not easily move into ground and surface waters. A douglas fir tree with (left cuts) and without (right cuts) biosolids application. There is a more than 100 percent increase in tree growth with biosolids. Each “tree ring” represents one year of growth. (King County photo by Ned Ahrens. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.)

Still, some land application projects are controversial, especially if they release odors. Odors at an application site can cause neighbors to raise questions about the safety and adequacy of regulations for biosolids recycling. In response to the need for accurate and consistent information, the National Biosolids Partnership was established in 1997 by the federal EPA, Water Environmental Federation, and the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies. One of their goals is to encourage safe biosolids management practices in local communities through the use of environmental management systems. S E E A L S O Beneficial Use; Clean Water Act; Ocean Dumping Ban Act; Risk; Solid Waste; Wastewater Treatment; Water Pollution. Internet Resource National Biosolids Partnership Web site. Available from http://www.biosolids.org.

Peter S. Machno and Peggy Leonard

Bioterrorism

See Terrorism

Bottle Deposit Laws Bottle deposit laws, policy that requires the containers for carbonated beverages such as soft drinks and beer to carry a refundable deposit, have been a subject of controversy for more than thirty years. Designed to reduce waste by motivating more people to recycle bottles and cans, the strategy imposes a mandatory fee of usually ﬁve or ten cents per container that consumers pay at the cash register; when customers return the containers to stores selling the product or redemption centers, they get their deposit back. Since the concept was introduced in 1971 by Thomas Lawson McCall, then governor of the state of Oregon, the beverage industry has fought such legislation. Environmentalists and the recycling industry, however, have hailed the strategy as a major success. Organizations such as the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) argue that the system is outdated, unnecessary, and inefﬁcient. The program was introduced, they say, during a time when recycling was just beginning to catch on, whereas today, curbside recycling programs, which focus on broad categories of materials such as plastics, or glass, instead of product-speciﬁc containers such as milk jugs or soda bottles, are ﬂourishing. Additionally, they

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argue, deposit laws require a vast, costly infrastructure to track collections and payments; sort containers by material, brand, and distributor; and transport collections between stores and processing centers. For such little gain, such critics say, the beneﬁts of the laws hardly seem worth it when compared to their costs. But according to one report released by Business and Environmentalists Allied for Recycling (BEAR), an alliance of businesses, recyclers, and environmentalists that studies recycling recovery rates, deposit programs achieve the highest levels of recycling. The eleven states that currently have bottle deposit laws (see table) recycle more waste than all other U.S. states combined, with each state reducing overall litter by 30 to 47 percent. Let the facts, recycling proponents argue, speak for themselves. Some states are calling for an expansion of bottle deposit policy to include the containers for noncarbonated beverages such as juice, bottled water, and milk; Iowa, Maine, and Vermont currently include wine and liquor bottles in their state laws. In 2001 Maine even proposed a deposit on cigarettes, the leading litter item on Earth. S E E A L S O Recycling; Solid Waste.

S TA TE S WI TH BOTT LE DEP OS I T LA WS

State

Deposit in Cents (varies by size/ refill or nonrefill)

California Connecticut Delaware Hawaii Iowa Maine Massachusetts Michigan New York Oregon Vermont

2.5–5 5 5 5 5 5–15 5 10 5 2–5 5–15

Container Recycling Institute. "Bottle Bill Resource Guide." Available from http://www.bottlebill.org.

SOURCE:

Internet Resources Beck, R.W. et al. (2002). “Understanding Beverage Container Recycling: A Value Chain Assessment.” Business and Environmentalists Allied for Recycling (BEAR). Available from http://www.container-recycling.org/BEARRpt.html. Container Recycling Institute. “Bottle Bill Resource Guide.” Available from http://www.bottlebill.org. Grocery Manufacturers of America. “Beverage Container Deposits.” Available from http://www.gmabrands.com/publicpolicy.

Dave Brian Butvill

Brower, David DEAN OF THE MODERN ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT (1912–2000)

Often called Earth’s best friend, David Ross Brower built a ﬁre under the environmental community and kept it stoked for more than half a century. Sound-bite genius, both gracious and ﬁerce, Brower was a master organizer, and his story is the story of the modern environmental movement. During seven decades of environmental activism, Brower helped transform the Sierra Club from a small, genteel group of hikers to a powerhouse political force and helped found more than thirty environmental groups, such as the mainstream League of Conservation Voters and Friends of the Earth. Brower led successful campaigns to prevent dams in Dinosaur National Monument and the Grand Canyon, aided Howard Zahniser in establishing the National Wilderness Preservation System, and helped add nine areas to the National Wilderness Preservation System, from the Point Reyes National Seashore in California to New York’s Fire Island. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times. Brower was also one of the ﬁrst environmental leaders to adamantly oppose nuclear power. His stance against the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California led to his forced resignation as the executive director of the Sierra Club after seventeen years.

David Brower. (©Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

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As Brower grew older and the planet became more polluted, he was transformed into the most creative and radical green activist of his generation. He launched the Earth Island Institute, which organized the consumerled boycott that resulted in dolphin-safe tuna. As a coalition builder, Brower brought union workers and environmentalists together to found the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment. Brower later served several terms on the Sierra Club’s board of directors, before ﬁnally retiring when he was in his eighties. “The planet is burning,” he said. “And all I hear from them is the music of violins.” S E E A L S O Environmental Movement. Bibliography Brower, David R., with Chapple, Steve. (2000). Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers. Internet Resource Earth Island Institute Web site. Available from http://www.earthisland.org.

Dan Hamburg

Brownfield A brownﬁeld is a property which was once was home to a viable commercial or industrial operation but, because there is no longer an adequate market demand for that operation, the property sits idle, partially because of possible environmental contamination, waiting for a new function. It is estimated that there are 500,000 to one million brownﬁelds nationwide, but this number is difﬁcult to conﬁrm and there is reason to believe that the number is higher. Contamination will vary with the nature and size of the commercial or industrial operation that once occupied the site. A large steel plant may have covered more than 200 acres and may have contaminated the soil and groundwater with heavy metals, the concentration of which will be greatest near to the source of contamination and will lessen as the distance from the source increases. A dry cleaning operation or a gas station may cover less acreage and may leave behind contamination in the form of solvents, as may be the case for the former operation, and gasoline and petroleum products for the latter.

surface water all water naturally open to the atmosphere (rivers, lakes, reservoirs, ponds, streams, seas, estuaries, etc.) groundwater the supply of freshwater found beneath the Earth’s surface includes; aquifers, which supply wells and springs

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In the United States, the federal-level brownﬁeld initiative evolved in the mid-1990s with the removal of less severely contaminated sites from the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) National Priority List (NPL), thus opening them up for redevelopment. The federal program has encouraged the development of statelevel voluntary action (or voluntary cleanup) programs, with provisions including site-speciﬁc, risk-based cleanup standards, limitation of buyer and lender liability, and pilot funding for environmental investigations and remedial actions associated with soil, surface water, and groundwater contamination. Risk-based cleanup standards assure that the level of remediation is consistent with the proposed future use of the property. Provisions for buyer and lender liability are important to protect the future owners from the excessive costs and other potential ramiﬁcations of

Brownfield

environmental contamination that they did not cause. Pilot funding is provided by the federal and state governments as seed money to initiate and promote investigation and evaluation activities on otherwise inactive sites. The hope is that incentives will help to gather information that will remove some of the fears about site development and quicken the return of the property to productive use within the community. In practice, brownﬁeld development is very complex. Successful strategies for brownﬁeld development are often site speciﬁc because site conditions and location, as well as the local and regional economic conditions, will dictate “what will work” and “what will not work” on a brownﬁeld. Generally speaking, the most successful sites will be a mixed-use development inclusive of residential, retail, ofﬁce/commercial and recreational space. In addition to concerns about environmental contamination, there are many factors that complicate brownﬁeld development, the most important of which are (1) local and regional land use planning and real estate demands, (2) regional political climate, and (3) ﬁnancing and the options for sharing ﬁnancial risk Liability with respect to brownﬁeld generally occurs in three forms and all result in unexpected costs. The ﬁrst occurs when the remediation efforts uncover more contamination than was originally estimated. This can result in considerable cost overruns in the site development phase of the project. The second form of liability arises when a nearby landowner or neighbor claims that they have been harmed by environmental contamination migrating from the property. The third form of liability occurs when future development on the property uncovers previously undetected environmental contamination. In Europe, postindustrial site development has the same complexity, but the approach and the role of the government is very different. It is difﬁcult to generalize about Europe as a whole, but for instance, in the Czech Republic, there is a National Property Fund to which application can be made to obtain the monies required to remediate an old factory (such as a steel plant) that was previously owned and operated by the government. Most of the discussion of brownﬁeld development centers on urban brownﬁelds: inner city properties, sometimes postindustrial sites, that have been idled because of changing economic conditions. Intelligent development of brownﬁelds takes advantage of the existing infrastructure (transportation, water supply, wastewater removal, electricity lines, and gas conveyance lines), and minimizes the potential for future brownﬁelds. A brownﬁeld is created when there is no longer a need for the current use of the property and the property has suspected environmental contamination. If, in the redevelopment of the brownﬁeld, one can preclude the occurrence of environmental contamination and design the building and infrastructure to have ﬂexible use, then in the event of a change in the market demand, the property may more readily adapted for an alternate use, thereby preventing the site from becoming idled once again. Brownﬁeld development also reduces the demand for greenﬁelds, or undeveloped properties on the outskirts of the city, by reusing previously developed land. In this way, urban brownﬁeld development, sometimes referred to as inﬁll development, can help control urban sprawl. The “Waterfront” development, in an urban neighborhood bordering the city of Pittsburgh, is a 200-plus-acre steel plant that has been converted into a mixed-use site including light industrial, entertainment, retail, and residential space. Within

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the Pittsburgh city limits, the largest remaining piece of undeveloped property was a slag pile. Currently under construction, Summerset at Frick Park will have more than seven hundred housing units when fully completed. S E E A L S O Abatement; Bioremediation; Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA); Cleanup; Industry; Laws and Regulations, United States; Superfund. Bibliography Bartsch, Charles; Deane, Rachel; and Dorfman, Bridget. (2001). “Brownﬁelds: State of the States: An End-of-Session Review of the Initiatives and Program Impacts in the 50 States.” Washington, DC: Northeast Midwest Institute. Also available from http://www.nemw.org/brown_stateof.pdf. Deason, Jonathan P.; Sherk, George William; and Carroll, Gary A. (2001). “Final Report—Public Policies and Private Decisions Affecting the Redevelopment of Brownﬁelds: An Analysis of Critical Factors, Relative Weights and Areal Differentials.” Washington, DC: George Washington University. Also available from http:// www.gwu.edu/~eem. Internet Resource The Brownﬁelds Center at Carnegie Mellon. Available from www.ce.cmu.edu/ Brownﬁelds.

Deborah Lange

Brundtland, Gro NORWEGIAN PRIME MINISTER AND ENVIRONMENTALIST (1939–)

In her life, Gro Harlem Brundtland has served society in three distinct capacities—as a medical doctor, a politician, and an environmentalist. She initially worked as a physician and then moved into the political arena as an environmental minister in the Norwegian government. Her success in this capacity led to her election as Norway’s ﬁrst female prime minister and inﬂuence on international treaties and conferences.

Gro Brundtland. (©Reuters NewMedia Inc./Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

After attending medical school, Brundtland took a job with the city of Oslo as assistant medical director at the Board of Health. The opportunity to further evolve professionally came in 1974 when she joined the Norwegian cabinet as the ruling Labor Party’s new environmental minister. As environmental issues grew to play a larger role in the Norwegian political arena, Brundtland’s power base expanded. Her concern for the environment made her increasingly popular with many Norwegians. That popularity led to Brundtland’s election as the prime minister of Norway in 1981. She became the country’s ﬁrst female prime minister and, at age 42, the youngest person to ever hold that ofﬁce. Although her ﬁrst term as the leader of Norway was frustrating and lasted only one year, Brundtland remained the leader of the country’s Labor Party, and in 1986 she was reelected prime minister. In between, her leadership skills landed her an opportunity to conduct one of the most intensive studies on the future of the global environment ever undertaken. Called the World Commission on Environment and Development, this United Nations commission in the 1980s focused on solving the problems of poverty without destroying or severely depleting the world’s natural resources.

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Ultimately, the commission created a report, titled Our Common Future. Because of Brundtland’s leadership in preparing it, the document also became known as The Brundtland Report. “The time has come for a marriage of economy and ecology so that governments and their people can take responsibility not just for environmental damage, but for the policies that cause the damage,” the commission stated in its report. Brundtland’s leadership on this United Nations effort helped cement her role as a leading voice in the evolving global concern for the environment. In 1998 Brundtland took ofﬁce as the Director General of the World Health Organization, a position she still held in 2002. S E E A L S O Earth Summit; Montréal Protocol; Treaties and Conferences. Bibliography Gibbs, Nancy. (1989). “Norway’s Radical Daughter.” Time, September 25. World Commission on the Environment and Development. (1987). Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kevin Graham

Burn Barrels People used to think that burning household trash and yard waste in an open barrel was an inexpensive, good way to get rid of it. However, today’s packaging and products are often made from plastics, dyes, and other synthetics. When burned, these cause air pollution and, in a number of U.S. states and municipalities, it is illegal. Burn barrels operate at relatively low temperatures, typically at 400 to 500° Fahrenheit (F) and have poor combustion efﬁciency (municipal incinerators run in the 1200 to 2000° F range). As a result, many pollutants are generated and emitted directly into the air. Backyard trash and leaf burning often release high levels of toxic compounds, some of which are carcinogenic. Smoke from burning garbage often contains acid gases, heavy metal vapors, carbon monoxide and other sorts of dangerous toxins. One of the most harmful pollutants released during open trash burning is dioxin, a known carcinogen associated with birth defects. Dioxin can be inhaled directly or deposited on soil, water, and crops, where it becomes part of the food chain. Research has demonstrated that a single burn barrel can generate as much dioxin as a municipal incinerator serving thousands of households. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Cancer; Carbon Dioxide; Composting; Dioxin; Heavy Metals; Household Pollutants; Incineration; Recycling; Reuse; Solid Waste; Waste Reduction.

carcinogenic causing or aggravating cancer

Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov/ttn.

Susan L. Senecah

CAFOs

See Agriculture

Cancer

C

Cancer develops when cells in the body begin to grow out of control. Normal cells grow, divide, and die. But cancer cells, instead of dying, continue to

65

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L I F E T I ME RI S K OF CA NCER FROM K NOWN CA US ES Risk

Risk Factor Excessive sun exposure Cigarette smoking (one pack or more per day) Natural radon in indoor air at home Outside radiation Environmental tobacco smoke (in room with a smoker) Human-made chemicals in indoor air at home Outdoor air in industrialized areas Human-made chemicals in drinking water Human-made chemicals in most foods (including pesticides) Chemical exposure at uncontrolled hazardous waste sites SOURCE:

1 8 1 1 7

in in in in in

3 100 100 1,000 10,000

2 1 1 1

in in in in

10,000 10,000 100,000 100,000 or less

1 in 10,000 to 1 in 1,000

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

grow and form new abnormal cells. Cancer cells often travel to other body parts where they grow and replace normal tissue. This process, called metastasis, occurs as the cancer cells are transported by the bloodstream or lymph vessels. Cancer cells develop because of damage to DNA. DNA carries the genetic information of every cell and directs all its activities. When DNA becomes damaged, the body is able to repair it. But in cancer cells, the damage is not repaired. Some anomalies that increase the risk of cancer are present at birth in the genes of all cells in the body, including reproductive cells. These can be passed from parent to child. This is known as inherited susceptibility and is an uncommon cause of cancer. Most cancers result from genetic changes that occur over decades within the cells of a particular organ. These changes can usually be traced to an interaction of genetics and the environment, including behavior and lifestyle. Other factors that inﬂuence cancer risk are age, race, gender, preexisting disease, and nutritional impairment.

Environmental Factors The term “environment” includes air, water, and soil, as well as substances and conditions in the home and workplace. It also includes: • Diet • Use of tobacco, alcohol, or drugs • Exposure to chemicals • Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun and in tanning parlors and other forms of radiation Only recently have scientists proved the existence of an interaction between environmental toxins and one’s genetic makeup. Researchers hope that when people are knowledgeable about inherited susceptibility, they will be motivated to avoid carcinogens that increase their risk. For example, scientists at the State University of New York at Buffalo report evidence that a genetic variation (mutation) in a gene which helps detoxify carcinogens may put smokers with this mutation at increased risk for breast cancer.

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Overexposure to UV radiation from the sun and cigarette smoking pose the greatest known risks of developing cancer. Other factors contribute much less signiﬁcantly to cancer development. The approximate lifetime risk of developing cancer from known causes is listed in descending order of risk in the bar graph. Note that the risk from exposure to chemicals at hazardous waste sites can vary widely, depending on the chemical, and the length and type of exposure. For comparison, consider the fact that the lifetime risk of death from a fall is 1 in 270, according to the National Safety Council. The lifetime risk of any given American dying as an automobile passenger or a motorcycle rider are 1 in 244 and 1 in 1,536 respectively.

Categories of Carcinogenicity Substances or agents that cause cancer are called carcinogens. The more likely something is to cause cancer, the more carcinogenic it is. Cigarette smoke is more carcinogenic than chlorinated community drinking water. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classiﬁes carcinogenicity into ﬁve categories. A category A substance is known to cause cancer in humans, generally based on epidemiological (large population) data showing sufﬁcient evidence to support a causal association between exposure to the substance and cancer. Category A carcinogens include asbestos, benzene, radon, and coal gasiﬁcation. Category B includes “probable” human carcinogens known to cause cancer in animals but not yet deﬁnitively shown to cause cancer in humans. Category B carcinogens include chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, gasoline, and progestins. Category C includes “possible” human carcinogens for which the data show “limited evidence” of carcinogenicity in the absence of human data. Chemicals for which the data are incomplete, inadequate, or ambiguous are “not classiﬁable” and reside in category D. Those in category E are “probably not carcinogenic.”

carcinogen any substance that can cause or aggravate cancer carcinogenic causing or aggravating cancer

Determining carcinogenicity can be a harrowing and lengthy process. For example, the debate over possible risks posed by electromagnetic ﬁelds (EMF) has been raging for decades. Magnetic ﬁelds originate from everything with an electrical current. Elevated ﬁeld levels can occur in homes close to power lines, or occasionally from improper household wiring. A form of EMF called “extremely low frequency (ELF) electric and magnetic ﬁelds” recently was classiﬁed as “possibly carcinogenic” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Concerns about EMF from power lines began to mount in the 1970s, when epidemiological studies ﬁrst showed a possible link to childhood cancer. But the research has produced inconsistent and conﬂicting ﬁndings, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2002 to launch a more complete series of follow-up studies. Military personnel in proximity to radio frequency (RF) emitted by radar equipment may have an increased risk of brain cancer, according to a small published Israeli study. But when it comes to RF, cellular phones have been receiving the bulk of attention from the media and in lawsuits claiming that cell phone use resulted in plaintiffs’ brain tumors. While researchers have shown that the use of these handheld devices increases a driver’s risk of experiencing a trafﬁc accident, the brain tumor connection remains unproved.

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C A N C E R MORTA LI TY RA TES P E R 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 P ERS ONS A G E - A D JUS TED 1 9 7 0 U. S . P OP ULA TI ON W H I T E MA LE S , A LL A GE S , 1 9 7 0 TO 1 9 9 4

Lung, trachea, bronchus, pleura Prostate gland Colon Other unspecified cancers Pancreas Leukemia Stomach Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma Bladder Brain, nervous system Kidney, renal pelvis, ureter Esophagus Liver, gallbladder, biliary tract Rectum Oral cavity, pharynx Liver Multiple myeloma Melanoma of skin Larynx Skin, other Connective tissue Hodgkin's disease Biliary tract (other) Bones, joints Gallbladder Testis Salivary glands Nasopharynx Thyroid gland Endocrine glands (other) Nose, nasal cavity, sinuses Breast Penis Eye Lip Cervix uteri Corpus uteri, uterus Ovary Vagina Vulva 0 SOURCE:

15

30

45

60

75

Cancer Mortality Maps & Graphs Web site, a service of the National Cancer Institute http://cancer.gov/atlasplus.

When a person develops a malignancy, it can be very difﬁcult to attribute a particular cause or source. Though smoking underlies the bulk of environment-induced lung disease, there are other contributors or possible contributors in human surroundings. Some evidence suggests that air pollutants produced by the burning of fossil fuels play a role in causing lung cancer

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among city dwellers. A high level of radon in the home—such as exists in parts of the Midwest and northeast—is a cancer risk factor, especially for smokers. Radon is a heavy, radioactive gaseous element formed by the natural decay or disintegration of radium in the earth’s crust. Other environmental pollutants that may play roles in cancer include airborne arsenic and microscopic asbestos ﬁbers inhaled into the lungs. Radon is not alone in adding to the lethality of cigarette smoking. Asbestos exposure and smoking also multiply each other’s lethality (a “synergistic” effect). On an individual basis, both smoking and asbestos exposure can cause lung cancer, but taken together, they multiply the risk of lung cancer signiﬁcantly. Studies in the science of epidemiology conﬁrm that the combination of smoking and asbestos exposure creates a risk of cancer much higher than just adding together their separate risks. Evidence suggests that asbestos-exposed workers who quit smoking can reduce their risk of developing lung cancer by as much as 50 percent within ﬁve years of quitting.

Comparison of a smoker’s lung (r) to a normal lung (l). (Photograph by A. Glauberman. National Audubon Society Collection/Photo Researchers, Inc. Reproduced by permission.)

Cancer Clusters The study of disease clusters is one method scientists use to study the public health implications of carcinogens. A cancer cluster is deﬁned as a greaterthan-expected number of cancer cases that occurs within a group of people in a geographic area over a speciﬁc period of time. Studies of suspected cancer clusters usually focus on heredity and environment. Such clusters may be suspected when people report that several family members, friends, neighbors, or coworkers have been diagnosed with the same or related cancer(s). In the early 1980s a leukemia cluster was identiﬁed in the Massachusetts town of Woburn. In a case that was the subject of A Civil Action, later made into a major motion picture, three companies were accused of contaminating drinking water and causing illnesses. The case went to trial in Anne Anderson, et al. v. W.R. Grace & Co., et al. Six families alleged that chemicals dumped by the defendants caused leukemia in members of those families. Two closed municipal water wells—which were the focus of the families’ case—were found to be contaminated with EPA-listed hazardous substances, including trichloroethylene (TCE). Although the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) lists TCE as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen,” IARC has determined that trichloroethylene cannot currently be classiﬁed as such. In any case, this action became a poster trial for the difﬁculty of linking certain events to a cluster of individual illnesses. The incredibly complex case involved thirty-three plaintiffs, two defendants, a mountain of conﬂicting geological and medical testimony, and multiple claims including negligence, nuisance, and emotional distress. A direct and incontrovertible connection between the pollution caused by W.R. Grace and the cancer cluster was never conﬁrmed. The prospect of a larger cancer cluster was investigated in New York State. The Breast Cancer and the Environment on Long Island Study was carried out in response to anecdotal reports that environmental toxins elevated breast cancer rates among women in the region. Chief among the suspects were polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which are caused by incomplete combustion of various chemicals including diesel fuel and cigarette smoke, and organochlorine compounds, which are found in many pesticides. In

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August 2002 scientists reported that organochlorine compounds were not associated with the elevated rates of breast cancer on Long Island. However, the same investigators did suggest it was possible that risk in some individuals may be associated with organochlorine exposures because of individual differences in metabolism and the ability of one’s body to repair DNA damage. The researchers also found that PAHs were associated with a modest 50 percent increased risk for breast cancer in susceptible women exposed to high levels of the compounds. But for the population of women as a whole, no speciﬁc environmental factor could be tied to the incidence of breast cancer. Some have complained that the study failed to take into account the possible effects of leaks from a nearby nuclear reactor, and there have been public accusations that the study avoided the so-called “nuke connection” for political and ﬁnancial reasons. The thousands of individuals who were in and around the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan on and immediately after September 11, 2001, may constitute a cluster of future disease. Public safety personnel, rescue workers, and local residents were exposed to a lingering pall of dust and debris following the collapse of the twin towers and other buildings. Superheated and aerosolized building materials created an incalculable number of toxic compounds. The full effects on the health of those exposed may not be known for decades. In conclusion, the interplay between our environment and cancer is complex and not yet fully understood. It is increasingly clear that the unborn and very young children are particularly susceptible to environmental toxins such as endocrine-disrupting herbicides and insecticides. Adult cancer risk can be greatly reduced by avoiding tobacco products and limiting sun exposure. Known carcinogens often encountered in workplaces and homes include pesticides, asbestos, arsenic, uranium, and certain petroleum products. S E E A L S O Asbestos; Health, Human; PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls); Radon; Risk. Bibliography Fackelmann, Kathleen. (1995). “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 of Less than 10 Years in Young Military Radar Workers.” Archives of Environmental Health 57(4):270–272. Internet Resources Asbestos Network Web site. Available from http://www.asbestosnetwork.com. Harvard Medical School Web site. Available from http://www.intelihealth.com. International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Web site. Available from http:// www.monographs.iarc.fr/.Int. National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute Web site. Available from http://www.cis.nci.nih.gov. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site. Available from http:// www.cdc.gov/nceh. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov.

Bruce K. Dixon

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Cancer Alley, Louisiana

Cancer Alley, Louisiana In 1987 some residents in the tiny community of St. Gabriel, Louisiana, called Jacobs Drive, the street on which they lived, “cancer alley” because there were ﬁfteen cancer victims in a two-block stretch. Half a mile away, there were seven cancer victims living on one block. The eighty-ﬁve-mile stretch of the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans was formerly referred to as the “petrochemical corridor” but after reports of numerous cases of cancer occurring in the small rural communities on both sides of the river, the entire area became known as cancer alley. In 2002 Louisiana had the second-highest death rate from cancer in the United States. Although the national average is 206 deaths per 100,000, Louisiana’s rate is 237.3 deaths per 100,000. In 2000 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data showed that Louisiana ranked second throughout the nation for total onsite releases, third for total releases within the state, and fourth for total on- and offsite releases. Louisiana, which has a population of 4,469,970 people, produced 9,416,598,055 pounds of waste in 2000. Seven of the ten plants in the state with the largest combined on- and offsite releases are located in cancer alley, and four of the ten plants with the largest onsite releases in the state are located there. Industrial accidents and accidental releases are common occurrences in cancer alley. For instance, in 1994 Condea Vista (Conoco) located in Lake Charles reported thirty-nine chemical accidents that released 129,500 pounds of chemicals. The following year, Condea Vista reported ninety accidental chemical releases. In 1997 the company was charged with contaminating local groundwater supplies by discharging between 19 to 47 million pounds of ethylene dichloride (EDC), a suspected human carcinogen, into a local stream. In 1999 hundreds of unskilled laborers ﬁled suit against Condea Vista, claiming they were exposed to EDC while cleaning up a spill from a leaking underground pipeline. The population of cancer alley is primarily African-American and lowincome. Despite the large number of industrial facilities—more than 136— unemployment is high in many communities and most residents do not have a college education. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of cancer alley have been organizing to limit the siting of noxious facilities in their neighborhoods. The most famous case of community resistance occurred in Convent, where, in 1996, Shintech announced plans to build a $700 million chlor-alkali vinyl complex that would be permitted to emit 611,700 pounds of contaminants into the air. The battle between Shintech and Covent garnered international attention. Finally, in 1998 Shintech decided to abandon its plans to build a plant in Convent. Bibliography Centers for Disease Control. (2002). Cancer Prevention and Control “Cancer Burden Data Fact Sheets, Louisiana.” Atlanta, GA. Coyle, Marcia. (1992). “Company Will Not Build Plant: Lawyers Hail Victory.” The National Law Journal, October 19, p. 3. Internet Resource Sierra Club Web site. “Toxics.” Available from http://www.sierraclub.org/toxics.

Dorceta E. Taylor

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Carbon Dioxide

Carbon Dioxide

biomass all of the living material in a given area; often refers to vegetation dissolution into the oceans dispersion in ocean water

anthropogenic human-made; related to or produced by the influence of humans on nature

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a nontoxic, odorless, and colorless gas present in trace concentrations in the atmosphere. The molecule is linear with a central carbon atom doubly bonded to two oxygen atoms (O=C=O). Natural sources of CO2 include volcanic outgassing, animal respiration, biomass decay, and oceanic evaporation. Removal processes include photosynthesis and dissolution into the oceans. CO2 is a long-lived gas, with an atmospheric lifetime of more than one hundred years. It is a natural greenhouse gas and plays an important role in regulating Earth’s climate. Like water vapor, CO2 traps outgoing infrared radiation emitted by Earth into space. By absorbing this energy, the atmosphere warms the earth, a process known as the natural greenhouse effect. Without carbon dioxide and water in the atmosphere, the earth’s average surface temperature would be below 0°F, turning oceans into ice and dramatically altering life as it is known. CO2 is also an anthropogenic greenhouse gas, ranked number one for its contributions to global warming. At the beginning of the Industrial Era (around 1750), CO2 concentrations worldwide were approximately 280 parts per million (ppm); by 1999 concentrations reached 367 ppm. (One ppm equals one molecule of CO2 for every million molecules of air, or 0.0001 percent.) CO2 emissions continue to rise; the average rate of increase since 1980 is 0.4 percent per year. The recent rise in anthropogenic CO2 is attributed largely to fossil fuel combustion (73 percent) and land use conversion resulting from deforestation (25 percent). When oil, coal, or natural gas is burned to generate energy, the by-products are CO2 and water. Due to heavy fossil fuel consumption, the United States leads the world in anthropogenic CO2 emissions (see table). In 1996 the United States contributed more than 50 percent of the 1.027 × 1016 grams of total global CO2 emissions. As concentrations of CO2 increase in the atmosphere, more outgoing infrared energy is trapped (energy that would have escaped to space), warming the earth’s atmosphere and surface. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the global surface temperature has increased by 1.1°F since the late nineteenth century, due to increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

afforestation conversion of open land to forest

O

C

O

Carbon Dioxide

Chemical structure of carbon dioxide (CO2).

72

International efforts are underway to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gases. As of December 2001, 186 countries ratiﬁed the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. CO2 emissions can be reduced by reforestation and afforestation efforts by changing cropland management practices such as tilling, and by reducing the combustion of fossil fuels. The United States did not sign the protocol, but promotes voluntary development of climate-friendly technologies (i.e., renewable energy sources) coupled with changes in land use and forestry practices. Examples of the latter include decreased deforestation, increased reforestation, and agricultural practices designed to increase soil carbon. S E E A L S O Electric Power; Emissions Trading; Global Warming; Greenhouse Gases; Petroleum; Vehicular Pollution.

Carbon Monoxide

AN T H R O PO G E N I C E M I S S I O N S O F CO 2 (EX CLUDI NG LA ND US E CHA NGE A ND FORE S TRY ) , IN T H E U N I TE D S TA T E S A N D O T H E R C OUNTRI ES , 1 9 9 6

United States Japan Germany UK Canada France Australia Netherlands Czech Republic Belgium Greece Denmark Austria Sweden Slovakia Switzerland Norway Ireland New Zealand Latvia Monaco 0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Percent CO2 Emissions (1996) SOURCE:

United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change, Conference of the Parties, FCC/COP.1998/INF.9.

Bibliography Turco, Richard P. (1997). Earth under Siege: From Air Pollution to Global Change. New York: Oxford University Press. Internet Resources Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group I. “The Carbon Cycle and Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.” In Climate Change 2001: The Scientiﬁc Basis. Available from http://www.ipcc.ch. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. “Texts of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol.” Available from http://unfccc.int/resource. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Conference of the Parties. Fourth session, Buenos Aires, November 2–13, 1998, Information 9. “Summary Compilation of Annual Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory Data from Annex I Parties.” Available from FCCC/COP/1998/INF.9.

Marin Sands Robinson

Carbon Monoxide Carbon monoxide is an invisible, odorless, and poisonous gas with the chemical formula CO. Because of its toxicity, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates CO. The gas is a by-product of incomplete combustion (burning with insufﬁcient oxygen). Its major source is vehicle exhaust (60 percent). Other sources include water heaters and furnaces, gas-powered

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Carbon Monoxide

S O U R C ES OF CA RBON MONOX I DE I N THE HOME

Improperly maintained or faulty gas oven range or cooktop stove

Operating barbeque grill in enclosed area such as the garage

Blocked chimney opening Clogged chimney

Unvented space heater

Gas- or wood-burning fireplace Leaking, cracked, corroded or disconnected flue or vent pipes

Auto exhaust fumes from attached garage Cracked heat exchanger Placement of carbon monoxide (CO) detector

Improperly installed or faulty gas clothes dryer, furnace or water heater

engines (boats and lawn mowers), charcoal and wood ﬁres, agricultural burning, and tobacco smoke. CO is classiﬁed as an indirect greenhouse gas. It does not contribute to global warming directly, but leads to the formation of ozone. Ozone is the major air pollutant formed in photochemical smog and a potent greenhouse gas. Human exposure to elevated CO impairs oxygen uptake in the bloodstream. Under CO-free conditions, oxygen is transported from the lungs to tissues by hemoglobin. When CO is present, it mimics the shape of oxygen and binds instead to the hemoglobin. The molecule is not easily released, blocking further oxygen uptake, and ultimately depriving organs and tissues of life-sustaining oxygen. The symptoms of CO poisoning range from dizziness, mild headaches, and nausea at lower levels to severe headaches, seizures, and death at higher levels. The EPA national outdoor air quality standard for CO is nine parts per million or ppm (0.0009 percent) averaged over an eight-hour period. The gas is life-threatening after three hours at 400 ppm (0.04 percent) and within minutes at 1.28 percent. In 1996, 525 deaths in the United States were attributed to unintentional and 1,988 deaths to intentional CO poisoning. Exposure to CO can be reduced by assuring adequate ventilation when near any combustion source. Indoor cooking with charcoal and running gaspowered engines inside a garage are both dangerous and should be avoided. Fuel-burning appliances and ﬁreplaces ought to be routinely inspected. CO detectors are available to detect less obvious sources, such as a malfunctioning furnace. The sensors operate in one of three ways: They mimic the body’s response to CO (biomimetic detectors), they allow a heated metal oxide to react with the gas (metal oxide detectors), or they facilitate a reaction

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Careers in Environmental Protection

using platinum electrodes immersed in an electrolyte solution (electrochemical detectors). The lowest level that a CO alarm can detect is 70 ppm. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Global Warming; Greenhouse Gases; Indoor Air Pollution; Ozone; Vehicular Pollution. Bibliography Phillips, William G. (1998). “Carbon Monoxide Detectors, What You Need to Know.” Popular Science 252(1):76–81. Turco, Richard P. (1997). Earth under Siege: From Air Pollution to Global Change. New York: Oxford University Press. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Available from http://epa.gov/IAQ.

Marin Sands Robinson

Careers in Environmental Protection Careers in environmental protection involve jobs that help reduce the negative environmental impacts of today’s actions, restore damaged ecosystems to health, or build sustainable ways of life for the future. Fifty years ago, most of today’s environmental careers did not exist. Today, the ﬁeld of environmental jobs is one of the fastest-growing job markets; there are more than one hundred environmental-protection careers to consider—ranging from environmental law, politics, journalism, and education, to highly technical and scientiﬁc jobs in such ﬁelds as environmental engineering, biology, chemistry, and architecture. What happened to create so many new jobs in environmental protection? The environmental movement happened. During the past half century, American society began to adopt a new set of environmental values. The public also started to explore the idea that people could often save money— and sometimes even make money—by protecting the environment. As a result of the environmental movement, environmental advocates and legislators worked together to create a large infrastructure of environmental laws and regulations to protect the environment and human health. New regulations called for policymakers, lobbyists, citizen monitors, attorneys, managers, and conservationists to make and enforce new policies. Scientists, engineers, and other specialists were enlisted to study problems and develop and implement solutions to problems such as oil spills, air pollution, landﬁlls, and contaminated ground water. As new technological advances were developed to combat ongoing crises, new environmental occupations emerged. By the beginning of the twentyﬁrst century, over $400 billion was spent annually worldwide on environmental protection, supporting hundreds of thousands of interesting jobs.

Opportunities for Almost Every Interest Today, many people can ﬁnd careers in environmental protection that match their personal skills and dreams. For example, someone interested in working outdoors might choose to become a conservation biologist, park ranger, wildlife manager, or forester. A person who enjoys working with the public might explore working as an outreach specialist in environmental education,

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Careers in Environmental Protection

Workers testing and analyzing ground water. (©David Sailors/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

public relations, environmental journalism, or nature interpretation—or in some other communications specialty. Some of today’s hottest careers are in environmental sciences, environmental law, environmental business, conservation, environmental engineering, environmental communications, environmental lobbying, and the social sciences. Yet, like any job, the demand for experts in any ﬁeld of environmental protection can rise or fall.

Environmental Career Opportunities Environmental protection occupations fall into ﬁve categories: 1. Environmental research 2. Environmental outreach: education, communications, and advocacy 3. Natural resource management 4. Environmental engineering and sciences 5. Environmental policy and legislation and regulation171

Environmental Research and Teaching Environmental research is conducted by scientists and science technicians who study all aspects of the environment.

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Careers in Environmental Protection

Jobs include: Ecologists Biologists Zoologists Biochemists Aquatic biologists Marine biologists Botany Microbiologists Physiologists Air specialists

Sample Jobs • Zoologists study all animals. Their research focuses on life processes, diseases, behavior, and other features of the animal world. • Microbiologists study the growth and characteristics of microscopic organisms such as bacteria, algae, and fungi. • Ecologists study the interactions between organisms and their environment.

Environmental Outreach: Education, Communications, Advocacy, and Fundraising Environmental communications specialists are responsible for communicating knowledge about the environment to the public, the government, and private businesses. Environmental outreach specialists can be found teaching in schools, helping ﬁrms understand environmental goals, interpreting nature at state parks, writing for publications, and lobbying legislators. Jobs include: Environmental educators Environmental journalists Communications specialists Interpretive naturalists Environmental advocates Technical writers Organizers Lobbyists Fund-raisers

Sample Occupations • Environmental educators teach the public about the environment. Environmental educators are hired to work in schools, nature centers, and in industry.

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A microbiologist examines a core sample from a bioremediation demonstration. (U.S. EPA. Reproduced by permission.)

• Environmental journalists report on environmental issues. They are hired to work for magazines, newspapers, journals, television, and radio. Some work for environmental advocacy groups or organizations. • Fund-raisers (also called developers) raise money for speciﬁc environmental causes. Fund-raisers are employed by private and government organizations.

Natural Resources Conservation and Management Conservation and natural resource managers maintain and manage natural resources. Some specialists are required to balance multiuse recreation with the preservation of natural resources. Jobs include: Wildlife conservationists Foresters Fishery and wildlife managers Fish and game wardens

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Careers in Environmental Protection

Energy and conservation technicians Forestry and conservation technicians

Sample Occupations. Foresters manage and protect forests so that both people and the environment beneﬁt. Foresters oversee a multiuse system, including municipal watersheds, wildlife habitats, and outdoor recreation areas. They deal with ﬁre protection, landscape design, municipal waste recycling, and the care of trees.

Environmental Engineering and Sciences Environmental engineers specialize in either preventing or cleaning up pollution or environmental emergencies. Engineers who work to prevent pollution look for and help defend against potential sources of damage to the environment. Engineers who specialize in cleaning up accidents decide how to clean up environmental problems quickly and efﬁciently. Engineers are called upon to resolve complex problems such as oil spills, hazardous waste, and polluted lakes and wetlands. Jobs include: Geographic information systems analysts Chemical engineers Civil engineers Water and air quality engineers Solid and hazardous waste engineers Marine biologists Pollution control technicians Wastewater treatment plant operators

Sample Occupations • Geographic information systems (GIS) specialists use computers to demonstrate interactions between human activities and ecological systems. GIS analysts are in demand at planning agencies, research centers, and consulting agencies, because these specialists can produce important data that is needed to make decisions. • Air-quality managers do highly sophisticated monitoring, conduct chemical and statistical analyses, and perform computer modeling to determine whether industries are complying with air-quality regulations. They also conduct research to create new technologies to reduce air pollution. • Hazardous-waste managers include environmental engineers, groundwater scientists, toxicologists, industrial hygienists, and other specialists who manage hazardous wastes. One of their prime goals is to reduce the generation of hazardous wastes. • Solid-waste managers are environmental engineers, urban planners, business and ﬁnance managers, and other professionals who develop systems to manage solid waste safely.

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Careers in Environmental Protection

A worker analyzes data at a computer workstation. (U.S. EPA. Reproduced by permission.)

• Water-quality managers include chemical, civil, environmental, and mechanical engineers, hydrologists, toxicologists, planners, and other professionals who reduce pollutants in lakes, streams, rivers, and wetlands.

Environmental Policy, Legislation, and Regulation Professionals working in environmental policy, legislation, and regulation are responsible for developing and enforcing environmental regulations. Jobs include: Environmental lawyers Paralegals Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inspectors Environmental Compliance Agency workers

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Sample Occupations • Environmental attorneys and lawyers are experts in environmental law who help companies understand the complex environmental rules and regulations that businesses need to follow. Some environmental lawyers help the government create environmental policies and regulations. • Environmental inspectors help the government inspect companies to make sure that they are complying with federal or local environmental regulations.

Environmental Planning and Analysis Environmental planners and analysts are involved in ﬁnding ways to reduce damage to the environment. Jobs include: Environmental planners and environmental analysts.

Sample Occupations • Environmental planners develop plans for speciﬁc communities to protect environmental quality. • Environmental analysts research, identify, and analyze different sources of pollution to determine their effects on the environment and ﬁnd alternative ways to handle projects in an environmentally sensitive manner.

A professor’s challenge to do something about “those hippie students hanging out in Harvard Yard, making noise about the environment but doing nothing about it” led to the creation of a nonprofit organization that by 2002 had placed more than 7,500 college students in environmental internships. The Environmental Intern Program, founded in 1972 with a $3,000 gift, placed eleven interns in its first year. By 2001, now called the Environmental Careers Organization, the budget was some $15 million and ECO placed more than 750 interns at 124 sites in thirty states and three U.S. territories. For info and to apply, go to http://www.eco.org.

Building a Career Most careers in environmental protection require some training or collegelevel education—and often graduate-level or professional training. Anyone interested in pursuing a career in this ﬁeld needs to consider educational and training requirements carefully. Choosing the courses or a major for a career in environmental protection is not usually as clear-cut as it is for a career in law or medicine. However, many universities now have degree programs in environmental studies that allow students to explore many options. Also, many employers offer internships in environmental protection jobs; these internships offer students a chance to learn about speciﬁc jobs.

Who Hires Environmental Specialists? Jobs in environmental protection can be found in both government and private organizations—many of which are not speciﬁcally environmentally oriented—as well as in industry. Here is a brief list of places to look for jobs in environmental protection. Most agencies have their own Web site with current job listings. In the public sector: • Federal government agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Forestry Department • Local government, such as state and community agencies including the state Departments of Natural Resources • Universities

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Cars

In the private sector: • The environmental industry (businesses that produce products and services designed to protect the environment) • Regulated companies • Law ﬁrms • Financial and insurance industries • Environmental consulting ﬁrms • Nonproﬁt organizations (there are hundreds to choose from, including the Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, and the National Audubon Society) • Lobbyist organizations.

The Future for Environmental Careers The ﬁeld of environmental protection is still new, so it is difﬁcult to predict which environmental careers will have the greatest prospects in the future. New environmental regulations, new technologies, and new environmental crises may inﬂuence which jobs are in greatest demand. Universities are attempting to help students prepare for jobs in environmental protection by offering degrees in many areas of environmental studies. Bibliography The Environmental Careers Organization. (1999). The Complete Guide to Environmental Careers in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: Island Press. Internet Resources The Environmental Careers Organization. Available from http://www.eco.org. Environmental Jobs and Careers. Available from http://www.ejobs.org.

Corliss Karasov

Cars

See Vehicular Pollution

Carson, Rachel SCIENTIST, ECOLOGIST, WRITER OF SILENT SPRING (1907–1964)

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 trichloroethane (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 totaled 4,712 pairs and was no longer on the endangered species list. Credit for the eagle’s comeback is often given to the effects of one book: Silent Spring (1962), by Rachel Louise Carson. This quiet, determined woman not only helped save the eagle, but also raised the public’s awareness of the damaging effects of pesticide pollution upon all living things. After her death, Carson was generally recognized as the founder of twentieth-century environmentalism.

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Carson, Rachel

Rachel Carson. (CorbisBettmann. Reproduced by permission.)

Carson had a master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University, but excelled in writing about science for the public. She was planning what would have been the nation’s ﬁrst popular book on ecology when she heard that hundreds of songbirds were dying in a Maryland wildlife sanctuary sprayed with DDT. The birds were much like the canary that miners used to carry into a coal shaft: When it inhaled poisonous gases, it would stop singing, warning the miners to escape. Similarly, Carson reasoned that without careful use, pesticides could be harmful or deadly to humans as well as insects and birds. She dropped her plans to write about ecology and instead did research on pesticides. When she wrote about her new project in the New Yorker magazine in June 1962, the public and critical reaction was explosive. Many reviewers from the news media criticized her article, calling Carson an unreasonable, emotional, fear-provoking, and hysterical woman. Velsicol, a company that sold pesticides, pressured publisher Houghton Mifﬂin to drop the book by associating Carson with communists. Linda Lear writes in Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (1997) that Velsicol sent a letter to the publisher suggested that she had some political involvement with the Soviet Union and identifying her with “sinister inﬂuences.” Velsicol claimed that Carson intended to reduce U.S. food sources to equal the low food production of the eastern European countries allied with the Soviet Union. Velsicol

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Carver, George Washington

never retracted their claims. But the controversy between chemical company scientists and Carson’s supporters greatly increased sales when the book was ofﬁcially published on September 27, 1962. By the end of the year, Silent Spring was number one on the New York Times best-seller list. Carson and her book have been linked to countless environmental milestones. Soon after the book’s publication, President John F. Kennedy ordered the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) to investigate pesticides, leading to federal regulation in 1964. DDT and other pesticides were later banned in the United States, although the chemical is still used in a few countries. Testifying before Congress, Carson suggested that a commission be created to coordinate pesticide policy—the ﬁrst recorded version of what became the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Ofﬁcials from President Jimmy Carter to Vice President Al Gore have recognized her leadership of the environmental movement. Finally, her book Silent Spring has become known as the ﬁrst and most important statement about ecology to inﬂuence public policy in the twentieth century. Bibliography Lear, Linda. (1997). Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. New York: Henry Holt. Internet Resource “How Many Bald Eagles Are There? Bald Eagle Pairs: Lower 48 States, 1963–1998.” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Region 3. Available from http://midwest.fws.gov/ eagle.

Christine Oravec

Carver, George Washington FARMER, AGRICULTURAL/FOOD SCIENTIST, EDUCATOR (1805–1943) conservationist a person who works to conserve natural resources

crop rotation alternation of crop species on a field to maintain soil health

The conservationist agricultural practices developed by George Washington Carver at the beginning of the twentieth century increased agricultural sustainability for poor African-American farmers in the U.S. Deep South. An expert in revitalizing soil, Carver worked through the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to publicize composting techniques and the importance of crop rotation, which helped combat soil depletion and pest infestation in the region’s overcultivated cotton and tobacco ﬁelds. Carver was born into slavery in Diamond Grove, Missouri, sometime between 1860 and 1864. His parents were lost to Confederate slave raiders. Formal education of blacks was not widespread, and only through his own tenacity did Carver become Iowa State’s ﬁrst African-American college graduate, earning a bachelor of science degree in 1894 and a master of science degree in 1896.

hybridization formation of a new individual from parents of different species or varieties

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In 1896, Carver took a job at the Tuskegee Institute, where he discovered how rotating alternative crops such as sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas, and especially peanuts restored nitrogen to depleted soil. Carver also experimented with hybridization to increase plant resistance to common pests. To popularize his methods, Carver wrote instructional manuals, and in 1906 he founded the “moveable school” to give hands-on demonstrations to illiterate farmers. This school on wheels taught approximately 2,000 farmers per

Carver, George Washington

month during its ﬁrst summer, and served as a model for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s extension program.

George Washington Carver. (©Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

One of his forty-four instructional manuals, How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing It for Human Consumption, published in 1916, revealed new uses for peanuts and their byproducts, including paper, paints, insecticides, shaving cream, peanut butter, and bar candy. An American peanut industry developed as a result, and Carver became its chief spokesman. In 1921 he addressed Congress to urge high import duties on peanuts grown in Asia. After this successful presentation, Carver’s fame spread and he became the ﬁrst African-American scientist to achieve national acclaim. Carver died at Tuskegee on January 5, 1943, but continues to receive posthumous awards. His childhood home is a national monument, and in 1990, he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame. S E E A L S O Agriculture. Bibliography Holt, Rackham. (1943). George Washington Carver: An American Biography. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company. Kremer, Gary, ed. (1987). George Washington Carver in His Own Words. Columbia, MS: University of Missouri Press.

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Catalytic Converter

McMurry, Linda. (1981). George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol. New York: Oxford University Press. Internet Resource “Facts of Science: African Americans in the Sciences.” Princeton University Web site. Available from http://www.princeton.edu/~mcbrown.

Anne Becher and Joseph Richey

Catalytic Converter The catalytic converter in an automobile is an expanded section of exhaust pipe occurring upstream of the mufﬂer in which pollutants generated in the engine are converted to normal atmospheric gases. It is an essential element in the emissions control system of modern automobiles. This technology was introduced in the United States in the late 1970s and became legally required by the early 1980s because of more stringent exhaust emission control standards. Early catalyst systems, as applied to vehicles with carburetors, attempted to oxidize carbon monoxide (CO) and unburned hydrocarbons (HC) to carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor, using air added by means of an air pump or rapidly actuating valve system. Although constructed from a high-surface-area alumina substrate with a noble metal (usually platinum) on the surface, their effectiveness was limited by extreme conditions of service. These problems include high temperatures (greater than 1,000°C) exacerbated by a large and variable “engine-out” pollutant load and constant vibration from roadway and engine sources. The replacement of carburetors with computer-controlled, port fuel injection and precise air/fuel ratio control based on exhaust oxygen sensing has allowed catalytic converters to operate with close to 100 percent efﬁciency and better longevity, often exceeding 100,000 miles. The addition of a ceria wash coat in the form of a thin layer of porous cerium oxide and

COMPONENTS OF A CATALYTIC CONVERTER

N2 CO2 H2O

cross-section of ceramic substrate wall

HC NOx CO SOURCE:

86

Adapted from Corning.

Substrate

Mat

Can

Washcoat

Catalysts

CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons)

rhodium metal in conjunction with the platinum now allow for both good longevity and “three-way” operation. Not only are the small amounts of residual CO and HC oxidized, but the nitric oxide pollution emissions are simultaneously reduced to nitrogen (and some nitrous oxide, a potent atmospheric greenhouse gas, but otherwise nonpoisonous). The tetraethyl lead present in gasoline as an octane booster in the 1970s was removed not because of its effects on human health, but because it rapidly poisoned catalysts. Its removal, although coincidental, has had enormous beneﬁts for human and environmental health. Current pressure to reduce the sulfur content of fuel arises, in part, from evidence that sulfur has a similar, but much smaller effect on catalyst longevity and effectiveness. S E E A L S O Greenhouse Gases; Lead; Ozone; Vehicular Pollution. Internet Resource Kovark, William, and Hermes, Matthew E. “The Role of the Catalytic Converter in Smog Reduction.” Available from http://chemcases.com/converter.

Donald Stedman

Cell Phones

See Electromagnetic Fields

CERCLA

See Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act

CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons) Chloroﬂuorocarbons (CFCs), once described as “miracle chemicals,” cause the breakdown of the ozone layer that protects the earth from the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation. CFCs have no signiﬁcant natural sources. They were ﬁrst manufactured in the 1930s, and industries soon found a wide variety of applications for them due to their chemical unreactivity and heat-absorbing properties. CFCs have been used as refrigerants in air conditioners and refrigerators, in aerosol spray cans, in manufacturing foams as industrial solvents, and as cleaning agents in the manufacture of electronics. One U.S. chemical industry gave them the trade name of “Freons,” and the term has since become a household word. Chemically, CFCs are a subset of the more general class of compounds known as halocarbons (carbon- and halogen-containing compounds). CFCs are halocarbons that contain only the elements carbon, chlorine, and ﬂuorine. The most common CFCs are small molecules containing only one or two carbon atoms. For example, a common refrigerant has the chemical formula of CCl2F2, which in an industry-devised shorthand is noted as CFC-12. Scientists initially believed that CFCs would be harmless in the earth’s atmosphere because of their chemical inertness. This inertness, and their lack of solubility in water, give CFCs a long life span in the atmosphere (tens to hundreds of years, depending on the CFC). In the late 1970s, scientists began to realize that CFCs do break down in the upper atmospheric region known as the stratosphere, where the sun’s UV waves are more intense. The UV-induced breakdown releases free, highly reactive chlorine and bromine atoms from the CFCs. Several subsequent chemical reactions are kick-started by this process, including the breakdown of the stratospheric ozone layer.

F Cl

C

F Cl

Cl

Cl

C

Cl

F CFCs

Chemical structure of CFCs. unreactivity lack of chemical reactivity refrigerant liquid or gas used as a coolant in refrigeration solvent substance, usually liquid, that can dissolve other substances

inertness inability to react chemically solubility the amount of mass of a compound that will dissolve in a unit volume of solution; aqueous solubility is the maximum concentration of a chemical that will dissolve in pure water at a reference temperature breakdown degradation into component parts

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Chávez, César E.

The ozone layer is important to humans and other life on earth because it absorbs harmful UV radiation (acting as a sort of UV “shield”) Long-term effects on humans’ excessive UV exposure include skin cancer, eye damage (cataracts), and suppression of the immune system. CFCs are now recognized as harmful chemicals because of their ozonedepleting properties. As a consequence, an international agreement known as the Montréal Protocol was forged in 1987 and later strengthened by amendments to decrease and eventually end the use of these chemicals. CFCs are also potent greenhouse gases and are components of pending international agreements regarding greenhouse gases, the most notable being the Kyoto Protocol (1997). S E E A L S O Global Warming; Greenhouse Gases; Montréal Protocol; Ozone. Bibliography World Meteorological Organization. (2003). Scientiﬁc Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2002. Global Ozone Research and Monitoring Project, Report No. 47. Geneva: Author. Internet Resources National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory. “Chloroﬂuorocarbons.” Available from http://www.cmdl.noaa. gov/noah/publictn/elkins/cfcs.html. World Meteorological Organization. “Global Atmosphere Watch.” Available from http://www.wmo.ch/web/arep/ozone.html.

Christine A. Ennis

Chávez, César E. FOUNDER OF UNITED FARM WORKERS OF AMERICA (1927–1993)

César Estrada Chávez was born near Yuma, Arizona, on March 31, 1927. Eleven years later, his family lost their farm and joined several hundred thousand other migrants working California’s crops under terrible conditions. By the time of his death at 63, Chávez had organized farmworkers, improved their wages and living conditions, shaped public awareness, and prompted government regulations that reduced their exposure to dangerous pesticides. After dropping out of school and serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II (1944–1945), Chávez did farm work for seven years. Beginning in 1952, he registered voters and organized chapters of the Community Service Organization (CSO), a Mexican-American equal rights movement, in California. He left CSO in 1962 to establish a separate union that eventually became the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) in 1973. After Chávez led a series of migrant worker strikes against vineyards, most grape growers signed contracts restricting dangerous pesticides as a result, long before comparable government restrictions were put in place. Chávez continued the struggle because most growers persisted in their abusive pesticide practices and refused to renew their contracts with proactive migrant workers. When research found that 300,000 people in central California suffered from pesticide-related illnesses, and there was a high incidence of cancer among children in the same region, Chávez initiated another grape boycott

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in 1984. He fasted for a life-threatening thirty-six days in mid-1988 to augment his antipesticide protest. Ultimately, his controversial nonviolent strategies signiﬁcantly raised American awareness of farm pesticide dangers, changed public policies, and concentrated his union’s efforts well into the 1990s. In 1994 President Bill Clinton posthumously awarded Chávez the U.S. Medal of Freedom. Days later, Governor Pete Wilson signed a bill making Chávez’s birth date an ofﬁcial holiday in California. In carrying out his life’s mission, Chávez exempliﬁed a unique blend of beliefs, behaviors, and commitments along with nonviolence, egalitarianism, political activism, volunteerism, solidarity/unity, and respect for all cultures, religions, and lifestyles. S E E A L S O Activism; Labor, Farm; Pesticides. Bibliography Griswold Del Castillo, Richard, and García, Richard. (1995). César Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit. Tulsa: University of Oklahoma Press. Ferriss, Susan, and Sandoval, Ricardo. (1997). The Fight in the Fields—César Chávez and the Farmworker Movement. Orlando, FL: Harcourt and Brace. Matthiessen, Peter. (1997). Sal Si Puedes (Escape If You Can)—César Chávez and the New American Revolution Berkeley: University of California Press.

César E. Chávez. (©HultonDeustch Collection/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Ross, Fred. (1989). Conquering Goliath–César Chávez at the Beginning. La Paz, CA: El Taller Graﬁco Press. Internet Resources San Francisco State University, César E. Chávez Institute for Public Policy Web site. Available from http://www.sfsu.edu/~cecipp. United Farm Workers Web site. Available from http://www.ufw.org.

José B. Cuellar

Chemical Spills

See Abatement; Cleanup; Disasters: Chemical

Accidents and Spills

Chlorination

See Water Treatment

Chloroflurocarbons Citizen Involvement

See CFCs See Public Participation

Citizen Science If asked to picture a scientist, most people probably would imagine a professional peering into a microscope or poring over statistics on a computer screen. Science does not belong solely to such professionals, however. Ordinary citizens from all walks of life have a huge stake in science and technology as well, which can both enrich their lives with new discoveries and damage their world with pollution. Citizen science is a movement that recognizes the contribution which such concerned citizens can make to scientiﬁc policy and research, particularly when it comes to environmental issues. Several high-proﬁle court cases have proved the power of citizen science. For example, it was citizen volunteers in Woburn, Massachusetts, who gathered data about the unusually large number of area children stricken with

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leukemia, a cancer of the blood-forming cells. The efforts of these volunteers led to a trial, where two large corporations were accused of polluting the town’s water, which was thought to have played a role in the children’s illness. The trial, in turn, inspired a best-selling book by Jonathan Harr and a popular movie starring John Travolta, both titled A Civil Action. Another famous example of citizen science is less controversial, but just as powerful in its own way. In 1900 the National Audubon Society launched its Christmas Day Bird Count, in which amateur birdwatchers were asked to tally and report the number of birds they spotted on one day. The ﬁrst year, twenty-seven people took part. Today, this event, the longest-running of all citizen science projects, attracts more than 50,000 participants. Several other large-scale bird counts have started as well. These projects help scientists spot local changes in bird populations, which may signal an environmental threat, such as groundwater pollution or poisoning from the improper use of pesticides. Some citizen science programs enlist people of all ages to help with the hands-on collection of technical data. For example, Global Learning and Observations to Beneﬁt the Environment (GLOBE) is a program that has involved more than one million elementary through high school students in the United States and one hundred other countries. The students learn to take accurate measurements of the air, water, soil, and vegetation in their area. They then share their data via the Internet. Scientists, in turn, use the measurements to improve their understanding of the global environment. Although GLOBE is sponsored by the U.S. government, many citizen science programs grow out of grassroots organizations. For example, it is estimated that over 550,000 people in the United States are involved in monitoring rivers in their area. The River Watch Program is a national organization that provides training and support to local groups working to protect and restore their rivers. As these examples show, individuals do not need lab coats, fancy equipment, or a big research budget to make very real and important contributions to environmental science. S E E A L S O Activism; Cancer; Earth Day; Environmental Movement. Bibliography Harr, Jonathan. (1996). A Civil Action. New York: Vintage Books. Internet Resources National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Department of State. “Global Learning and Observations to Beneﬁt the Environment (GLOBE).” Available from www.globe.gov. National Audubon Society and Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. “BirdSource.” Available from http://www.birdsource.org. River Network. “River Watch Program.” Available from http://www.riverwatch.org.

Linda Wasmer Andrews

Citizen Suits Citizen suits are lawsuits that are brought by individuals or nonproﬁt groups under the provisions of certain environmental laws. Because agencies do not catch and prosecute all violators of environmental statutes, citizen suits can

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be extremely useful, empowering anyone with an interest in environmental protection to demand that laws be enforced. Provisions for citizen suits have been created on both the federal level and in some states’ environmental statutes. On the federal level, provisions for citizen suits are generally more narrow, limited to speciﬁc laws. Conversely, when states allow citizen suits, there are usually fewer hurdles for plaintiffs. State-level citizen suits also tend to have a greater impact on overall enforcement. To bring any claim in the United States, plaintiffs must show that they have standing, meaning that they have been personally injured by the defendants’ actions. Under most citizen suit provisions, individuals are automatically granted standing to bring claims against violators. Industry has made efforts to limit this practice, but in a 2000 appeal, citizen suit standing was upheld. In Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, the U.S. Supreme Court reinforced and extended its recognition of standing to include claims brought against violators even after they have come into compliance with the law. Citizen suits have improved the enforcement of environmental laws over the past quarter century. In response, during the 1980s, polluters created a defense strategy against these lawsuits. Strategic Litigation against Public Participation (SLAPP) suits are civil lawsuits brought by alleged polluters against the citizens who attempt to compel enforcement action against them. These suits are usually based on claims of defamation, discrimination, or contract interference, and can effectively deter individuals from pursuing environmental enforcement cases. Some states have attempted to reign in SLAPP suits, but such actions continue to intimidate individuals. Despite certain industries’ counteractive measures, however, citizen suits continue to be a valuable tool in environmental enforcement. S E E A L S O Activism; Environmental Crime; Environmental Impact Statement; Laws and Regulations; National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs); Politics; Public Participation; Regulatory Negotiation. Bibliography Jorgenson, Lisa, and Kimmel, Jeffrey J. (1988). Environmental Citizen Suits: Confronting the Corporation. Washington, DC: Bureau of National Affairs Books. Blanch, James T.; Cohen, Benedict S.; Gerson, Stuart M.; and Slavitt, Evan. National Legal Center for the Public Interest. (1996). Citizen Suits and qui tam Actions: Private Enforcement of Public Policy. Washington, DC: National Legal Center for the Public Interest. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Region 4: Southeast.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/region4.

Mary Elliott Rollé

Clean Air Act The 1970 Clean Air Act (CAA), signiﬁcantly amended in 1977 and again in 1990, regulates air pollution emissions from “stationary” sources (e.g., factories, smokestacks, etc.), mobile sources (e.g., motor vehicles), and certain “indirect” sources (e.g., highways, malls, parking lots, etc., that attract mobile

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sources to the location). Speciﬁed “criteria” pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, particulates (i.e., soot, ﬂy ash, etc.), and lead are directly regulated, as are “hazardous” air pollutants that the EPA determines are likely to cause death or serious physical injuries. Congress listed some 189 hazardous air pollutants in its 1990 amendments to the original law. Many of these hazardous air pollutants are fairly common chemicals, such as benzene, dry-cleaning solvents, and others that pose scientiﬁcally veriﬁable health dangers. Although it has long been a criteria pollutant, lead is now known to be especially dangerous to human health. The 1990 amendments require further reductions in the criteria oxides that cause smog and acid rain. Permitted sources have monitoring and reporting requirements. Permitting decisions are based, in part, on whether the location of a stationary source emitting a particular pollutant is in an “attainment area” for that pollutant (i.e., the local pollution generated by that pollutant does not exceed the speciﬁed threshold). Conversely, the area may be regarded as “nonattainment” in terms of that pollutant and the applicable standard (i.e., the threshold is exceeded), in which case allowable emissions will be severely curtailed. Mobile source emissions are regulated in the main by the EPA’s establishment of speciﬁc emission standards for several classiﬁcations of vehicles; these are imposed on manufacturers. The 1990 amendments planned the development of “clean fuel” vehicles using hybrid or low polluting fuels and, especially for notoriously dirty urban buses, clean fuel ﬂeets. Vehicle fuel is also regulated in regard to its constituents, with limitations imposed on gasoline sold in ozone or carbon monoxide nonattainment areas. After 1995, leaded gasoline was absolutely barred from commerce. States exercise responsibility primarily by the formulation of State Implementation Plans (SIPs), which are subject to EPA approval. If a SIP is unavailable or ineffectively carried out by the state, the EPA enforces the act. Citizen suits are also permitted, whereby private citizens, subject to notice requirements, have the authority to act as private attorney generals in seeking judicial enforcement. They may not, however, recover damages. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Dry Cleaning; Electric Power; Laws and Regulations, United States; Toxic Release Inventory; Vehicular Pollution. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “The Plain English Guide to the Clean Air Act.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/oar.

Kevin Anthony Reilly

Clean Water Act The twentieth-century conﬂagration of Ohio’s Cuyahoga River well illustrated the quandary of a nation whose water was so polluted that it burned. The modern Clean Water Act (CWA) is the result of a sequence of federal water pollution control statutes starting with the nineteenth-century enactment of the Rivers and Harbors Act (limited to navigation-impeding debris), the 1948 Federal Water Pollution Control Act (the ﬁrst federal attempt to regulate water pollution), the 1965 Water Quality Improvement Act, and the 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act. This, as amended in 1977 and

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again in 1987, was the template for the present statute. Although denoted the Federal Water Pollution Prevention and Control Act in the U.S. Code, the statute’s common name is the Clean Water Act. The CWA primarily governs the pollution of surface water, such as rivers, lakes, and streams. The CWA also regulates dredge and ﬁll operations in wetlands, establishes criteria for ocean discharges, and regulates the oil pollution of water. In addition, it provides for state funding and includes research-oriented provisions. The crux of the CWA lies in the requirements for a national permitting scheme for the pollution of surface waters. It provides for regulatory control of water pollution primarily by two mechanisms: enforcing “water-quality standards,” typically established by states, and imposing technology based “efﬂuent limitations” by means of permitting under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). Dischargers, such as publicly owned treatment works (POTWs), are required to utilize the best available pollution control technology in minimizing pollutants before they can obtain a permit to operate. The CWA contemplates the signiﬁcant delegation of enforcement authority to qualifying states and state permitting under SPDES (i.e., “state” PDES) programs. The discharge of certain pollutants, such as toxic pollutants and medical wastes, is prohibited. The EPA (except that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issues wetlands permits) or state agencies under qualifying state programs enforce the CWA. Citizen plaintiffs, subject to notice requirements speciﬁed in the statute, also may sue to enforce the act, although, similar to other federal environmental “citizen suit” provisions, not for the recovery of personal damages. Enforcement of the CWA has received wide popular support. Despite the fact that it will not be possible to fairly evaluate its real value for quite some time, the CWA is generally considered an environmental success. S E E A L S O Biosolids; Laws and Regulations, United States; Ocean Dumping; Ocean Dumping Ban Act; Wastewater Treatment; Water Pollution. Internet Resource The Clean Water Network. Available from http://www.cwn.org.

Kevin Anthony Reilly

Cleanup The cleanup of environmental pollution involves a variety of techniques, ranging from simple biological processes to advanced engineering technologies. Cleanup activities may address a wide range of contaminants, from common industrial chemicals such as petroleum products and solvents, agricultural chemicals and metals, to radionuclides. Cleanup technologies may be speciﬁc to the contaminant (or contaminant class) and to the site. This entry addresses the cleanup of contaminated soil and water. Air pollution is addressed generally at the point of release by control technologies, because the opportunities to capture and recover airborne contaminants are limited once they are released into the atmosphere. Cleanup costs can vary dramatically depending on the contaminants, the media affected, and the size of the contaminated area. Much of the

solvent substance, usually liquid, that can dissolve other substances radionuclide radioactive particle, man-made or natural, with a distinct atomic weight number; can have a long life as soil or water pollutant media specific environments— air, water, soil—which are the subject of regulatory concern and activities

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Tractor-drawn tankers are being used to clear oil beached to the west of Angle Bay, following the grounding of the tanker Sea Empress off Milford Haven in southwest Wales, U.K., 1996. (©Bryan Pickering; Eye Ubiquitous/ Corbis. Reproduced by permission.) remediation cleanup or other methods used to remove or contain a toxic spill or hazardous materials from a Superfund site or for the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response program remediation reduction of harmful effects; restoration of undisturbed site Warsaw Pact nations allied with the former Soviet Union countries

remediation to date has been in response to such historical chemical management practices as dumping, poor storage, and uncontrolled release or spillage. Greater effort in recent years has been directed toward pollution prevention, which is more cost-effective than remediation. Programs such as Superfund in the United States, as well as parallel state programs, represent a commitment of billions of dollars to the cleanup of contaminated sites. Many industry-speciﬁc cleanup programs (e.g., Florida’s dry cleaner program) are funded by taxes or fees levied on that industry. Several Western European countries have environmental programs that are at least as aggressive as those in the United States. Countries with emerging economies are working hard to address environmental contamination with limited resources. Many cases of environmental contamination in former Warsaw Pact, for example, are associated with former Soviet military bases. In Poland, cleanup of several of these bases is under way. In Kluczewo, northwestern Poland, a former military base is reportedly the biggest and most contaminated such site in Central Europe. A skimming technique was used to remove liquid petroleum fuel from the subsurface followed by bioremediation of the remaining contaminated soil. The Polish government paid for the work with support from local sources. Government involvement in environmental remediation includes consideration of the safety of the cleanup workers. Professionals involved in the cleanup of contaminated sites may have long-term exposure to a variety of hazardous materials and, as such, must be protected against adverse health

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impacts. Such protection begins with the planning and implementation of characterization and clean up efforts. Minimizing contact with contaminated media is the optimal method for managing risk to site workers. When such contact is necessary, or when the nature of the contamination is unknown, as in initial characterization activities, personnel protective equipment (PPE) is used to protect site workers. The major routes of exposure for workers at contaminated sites are through dermal (skin) or inhalation pathways. PPE is categorized by the level of protection it provides to these two exposure pathways, ranging from simple dermal protection such as overalls and gloves to fully encapsulating suits with supplied air. The level of protection needed is based on the nature and extent of knowledge of site conditions—less information requires more protection. In most cases, it is ﬁnancially or physically impractical to completely remove all traces of contamination. In such cases, it is necessary to set an acceptable level of residual contamination. Evaluating experimental toxicity data and then extrapolating to potential exposure scenarios forms the basis for such decisions. The result of these evaluations is an estimate of risk for given adverse outcome (e.g., cancer or death). Risk-based target levels typically determine when cleanup is complete. As a result, evolution of cleanup technologies has yielded four general categories of remediation approaches: (1) physical removal (with or without treatment); (2) in situ conversion by physical or chemical means to less toxic or less mobile forms; (3) containment;

Two workers wearing gas masks and protective clothing loading debris contaminated by dioxin into tractor trailers. (©Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

physical removal digging up and carting away conversion chemical modification to another form containment prevention of movement of material beyond the immediate area

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natural attenuation reduction in a pollutant through combined action of natural factors

and (4) passive cleanup, or natural attenuation. Combinations of technologies may be used at some sites.

Physical Removal The physical removal of contaminated soil and groundwater has been, and continues to be, a common cleanup practice. However, physical removal does not eliminate the contamination, but rather transfers it to another location. In ideal cases, the other location will be a facility that is specially designed to contain the contamination for a sufﬁcient period of time. In this way, proper removal reduces risk by reducing or removing the potential for exposure to the contamination. Removal options vary dramatically for soil and groundwater, as described below.

excavate dig out

leachate water that collects contaminants as it trickles through wastes, pesticides, or fertilizers; leaching may occur in farming areas, feedlots, and landfills, and may result in hazardous substances entering surface water, ground water, or soil heavy metals metallic elements with high atomic weights; (e.g. mercury, chromium, cadmium, arsenic, and lead); can damage living things at low concentrations and tend to accumulate in the food chain radionuclide radioactive particle, man-made or natural, with a distinct atomic weight number; can have a long life as soil or water pollutant

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Soils. Excavation of contaminated soils works well for limited areas of contamination that are close to the ground surface. Under ideal conditions, the disposal location is a designed, regulated, and controlled disposal facility (e.g., a landﬁll or incineration facility). Alternatively, contaminated soil may be excavated and consolidated in a prepared facility on-site. Prepared disposal facilities range from simple excavations with impermeable covers (caps) to sophisticated containment structures such as those used in modern landﬁlls. Landﬁlls typically consist of multiple layers of impermeable materials— often combinations of synthetic (plastic) liners and compacted layers of dense clays; piping to collect and transport liquids generated within the landﬁll (leachate); and systems of sensors within and surrounding the landﬁll to detect leaks. When contaminated soil is excavated, transported, and disposed of properly, physical removal can be an effective and economical cleanup option. Treatment of excavated soil, to either destroy the contaminant or to reduce its toxicity or mobility often is associated with physical removal. Treatment following removal will differ with the chemical of concern. Many organics (e.g., solvents, pesticides, oils) may be incinerated or landﬁlled effectively. Some metals require conversion to compounds that will not react with other substances before being transferred to a landﬁll. Treatment options also can be troublesome as landﬁll space decreases and public opposition to incineration increases in some areas. However, effective air pollution controls are available to manage incinerator emissions, and engineering for landﬁll construction now includes sophisticated liners, leachate controls, and management practices to prevent groundwater contamination or other forms of cross-pollution. Beyond excavation, more selective removal technologies have been developed for contaminants in soil, including soil washing, which uses processing equipment and chemical solvents to “wash” contaminants from soil. In practice, soil washing often is complicated and expensive. Phytoextraction—the use of plants to remove soil contaminants—has achieved favor in some applications. Selected plant species may remove and concentrate inorganic contaminants such as heavy metals and radionuclides in the above- or below-ground tissues. If phytoextraction is successful, the resulting plant tissue will have high levels of the soil contaminant and be classiﬁed as hazardous waste, requiring appropriate treatment or disposal options (see previous section). To date, phytoextraction has been used only at relatively small sites.

Cleanup

One of the best-documented cases of heavy metal phytoremediation in the United States was conducted at a former battery manufacturing site in Trenton, New Jersey. The land surrounding this urban facility that was in operation from the 1930s until 1980 was highly contaminated with lead. For two vegetation seasons Indian mustard plants were used to reduce the concentration of lead in the soil to below regulatory limits. This cleanup effort illustrates the potential for innovative, biological remediation technologies. Sediments are the inorganic (e.g., clay, silt, sand) and organic (plant and animal) materials that settle to the bottom of water bodies. Aquatic sediments often become contaminated by a wide variety of man-made chemicals including agricultural chemicals such as pesticides that are washed into water bodies, industrial chemicals that are released into water bodies or that leak from containment structures as well as the many products that are transported by water. Contamination in aquatic sediments may affect the organisms that live within the sediments, or may bioaccumulate through the food chain as larger species feed on organisms that have absorbed the contamination. Remediating such contamination requires choosing between the risks associated with leaving the contamination in place and the risks associated with excavating the sediments (and resuspending them in the water), transporting and disposing of them.

Groundwater. Liquid or solid chemicals, when disposed of by burial or direct release onto the ground surface, can migrate down into the soil structure and come in contact with groundwater. Final disposition of these chemicals depends on their volatility and water solubility. Aqueous phase chemicals, chemicals that are soluble in water, dissolve in and move with groundwater. Nonaqueous phase chemicals (NAPLs) do not dissolve in water and may be either lighter than water (light nonaqueous phase liquids or LNAPLs) or heavier than water (dense nonaqueous phase liquids or DNAPLs). The distinction between DNAPLs and LNAPLs has a signiﬁcant impact on the detection and remediation of organic contamination. LNAPLs such as petroleum products (e.g., gasoline, diesel, oils) are common contaminants in urban, industrial, and agricultural areas. DNAPLs such as chlorinated solvents—trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE)—are found also in urban and industrial areas, most commonly in association with the dry cleaning industry, where previous management practices often resulted in the spilling or dumping of these chemicals. These NAPLs pool above (LNAPL) or below (DNAPL) groundwater bodies, dissolving slowly into, and potentially contaminating, enormous volumes of water. In states that rely heavily on groundwater for drinking water, billions of dollars have been spent in the last two decades to replace leaking underground gasoline storage tanks (LUSTs) and to clean up historical contamination. When contamination is detected in groundwater, one common cleanup approach is to drill wells, then pump out and purify the contaminated water using a variety of methods, including air stripping, where compounds are volatized from the water into the air. This technique does not rid the environment of the pollutants, however, as the contaminants are merely transferred from the water to the air. Less volatile compounds, or those at low concentrations, may be removed by ﬁltration through a solid sorbent, such as activated carbon. This “pump and treat” approach addresses only the dissolved, aqueous phase of contamination, while leaving the concentrated, nonaqueous “pool” as

volatile any substance that evaporates readily

groundwater the supply of freshwater found beneath the Earth’s surface includes; aquifers, which supply wells and springs air stripping a treatment system that removes volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from contaminated groundwater or surface water by forcing an airstream through the water and causing the compounds to evaporate volatilize vaporize; become gaseous sorbent a substance that absorbs (within) or adsorbs (on the surface) another substance

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a continuing source of groundwater contamination. As a result, “pump and treat” may be a prolonged process. The detection and elimination of NAPL source zones of contamination are more desirable where feasible. In order to remove sources of groundwater contamination, technologies are needed to accurately detect and measure the amounts of these chemicals. Well drilling is commonly used to investigate or remediate contaminated sites, though it is relatively slow and expensive, and it brings up contaminated soil that must be disposed of properly. Direct push technologies use large vehicles equipped with hydraulic rams or percussion equipment to push metal tubes into the ground. Special sensors on the advancing tip of these tubes provide information on the nature of the sediments being penetrated. Recent advances in this technology allow special chemical sensors to be deployed on the end of the tube providing information on the presence and concentration of chemicals in the ground. The hollow tube also can be used to collect soil and groundwater samples. When sampling is complete, the rods typically are removed from the ground and the hole is sealed. While depth and geology limit “direct push,” it is generally faster than well drilling, and it does not contaminate the soil.

electrode conductor used to establish electrical contact with a substance by delivering electric current to it or receiving electric current from it

Once source zones have been identiﬁed, technologies may be deployed to remove contamination. One of the most popular approaches to removing NAPLs is thermal treatment. Heating contaminated soil and groundwater to the boiling point of the contaminant will convert liquids to gases, which move through the soil. Wells are used to extract the resulting gases that can then be absorbed by activated carbon, or heated to temperatures high enough to break them down into harmless elements. Typically, soils are heated in one of two ways: electrical resistance or steam injection. Electrical resistance heating uses electrodes placed in the ground between which electrical currents are passed. The soil’s resistance to the movement of the electrical current produces heat. Steam heating pumps high-pressure steam into the ground through injection wells.

Conversion

reactive chemicals chemicals likely to undergo chemical reaction bioremediation use of living organisms to clean up oil spills or remove other pollutants from soil, water, or wastewater; use of organisms such as nonharmful insects to remove agricultural pests or counteract diseases of trees, plants, and garden soil

Conversion uses chemical reactions to change contaminants into less toxic or less mobile forms. These chemical reactions may be produced by the introduction of reactive chemicals to the contaminated area, or by the action of living organisms such as bacteria. The use of biological systems to clean up contamination is known as bioremediation. Bioremediation includes all cleanup technologies that take advantage of biological processes to remove contaminants from soil and groundwater; the most common technique is microbial metabolism. For decades, scientists have known that microbes can degrade certain organic contaminants, and in cases of historical contamination, microbial communities often adapt to take advantage of the energy released when these chemicals are degraded (i.e., metabolized). By studying the existing conditions, substances that microbes need to break down chemicals, such as nutrients or oxygen, may be added to enhance biodegradation. Microbial biodegradation is capable of degrading most organic contaminants. For example, under ideal conditions, microbes can degrade the organic constituents of petroleum hydrocarbons such as gasoline or diesel fuel, to

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carbon dioxide and water. This is the concept behind a technology being used by the U.S. Department of Energy to remove petroleum contamination from soils that also contain low levels of radioactive materials. The combination of hazardous materials (petroleum) and radiation places this soil in the regulatory category of mixed waste, for which disposal is extremely difﬁcult. By using biodegradation to remove the petroleum component, the remaining soil can be classiﬁed as low-level radioactive waste, which has an accepted disposal mechanism.

Soils. Heavy metals are a common target for conversion approaches. Removal may not be practical when such metals contaminate large areas of surface soil. In these cases, chemical approaches often are sought to convert the metals to a less toxic and less mobile form. Such conversions often involve the use of reactive agents such as sulfur to create immobile sulﬁde salts of metals (e.g., mercury). Reducing the mobility of soil contaminants often refers to reducing the water solubility of the compounds. Reducing water solubility lowers the potential for contaminants to become dissolved in and move with water in the subsurface. Groundwater. DNAPLs such as chlorinated solvents may be treated with chemicals (e.g., potassium permanganate) that degrade the solvents into relatively harmless chemicals. When combined with chlorinated solvents, potassium permanganate removes chloride ions, which results in the degradation of these chemicals to carbon dioxide (CO2) and water. This technology holds promise as a tool for remediating these challenging contaminants.

A microbe discovered in the mud in the bottom of the Hudson River may solve the problem of treating groundwater contaminated with the industrial solvent TCA (trichloroethane). The microbe, which lives without oxygen, converts TCA into chloroethane, a compound that can more easily be removed from groundwater. The Environmental Protection Agency lists TCA as a contaminant of concern at 696 of its 1,430 priority cleanup sites.

immobile not moving

ion an electrically charged atom or group of atoms

Containment Situations exist in which technologies are not available or practical to remove or convert contaminants. In those situations, it is often possible to contain the contamination as a ﬁnal solution or as an interim measure until appropriate technologies become available.

Soils. Radionuclides from historical weapons production and nuclear testing, as well as from industrial uses of radiation, appear to be a good match for developing containment technologies. For example, containment is a promising technology for the management of radioactively contaminated soils beneath the large high-level radioactive waste storage tanks at the U.S. Department of Energy Hanford site in Washington State. Removing radioactive contamination from soil is problematic from a worker-safety standpoint, and it may create further contamination of equipment, containers, and surrounding areas. Efforts to develop effective physical containment technologies for soil contaminants are continuous. Groundwater. Groundwater is not generally suitable for absolute containment; however, between containment and conversion is a technology known as reactive barriers. Reactive barriers intercept contaminated groundwater plumes and are constructed of chemically reactive materials (e.g., iron) that bind or convert dissolved contaminants. Reactions between the contaminant and the iron either immobilize or degrade the contaminant by altering its chemical form (redox manipulation).

Passive Cleanup

plume a visible or measurable discharge of a contaminant from a given point of origin; can be visible, invisible, or thermal in water, or visible in the air as, for example, a plume of smoke

Passive remediation technologies are increasingly common in some applications, and take advantage of naturally occurring chemical or biological

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processes that degrade contaminants to less toxic forms. The accepted term for this group of technologies is monitored natural attenuation (MNA), which is the result of regulatory recognition that natural biological processes are capable of degrading certain contaminants under speciﬁc conditions and that dispersion may aid in achieving objectives. MNA is employed for the cleanup of organic contaminants such as petroleum hydrocarbons in situations where the longer time frame associated with MNA does not increase the risks posed by the contamination. MNA recognizes that, while these processes are possible, they must be monitored to insure that the expected progression actually occurs. In the State of Florida, MNA is being used as an approved cleanup action for some former dry cleaning sites. At these sites, natural processes are being monitored as they degrade chlorinated solvents from the former dry cleaning operations. MNA is one example of major innovation in this area. Environmental cleanup is a dynamic ﬁeld. Advances in science and engineering fuel innovative approaches and technologies, and advanced technologies provide greater capabilities in meeting the ultimate goal of a safer and healthier environment. S E E A L S O Abatement; Bioremediation; Dredging; Economics; Incineration; Laws and Regulations, International; Laws and Regulation, United States; Love Canal; Nonaqueous Phase Liquid (NAPL) Superfund; Times Beach; Underground Storage Tank; Water Pollution. Bibliography Page, G.W. (1997). Contaminated Sites and Environmental Cleanup: International Approaches to Prevention, Remediation, and Reuse. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Tedder, D.W., and Pohland, F.G. (2000). Emerging Technologies in Hazardous Waste Management. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Testa, S.M., and Winegardner, D.L. (2000). Restoration of Contaminated Aquifers: Petroleum Hydrocarbons and Organic Compounds, 2nd edition. Boca Raton, FL: Lewis. U.S. Department of Energy. (1999). Groundwater and Soil Cleanup: Improving Management of Persistent Contaminants. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund Program Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov/superfund.

J. Michael Kuperberg, Christopher M. Teaf, and Heather V. Ritchie

Climate Change

See Global Warming

Coal Coal is a brown-to-black combustible rock that originated from peat deposits in large swamp environments, through their burial to great depths and over a few hundred thousand to tens of millions of years. During burial peat is converted ﬁrst into lignite, then subbituminous and bituminous coal, and, uncommonly, anthracite. Due to the loss of moisture during burial (peat has about 90 percent in its natural state, bituminous coal as little as 2 to 3 percent) and the chemical changes in the plant material that are induced by the rising temperature during burial to thousands of feet (increased carbon and decreased oxygen contents in particular), the heating value of coal increases signiﬁcantly from peat to lignite and on to bituminous coal and anthracite.

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The various environments that prevailed in the peat swamps (e.g., forests with large trees; marshes with sedges, grasses, and reeds) produced various kinds of peat and thus coal with signiﬁcantly different properties. The major coal types—banded, nonbanded, and impure coal—are easily recognizable. Banded coals are most common. In subbituminous and bituminous coal the bands are composed of vitrain (shiny, glassy, brittle), clarain (bright luster, tough), durain (dull luster, hard), and fusain (charcoal-like, soft). Under the microscope, the so-called macerals become visible. Many of these clearly reveal their plant origin (e.g., sporinite, cutinite, resinite, alginite), whereas others have lost much or all of the plants’ original cell structure (e.g., vitrinite, collinite, inertinite, semifusinite).

maceral organic remains visible in coal

Coal Mining and Pollution Coal is recovered from the ground either by underground or surface mining. Underground mining creates voids over many square miles. Two basically different methods are used: longwall and room-and-pillar mining. In longwall mining all coal is recovered from the mined panels; hence, subsidence occurs at the surface almost immediately and it is planned for. Room-and-pillar mining leaves about half of the coal in the ground as pillars to support the surface and prevent subsidence. However, subsidence may still occur because coal pillars or the ﬂoor strata under them fail, sometimes decades after mining (this sort of unplanned subsidence is a signiﬁcant problem in major coal-producing states of the past). Subsidence causes damage to structures and interferes with the drainage of surface water; it may also impact aquifers. Coal left in the ground may catch ﬁre, for example, through spontaneous combustion. Mine ﬁres are difﬁcult to control; some have burned for decades, even centuries. They can cause considerable local pollution, as well as other problems. Coal also always contains methane (CH4), most of which is released into the atmosphere during mining. On the average, the deeper a mine, the more methane it generates. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas and contributes to global warming. Another signiﬁcant environmental problem is related to underground mines that operated above the local drainage level. The mine workings collect and conduct water that oxidizes the ever-present pyrite (FeS2) in coal-bearing strata and causes acid mine drainage into the local drainage system. This is a common problem in the mountainous Appalachian coal ﬁelds where many old mines were operated at shallow depth above valley ﬂoors. For surface mining, large machines are used to remove all rocks and/or soil above the coal bed or beds to gain access to it or them (usually at depths of less than 150 to two hundred feet). Any surface drainage and aquifers in the overburden will be severely impacted within the vicinity of the mine pit. Also, the fertility of agricultural land becomes a concern. Modern mining laws require the careful monitoring of groundwater at mines and the restoration of proper drainage and fertility to farmland, to its premining levels, through reclamation. Contaminated water (e.g., water containing suspended ﬁne solids and/or dissolved minerals) may run off the open pit and must be treated before release into the local drainage system. Modern mining laws seek to remedy or minimize the above-mentioned environmental and other problems related to the mining and cleaning of coal, as well as many other related concerns. See the table for a listing of the top producers of coal by state.

subsidence sinking of earth surface due to underground collapse

mine workings the parts of a quarry or mine that is being excavated

overburden rock and soil cleared away before mining

reclamation in recycling: restoration of materials found in the waste stream to a beneficial use which may be for purposes other than the original use

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LEADIN G C O AL PROD U C IN G ST AT ES O F THE U N IT E D ST AT E S

Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

SOURCE:

State Wyoming West Virginia Kentucky Pennsylvania Texas Montana Indiana Illinois Colorado Virginia North Dakota New Mexico Utah Ohio Alabama Arizona Other states U.S.A.

2001 Production 365.6 160.4 132.6 76.4 45.0 39.1 37.1 33.8 33.4 32.5 30.5 29.6 27.0 25.3 19.2 13.4 20.4 1,121.3

Adapted from U.S. Department of Energy.

coke carbon fuel, typically derived from bituminous coal, used in blast furnaces for the conversion of iron ore into iron

scrubber an air pollution device that uses a spray of water or reactant or a dry process to trap pollutants in emissions

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Coal Cleaning and Pollution Many mined coals, especially from eastern and Midwestern coal ﬁelds, contain signiﬁcant mineral matter in their raw mined state—up to about half by weight—and they are cleaned before sale. Preparation plants, capable of cleaning or processing several million tons of coal a year, generate large quantities of refuse that must be disposed of locally, safely, and in an environmentally sound manner. The materials rejected by a cleaning plant tend to be enriched in iron sulﬁdes (FeS2: pyrite and marcasite) in particular; these oxidize easily into sulfates, causing the acidiﬁcation of any water that percolates through and exits from refuse piles; acid water in turn tends to dissolve various other minerals, creating products that are potentially harmful to plants, animals, and humans. Cleaning plants always reject some coal, together with the incombustible material; spontaneous combustion can cause refuse piles to catch ﬁre, which emit pollutants and are difﬁcult to control.

Coal Utilization and Pollution Coal, due to its origin from plants, is composed primarily of the “organic” elements carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), nitrogen (N), and sulfur (S). Whenever coal is used, it eventually ends up being burned, either through direct combustion in boilers, for example, those in large electric utility power plants, or after conversion into intermediate products like coke. Of all the oxidation products of these elements, carbon dioxide (CO2) has become a major concern because it is a powerful greenhouse gas that accumulates in the atmosphere and is considered the primary cause of global warming. Sulfur and nitrogen oxides (SO2, NOx ), when released into the atmosphere from power plants, become a human health hazard and lead to the formation of acid rain downwind. This has been an important social and political issue for several decades, and various laws have been enacted that force power companies to limit the emission of sulfur and nitrogen oxides. All “new” (since 1970) electric power plants must remove most of the SO2 from their ﬂue gas, using various types of scrubbers. A cost-effective way to control SO2 total emissions has been emissions trading, the federal government’s decision to award a limited number of SO2 “pollution allowances” to utilities that they are permitted to trade; this allows industry to decide at which plants it is most cost-effective to add scrubbers. The 1970 Clean Air Act (CAA) exempted existing power plants from this requirement, assuming that they would be shut down in the near future. To close this loophole, the 1977 CAA amendments established the “new source review” process (NSR), which requires a careful review of any changes performed in “old” (pre-1970) plants to determine whether they represent “routine maintenance, repair, and replacement” or a signiﬁcant upgrading in which the plant would become subject to the same rules as new plants. Over the years these reviews became highly controversial because of the gray area between “routine maintenance” and “signiﬁcant upgrading.” In response, after a multiyear review process, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed revisions of the regulations in late 2002, intending to overcome these widely recognized problems, provide greater ﬂexibility for power companies to improve old plants, lead to increases in energy efﬁciency, and decrease pollution. However, environmental and political groups have challenged the proposed new regulations. One proposal to resolve the controversy would be to abolish the NSR

Colborn, Theo

process entirely and expand the pollution allowances trading system to old power plants. By capping the number of allowances over time, total pollution could be further lowered. Besides these major elements, coal always contains a large number of other elements in minor and trace amounts. Some of these are highly toxic, for instance, mercury (Hg), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), selenium (Se), and uranium (U). Because coal is burned in such large quantities, primarily to generate electricity (nearly a billion tons in the United States alone!), even trace amounts add up to large quantities being released into the atmosphere. The 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act identify 189 hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), eighteen of which are associated with coal. Of particular concern are those elements that form volatile compounds during coal burning and are carried into the atmosphere with the ﬂue gas. The 1990 amendments require the EPA to study the health effects of HAPs and develop appropriate regulations for their control. Even cleaned coal still contains incombustible minerals (about 5 to 15 percent by weight) that are converted into ash when coal is burned at very high temperatures. Some ash particles are small and light enough to be carried up tall chimneys into the atmosphere with the ﬂue gas (ﬂy ash). Most power plants are required to remove ﬂy ash from ﬂue gas, using bag houses or electric precipitators. Both methods are highly efﬁcient. However, tiny particles (PM-10) may still escape. Because of their potential harm to humans, they have been targeted for regulation in recent years. Coarsergrained ash remains at the bottom of boilers (bottom ash); it is removed and disposed of nearby. Fortunately, this material is rather inert and of limited environmental concern. S E E A L S O Acid Rain; Air Pollution; Carbon Dioxide; Electric Power; Emissions Trading; Fossil Fuels; Global Warming; Greenhouse Gases; Methane; NOx (Nitrogen Oxides); Particulates; Scrubbers.

PM-10 airborne particles under 10 micrometers in diameter

Bibliography ASTM. “Standard Classiﬁcation of Coals by Rank,” Standard D388. In Annual Book of ASTM Standards, Vol. 05.05. New York. ASTM. “Standard Terminology Relating to Megascopic Description of Coal and Coal Seams and Microscopic Description and Analysis of Coal,” Standard D2796. In Annual Book of ASTM Standards, Vol. 05.05. New York. Internet Resources U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Clean Air Act of 1970” and “1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act.” Available from http://www.epa.gov. U.S. Ofﬁce of Surface Mining. Public Law 95-87, “The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA).” Available from http://www.osmre.gov/ smcra.htm.

Heinz H. Damberger

Colborn, Theo AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALIST, COAUTHOR OF OUR STOLEN FUTURE (1927–)

Dr. Theo Colborn focused international attention on the dangers of endocrine disrupters, chemicals that alter or block endocrine functions.

endocrine the system of glands, hormones, and receptors that help control animal function

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Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs)

With Dianne Dumanoski and John P. Myers, she authored Our Stolen Future, published in 1996. This seminal work synthesizes scientiﬁc evidence, gleaned from Colborn’s seven years of research review, on the dangers of hormonedisrupting chemicals. Small amounts of these chemicals are especially dangerous for fetuses and infants because hormones control all aspects of development such as organ and physiological system development, sexuality and reproductivity, learning and behavior. Our Stolen Future led to congressional legislation aimed at protecting children from such exposure. It also motivated much scientiﬁc research on potential hormone-disrupting chemicals, such as phthalates, bisphenol-A, and numerous ﬁre retardants. Colborn was born in Plainﬁeld, New Jersey in March 1927. She raised four children while working as a pharmacist but became increasingly interested in environmental issues. At age 51, she enrolled as a graduate student in ecology, studying stone ﬂies and mayﬂies as indicators of stream health. She received a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1985. Her ﬁrst job, as a congressional fellow at the Ofﬁce of Technology Assessment in Washington, involved working on studies related to air pollution and water puriﬁcation. She joined the Conservation Foundation, a nonproﬁt think tank in 1987. Her job there, scientiﬁcally assessing the health of the Great Lakes, resulted in Our Stolen Future. Colborn is a senior scientist with the World Wildlife Fund and travels widely, speaking about the dangers of prenatal exposure to chemicals that interfere with hormonal systems. S E E A L S O Endocrine Disruption. Bibliography Dumanoski, Dianne; Myers, John P.; and Colborn, Theo P. (1997). Our Stolen Future. New York: Penguin.

Patricia Hemminger

Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs)

See Wastewater

Treatment

Commoner, Barry AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALIST, WRITER, AND PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY (1917–)

Barry Commoner’s 1971 book The Closing Circle: Man, Nature and Technology attempted to explain the causes of and solutions for environmental degradation in modern society. The “closing circle” was his metaphor for the connection between humans and the natural ecosystem. Commoner argued that there were three possible causes of environmental degradation: human population growth, increasing afﬂuence, and modern technology. He concluded that modern technology was the principal cause of society’s environmental problems. This opinion put him at odds with Paul Ehrlich, who had argued in his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, that human overpopulation was the principal cause of environmental problems. The Closing Circle never offered a deﬁnitive solution to the problems it presented, however. A memorable idea in the book is its four laws of ecology:

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Barry Commoner speaks to protesters outside a hotel in New Jersey where Exxon stockholders met in 1989. (Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission.)

(1) everything is connected to everything else; (2) everything must go somewhere; (3) nature knows best; and (4) there is no such thing as a free lunch. Commoner has generally favored leftist political causes and, in 1980, he ran for U.S. president on the Citizen’s Party ticket. He has been the recipient of eleven honorary university degrees and has served on the boards of numerous environmental and antiwar organizations. On May 30, 1997, a symposium titled “Barry Commoner’s Contribution to the Environmental Movement” was held in honor of his eightieth birthday. S E E A L S O Ehrlich, Paul. Internet Resource Hall, Alan. (1997). “Barry Commoner: A Leading Environmentalist Reviews His Long, Contentious Past and Sets New Directions for the Future.” Scientiﬁc American. Available from http://www.sciam.com/interview.

Joseph E. de Steiguer

Composting Decomposed biosolids (e.g., leaves, crop residue, animal waste) have long been used to recycle plant nutrients and enhance soil fertility. It is one of the

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humus rich soil component derived from plant breakdown and bacterial action

most ancient of agricultural innovations, as is evidenced by an ancient Telgu proverb “Leaf manure produces luxuriant growth” (Donahue et al., p. 154). Despite its long history, the scientiﬁc principles and systematic explanation of the techniques involved were not described until 1935 when Sir Albert Howard, working in Indore, Madya Pradesh, India, described the so-called Indore method of composting in which plant and animal waste is converted into humus. The process was developed between 1924 and 1931 for two reasons: to eradicate parasites from biosolids and maintain soil fertility. It was realized that “improved varieties by themselves could be relied upon to give an increased yield in the neighborhood of 10 percent, improved varieties plus better soil conditions were found to produce an increment up to 100 percent, or even more” (Howard, p. 39). The process involves creating an admixture of animal and plant wastes with a base for neutralizing acidity, and managing the admixture so that microbial processes are most effective at humifying the biosolids. The fermenting processes are allowed to occur in a shallow pit to avoid loss of water. The pit is surrounded by a cutoff drain to prevent run on and by a thatch of roof to keep rains out and reduce the risk of inundation. Thus, composting is the biological reduction of biosolids into a soil-like, nutrient-rich material. The composted product is safe and easy to handle, and does not induce nitrogen deﬁciency in recipient plants by nitrogen stabilization in the compost. It suppresses disease infestation by partial sterilization and detoxiﬁes pollutants. Principal types of organic wastes used in composting are animal manure, yard waste, municipal solid waste, paper mill sludge, municipal sewage, and fermentation waste. An important precaution when creating a usable end product is to exclude those materials that contain weed seed or cuttings which may sprout and become weed, or infested material that may spread pathogens to recipient crops. These organic materials are decomposed into humus outside of the soil by a process called humiﬁcation that normally occurs within the soil. The application of biosolids directly to soil may have adverse impacts on soil quality and plant growth. With decomposition of biosolids and their humiﬁcation the compost pit minimizes the adverse impacts. Techniques have also been developed for making satisfactory compost from sewage sludge. Of concern here is the risk that heavy metals in municipal sludge will contaminate cropland. Composting is a hygienic way of recycling nutrients in the organic byproducts of agriculture, urban, and industrial activities. It represents safe storage and easy handling, and is an economic source of plant nutrients. It is an important strategy for handling a signiﬁcant volume of by-products. The quantity of biosolids available for composting in the United States is large (see table). Properly used, it is a major resource for enhancing soil quality and improving environments. Compost material is principally used for the reclamation of drastically disturbed (e.g., mined) soil and other degraded ecosystems, and for landscaping and agriculture. Rather than cause environmental pollution, properly composted organic material can be a major asset in the enhancement of soil fertility, restoration of degraded soils, and sequestration of carbon. Carbon sequestration implies removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere either biotically through photosynthesis as plant products or abiotically by capturing from industrial sources. Subsequent storage of the carbon thus captured into long-lived pools such as soil, forestry products, geological strata, or ocean.

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C O MP OS TI N G PR O C E S S M A TE R I A LS FLOW DI A GRA M

Organic Amendment (sawdust, straw, stover)

Mixing Wet Organic Substrate (Manure, garbage, sludge)

Mixture

Composting Process

Compost (organic residue, humus)

Recycled Compost

Process of Composting The humiﬁcation of organic material under most conditions occurs in three stages: 1. Mesophilic stage. This is the initial stage of decomposition, lasting for about a week, during which sugars and other simple carbohydrates are rapidly metabolized. This is an exothermic process and may cause an increase in temperature by 40°C. 2. Thermophilic stage. This is the second stage, lasting for about two weeks, during which the temperature may rise to about 50 to 75°C. Such a drastic increase in temperature is accompanied by the decomposition of cellulose and other resistant materials. It is important that the material be thoroughly mixed and kept aerated during this stage. 3. Curing stage. The temperature decreases during this ﬁnal stage and the material being composted is recolonized by mesophillic organisms, which often produce plant-growth stimulating compounds. Mesophillic organisms are usually fungal-dominated and useful to restore bacteria dominated soils.

exothermic releasing heat

aerate process of injecting air into water

At the completion of this process, the plant or other organic parts (leaves, roots, etc.) are no longer identiﬁable in the compost. The humiﬁcation of organic material is characterized by an increase in concentration of humic acids from approximately 4 to 12 percent, and a decrease in the C/N ratio from thirty in the original material to about ten in the ﬁnal product.

Composting Techniques Traditionally, composting has been an important technique for maintaining soil fertility. In developed economies, composting is a commercial enterprise, manufacturing soil products for horticultural and ornamental plants, and organic farming. On a small scale, composting is done in a bin at least 1 m2 at the base and no more than 120 cm (4 feet) high. A 5-cm mesh of woven wire is placed at the base of the bin as a retaining barrier and to facilitate drainage. The bin has an overﬂow gate at about 90 cm from the base.

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E S T I M A TE S OF P OTENTI A LLY COMP OS TA BLE ORGA NI C M A TE R IA LS I N THE UNI TE D S TA TES

Amount generated (Mt/yr)

Source I. Agriculture and forestry (i) Farm manure, crop residues, animal carcasses (ii) Logging and wood manufacture (bark, chips, sawdust, scraps) II. Municipal waste (i) Paper, cloth, yard refuse, leaves, garbage, landscape, refuse, wood (ii) Municipal sewage sludge (biosolids) (iii) Domestic septic tank sludge III. Industrial by-products (i) Petroleum, paper, food processing wastes, textile, pharmaceutical (ii) Hydrocarbon-contaminated soil, pesticide waste

590 55

125 9 3

45 50

Total SOURCE:

877 Adapted from Barker, 1997.

Composting material is packed in the bin in approximately 15-cm layers, alternated by 15-cm layers of soil. It is important to ﬂatten the top and create a small depression for water penetration. Small-scale backyard composting is an effective way to recycle food and yard waste. Precautionary measures that should be taken include the following: • provide good aeration throughout the pile; • avoid excessive packing; • avoid weed seeds, rhizomatous, and disease-infested materials; • do not use by-products containing heavy metals and other contaminants; • build pile large enough to generate sufﬁcient heat; • keep the pile moist at 50 to 70 percent moisture content; • provide a coarse mesh screen at the base of the bin; and • mix bulking agents such as wood chips and residue. The compost is usually ready within three to four months. culture; Biosolids; Recycling.

SEE ALSO

Agri-

Bibliography Barker, A.V. (1997). “Composition and Uses of Compost.” In Agricultural Uses of ByProducts and Wastes, edited by J.E. Recheigl and H.C. MacKinnon. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society. Brady, N.C., and Weil, R.R. (2002). The Nature and Properties of Soils, 13th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Donahue, R.L.; Follett, R.H.; and Tulloch, R.W. (1990). Our Soils and Their Management. Danville, IL: Interstate Publishers. Howard, A. (1935). “The Manufacture of Humus by the Indore Process.” Journal of Royal Society on the Arts 84:25. Howard, A. (1940). An Agricultural Testament. London: Oxford University Press. Rechaigl, J.E., and MacKinnon, H.C., eds. (1997). Agricultural Uses of By-Products and Wastes. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society.

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Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)

Rynk, R., and Richard, T.L. (2001). “Commercial Compost Production Systems.” In Compost Utilization in Horticultural Cropping Systems, edited by P.J. Stofella and B.A. Kahn. Boca Raton, FL: Lewis Publishers. Sopper, W.E. (1993). Municipal Sludge in Land Reclamation. Boca Raton, FL: Lewis Publishers. Internet Resources U.S. Composting Council Web site. Available from http://www.compostingcouncil .org.

Rattan Lal

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) was established in 1980 by Congress. CERCLA’s objective was to provide a regulatory mechanism in response to threats to human health or the environment from abandoned hazardous waste sites. Passage of CERCLA was heavily inﬂuenced by events at Love Canal, New York, where toxic chemicals oozing from an abandoned hazardous waste dump forced the abandonment of homes and a public school. Under CERCLA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was given funds and the authority to clean up such sites when a responsible party could not be identiﬁed. The funds were derived from taxes on industry, particularly the oil and chemical industries, and became known as Superfund. CERCLA’s major provisions establish (1) liability for hazardous waste cleanup by the generator of the waste; (2) a system for EPA to rank hazardous waste sites; (3) a national priorities list for the sites eligible for cleanup through Superfund; (4) and a national contingency plan that details the procedures to be followed to assess contamination at a site, the degree of hazard to public health or the environment, pathways for pollutant movement, alternatives to clean up a site, and the record of decision by EPA detailing how the site is to be remediated. In 1986, the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) amended CERCLA. SARA provided an additional $8.5 billion for cleanup of hazardous waste sites and emphasized the need for faster cleanups and permanent remediation practices. Also, under SARA, EPA was given authority to enforce hazardous waste regulations at many government facilities operated by the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. In 1986, residents of Woburn, Massachusetts, relied on CERCLA’s provisions to bring a lawsuit against potentially responsible parties for the contamination of drinking water wells located in the city of Woburn. The lawsuit claimed that three industries were responsible for contaminating the city’s wells and were therefore liable for cleanup of the drinking water and for damages to residents. The suit claimed that an abnormally high incidence of leukemia in Woburn was the result of consumption of contaminated drinking water from the city’s wells. One company was found not guilty while another settled for $8 million with no admission of wrongdoing. This case was depicted in A Civil Action, later made into a Hollywood ﬁlm.

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Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)

Hazardous waste legislation exists in most countries in the industrialized world; however, differences exist regarding the relative authority and oversight of central and local governments and liability of the waste generator after disposal of the waste. S E E A L S O Brownfield; Cleanup; Hazardous Waste; Laws and Regulations, United States; Superfund. Bibliography LaGrega, Michael D.; Buckingham, Phillip L.; and Evans, Jeffrey C. (2001). Hazardous Waste Management, 2nd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. Watts, Richard J. (1997). Hazardous Wastes: Sources, Pathways, Receptors. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Superfund homepage. Available from http:// www.epa.gov/superfund.

Thomas D. DiStefano

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) See Agriculture

Conferences

See Treaties and Conferences

Consensus Building

mediation dispute resolution in which a neutral third party helps negotiate a settlement

adjudicative involving the court system

Consensus building addresses conﬂict by helping disputants themselves decide the process and the outcome. It involves a number of collaborative decision-making techniques and an impartial facilitator or mediator is often used to assist diverse or competing interest groups to reach agreement on policy matters, environmental conﬂicts, or other issues in controversy affecting a large number of people. The processes include negotiation, facilitation, mediation, and regulatory negotiation (including public policy negotiation). Consensus building processes are typically used to foster dialogue, clarify areas of agreement and disagreement, improve the information on which a decision may be based, and resolve controversial issues in ways that all interests ﬁnd acceptable. The goal is to produce sound policies or agreements with a wide range of support while reducing the likelihood of subsequent disagreements or legal challenges. Disputes over the interpretation or application of rules may be resolved through consensual or adjudicative means, and in some cases through coercion or force by legislation. Adjudicative dispute resolution means that a third party makes a binding decision for the parties. Adjudicative approaches include arbitration and court adjudication. Legislative approaches to dispute resolution focus on rule-making by a group, organization, formal legislative body, or ruler. S E E A L S O Arbitration; Enforcement; Government; Legislative Process; Litigation; Mediation; Public Policy Decision Making; Regulatory Negotiation. Internet Resource U.S. Institute for Environmental Conﬂict Resolution Web site. Available from http://www.ecr.gov.

Susan L. Senecah

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Consumer Pollution Consumer pollution refers, in part, to traces of numerous consumer products, including pain relievers, prescription drugs, antibiotics, insect repellent, sunscreens, and fragrances—collectively called pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs)—discovered in inland and ocean waters. Between 1999 and 2000 the United States Geological Survey (USGS) established the widespread occurrence in the environment of minute but measurable quantities of PPCPs, along with other organic wastewater contaminants, such as detergent metabolites, plasticizers, and ﬁre retardants. These contaminants were discovered in 80 percent of 139 waterways downstream from sewage treatment plants and livestock operations. Before 1999 most research into PPCPs took place in Europe, and pharmaceuticals were detected there in sewage treatment efﬂuent, surface water, groundwater, drinking water, and the North Sea.

metabolite any substance produced by biological processes, such as those from pesticides

How PPCPs Enter the Environment Thousands of PPCPs are consumed worldwide, some on a par with agrochemicals, at rates of thousands of tons a year. These substances enter the environment largely from sewage treatment plants, as well as directly from ﬁsh farms, storm runoff, recreational activities, and leaking landﬁlls. Incompletely metabolized drugs or their metabolites—chemicals formed from the body’s interaction with the drug—are excreted in the urine and feces of humans and animals. Cosmetics and perfumes are washed off in the shower. Unused drugs are ﬂushed down the toilet or thrown out in the trash. Antibiotics, steroids, and other drugs that are used to treat animals, such as those in conﬁned animal feeding operations, are eventually washed into sewer drains or directly into local waters from roads and farms. Sewage is treated to break down human waste, but the wide occurrence of eighty-two out of the ninety-ﬁve substances tested for in the USGS survey indicates that many synthetic chemicals are not completely removed by sewage treatment methods. PPCPs in wastewater efﬂuent end up in rivers, lakes, and oceans, and contaminants in manure or sewage sludge are spread on land.

Potential Health and Environmental Effects The concentrations of PPCPs found in the USGS survey range from parts per trillion (ppt) to parts per billion (ppb), or nanograms per liter to micrograms per liter. For pharmaceuticals this is many orders of magnitude below the concentrations prescribed as medication. However, some PPCPs, such as musk fragrances, are fat soluble and so can bioaccumulate in animal tissue. In addition, many water-soluble PPCPs are effectively persistent if they are continually replenished from sewage efﬂuent. Fish and other aquatic species could therefore be permanently exposed to these chemicals. Although research on the environmental effect of PPCPs is sparse, some studies link low concentrations of oral contraceptives, along with reproductive estrogens, to the feminization of male ﬁsh. When exposed to the estrogens, male ﬁsh produce vitellogenin, an egg protein, usually found only in the females. Other studies show that ﬂuoxetine, marketed as Prozac, affects reproductive hormonal activity in zebra mussels, crayﬁsh, and ﬁddler crabs. Some scientists think that aquatic species could be harmed

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FREQUENCY OF DETECTION OF PPCPS IN STREAMS Percentage of streams in which contaminant was found

Category of contaminant

89% 81%

Steroids Nonprescription drugs

74% 66% 48%

Insect repellent Disinfectants Antibiotics

37%

Reproductive hormones

32%

Other prescription drugs

27%

Fragrances

Representative substances found (median concentration, in ppb) Cholesterol (0.83), coprostanol (fecal steroid) (0.88) Acetaminophen (0.11), caffeine (0.081), ibuprofen (0.2), cotinine (nicotine metabolite) (0.05) DEET (0.06) Phenol (0.04), triclosan (0.14) Erythromycin metabolite (0.1), ciproflaxin (0.02), sulfamethoxazole (0.15) 17-alpha-ethynyl estradiol (0.073) (birth control), estrone (0.027) Codeine (0.012), dehydronifedipine (antianginal) (0.012), diltiazem (0.021) (antihypertensive), fluoxetine (0.012) (antidepressant) Acetophenone (0.15)

SOURCE:

Frequency of Detection of PPCPs in Streams. (2002). “Pharmaceuticals, Hormones and Other Organic Wastewater Contaminants in U.S. Streams. 1999–2000: A National Reconnaissance.” Environmental Science and Technology 36, no. 6:202–1211

efflux pump inhibitor a drug that prevents a cell from expelling another drug; used with antibiotics to increase their effectiveness

more by pollutants if they are exposed to efflux pump inhibitors (EPIs). EPIs decrease the cell’s ability to expel potentially harmful substances and are prescribed to help drugs pass through cell walls. Another concern is that ﬁsh and other species constantly exposed to mixtures of low levels of PPCPs will be affected in small, undetectable ways that lead to irreversible changes over time. Such small shifts in behavior, immunology, and reproduction may be attributed to natural adaptation and may not be recognized as a consequence of pollution. Seventy-ﬁve percent of streams in the USGS survey contained more than one contaminant, and 13 percent contained more than twenty. The presence of antibiotics in 48 percent of the streams and potentially in soil that is overlaid with sewage sludge could be a factor in the increase in antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. There is also a potential threat to human health. Recharging groundwater from surface water constantly infused with treated sewage efﬂuent could result in PPCP contamination in drinking water. Some pharmaceuticals, including cloﬁbric acid, have been detected in parts per trillion in drinking water in Germany. Cloﬁbric acid is a metabolite of drugs taken by many people to reduce cholesterol levels in the blood. The long-term effect of swallowing very low, subtherapeutic amounts of multiple medications simultaneously many times a day for a lifetime is unknown.

Current and Proposed Research Scientists in Germany are researching treatment methods to remove PPCPs from wastewater before it enters rivers and oceans, and from potable water. Results to date show that ozone treatment and/or ﬁltering water through granular activated carbon effectively removes the pharmaceuticals commonly found in drinking water in Berlin. Research in the United States in 2002 is aimed at establishing where and in what concentration organic wastewater contaminants, including PPCPs,

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are found. PPCPs are not currently part of any water-monitoring program in the United States. The USGS is conducting a survey of these contaminants in groundwater and in sources of drinking water. Other research is focused on the presence of pharmaceuticals, including anticancer drugs and anticonvulsants in wastewater and drinking water. Some scientists are proposing research to ﬁnd out which PPCPs are harmful, especially to aquatic species, and how these chemicals work at the molecular level. Scientists also want to study whether exposure to a combination of different pharmaceuticals at low concentrations, especially those that work in the same way, poses a risk to humans or wildlife. Research is needed to develop analytical methods sensitive enough to detect traces of all the different pharmaceuticals and active ingredients in personal care products and to develop new ways for measuring subtle rather than acute toxic environmental changes.

Prevention and Recycling / Reuse Source reduction, recycling, and replacement with “green” pharmaceuticals could help reduce excess or unused, expired medications. Disposal advice on packaging could recommend that drugs be recycled or disposed of in a controlled manner. Reducing the number of pills per container could reduce the amount of expired medication. Drug manufacturers could also ﬁnd ways to minimize excess expired inventory.

Regulations In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration requires an environmental assessment for new drugs when manufacturers predict that one ppb or more will enter the environment. The drug is then tested for acute toxicity, such as whether it causes cancer. Although most individual contaminants measured in the USGS study had concentrations below one ppb, the maximum total concentration of the thirty-three suspected or known hormonally active compounds was ﬁfty-seven ppb. Some scientists argue that individual concentrations may not be signiﬁcant for predicting risk, but concentrations of all drugs that behave in the same way should be considered. Health Canada is at the beginning of a regulatory process that will require environmental assessment of products regulated under Canada’s Food and Drug Act. In Europe, since 1998, pharmaceuticals used in veterinary medicine must be tested for their environmental effect before they can be registered, unless the concentration predicted to enter groundwater is less than 0.1 ppb or less than ten ppb for drugs in soil. Similar standards are being considered for regulating pharmaceuticals taken by humans. Testing includes checking for inhibited algal growth, for acute, chronic, or bioaccumulation exposure in ﬁsh, for reproductive changes in birds, for earthworm toxicity, and for plant growth. S E E A L S O Endocrine Disruption; Health, Human; Non-Point Source Pollution; Sewage Studies; Toxicology; U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); Wastewater Treatment; Water Pollution; Water Treatment. Bibliography Daughton, Christian G., and Jones-Lepp, Tammy L., eds. (2001). Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products in the Environment: Scientiﬁc and Regulatory Issues. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society.

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Coral Bleaching

Internet Resources Environmental Protection Agency. “Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) as Environmental Pollutants: Pollution from Personal Actions, Activities, and Behaviors.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/nerlesd1/chemistry/pharma/ index.htm. United States Geological Survey. Toxic Substances Hydrology Program. Available from http://toxics.usgs.gov.

Patricia Hemminger

Coral Bleaching

See Water Pollution: Marine

Cost-benefit Analysis Cost-beneﬁt analysis (C-BA) is a form of economic analysis in which costs and beneﬁts are quantiﬁed and compared. C-BA is used primarily to evaluate public expenditure decisions with regard to such factors as esthetics, ethics, and long-term environmental costs (e.g., pollution costs).

Origins in the 1930s C-BA had its origins in 1936 with the dam projects of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the western United States. At the time the federal government’s policy was that projects would only be started if accrued beneﬁts exceeded accrued costs. Although such a statement would be judged quite simplistic by today’s standards, this philosophy is still the basis for C-BA.

Costs vs. benefits. The power of C-BA lies in its ability to organize and evaluate an action’s likely effects and overall impact on economic welfare. CB-A states that if a project is to proceed on a successful basis, then total beneﬁts should outweigh total costs. Consider, for instance, the following hypothetical scenario. The construction of an industrial complex next to an existing residential community will provide a needed boost to the community, which has a high unemployment rate. However, the new businesses will also cause substantial localized air and water pollution. CB-A will sum up all the beneﬁts and costs in order to determine whether the new arrangement will be positive or negative for local residents and businesses.

Evolution into a Sophisticated Technique C-BA has evolved into a highly technical subject, which normally requires that all costs and beneﬁts (whether tangible or intangible) be expressed in monetary units. Tangible means that costs and beneﬁts are capable of being understood and evaluated. An example of a tangible cost is the price of land for locating a new company. Intangible means just the opposite, that the economic costs and beneﬁts are difﬁcult to deﬁne clearly. The measurement of intangibles causes the most difﬁculty for C-BA. Pollution is one such intangible that is exceptionally difﬁcult to measure because of its unique problems. For example, it is not easy to determine the value of clean air vs. degraded air quality due to pollution from a proposed manufacturing complex. A number of sophisticated techniques have been developed to successfully measure such intangibles as pollution. In the earlier hypothetical case, one such technique estimates how much an individual is willing to pay to use

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or retain clean air. Another technique is a subsidy offered to individuals to live with polluted instead of clean air. A third technique involves the measure of today’s intrinsic value of clean air vs. the future costs of remedying the consequences of polluted air (such as respiratory problems and environmental cleanup).

Oklawaha River Canal A good example of C-BA with respect to pollution was a 1962 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposal for a 177-kilometer (110-mile) canal to be dug across central Florida. The canal would have provided a shortcut for barge trafﬁc from Texas and Louisiana to the Atlantic Coast by, in part, expanding 80 kilometers (50 miles) of the pristine Oklawaha River. Numerous citizen and environmental groups opposed the canal, citing the pollution and general environmental degradation it could potentially cause.

To the Rescue. A C-BA was undertaken with respect to various interest groups that would be affected, such as shippers using the canal and ﬁshers using the river. The analysis determined that few beneﬁts would be realized, and that the proposed project would be detrimental to most interest groups. Because of the evidence provided by the C-BA, the project was halted in 1971 by a citizen’s group lawsuit and a presidential executive order. Although C-BA has many strengths as a tool, it also has numerous weaknesses such as the inability to conclude anything without the use of ﬁnancial costs and beneﬁts and the inherent problem of introducing uncertainty of data when using intangible items unable to be analyzed even with sophisticated techniques. Even so, it is still a valuable tool for governments to consider in making decisions about the most effective use of their resources. C-BA can gather all the essential data related to an issue and establish reasonable economic, demographic, and technical assumptions that will serve as the ground-rules for the ensuing debate. C-BA is thus an important ingredient in the decision-making process concerning proposed projects that impact the environment and, especially, pollution. Bibliography Dorfman, Robert, and Dorfman, Nancy S., eds. (1993). Economics of the Environment: Selected Readings, 3rd edition. New York: W.W. Norton. Florida Defenders of the Environment. (1970). Environmental Impact of the CrossFlorida Barge Canal with Special Emphasis on the Oklawaha Regional Ecosystem. Gainesville, FL. Internet Resources College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Arizona. “A Student’s Guide to Cost Beneﬁt Analysis for Natural Resources: Lesson 3—Cost-Beneﬁt Analysis in Theory and Application.” Available from http://ag.arizona.edu/classes. Florida Defenders of the Environment. “Oklawaha River Restoration: History of Restoration Efforts.” Available from http://www.ﬂadefenders.org/publications. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. “Chapter IV—Methods for Environmental Cost-beneﬁt Analysis for Agricultural Lending.” Available from http://www.fao.org/docrep. Kopp, Raymond J.; Krupnick, Alan J.; and Toman, Michael. Resources for the Future. “Cost-Beneﬁt Analysis and Regulatory Reform: An Assessment of the Science and the Art.” Discussion Paper 97-19. Available from http://www.rff.org/disc_papers. Margetts, Steve. “Cost Beneﬁt Analysis.” Available from http://www.revisionguru.co.uk/ economics.

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National Center for Environmental Decision-Making Research. “Cost-Beneﬁt Analysis and Environmental Decision Making: An Overview.” Available from http://www.ncedr.org/tools.

William Arthur Atkins

Cousteau, Jacques MARINE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION ADVOCATE (1910–1997)

Jacques Yves Cousteau was the twentieth century’s best-known advocate for marine environmental protection. He produced 115 documentary ﬁlms and television programs about adventures on his research ship, Calypso. He was also the coinventor of the aqualung or “scuba” tank. Cousteau achieved international fame with his role as narrator and star of the television series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. During his lifetime, he received numerous awards and honors. Among them were three Oscars and ten Emmy Awards for his ﬁlms and television programs and the U.N.’s International Environmental Prize in 1977.

Jacques Cousteau. (AP/Wide World Photos/The Cousteau Society. Reproduced by permission.)

Cousteau trained as a pilot at the French naval academy, but injuries from an auto accident in 1933 prevented him from pursuing an aviation career. Soon thereafter he developed an interest in the undersea world and became obsessed with developing snorkels, bodysuits, and other diving gear. In the early 1940s he worked with a Parisian engineer to invent a regulator for a compressed air tank, a self-contained apparatus that allowed free movement and breathing underwater. Scuba diving was thus born. Scuba was a great improvement over the heavy diving suits used at the time. Cousteau used scuba to help the French resistance during World War II and was awarded the Légion d’Honneur for his service. After the war, Cousteau developed scuba diving as part of a French naval research group. He also wanted to challenge age-old superstitions and open the undersea world to scientiﬁc exploration. Cousteau was initially known for his 1953 best-selling book The Silent World. A ﬁlm by the same title won a 1957 Academy Award for best documentary. Cousteau became director of the Oceanographic Institute of Monaco and, in that position, led a successful campaign to stop nuclear waste dumping in the Mediterranean. He also established experiments on deep undersea living near the continental shelf called Conshelf I, II, and III. Much of his environmental work was conducted by an organization he founded in 1973, the Cousteau Society. S E E A L S O Ocean Dumping. Bibliography DuTemple, Lesley A. (2000). Jacques Cousteau. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publishing Group. King, Roger. (2000). Jacques Cousteau and the Undersea World. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers. Internet Resource Cousteau Society. “Cousteau People: Jacques Cousteau, Founder.” Available from http://www.cousteausociety.org/tcs_people.html.

William Kovarik

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Cryptosporidiosis Cryptosporidiosis (also referred to as Crypto) is a gastrointestinal illness that results from exposure to the organism Cryptosporidium parvum (C. parvum). Cryptosporidiosis rose to public attention in the United States in 1993 when more than 100 people died and more than 400,000 people were sickened by Crypto in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Cryptosporidiosis is primarily a waterborne illness. People get infected from drinking inadequately treated drinking water, or from swallowing or drinking untreated water from a lake, stream, or swallowing water from a recreational swimming pool. People can become infected with Crypto through contact with the contaminated fecal matter of humans or animals carrying the organism, usually by swallowing food or liquid that has had contact with the contaminated fecal matter. Children at day care centers, day care workers, and health care workers interacting with infected individuals must be vigilant about sanitation to reduce the spread of the organism. Unwashed fruits and vegetables that have been in contact with Cryptoinfected soil have also exposed people to the organism. Cattle and calves contribute signiﬁcant amounts of Crypto to soils and adjacent water bodies; and wild animals such as elk, deer, bear, and beaver can also carry and spread the organism. Crypto’s symptoms in humans are not unique. They include upset stomach, diarrhea, cramps, weight loss, dehydration, and sometimes fever. Some people do not experience any symptoms. The effects of cryptosporidiosis can be fatal for immunocompromised individuals, including AIDS and cancer patients. Cryptosporidiosis can only be diagnosed by testing a person’s stool for the parasite. There is currently no treatment for the illness, which can last several days to a few weeks in healthy individuals.

fecal matter animal or human excrement

immunocompromised having a weakened immune system

The organism, C. parvum, is miniscule. It is 3 to 5 microns in size, while the diameter of a human hair is 50 to 200 microns. Giardia lamblia, another signiﬁcant waterborne parasite, is 5 to 7 microns in size. Drinking water regulations that went into effect in 1990 focused on the removal and inactivation of Giardia. The threat of Giardia is removed by common water treatment practices, including ﬁltration and disinfection with chlorine. These treatment practices are not as effective against Crypto, which is half the size of Giardia and resistant to disinfection with chlorine. Because drinking water containing Cryptosporidium is difﬁcult to treat, it is important to protect the source of the water against animal waste runoff and other sources of Crypto contamination. Water treatment regulations in effect in 2002 require water utilities to improve treatment plant performance and consistency against Cryptosporidium. The revised drinking water regulations only address exposure from public drinking water sources; they do not address recreational waterborne exposure, or other routes of exposure that tend to be more common. S E E A L S O Health, Human; Risk; Water Pollution; Water Treatment. Bibliography American Water Works Association. (1990). Water Quality and Treatment: A Handbook of Community Water Supplies, 4th edition. San Francisco: McGraw-Hill. American Water Works Association and the Society of Civil Engineers. (1998). Water Treatment Plant Design, 3rd edition. San Francisco: McGraw-Hill.

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Cryptosporidium cells, which cause cryptosporidiosis. The infection is probably via fecaloral transmissions from kittens and puppies. Those with suppressed immune systems are susceptible to diarrhea. (©Lester V. Bergman/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ofﬁce of Water. Available from http:// www.epa.gov/safewater.

Julie Hutchins Cairn

CSOs

See Wastewater Treatment

DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane) DDT, dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane, was synthesized in 1874, but its insecticidal properties were ﬁrst identiﬁed in 1939 by P.H. Mueller. He received the Nobel Prize for his discovery, which coincided with the outbreak of World War II, when DDT was used extensively to keep soldiers free of head and body lice. DDT also proved very effective against mosquitoes, which transmit a serious global human disease, malaria, as well as yellow fever. After the war, DDT was developed extensively as an agricultural pesticide.

D

DDT has an extremely low volatility and may be the least soluble chemical known, which makes it extremely persistent in soils and aquatic sediments. It has relatively low acute mammalian toxicity and is toxic to a wide range of insects. It kills insects by affecting the transmission of nerve impulses, probably by inﬂuencing the delicate balance of sodium and potassium within the neuron.

Cl Cl Cl

C CH

Cl Cl

DDT

Chemical structure of DDT.

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More than four billion pounds of DDT have been used throughout the world since 1940. Production in the United States peaked in 1961 when 160 million pounds were manufactured. Large economic beneﬁts have resulted from the control of many serious agricultural and forestry pests, including Colorado potato beetle, cotton boll weevil, and pests of fruit, vegetables, corn, and tobacco. In forestry, its greatest success occurred in combating

DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane)

spruce budworm and gypsy moth. However, its major impact lay in the control of mosquitoes that transmit malaria, as well as body lice and ﬂeas; many millions of lives have been saved through these uses. DDT’s potentially adverse environmental effects were brought to public attention by Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring (1963). Carson emphasized the great persistence of DDT in soils and river sediments and focused on the bioconcentration of DDT through the trophic levels of food chains. One result of the bioaccumulation of DDT was the thinning of the eggshells of predatory birds such as bald eagles, peregrine falcons, golden eagles, hawks, and pelicans, resulting in embryonic death and decreasing populations of these species. DDT bioconcentrates because it has low water solubility and high fat solubility, that is, a high lipid-to-water partition coefﬁcient (e.g., it can concentrate into fatty tissues from water). In the 1960s large DDT residues in human tissues and human milk began to be reported, probably from the consumption of food containing traces of DDT. DDT in body fat was reported to cause convulsions in laboratory rats; it also reached human fetuses by crossing the placenta. However, few serious effects on human health were ofﬁcially recorded.

A comparison of a normal Peregrine falcon eggshell and one thinned by exposure to the pesticide DDT. (©Galen Rowell/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Many pests began to develop resistance to DDT, necessitating the progressive use of more of the pesticide to control such pests. In 1972 the use of DDT in the United States was banned on environmental grounds, including the widespread contamination of the environment with DDT, its ability to bioconcentrate, and its effects on endangered bird species.

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Suitable alternatives to DDT were found in the United States and other industrialized countries that also banned its use in the 1970s. However, tropical developing countries that used inexpensive DDT extensively to control malaria and other pests faced a signiﬁcant dilemma. Moreover, although the United States no longer used DDT, it continued to manufacture and export very large quantities to developing countries and how much DDT is still used. It is difﬁcult to say with accuracy exactly which countries still use DDT. Some countries use it illegally, others only in small quantities. And information is often impossible to obtain because questionnaires from an organization like the World Health Organization (WHO) generally have only a 50 to 60 percent response rate. Nonetheless, it is known that poorer countries in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia, as well as the large nation of China, continue to utilize sizable quantities of DDT. S E E A L S O Bioaccumulation; Carson, Rachel; Federal Insecticide, Rodenticide and Fungicide Act; Integrated Pest Management; Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPS); Pesticides. Internet Resource “World Wildlife Federation DDT Report.” Available from http://www.worldwildlife .org/toxics.

Clive A. Edwards

Dense Nonaqueous Phase Liquid (DNAPL) See Nonaqueous Phase Liquids.

Detergents

See Water Pollution: Freshwater

Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane

See DDT

Diesel Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (1858–1913), a German thermal engineer, invented the diesel engine and patented it in 1893. Unlike their gasoline counterparts, which ignite an air/fuel mixture using spark plugs, diesel engines compress air to a very high pressure and then inject the fuel. The fuel then ignites due to the high temperature of the compressed air. Diesel engines are relatively fuel-efﬁcient engines commonly used in heavy construction equipment, ships, locomotives, commercial trucks, and some large pickups, as well as in the production of electricity at some power plants or in factories. Diesel-powered automobiles gained popularity in the United States during the oil crisis of the 1970s because they tend to result in better fuel economy than their gasoline counterparts. But diesel-powered cars have declined in popularity with American drivers since their peak in the mid-1970s because of quality-related problems in early models and because earlier diesel engines did not accelerate as quickly as those powered by gasoline. Diesel passenger cars have also declined in popularity because they are more expensive and they emit more smog-forming pollutants and toxic soot than other conventional internal-combustion engines. For eighteen-wheel trucks and other large vehicles, however, diesel engines are currently the standard. S E E A L S O Vehicular Pollution.

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Internet Resource “How Diesel Engines Work.” Available at http://auto.howstuffworks.com/diesel1.htm.

David Friedman

Dilution Dilution was the solution to pollution when populations were small. Everything people wanted to get rid of went into the water. These wastes were typically organic, such as human wastes and animal carcasses. They became food for animals, macroinvertebrates, bacteria, and fungi that broke down the waste. As small villages grew into towns and towns into cities, waterways were overwhelmed by the amount of disposed wastes, and many rivers became open sewers. A larger problem developed during the Industrial Revolution. Chemicals used in industry were added to the mix in the rivers. Many of these substances could not be broken down naturally or biodegraded even in wastewater treatment plants. But because lower concentrations of cancer-causing pollutants, for instance, proved less harmful or had no effect in animal studies, the dilution of pollutants in large amounts of water was thought to be an effective method of disposal. Scientists, however, have recently discovered that many pollutants (pesticides, industrial chemicals, and pharmaceuticals) mimic hormones and can interfere with the reproduction of birds and ﬁsh at parts per million (ppm) to parts per billion (ppb). Dilution cannot render these pollutants harmless. Nor does dilution work for chemicals that bioaccumulate. These persist through the food chain and increase in each organism. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has banned twenty-two bioaccumulating chemicals (BCCs) in its Great Lakes Initiative (1995), including dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), mercury, and dioxins. The Great Lakes Basin 2020 Action Plan of Environment Canada’s Great Lakes Programs is working on the same problems. The International Joint Commission has designated forty-two areas of concern (AOCs) or pollution hot spots in the Great Lakes region. EPA regulations require industries using these chemicals to treat them at the source rather than releasing them into waters. The Whole Efﬂuent Toxicity (WET) test is used to test the toxicity of efﬂuent ﬂowing into uncontaminated waters. The WET test is speciesspeciﬁc. The EPA has developed “Self-Implementing Alternate Dilution Water Guidance.” This is included in any National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit issued by the EPA and would be used if a WET test shows the toxicity of water at the site for the species speciﬁed by the NPDES permit. S E E A L S O Bioaccumulation; Bioremediation; Mixing Zone; Water Pollution. Diana Strnisa

Dioxin Dioxin, formed by burning chlorine-based chemical compounds with hydrocarbons, is one of the most toxic chemicals known. Dioxin is a general term

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Dioxin

G E N E R AL FORMULA S OF P OLY CHLORI NA TE D DI BENZODI OX INS ( PC D D ) A ND P OLY CHLORI NA TED DI BE NZOFURA NS (P CDF) O Clm

O PCDD

defoliant an herbicide that removes leaves from trees and growing plants

congener a member of a class of chemicals having a of similar structure

Cln

Clm

O

Cln

PCDF

that describes a group of hundreds of chemicals that are highly persistent in the environment. It was the highly toxic impurity of Agent Orange, a defoliant used during the Vietnam War, and was the basis for evacuations in Times Beach, Missouri, and Seveso, Italy. Dioxin has become the synonym for polychlorinated dibenzo[1,4]dioxins (PCDD) in general or the most toxic congener 2,3,7,8-tetrachloro dibenzo[1,4]dioxin (TCDD) in particular. PCDD comprise a group of seventy-ﬁve structurally similar compounds, so-called congeners. The individual congeners differ in the number and positions of the chlorine atoms in the molecule. Structurally related are the polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDF) (135 congeners). PCDD and PCDF are stable and fat-soluble molecules classiﬁed as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The central element of the PCDD is the dioxin 6-ring, containing two oxygen atoms, while in PCDF it is the furan 5-ring, containing one oxygen atom. Apart from the structural similarity, they are often formed in the same processes, such as combustion. PCDD and PCDF are formed incidentally in combustion and chemical production processes. Combustion processes include municipal and backyard waste incineration, residential and industrial burning of wood and coal, internal combustion in vehicle engines, and forest ﬁres. Prerequisites for PCDD and PCDF formation are the presence of carbon compounds and inorganic or organic chlorine sources (e.g., sodium chloride or polyvinyl chloride). Their creation generally requires temperatures around 300°C and an excess or lack of oxygen. PCDD and PCDF are present as impurities in a variety of chemical products.

antimicrobial an agent that kills microbes

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Chlorophenol-based pesticides like 2,4,5-T, a phenoxy herbicide, were responsible for up to half the environmental emissions of PCDD and PCDF in the early 1970s. A 1:1 mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T was used in Agent Orange; it contained elevated levels of PCDD. An estimated 110 to 170 kilograms (kg) of 2,3,7,8-TCDD alone were sprayed with herbicides over Vietnam. Consequently, acute and chronic health effects were observed in the exposed population and military personnel. Further examples of PCDDcontaminated chemical products are the wood, leather, and textile preservative pentachlorophenol, the widely used antimicrobial triclosan, and PCDF in polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Certain thermal metallurgical processes as well as chlorine-based pulp and paper bleaching emit PCDD and PCDF into the environment. In its 1995 inventory, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identiﬁed municipal and medical waste incineration, backyard refuse barrel burning, secondary copper smelting, and cement kilns burning hazardous waste as the largest current sources of dioxin-like compounds.

Dioxin

It has been claimed that 2,3,7,8-TCDD is the most toxic human-made compound, an ultra-poison. Although some evidence supports this view, the results of many studies are still controversial. 2,3,7,8-TCDD is extremely toxic to guinea pigs (the lethal dose is approximately 1 microgram or µg). For other animals and apparently for humans the acute toxicity is considerably lower. Long-term effects appear to be more serious. 2,3,7,8-TCDD was found to be the most potent multisite carcinogen in test animals, and PCDD and PCDF are also a human carcinogen. Noncancer effects may pose an even greater threat to human health. These include effects on reproduction and sexual development, teratogenic effects, endocrine disruption, suppression of the immune system, and neurological effects. PCDD and PCDF bioaccumulate and are stored in the body fat of higher organisms. About 95 percent of human exposure originates from food, especially ﬁsh, meat, eggs, and dairy products.

Mentally handicapped Vietnamese children and teenagers, suffering from the harmful effects of Agent Orange. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.) multisite several sites

teratogenic causing birth defects

A 1990 global emission inventory estimated that municipal waste incineration was the major source of PCDD and PCDF in the environment. Abatement strategies focus on this issue. State-of-the-art incinerators may act as sinks for dioxins, but they are expensive to construct and operate. At a higher cost-efﬁciency, PCDD and PCDF reduction could be achieved by a reduction in the amount of garbage to be destroyed (e.g., by manufacturing long-lived products and using less packaging), a cessation of open waste

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burning, and technical improvements in as of yet less strictly regulated facilities such as cement kilns and metallurgical industries. The remediation of dioxin-contaminated sites requires sophisticated abatement methods. Cleaning the Times Beach Superfund site was a ten-year effort that included the relocation of its inhabitants, construction of a series of spur levees surrounding the site to prevent ﬂoodwater from carrying contaminated soil off-site, installing a temporary incinerator, and the excavation and burning of 265,000 tons of contaminated soil. S E E A L S O Burn Barrels; Cancer; Endocrine Disruption; Health, Human; Incineration; Medical Waste; Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs); Superfund; Times Beach, Missouri; War. Bibliography IARC Working Group on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans. (1997). Polychlorinated Dibenzo-para-dioxins and Polychlorinated Dibenzofurans. Lyon, France: World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer. Safe, Stephen; Hutzinger, Otto; and Hill, T.A., eds. (1990). Polychlorinated Dibenzo-pdioxins and -furans (PCDDs/PCDFs): Sources and Environmental Impact, Epidemiology, Mechanisms of Action, Health Risks. New York: Springer-Verlag. Young, Alvin L., and Reggiani, G.M., eds. (1988). Agent Orange and Its Associated Dioxin: Assessment of a Controversy. New York: Elsevier. Internet Resource Activists’ Center for Training in Organizing and Networking (ACTION). Available from http://www.ejnet.org/dioxin.

Stefan Weigel

Dirty Dozen

See Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)

Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills By their nature, the manufacture, storage, and transport of chemicals are accidents waiting to happen. Chemicals can be corrosive, toxic, and they may react, often explosively. The impacts of chemical accidents can be deadly, for both human beings and the environment. Many if not most products we use in everyday life are made from chemicals and thousands of chemicals are used by manufacturing industries to make these products. The source of many of these chemicals is petroleum, which is reﬁned into two main fractions: fuels and the chemical feedstocks that are the building blocks of plastics, paints, dyes, inks, polyester, and many of the products we buy and use every day. Fuels and chemical feedstocks made from petroleum are called organic chemicals. The other important class of chemicals is inorganics, which include acids, caustics, cyanide, and metals. Commercial products made from inorganics range from car bodies to computer circuit boards. Of the more than forty thousand chemicals in commercial use, most are subject to accidental spills or releases. Chemical spills and accidents range from small to large and can occur anywhere chemicals are found, from oil drilling rigs to factories, tanker trucks to ﬁfty-ﬁve-gallon drums and all the way to the local dry cleaner or your garden tool shed.

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Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills

One of the worst industrial chemical disasters occurred without warning early on the morning of December 3, 1984, at Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. While most people slept, a leak, caused by a series of mechanical and human failures, released a cloud of lethal methyl isocyanate over the sleeping city. Some two thousand people died immediately and another eight thousand died later. Health ofﬁcials, not informed about chemicals at the factory, were completely unprepared for the tragedy.

A train derailment near Milligan, Florida. The train carried chemicals, which were spilled at the site. (©Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Congressional hearings that followed the Bhopal accident revealed that U.S. companies routinely discharged hazardous chemicals into the air, while emergency planners knew little about the potential for disaster at local industrial facilities. Less than a year later, a Union Carbide plant that produced methyl isocyanate in Institute, West Virginia, leaked a toxic cloud in the Kanawha Valley. While the West Virginia incident was not another tragedy, it was a shocking reminder that an accident such as the one that occurred at Bhopal could happen in the United States. The hearings and media attention to institute led to enactment of the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA), requiring companies to provide information about their potentially toxic chemicals. At the same time, states were required to establish emergency planning districts and local committees to prepare for any emergency—a ﬁre, an explosion, a ﬂood that might result in the release of chemicals into the environment. In 2003, more than 31,000 industrial facilities must report

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more than 650 individually listed toxic chemicals and chemical categories to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that is made public in the Toxic Release Inventory. In 1990, amendments to the Clean Air Act required industrial chemical companies to submit a risk management plan that included “worst case” chemical accident scenarios. Industry leaders did not want these potential disasters made public and argued that they could alert terrorists which facilities to target. In July 2002, the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee approved a bill to identify plants vulnerable to terrorist attacks that produce hazardous chemicals. Congress also voted against a landmark community right to know law that would have required some 6,600 chemical facilities to reveal their “worst case” accident scenarios. Although the major chemical accidents seem most threatening because they often kill people outright, it is the smaller, more routine accidents and spills that affect most people. Some of the most common spills involve tanker trucks and railroad tankers containing gasoline, chlorine, acid, or other industrial chemicals. Many spills occur during the transportation of hazardous materials; one study found that 18,000 hazardous materials spills occurred during 1976. In 1983, spills from 4,829 highway and 851 railroad accidents resulted in eight deaths, 191 injuries, and damages exceeding more than $110,000,000. The National Environmental Law Center reported that 34,500 accidents involving toxic chemicals were reported to the EPA’s Emergency Response and Notiﬁcation System between 1988 and 1992, meaning that on average, a toxic chemical accident was reported nineteen times a day in the United States, or nearly once every hour. Emergency response workers are especially at risk. In 1988 six ﬁremen were killed minutes after arriving at the scene of two burning pick-up trucks in Missouri, when more than 30,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate stored in a nearby trailer exploded. This incident led to the formation of the hazardous materials division of the Kansas City, Missouri, Fire Department, specializing in hazardous materials handling. To help emergency responders know what they are dealing with, the Department of Transportation (DOT) has established a hazardous materials placard system. Rail cars and trucks carrying toxic or dangerous materials must display a diamond-shaped sign having on it a material identiﬁcation number, which can be looked up to determine what hazardous materials are on board, and a hazard class number and symbol that tells whether the contents are ﬂammable, explosive, corrosive, etc. Color codes also convey instant information: blue (health), red (ﬂammability), yellow (reactivity), white (special notice). The placard system is as follows: Hazard class 1: Explosives (class 1.1-1.6, compatibility groups A–L) Hazard class 2: Gases (nonﬂammable, ﬂammable, toxic gas, oxygen, inhalation hazard) Hazard class 3: Flammable liquids Hazard class 4: Flammable solids (ﬂammable solid, spontaneously combustible, dangerous when wet) Hazard class 5: Oxidizer and organic peroxide

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This boy is looking at a Greenpeace poster, which expresses solidarity for the victims of the Union Carbide chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, eighteen years after the incident. (Photograph by Indranil Mukherjee. © AFP/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Hazard class 6: Toxic/poisonous and infectious substances labels (PG III, inhalation hazard, poison, toxic) Hazard class 7: Radioactive (I, II, III, and ﬁssile) Hazard class 8: Corrosive Hazard class 9: Miscellaneous dangerous goods One of the most common concerns over chemical accidents and hazardous materials spills is acute, or short-term, toxicity. Acutely toxic contaminants, such as cyanide and chlorine released from hazardous materials spills, pose an immediate threat to public health. For example, a chemical accident in which chlorine gas or cyanide gas is released would likely result in widespread deaths as the plume, or toxic cloud, moved through a populated area. Another class of toxicity is chronic, or long term. One of the most common types of chronic toxicity is exposure to carcinogens that may result in cancer twenty to thirty years after the time of the spill. An example of such an exposure occurred on July 10, 1976, in Meda, Italy, a small town about 12 miles north of Milan, where an explosion occurred at the ICMESA chemical plant in a 2,4,5-trichlorophenol reactor. (2,4,5-Trichlorophenol is an industrial chemical used as a building block to make pesticides and antiseptics.) A toxic cloud containing dioxins, which are very potent cancer-causing chemicals, was released into the atmosphere and spread across the nearby densely populated city of Seveso. Exposure to such carcinogens does not result in short-term health problems, but the effects may be expressed decades later. An investigation of women who were exposed to high levels of dioxin in the ICMESA explosion was published in 2002. The researchers found that the women who developed breast cancer had a ten-fold increase of the toxic chemical in their blood.

carcinogen any substance that can cause or aggravate cancer

Another very different effect of chemical spills and accidents is ecotoxicity, a toxic effect on the environment rather than on human health. The most dramatic ecotoxicity resulting from chemical spills results from petroleum spills at sea or in rivers or lakes. When such a catastrophe occurs, the toxicity often depends on the type of petroleum. The most common material spill,

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trophic related to feeding

crude oil, contains some toxic chemicals that dissolve in the water. Most of the petroleum, however, ﬂoats on the water’s surface. It causes environmental damage by coating the feathers of birds and the gills of ﬁsh, physically disrupting their movements and their ability to breathe. Oil washed ashore also disrupts marine life in fragile areas. One of the worst oil spill disasters in history occurred on March 24, 1989, when the oceangoing oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Nearly eleven million gallons of crude oil spilled from the ship, and every trophic level of the biologically rich waters of Prince William Sound was severely impacted. Some residual oil remains to this day.

How Are Chemical Accidents Handled? Emergency response personnel are involved in assessing the risk of hazardous material releases and working to avoid any harmful effects. Teams of workers evaluate the concentrations of the chemicals, where and how people might be exposed, and potential toxic effects on the exposed people. In many cases, emergency response teams are on twenty-four-hour call; if a spill occurs, they use source data (such as the hazmat placards on trucks and tanker cars), databases of chemical properties, and chemical movement models to rapidly predict the movement of contaminants and the toxicity of the spilled chemicals. If rapid spill cleanup is necessary, the emergency response team designs and implements cleanup measures to protect exposed populations and ecosystems from toxic responses. A wide range of cleanup systems has been developed for chemical spills. Small spills on land are cleaned up by simply excavating the contaminated soil and moving it to a secure landﬁll. Oil spills on water are contained using ﬂoating booms and adsorbents, or solid materials that capture the soil, so that it can be disposed of in landﬁlls. Newer, more innovative methods for spill cleanup include bioremediation (using bacteria to metabolize the contaminants) and chemical oxidation (using oxidants, such as hydrogen peroxide and ozone to break the chemicals down). Although chemical spills represent potentially very large environmental problems from a wide range of chemicals, emergency response procedures developed by environmental scientists and engineers are providing solutions to the resulting human health and ecological effects. Chemical accidents and spills can be devastating to humans, wildlife, and the environment. The best way to reduce the harm caused by chemical accidents is to design plants with better safety controls that operate at lower temperatures and pressures, and to use and manufacture less toxic compounds, a ﬁeld that is being pursued by “green” chemists and engineers. But until toxic chemicals are routinely replaced by less harmful substitutes, the emergency response procedures developed by environmental scientists and engineers help lessen the human health and ecological effects of chemical spills and accidents. Bibliography Hackman, C.L.; Hackman, E.E.; and Hackman, M.E. (2001). Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Manual and Desk Reference. New York: McGraw-Hill. Watts, R.J. (1998). Hazardous Wastes: Sources, Pathways, Receptors. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Internet Resources U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazards Investigation Board Chemical Incidents Report Center Web site. Available from http://www.csb.gov/circ/post.cfm.

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Working Group on Community-Right-to-Know Accident Data Web site. Available from http://www.rtk.net/wcs. Hazmat Safety Web site. Available from http://hazmat.dot.gov/hazhome.htm.

Richard J. Watts and Patricia Hemminger

Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents Some of the most publicized environmental disasters are associated with the mining industry. These disasters are attributed to both natural and miningrelated causes. Acid drainage, for example, formed by rainwater or snowmelt in contact with mineral deposits can damage nearby ecosystems by polluting streams and destroying wildlife. The mining and processing of ores, however, may accentuate and accelerate the natural processes.

ecosystem the interacting system of a biological community and its nonliving environmental surroundings

Long- and Short-term Impacts of Mining in the Environment On a long-term basis, mining can increase the acidity of water in streams; cause increased sediment loads, some of which may be metal-laden, in drainage basins; initiate dust with windborne pathogens; and cause the release of toxic chemicals, some contained in exposed ore bodies and waste rock piles and some derived from ore-processing reactions. Contaminants containing such toxic chemicals as cyanide and lead may be transported far from a mining site by water or wind, polluting soils, groundwater, rivers, and the atmosphere. These toxic chemicals can be remobilized intermittently (e.g., by intense wind or rainstorms) and eventually distributed over vast regions. Some of this contamination, because of its scale or intensity, may not be amenable to remediation. Mining may also have effects that can be short-term, depending on their severity, such as distortion to the surrounding topography or removal of vegetation. In many cases, these effects may be minimized or even prevented by means of a comprehensive mining plan that includes a reclamation and remediation stage. For example, in 1999 the Ruby Hill Mine, an open-pit gold mine located near Eureka, Nevada, received an “Excellence in Mine Reclamation Award,” which is granted jointly by various state and federal mining and environmental bodies. Since its inception, the mine has exhibited outstanding innovation in its design, mitigation, and reclamation, all of which is the basis of the award. One of the techniques employed by the mine is concurrent reclamation practice. Since initial exploration, disturbed areas are continuously relegated to facilitate erosion control and provide improved esthetical value. In addition, one mitigation measure that was cited is the effort to offset potential impacts to local wildlife by constructing nesting structures for bats and hawks. As of 2002, the mine was still in operation.

remediation cleanup or other methods used to remove or contain a toxic spill or hazardous materials from a Superfund site or for the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response program topography the physical features of a surface area including relative elevations and the position of natural and manmade (anthropogenic) features

Case Studies The Summitville Mine in Colorado has become a case study of environmental damage as a result of mining. Gold was mined there from 1870 until 1992. In 1994 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared the area a Superfund site. Some of the following events affected the environment at the mine: Geologic characteristics at the mine site contributed to the generation of both natural and mining-related acid drainage; the height of the containing

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leach solution in mining: chemical solution sprayed on ore to extract metal French drain buried plastic tubing with numerous holes, to collect or disperse water leach pad in mining: a specially prepared area where mineral ore (especially gold) is heaped for metal extraction watershed the land area that drains into a stream; the watershed for a major river may encompass a number of smaller watersheds

hydrology the science dealing with the properties, distribution, and circulation of water

dike for cyanide leach solutions (used to chemically extract gold) was below the level required for snowstorms and spring runoff; broken pump lines and a French drain beneath the leach pad caused cyanide-contaminated solutions to be released into the local watershed; several waste rock piles at the mine reacted with rain and snowmelt to form acidic waters that ﬂowed into area streams; an underground tunnel released large volumes of contaminated waters; and mining deforested much of the land. Remediation of the site has included such projects as backﬁlling mine waste into existing open pits, which reduces polluted water percolating into the ground; plugging underground tunnels; and replanting. Remediation is ongoing with the goal of restoring the nearby Alamosa River to support aquatic life; the U.S. Public Health Service classiﬁed this site as “no apparent public health hazard.” Another case study is the Iron Mountain Mine in California, which the EPA declared a Superfund site in 1983. Mining for copper, gold, silver, and zinc began in 1879 and continued until 1963 using underground and openpit methods. The site contains inactive mines and numerous waste piles from which harmful quantities of untreated acidic, metal-rich waters were discharged. Mining operations fractured the mountain, changing the hydrology and exposing the mineral deposit to oxygen and water, which resulted in intense acid mine drainage into nearby creeks and waterways. These caused numerous ﬁsh kills and posed a health risk to the area drinking water. Some current remediation projects include: capping areas of the mine and the diversion of nearby creeks, both of which serve to reduce surface water contamination; construction of a retention reservoir to control the area source acid mine drainage discharges; enlargement of a landﬁll to provide an additional thirty years of storage capacity for heavy metals sludges; and construction of a signiﬁcant upgrade to facilities in mine tunnels to assure safe travel for workers and equipment to perform maintenance and routinely remove mine wastes from the tunnels and other projects. S E E A L S O Acid Rain; Heavy Metals; Mining; Superfund; Water Pollution. Internet Resources “Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Division Summitville Mine.” Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, 2002. Available from http://cdphe.state.co.us. “Iron Mountain Mine.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Document EPA CAD980498612. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2001. Available from http://epa.gov/superfund/sites. Jorgenson, Pat. “World’s Most Acidic Waters Are Found Near Redding, California.” U.S. Geological Survey, 2000. Available from http://ca.water.usgs.gov. “Public Health Assessment Summitville Mine Del Norte, Rio Grande County, Colorado.” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1997. Available from http://atsdr.cdc.gov.

Michael J. McKinley

Disasters: Natural A natural disaster can be deﬁned as some impact of an extreme natural event on the ecosystem and environment, and on human activities and society. The concept relies on the interaction of a natural agent—the hazard—with human vulnerability to produce a risk that is likely to eventually materialize as a destructive impact.

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Understanding Hazards and Disasters The driving force, or trigger, of disaster is the natural agent. In this context natural disasters are distinguished—earthquakes, ﬂoods, hurricanes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, and so on—from technological ones (toxic spills, transportation accidents, explosions in industrial plants, etc.) and social disasters (riots, acts of terrorism, crowd crushes, etc.). Experts on natural disaster tend to conﬁne the deﬁnition to extreme geophysical phenomena and not include disease epidemics and the corresponding afﬂictions in animals (epizootics) and plants (epiphytotics), although phenomena such as locust infestations are sometimes considered. Epidemics are excluded mainly in order to narrow the ﬁeld to manageable levels, rather than as the result of any theoretical justiﬁcation. Indeed, students of disaster increasingly prefer not to distinguish between the three categories, which overlap considerably in terms of their effects, if not their generating mechanisms.

Lava flow from an eruption of Mount Etna, Sicily, destroys all trees and plants in its path. (©Vittoriano Rastelli/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

epidemic rapid spread of disease throughout a population, or a disease that spreads in this manner

Hazard, the catalyst for natural disaster, is subject to rules of magnitude and frequency. Generally, small events tend to be relatively frequent and large ones infrequent. In this context, considerable problems arise in preparing for large volcanic eruptions, as the timescale on which they may occur (e.g., once every 10,000 years) can be very different from that of human organization (months and years). In their more benign, everyday forms, many natural hazards can be considered as resources. Water, for instance, is a life-sustaining resource unless it comes in excessively large or small quantities, giving rise to ﬂood or drought, respectively.

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The greatest known natural disaster occurred some 65 million years ago when a mountain-sized comet or asteroid slammed into the earth near what is now Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. Scientists are boring a one-mile deep hole into the Chicxulub crater to learn more about the catastrophic event. By 2002, they had reached the top of the breccia layer at 2,800 feet down, bringing up a core of smashed rock-rubble. The devastation caused by the collision so drastically disrupted the earth’s ecology that it brought about the extinction of dinosaurs and opened the way for the age of mammals.

archetype original or ideal example or model desertification transition of arable land to desert disaster cycle phases in the public response to a disaster: preparedness, disaster, response, recovery, and mitigation of effects

The variation of ﬂood hazards from very abrupt ﬂash ﬂoods to much more slowly rising inundations, caused, for instance, when rivers swell from the gradual melting of snow, illustrates that hazards can strike along a continuum, from instantaneous impact to the gradual or long drawn-out effects of the so-called creeping disasters. The archetypal sudden-impact disaster is the earthquake, which usually strikes without warning and causes its worst effects within a minute or two of inception. At the other end of the continuum, one might regard accelerated soil erosion and desertification as creeping disasters, which may take years or centuries to reach catastrophic levels. Magnitude alone does not govern the hazardousness of an extreme natural phenomenon. Consider, for example, the Sherman landslide that occurred in central Alaska in 1964. About 29 million cubic meters of rock debris traveled more than ﬁve kilometers at an estimated maximum speed of 180 kilometers per hour. However, as the event took place in an uninhabited area and had no real human consequences, it was a mere geological curiosity, not a disaster. In contrast, the landslide of October 21, 1966, at Aberfan, South Wales, involved one-hundredth as much debris traveling one-twelfth of the distance at one-twentieth of the speed, but it demolished two schools and an area of housing, resulting in 144 deaths, 116 of them schoolchildren. It was thus a very signiﬁcant disaster. This illustrates that human vulnerability is a fundamental determinant of disaster potential. Natural catastrophe has often been studied using as a basic model the disaster cycle, which emphasizes the common repetitiveness of disasters. Five phases are distinguished: (1) mitigation, a period of inactivity in which there is time to reduce the risks of disaster; (2) preparation, in which hazard monitoring and forecasts show the need to prepare for an impending event; (3) impact and emergency response, the short-term aftermath in which basic needs such as food, shelter, and public safety must be met; (4) restoration and recovery, in which basic services are restored; and (5) reconstruction, in which the damage is repaired, perhaps over an extended period of time, a decade or more if the catastrophe was signiﬁcant enough. Each phase has its own set of requirements and, in a well-organized society, programmed responses.

Trends in Losses and Casualties

complex emergency a humanitarian crisis in which there is a breakdown of political authority

The worldwide picture of disasters shows that death tolls are fairly stable, although not signiﬁcantly decreasing, but losses are rising steeply. Social, economic, and military instability coupled with high rates of population growth fuel increases in the casualties and hardship caused by natural disasters in developing countries. Since the early 1990s much attention has been focused on the complex emergency, in which persistent warfare, particularly of the low-intensity guerrilla kind, leads to social and economic breakdown, which then interacts with repeated natural disasters, especially ﬂood and drought. Much of the complexity of the resulting situation lies in trying to end the conﬂict while reinstating sustainable development and disaster efforts, or at least avoiding political and military control of relief supplies, with all the ensuing moral dilemmas that aid agencies must face in order to maintain their neutrality. In richer countries death tolls in natural disaster tend to be low (e.g., an average of 570 a year in the United States), but the cost of damage and other losses has skyrocketed. The 1989 Loma Prieta, California, earthquake caused

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"Orthodox" Model Physical Event

Human Vulnerability

Human Consequences of Disaster

Physical Event

Human Consequences of Disaster

"Radical Critque" (K. Hewitt et al.) Human Vulnerability

Proposal for a New Model Human Vulnerability

Culture

History Physical Event s Con t e xt & C o n s e q u e n c e

Human Consequences of Disaster

approximately $12 billion in losses. The 1994 Northridge earthquake, also in California, resulted in costs more than twice that amount, but a year later the Hanshin-Awaji earthquake in Kobe, Japan, cost an estimated $131.5 billion. The scenario for a future repeat of the 1923 Tokyo earthquake points to losses of $2,800 billion. In part, however, this reﬂects a growing tendency to quantify new forms of indirect impact, especially lost production and sales. Nevertheless, the losses are undeniably rising, which points to growing economic vulnerability to disasters. Although in percentage terms insurance payments after disasters have doubled since the early 1990s, they still only cover one-sixth of losses, and the insurance industry is struggling to ﬁnd the capital to underwrite huge claims: In 1992 Hurricane Andrew sent eight insurance companies in Florida into receivership.

The Future of Disaster Preparedness As losses increase and casualties remain frequent and widespread, the problem of natural catastrophes is topical and pressing. Expertise is gradually accumulating on how to best tackle disaster, and new agencies for managing it are forming at the local, regional, national, and international levels. For such efforts to succeed, rigorous standards need to be established for emergency planning, management, and training. There needs to be more investment in both structural and nonstructural mitigation: As it is based on organization rather than civil engineering, the latter is often more costeffective than the former. From the point of view of understanding disaster as a phenomenon, more attention needs to be given to the role of context and culture in perceiving and interpreting the needs generated by hazards and disaster impacts. S E E A L S O Economics. Bibliography Alexander, David E. (1993). Natural Disasters. Boston: Kluwer. Alexander, David E. (2000). Confronting Catastrophe: New Perspectives on Natural Disaster. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Blaikie, Piers; Cannon, Terry; Davis, Ian; and Wisner, Ben. (1994). At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability and Disasters. London: Routledge. Burton, Ian; Kates, Robert W.; and White, Gilbert F. (1993). The Environment as Hazard, 2nd edition. New York: Guilford Press. Hewitt, Kenneth, ed. (1983). Interpretations of Calamity. London: George Allen & Unwin. Hewitt, Kenneth. (1997). Regions of Risk: A Geographical Introduction to Disasters. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Longman. Quarantelli, Enrico L., ed. (1998). What Is a Disaster? Perspectives on the Question. London: Routledge. Smith, Keith S. (2001). Environmental Hazards: Assessing Risk and Reducing Disaster, 3rd edition. London: Routledge.

David E. Alexander

Disasters: Nuclear Accidents acute in medicine, short-term or happening quickly chronic in medicine, long-term or happening over time half-life the time required for a pollutant to lose one-half of its original concentration; for example, the biochemical halflife of DDT in the environment is fifteen years spent radioactive fuel radioactive fuel rods after they has been used for power generation

bioaccumulation buildup of a chemical within a food chain when a predator consumes prey containing that chemical

Of all the environmental disaster events that humans are capable of causing, nuclear disasters have the greatest damage potential. The radiation release associated with a nuclear disaster poses signiﬁcant acute and chronic risks in the immediate environs and chronic risk over a wide geographic area. Radioactive contamination, which typically becomes airborne, is long-lived, with half-lives guaranteeing contamination for hundreds of years. Concerns over potential nuclear disasters center on nuclear reactors, typically those used to generate electric power. Other concerns involve the transport of nuclear waste and the temporary storage of spent radioactive fuel at nuclear power plants. The fear that terrorists would target a radiation source or create a “dirty bomb” capable of dispersing radiation over a populated area was added to these concerns following the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. Radioactive emissions of particular concern include strontium-90 and cesium-137, both having thirty-year-plus half-lives, and iodine-131, having a short half-life of eight days but known to cause thyroid cancer. In addition to being highly radioactive, cesium-137 is mistaken for potassium by living organisms. This means that it is passed on up the food chain and bioaccumulated by that process. Strontium-90 mimics the properties of calcium and is deposited in bones where it may either cause cancer or damage bone marrow cells.

The Chernobyl Disaster Fears of terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants have prompted state and local health offices to distribute supplies of potassium iodide pills, known as KI, to be taken in the event of a release of radioactive materials. KI blocks the intake of radioactive iodine by the thyroid and helps prevent thyroid cancer. The pills were provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

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Concern became reality at 1:23 a.m. on April 25, 1986, when the worst civil nuclear catastrophe in history occurred at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Soviet Union (which is now in Ukraine). More than thirty people were killed immediately. The radiation release was thirty to forty times that of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of people were ultimately evacuated from the most heavily contaminated zone surrounding Chernobyl. Radiation spread to encompass almost all of Europe and Asia Minor; the world ﬁrst learned of the disaster when a nuclear facility in Sweden recorded abnormal radiation levels. Chernobyl had four RBMK-type reactors. These reactors suffer from instability at low power and are susceptible to rapid, difﬁcult-to-control power increases. The accident occurred as workers were testing reactor

Disasters: Nuclear Accidents

number four. The test was being conducted improperly; as few as six control rods were in place despite orders stating that a minimum of thirty rods were necessary to maintain control, and the reactor’s emergency cooling system had been shut down as part of the test. An operator error caused the reactor’s power to drop below speciﬁed levels, setting off a catastrophic power surge that caused fuel rods to rupture, triggering explosions that ﬁrst destroyed the reactor core and then blew apart the reactors’ massive steel and concrete containment structure.

control rod a rod containing substance that absorbs neutrons inserted into a nuclear reactor to control the rate of the reaction

The health impacts of the Chernobyl explosion will never be fully known. It is estimated that some three million people still live in contaminated areas and almost ten thousand people still live in Chernobyl itself. The plant itself was not fully shut down until nearly ﬁfteen years after the disaster. Studies by the Belarus Ministry of Health, located approximately eighty miles south of Chernobyl, found that rates of thyroid cancer began to soar in contaminated regions in 1990, four years after the radiation release. Gomel, Belarus, the most highly contaminated region studied, reported thirty-eight cases in 1991. Gomel normally recorded only one to two cases per year. Health ofﬁcials in Turkey, 930 miles to the south, reported that leukemia rates are twelve times higher than before the Chenobyl accident.

Three Mile Island The thriller China Syndrome, which warned that a nuclear power plant meltdown would blow a hole through the earth all the way to China and “render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable” had been playing for eleven days when, at 4:00 am on March 28, 1979, Reactor #2 at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant suffered a partial meltdown. The plant was just downriver from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Film story, reality, and perception all interplayed to create near national panic. The accident occurred sequentially. A minor problem caused the temperature of the primary coolant to rise. In one second, the reactor shut down but a relief valve that was supposed to close after ten seconds remained open. Plant instrumentation showed operators that a “close valve” signal had been sent. There was no instrumentation to tell them the valve itself was still open. The reactor’s primary coolant drained away and the reactor core suffered serious damage. Fuel rods were damaged, leaking radioactive material into the cooling water and a high temperature chemical reaction created bubbles of hydrogen gas. One of these bubbles burned, creating fears that a larger hydrogen bubble would explode, possibly breaching the plant’s containment structure. Some gases were purposefully vented into the atmosphere. It took nearly a full month the bring the reactor into “cold shutdown” status. That said, there was never danger of a massive explosion and hundreds of readings taken by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources showed almost no iodine, and all readings were far below health limits. There was, however, widespread panic including a unordered mass evacuation. The greatest problem at TMI was a total failure of communication. Internal radioactivity levels, for example, were reported as ambient (outdoor) air readings. The many health studies following TMI showed no evidence of abnormal cancer rates. For eighteen years, the Pennsylvania Department of Health maintained a registry of 30,000 people who lived within ﬁve miles of TMI; it

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A civil defense worker is using Geiger counter to check radiation level near a school building following the accidental radiation leak from the nearby Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Schoolchildren are being evacuated via bus. (©Wally McNamee/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

found no evidence on unusual health trends. TMI’s only health effect was psychological stress related to the accident. While there were few long-term health effects, there is no doubt that the accident at TMI permanently changed both the nuclear industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). “Public fear and distrust increased,” the NRC notes in a fact sheet on TMI, “Regulations and oversight became broader and more robust, and management of the plants was scrutinized more carefully.”

Nuclear Submarines On August 12, 2000, an explosion in a torpedo tube sank the giant Russian nuclear submarine Kursk and its crew of 118 in the Barents Sea. Russian ofﬁcials described the sinking as a “catastrophe that developed at lightning

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speed.” A week later, divers opened the rear hatch of the sub but found no survivors. It took salvagers two years, but the Kursk and her two nuclear reactors was raised.

Two cooling towers at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. (©W. Cody/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

The Kursk was the sixth nuclear submarine to have sunk since 1963. The others all came to rest on the ocean ﬂoor at depths of more than 4,500 feet, far below where most marine life lives. They include two former Soviet submarines—one that sank east of Bermuda in 1986 and another that went down in the Bay of Biscay in 1970—and two U.S. nuclear submarines—the U.S.S. Thresher and U.S.S. Scorpion—which sank in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War. U.S. Navy ofﬁcials report there is little likelihood of radioactive release from the U.S. ships. Reactor fuel elements in American submarines are made of materials that are extremely corrosion resistant, even in sea water. The protective cladding on the fuel elements corrodes only a few millionths of an inch per year, meaning the reactor core could remain submerged in sea water for centuries without releases of ﬁssion products while the radioactivity decays. Comprehensive deep ocean radiological monitoring operations were conducted at the Thresher site in 1965, 1977, 1983, and again in 1986. None

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of the samples obtained showed any evidence of release of radioactivity from the reactor fuel elements. Internet Resources Nave, C.R. “Hyper Physics.” Available from http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/ hbase/hframe.html. Public Citizen. “Decades of Delay: The NRC’s Failure to Stockpile Potassium Iodide & Protect the Public Health and Safety” Available from http://www.citizen.org/ cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/nuclear_power_plants/reactor_safety/articles.cfm? ID=4433. Subnet. “USS Thresher (SSN-593).” Available from http://www.subnet.com/ﬂeet/ ssn593.htm. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Fact Sheet on the Accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.” Available from http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/ doc-collections/fact-sheets/fschernobyl.html. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Fact Sheet on the Accident at Three Mile Island.” Available from http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/ 3mile-isle.html.

Richard M. Stapleton

Disasters: Oil Spills

seep movement of substance (often a pollutant) from a source into surrounding areas

Liquid petroleum (crude oil and its reﬁned products such as tar, lubricating oil, gasoline, and kerosene) can be released as catastrophic spills from point sources (e.g., from tankers and blowouts) or as chronic discharges typically from nonpoint sources (e.g., from urban runoff or fallout from the atmosphere). Releases of petroleum into the environment occur naturally from seeps as well as from human sources. Together natural and human sources contribute about 380 million gallons of petroleum to the oceans each year. Of this, about 45 percent comes from natural seeps, and the remainder may be attributed to the human activities of petroleum production, transportation, and consumption. Discharges during petroleum production tend to be restricted to areas of exploration and extraction and are mostly due to the release of “produced waters” (water extracted with petroleum from the reservoir); these discharges contribute about 5 percent of the petroleum reaching the sea from human sources. Spills during the transport, reﬁnement, and distribution of petroleum are most common along shipping routes and pipelines and make up about 22 percent of human-caused petroleum inputs. Spills during petroleum consumption (i.e., use of automobiles, boats, etc.) tend to be small but are so numerous and widespread that they contribute the vast majority (about 70 percent) of human-caused petroleum pollution in the sea. Therefore, consumers could make an enormous contribution to pollution prevention through proper use of petroleum products in vehicles and other personal equipment maintained to avoid leaks and spills. The effects of spilled petroleum on marine organisms can be lethal or sublethal. Lethal effects are often obvious after large spills, with the most attention focused on birds and mammals (e.g., 900 bald eagles, 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, and 300 harbor seals were killed directly by the Exxon Valdez spill), but population-level consequences are difﬁcult to measure. Considerable controversy arises in the determination of when populations have recovered. Even when organisms are not killed, oil fouling can reduce feeding efﬁciency, growth and reproductive rates, survival of offspring, and

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resistance to diseases. Petroleum may act synergistically with other pollutants, such as those found in urban runoff, to cause even more toxic effects like high rates of mortality or reproductive failure. Petroleum can kill birds and mammals by reducing the capacity of feathers and fur to keep the animals warm, or through ingestion when birds and mammals attempt to remove the petroleum or eat fouled prey. The largest oil spill in history occurred from tankers, a tank ﬁeld, offshore terminals, and reﬁneries during the 1991 Persian Gulf War; it dwarfed other spills with a release of approximately 520 million gallons of oil. This was more than three times the volume of the second-largest spill, from the IXTOC 1 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979. The 1989 spill of eleven million gallons of crude oil from the Exxon Valdez along 1,100 miles of Alaska’s pristine southern coast was the largest spill in U.S. history and approximately the fortieth-largest spill globally. It caused a national backlash against “big oil” in the United States and led to the passage of the 1990 Oil Pollution Act. This legislation creates a cooperative arrangement between the polluter and the resource trustee in order to increase the speed and effectiveness of cleanup efforts and reduce the intensity of litigation. Oil spills from tankers capture the most media attention, but, as of 2000, ships contributed less than 2 percent of petroleum in the oceans. This is dwarfed by the 45 percent input from natural seeps. However, seeps typically release oil at a slow constant rate and the surrounding ecosystems have adapted to the presence of oil (although species diversity is reduced), with microorganisms even using the oil as a source of energy. Tanker spills, on the other hand, often occur in ecologically sensitive near-shore areas and the volume of oil released at once can be signiﬁcant. The largest human source of petroleum in the marine environment is the consumer, from sources such as personal watercraft (especially two-stroke engines), automobiles, fuel jettisoned from aircraft, and municipal waste, the sum of which aggregates into urban runoff, wastewaters, river discharge, and atmospheric deposition. These inputs are most pronounced in near-shore areas, which also have the most sensitive ecosystems (e.g., estuaries, mangrove forests, coral and oyster reefs, coastal marshes, sea grass, and kelp beds). These ecosystems derive much of their physical structure from the organisms themselves; as such, mortality due to petroleum can destroy the physical structure, leading to erosion of underlying sediments and the collapse of the ecosystem. Current technology is insufﬁcient to clean up large spills. Techniques in use include mechanical containment with booms and recovery with skimmers, suction equipment and sorbent materials, chemical treatment with dispersing and gelling agents, and physical removal via wiping, pressure washing, and raking. Scientists are developing bacterial strains to devour petroleum in spills and fertilizers to stimulate the success of these bacteria in the sea; although promising, this technique remains insufﬁcient. A 20 percent recovery of spill volume is considered a good effort. Some cleanup efforts may do more harm than good. For example, the hot water scouring of beaches following the Exxon Valdez spill stripped silt from between rocks and thereby prevented recolonization by bivalves, which must wait until sediments are naturally replenished. Some of the chemical agents are toxic themselves, and a number, such as gelling agents, must be applied at several times the volume of the spill itself, clearly impractical for a spill of millions of gallons.

boom a floating device used to contain oil on a body of water; or, a piece of equipment used to apply pesticides from a tractor or truck

gelling agent chemical used to thicken a substance, i.e., oil, to prevent it from spreading out

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Workers in orange coats standing on rocky beach using water hoses to clean up the oil spill from the Exxon Valdez. (Courtesy of Richard Stapleton. Reproduced by permission.)

heterotrophic phytoplankton floating microorganisms that consume other organisms for food

It is still the case that most petroleum spilled is “cleaned” by natural processes or remains for decades in the environment in forms such as tarballs accumulated on shorelines or petroleum soaked deeply into shoreline gravel. Natural cleansing of petroleum in water, particularly light oils, occurs through evaporation (10 to 75 percent during the ﬁrst few days, depending on petroleum weight and environmental conditions), photooxidation, and microbial degradation by bacteria, fungi, and heterotrophic phytoplankton. A small amount dissolves in the water, but this increases the toxicity of the water to organisms, and petroleum suspended in water may attach to suspended sediments that eventually settle to the sea ﬂoor, from where the petroleum may be rereleased into the water. The monetary costs of petroleum spills vary tremendously, even for identical spill volumes, depending on the sensitivity of the local ecosystem, type of petroleum released, weather, ocean currents and waves, time of year, use of local beaches, local ﬁshing activity, presence of ecological reserves, containment and cleanup effectiveness, and many other factors. The ﬁnancial responsibility for the spill lies with the polluter, but the cost of a petroleum spill is open to interpretation and often spawns litigation. Spills from vessels in U.S. waters declined signiﬁcantly during the 1990s (less than one-third of total spillage in the 1980s) due to better-designed ships (e.g., double-hull tankers and new construction materials being phased in) and more stringent regulations and operational practices. This decline in spills occurred at the same time as the global tanker ﬂeet grew slightly to 7,270 in 1999, but by that year more than half of the ﬂeet was less than ﬁfteen

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TEN WORST OIL SPILLS BY VOLUME, 1967–2002

Name Arabian Gulf/Kuwait IXTOC 1 Atlantic Empress Kolva River Nowruz Oil Field Castillo de Bellver Amoco Cadiz ABT Summer Haven Odyssey Prestige

Quantity (in millions of gallons)

Location Persian Gulf, Kuwait Bay of Campeche, Mexico off Tobago Kolva River tributary, Russia Persian Gulf, Iran off Saldanha Bay, South Africa Portsall, France off Angola Genoa, Italy off Nova Scotia, Canada off Spain

380–520 140 90 84 80 79 69 51–81 45 41 20

Date January 19, June 3, July 19, September 8, February 10, August 6, March 16, May 28, April 11, November 10, November 13,

1991 1979 1979 1994 1983 1983 1978 1991 1991 1988 2002

This table presents the ten largest oil spills since modern compilations began in 1967. The volumes of many major oil spills, especially those that occurred outside of North American or European waters, were not precisely measured. Where the uncertainty is large the range of possible spill volumes is given, ordered by the mid-range estimate for the spill.

years old. On the other hand, petroleum spilled from failed pipelines is projected to increase as pipelines age. North America alone has 23,000 miles of petroleum pipelines. Similarly, as the human population grows and consumes more petroleum, greater volumes of it will reach the seas from consumptive sources. All levels of society may contribute to reductions in petroleum pollution. Governments can enact more stringent drilling, wastewater, transportation, use, and recovery regulations and more rigorously enforce them. Governments and industry can work together to ensure the integrity of the pipeline system and reduce inputs from production activities. Improvements can be made in the avoidance of spills, the tracking of vessels, including their escort by tugs, and the general safety of a tanker ﬂeet. Government and industry can also partner to stop operational discharges such as bilge and fuel oil and oily ballast. Operational discharges are currently prohibited within ﬁfty nautical miles of the U.S. coast, but due to noncompliance and lax regulations in many countries and international waters, these inputs are third in importance only to land-based runoff and releases from two-stroke engines. Consumers can use more efﬁcient machinery that spills less petroleum, such as fourstroke engines for personal watercraft, and can properly dispose of petroleum products at recycling or collection centers. And society can migrate away from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy that pose signiﬁcantly fewer problems for both air and water pollution. S E E A L S O Cleanup; Petroleum; Underground Storage Tanks; Water Pollution: Marine. Bibliography National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (1992). Oil Spill Case Histories, 1967–1991: Summaries of Signiﬁcant U.S. and International Spills. NOAA Report No. HMRAD 92-11. National Research Council. (2002). Oil in the Sea III: Inputs, Fates, and Effects. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Internet Resources Family Education Network. (2002). “Oil Spills.” Available from http://www .infoplease.com/ipa/A0001451.html. International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation. (2001). “Accidental Tanker Oil Spill Statistics.” Available from http://www.itopf.com/stats.html.

bilge deepest part of a ship’s hold ballast material in a ship used for weight and balance

One of the most ecologically sensitive spots on earth was put at risk in January 2001 when an oil tanker ran aground and capsized on San Cristóbal Island in the Galápagos Islands. The Galápagos, described by Charles Darwin as a living laboratory of evolution, were spared when a fortuitous wind shift pushed some 170,000 gallons of diesel fuel out to sea and away from the fragile marine reserve.

Frank A. von Hippel and Ted von Hippel

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Disinfection

Disinfection Disposal DNAPLs

See Water Treatment

See Incineration; Injection Well; Landfill; Solid Waste Nonaqueous Phase Liquids

Donora, Pennsylvania

temperature inversion temporary trapping of lower warm air by higher cold air

The towns of Donora and Webster, Pennsylvania, along the Monongahela River southwest of Pittsburgh, were the site of a lethal air pollution disaster in late October 1948 that convinced members of the scientiﬁc and medical communities, as well as the public, that air pollution could kill people, as well as cause serious damage to health. The disaster took place over the course of ﬁve days, when weather conditions known as a temperature inversion trapped cooled coal smoke and pollution from a zinc smelter and steel mill beneath a layer of warm air over the river valley that enclosed the two towns and the surrounding farmland. Almost half of the area’s 14,000 residents reported becoming ill and about two dozen deaths were attributed to the badly polluted air. After the disaster, fact-ﬁnding studies conducted by federal, state, and local government, as well as the steel industry and private investigators, never deﬁnitively identiﬁed the exact mix of pollutants that caused the deaths and illnesses. It is believed that a thick blanket of sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide, and particulate literally smothered the towns. Donora is remembered as a key event that inspired federal air pollution legislation in the 1960s and 1970s and contributed indirectly to the establishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. It helped mobilize public sentiment in favor of federal regulation rather than continued state and local jurisdiction over polluters. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Clean Air Act; Coal; Environmental Protection Agency; Health, Human; Heavy Metals; Industry; Laws and Regulations, United States; Smog. Bibliography Roueche, Berton (1950). “The Fog.” In The Medical Detectives, Vol. 2, pp. 37–55. New York: Washington Square Press/Pocket Books. Snyder, Lynne Page (1994). “‘The Death-Dealing Smog Over Donora, Pennsylvania’: Industrial Air Pollution, Public Health Policy, and the Politics of Expertise.” Environmental History Review 18(1):117–139. Internet Resource Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. “History of Donora.” Available from http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep.

Lynne Page Snyder estuary region of interaction between rivers and near-shore ocean waters, where tidal action and river flow mix fresh and salt water (i.e., bays, mouths of rivers, salt marshes, and lagoons). These ecosystems shelter and feed marine life, birds, and wildlife

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Dredging Dredging is the process of excavating or removing sediments from the bottom of lakes, rivers, estuaries, or marine (ocean) locations. Sediment excavation or dredging is conducted for multiple purposes. These purposes include navigation, mineral extraction (mining), construction activities

Dredging

(e.g., laying underwater pipeline), and the environmental cleanup of polluted sediments. Dredging is generally conducted by ﬂoating construction equipment and is accomplished by mechanical, hydraulic, or hydrodynamic (agitation) processes. Mechanical dredges generally employ drag lines, open or closed clam shell buckets, or an endless chain of buckets to excavate the sediment and place it in a container such as a barge or scow. The dredged sediment is then transported in the barge or scow for beneﬁcial use at a location on land or in the water (e.g., construction material, ﬁll or habitat enhancement), to a nearby disposal site, or in some cases, to an aquatic disposal site at a lake, river, estuary, or ocean. Hydraulic pipeline dredges use a suction pipe connected to an excavation device (like a huge vacuum cleaner hose with a digger at its end) for removing the dredged sediment from the bottom. In the process, the removed sediment mixes with the overlying water to form the resultant dredged material. The sediment is then pumped hydraulically by a pipeline to a location intended for beneﬁcial use (e.g., beach nourishment or construction ﬁll), to an adjacent aquatic placement location, or to an upland placement facility for storage for later beneﬁcial or commercial uses. Contaminated sediments may be transported to off-site treatment or disposal facilities or to a contained aquatic disposal site. The nonaquatic disposal alternative for contam-

Noontime smog on a street in Donora, Pennsylvania, 1948. (© Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, all rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.)

hydraulic related to fluid flow

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inated sediments is much more environmentally complex when plant, animal, air (volatile), and surface and groundwater (leachate) pathways for contaminants must be controlled. Hydraulic dredging may also be accomplished by a self-propelled oceangoing dredging vessel (e.g., hopper dredges) that will store the sediment and entrained water in a large hopper for transport to an ocean disposal site, for beneﬁcial-use placement in the nearshore zone for beach nourishment, or for transport to a land-based containment facility. A special-purpose selfpropelled hydraulic dredge known as a side caster excavates the sediment (e.g., entrance channel sand) and immediately pumps the material to a location adjacent to the channel, but down drift of nearshore natural prevailing currents. The currents rapidly disperse the sediments down coast, beneﬁcially adding to the normal coastal sand movement. Hydrodynamic dredging (agitation dredging) is a process whereby the bottom sediment is physically disturbed by mechanical (e.g., a boat’s propeller) or hydraulic means (e.g., water jets). The sediment is not excavated and removed from the water body. The suspended material simply moves away from the dredging site as a result of the natural prevailing currents. The sediment never leaves the water body and is not moved or transported in a vessel or container. There is no resulting disposal or discharge from hydrodynamic (agitation) dredging. The vast majority of dredging in the United States occurs for navigation purposes as deep channels and berths are needed for ports in lakes, rivers, estuaries and the nearshore ocean to accommodate large commercial or military vessels. These ships are an integral part of U.S. trade and also necessary for defense purposes. About 350 million tons of dredged sediments are excavated annually in U.S. waters to maintain navigation. A large percent of dredged material is clean, approximately 90 percent, and suitable for a wide variety of useful purposes, including placement back into the water at an approved aquatic disposal site. In industrial and highly urbanized areas that account for about 10 percent of the total U.S. dredging, sediments are polluted with industrial and sewage contaminants along with runoff from nearby land areas. As such, these sediments must be thoroughly tested by chemical and toxicological means and disposed of in an environmentally acceptable manner. Some aquatic areas are so heavily polluted that the sediments must be removed for cleanup from the water body and disposed of in a secure disposal facility. Dredging for an environmental cleanup can be very controversial because of the signiﬁcant expense, and the need for an environmentally suitable disposal alternative and proof that the cleanup is necessary, then effective. Environmental dredging has been used in more than thirty U.S. locations with mixed success. These sites are currently under review regarding the long-term usefulness of dredging. As a result, signiﬁcant controversy (technical and political) exists as to the overall effectiveness of clean up dredging and the transfer of environmental and human health risk when huge quantities of sediment are removed from a water body and placed in an upland location. Comparative risk assessment of all practical alternatives is necessary to resolve these controversies. S E E A L S O Abatement; Bioaccumulation; Cleanup; Ocean Dumping; PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls); Risk; Superfund; Water Pollution.

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Bibliography Boyd, M.B., et al. (1972). “Disposal of Dredge Spoil; Problem Identiﬁcation and Assessment and Research Program Development.” Technical Report H-72-8. Vicksburg, MS: U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station. Palermo, M.R.; Engler, R.M.; and Francingues, N.R. (1993). “The United States Army Corps of Engineers Perspective on Environmental Dredging.” Buffalo Environmental Law Journal 2:243–254. Internet Resource CEDA, IADC, PIANC. (1997). Guidance Documents on Dredging. Guide 4: Machines, Methods and Mitigation. The Netherlands: IADC Secretariat. Also available from www.iadc-dredging.com. PIANC. (2000). Dredging: The Facts. Brussels, Belgium: International Navigation Association. Also available from www.pianc-aipcn.org. PIANC. (2001). Dredging: The Environmental Facts. Where to Find What You Need to Know. Brussels, Belgium: International Navigation Association. Also available from www. pianc-aipcn.org. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov/ hudson.

Robert M. Engler

Drinking Water

See Water Treatment

Dry Cleaning Dry cleaning is the use of solvents instead of water to clean fabrics. It is believed to have originated in France in 1828 when a factory worker spilled lamp oil, a flammable petroleum-based solvent, on a soiled tablecloth. When the tablecloth dried, the spots had disappeared. The original solvents used in the dry cleaning industry included turpentine, kerosene, benzene, and gasoline. These are extremely ﬂammable, often resulting in ﬁres and explosions. Around 1900, scientists developed chlorinated hydrocarbons, which are nonﬂammable solvents. Initially, carbon tetra chloride was the preferred solvent, but because of its toxicity, it was eventually replaced by tetrachloroethylene, also known as perchloroethylene (PERC). PERC is a colorless, clear, heavy liquid used by 90 percent of dry cleaners in the United States. Because of its signiﬁcant adverse health effects, the government has imposed regulations for the control of PERC exposures and emissions. In addition to PERC, other compounds are used in dry cleaning, particularly during removal of stains. These include other chlorinated solvents, petroleum naptha, acetic acid, hydrogen peroxide, ammonia, and mineral spirits.

flammable any material that ignites easily and will burn rapidly solvent substance, usually liquid, that can dissolve other substances

emissions substances, often polluting, discharged into the atmosphere

PERC enters the human body through both inhalation and skin exposure. Symptoms associated with overexposure include central nervous system depression, damage to liver and kidneys, and irritation of the respiratory system and skin. Those exposed may experience confusion, impaired memory, dizziness, headache, drowsiness, and eye, nose, and throat irritation. Repeated skin exposure often results in dermatitis. PERC is a known animal carcinogen and a suspected human carcinogen. The other solvents used in dry cleaning may also cause central nervous system depression and irritation of the mucous membranes, nasal passages, and skin. The dry cleaning process begins when soiled garments are brought to dry cleaning stores. Garments with visible stains are treated at spotting

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stations. Spotting chemicals, contained in squeeze bottles, are applied to the stain. The next step in the process involves washing, extracting, and drying. Clothes are manually loaded into washing machines. Detergent and solvents are poured over the garments. Water is also added to the system to aid in the removal of water-soluble soils. The contents of the machine are agitated, allowing the solution to remove the soils. Next, the clothes are spun at high speed to extract solvents. After extraction, the fabric is spun dry. Warm air vaporizes the residual solvent and unheated air is passed through to reduce wrinkles. Fresh air is added to freshen and deodorize clothing. Garments are removed and placed on the pressing machine, where they are heated to temperatures around 150°C (300°F). filtration process for removing particulate matter from water by means of porous media such as sand or synthetic filter distillation the act of purifying liquids through boiling, so that the steam or gaseous vapors condense to a pure liquid; pollutants and contaminants may remain in a concentrated residue

There are many steps during the dry cleaning process in which PERC and other solvents have the potential to become airborne. Filtration and distillation are the main methods used to recover solvents. Distillation removes soluble oils and greases not recovered by ﬁltration. These processes convert PERC into a solid form that then renders it disposable as hazardous waste. The government regulates dry cleaning stores to levels of less than one hundred parts per million (ppm), but encourages them to operate at levels below twenty-ﬁve ppm. The main danger outside a dry cleaning store is to residences in the same building. Inexpensive technology, such as exhaust fans, can safely remove these potentially dangerous substances. Despite such measures, residents who live in buildings housing dry cleaning establishments, as well as workers, may be exposed to concentrations of PERC that are of public health concern. The potential continues to exist for environmental contamination of water and soil due to improper disposal of PERC. In Katonah, New York, well water was polluted because PERC was poured down the drain in dry cleaning establishments. Proper disposal and collection of this material as a hazardous substance should be performed in order to minimize the environmental impact. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Clean Air Act; Water Pollution. Bibliography Garetano, G., and Gochfeld, M. (2000). “Factors Inﬂuencing Tetrachloroethylene Concentrations in Residences above Dry Cleaning Establishments.” Archives of Environmental Health, 55(1):59–68. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, CDC, NIOSH. (1997). “Control of Health and Safety Hazards in Commercial Dry Cleaners.” In Chemical Exposures, Fire Hazards, and Ergonomic Risk Factors, No. 97-150. Internet Resource National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. “Drycleaning.” Available from http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/drycleaning/drycleaning.html.

Iris Udasin

E 146

Earth Day An estimated twenty million Americans took part in the ﬁrst Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Virtually every community from Maine to California hosted activities. Congress adjourned for the day. All the television networks gave it signiﬁcant coverage. In New York, hundreds of thousands of people jammed Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth Street all the way to Central Park to listen to politicians, scientists, and celebrities. In San Jose, California, college students held a funeral for the internal combustion engine, and buried a new car.

Earth Day

Earth Day arrived at the close of the 1960s—a time of cultural and political turmoil. At its core was a growing recognition that unconstrained growth could produce a legacy of poisoned streams, ﬁlthy air, urban blight, and vanishing wilderness. Earth Day tied these issues, and a wide array of other concerns, together under the environmental banner and greatly magniﬁed their clout and visibility. It is generally cited as marking the birth of the modern U.S. environmental movement.

An Earth flag is being held by a member of the crowd at the Capitol Building in Washington D.C., for Earth Day 1990. (© Todd A. Gipstein/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Initially, some activists worried that environmental concerns might undermine other causes, such as peace and civil rights. This did not happen. Indeed, with its successful reengagement of the politically alienated middle class, Earth Day arguably helped revitalize a civil society that was becoming a bit frayed by violence at the end of the 1960s. The roots of Earth Day can be traced to a speech given by Democratic Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson at the University of Washington in September of 1969. Decrying a large oil spill in Santa Barbara as emblematic of environmental problems, he called for a teach-in on the environment at colleges across the country, modeled on the earlier anti–Vietnam War teach-ins. Senator Nelson repeated variations of this speech over the next few months to enthusiastic audiences. Based on that response, he created a nonproﬁt organization to organize the campaign. He invited Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey to cochair the board, and asked Denis Hayes, a politically active recent graduate of Stanford University, to serve as National Coordinator.

teach-in educational forum springing from a protest movement (derived from sit-in protests)

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counterculture collection of people whose political and social ideas stand in opposition to the mainstream culture

Hayes quickly rented some ramshackle ofﬁces and assembled the core national staff. Eventually, the Washington, D.C.–based staff grew to about sixty, supplemented by a few hundred, mostly youthful volunteers. Some had been active in politics as supporters of Gene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, or John Lindsay. Others were drawn from the counterculture, and were interested in recycling, organic food, solar power, and alternatives to the automobile. Under the pressure of an April 22 deadline, this diverse group put their differences aside and forged a very effective team. In early 1970 this small group of young people, most in their early twenties, made a series of decisions that were to shape and propel the environmental movement through the next few decades. The name “Earth Day” was chosen by Hayes and his staff over beer and pizza one night for use in a full-page ad in the Sunday New York Times. Julian Koenig, the New York advertising executive who designed the ad for free, proposed Earth Day (his favorite) along with numerous other candidate names (Environment Day, Ecology Day, E Day) in other mockups of the ad. The ad, headlined “Earth Day: The Beginning,” elicited enormous attention in the media. Having watched other social movements of the 1960s grow exclusionary with the passage of time, Earth Day’s organizers explicitly set out to engage the huge middle class that they saw as the fulcrum of American politics. They reached out to labor (organized labor was the largest source of ﬁnancial support for Earth Day); K–12 education groups (NEA, AFT, and NSTA); civic and religious groups; and national associations of zoos, museums, and libraries. They took special care to cultivate strong relationships with women’s groups such as the League of Women Voters, the American Association of University Women, PTAs, garden clubs, and the scouts. All were approached and urged to mobilize their huge networks of members across the country. As the New York Times described the resulting campaign: “Conservatives were for it. Liberals were for it. Democrats, Republicans and independents were for it. So were the ins, the outs, the Executive and Legislative branches of government.”

grassroots individual people and small groups, in contrast to government defoliation loss of vegetation mutagenic capable of causing permanent, abnormal genetic change supersonic faster than the speed of sound

As the Earth Day campaign grew, an enormous range of issues emerged from the grassroots. These included health-damaging levels of air pollution, the misuse of pesticides (raised earlier by Rachel Carson in her landmark book, Silent Spring), freeways cutting through vibrant urban neighborhoods, defoliation resulting from the use of mutagenic herbicides in Vietnam, the explosive growth of the human population, the ﬂushing of raw sewage and industrial wastes into the nation’s rivers and the Great Lakes, massive clear cutting of the national forests, the environmental impacts of a proposed new supersonic airliner (the SST), and others. To tie all these complex issues together, Earth Day’s organizers urged that the lessons of ecology—the study of the interrelationship of all creatures with their environment—be employed to create sustainable human environments. Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from republicans and democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. The size and coverage of Earth Day led President Richard Nixon (who was no fan of the environmental movement, but who

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expected Senator Ed Muskie, an environmental leader, to be his opponent in the 1972 election) to propose the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The tough Clean Air Act of 1970 was passed with only a handful of dissenting votes in both houses of Congress. Seven of a “Dirty Dozen” congressmen—so designated by the Earth Day organizers—were defeated in the 1970 elections. The military was forced to halt the use of mutagenic defoliants in Southeast Asia. Development of the SST was halted. The Federal Occupational Health and Safety Act aimed at “in-plant pollution” was passed by a coalition of labor and environmental groups. Within the next few years, such landmarks as the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act were passed by wide margins. Seldom, if ever, has a new issue so broadly and swiftly permeated the nation. Within a couple of years, the environment was inﬂuencing almost every aspect of American business, politics, law, education, culture, and lifestyle. As 1990 approached, and again before 2000, environmental leaders asked Denis Hayes to organize anniversary campaigns. In 1990 Earth Day turned its attention overseas, ultimately catalyzing events in 141 countries. Earth Day 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro—the largest gathering of heads of state in history. An estimated 200 million participants in 184 nations took part in Earth Day 2000, which included the ﬁrst national environmental campaign in the history of China. Earth Day 2000 focused on global warming and low-carbon energy alternatives. It helped create worldwide political support to implement the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in 2001 over the strong opposition of the ﬁrst Bush administration. Earth Day has evolved into the ﬁrst global secular holiday. Much as Americans use the occasion of Labor Day, Veterans Day, Martin Luther King Day, and other holidays to reﬂect on important issues, people everywhere now take time each April 22 to reﬂect on the health of the planet, and to ask what they can do in their jobs and their lives to improve it. A coordinating body, the Earth Day Network, promotes and coordinates activities among thousands of participating organizations from every corner of the planet. S E E A L S O Activism; Hayes, Denis; Nelson, Gaylord. Bibliography Hayes, Denis. (2000). The Ofﬁcial Guide to Planet Repair. Washington, DC: Island Press. Mowrey, Marc, and Redmond, Tim. (1993). Not in Our Backyard: The People and Events That Shaped America’s Modern Environmental Movement. New York: William Morrow & Co. Internet Resource The Earth Day Network Web site. Available from http://www.earthday.net.

Denis Hayes

Earth First! Earth First! (EF!) is a network of environmental activists, living mostly in the United States, committed to preserving wilderness and biological abun-

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dance. It was founded in 1980 by Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle, and a number of other environmentalists who were disillusioned with so-called mainstream environmentalism. Foreman and the others previously worked with Washington, D.C.–based environmental groups. According to EF! founders, however, these organizations were always willing to compromise their ultimate goals to be active players in the policy process. The founders of EF! sought to provide principles and a loose organizational structure for people who were no longer willing to compromise in their efforts to protect nature. The group’s motto is “No Compromise in the Defense of Mother Earth!” Earth First Journal logo. (Courtesy of Earth First Journal. Reproduced by permission.)

EF! is unique within the environmental movement for its philosophical orientation, political strategies, and organizational structure. EF! expounds the principles of deep ecology. At the heart of this view is the belief that all living things have intrinsic value, and thus one should protect the environment for the well-being of all creatures, not simply human beings. Put differently, deep ecology espouses a biocentric (life-centered) rather than an anthropocentric (human-centered) orientation. A deﬁning feature of EF! since its inception has been the commitment of many of its members to direct action and civil disobedience as ways to halt and call attention to environmentally harmful practices. Earth First! activists have occupied trees, blockaded roads, sabotaged bulldozers, and pulled up survey stakes to halt logging and mining in forests. Additionally, they have chained themselves to earthmoving equipment, cut down billboards, and otherwise harassed developers in attempts to stop speciﬁc instances of environmental destruction. These actions, often called “eco-tage” or “monkeywrenching,” aim to disrupt forces of environmental harm in an immediate and dramatic manner. In its largest circulating publication, Earth First! The Radical Environmental Journal, Earth First! activists continually debate the merits of direct action with those who argue for symbolic forms of protest. This debate became extremely heated in the early 1990s when the popular Earth First! tactic of tree-spiking—driving nails into trees to damage logging equipment—came under ﬁre after a saw operator was badly injured by a spike. Many renounced tree-spiking as a tactic, although monkeywrenching remains a signature tactic of EF! In addition to these more militant actions, Earth First! activists undertake ecological studies, debate environmental principles, sue corporations and agencies, and work to educate the public about threats to biological diversity and other environmental problems. EF! describes itself as a movement rather than an organization. It shuns the corporate organizational structure of mainstream environmental groups, and thus has no hierarchical pattern of leadership. Rather, EF! consists of autonomous but cooperating elements through which people share information and coordinate action on various campaigns and projects. These campaigns include efforts to stop mining, grazing, and logging on public lands, and to end the discharge of pollution into coastal wild lands. EF!’s achievements are matters of debate. Their direct actions have certainly raised business costs for developers, loggers, miners, and ranchers; its banner has enabled previously detached environmentalists to ﬁnd comrades and likeminded supporters; its philosophical orientation has motivated many to become more radical in their commitment to environmental protection; and its mere existence has allowed more mainstream groups to appear more reasonable to legislators. At the same time, EF! has alienated some of the

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more mainstream environmental groups, and has inspired backlash from antienvironmental forces. S E E A L S O Activism. Bibliography Manes, Christopher. (1990). Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization. Boston: Little Brown and Company. Davis, John, ed. (1991). The Earth First! Reader: Ten Years of Radical Environmentalism. Salt Lake City, UT: Peregrine Smith Books. Wall, Derek. (1999). Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement. New York: Routledge. Internet Resource Earth First! The Radical Environmental Journal. Available from http://www .earthﬁrstjournal.org.

Paul Wapner

Earth Summit On June 3 and 4, 1992, the Earth Summit (formally the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development or UNCED) met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as a twenty-year follow-up to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE, held in Stockholm). The goal of the 120 heads of state, over ten thousand government delegates, and hundreds of ofﬁcials from UN organizations was to refocus global attention on the planet’s degradation. It was the largest gathering of heads of state in history. Although the post-Stockholm years were marked in many industrialized countries by the incorporation of environmental protection in their policymaking processes, change in economically less developed countries was much slower. There, although, environmental protection objectives were understood as inseparable from economic development, they were often subordinated to it. In this context, with the winding down of the Cold War and such high-proﬁle environmental problems as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, industrialized countries—led by Norway and Canada—and various think tanks and UN-sponsored studies called for a redirection of attention to global environmental issues. Most notably, the World Commission on Environment and Development’s report entitled Our Common Future contended that it was “futile to attempt to deal with environmental problems without a broader perspective that encompasses the factors underlying world poverty and international inequality.” Called the Bruntland Commission, after its chair Gro Harlem Bruntland, the commission’s speciﬁc recommendations, presented to the UN General Assembly in 1987, included a call for a convention on environmental protection and sustainable development. To help achieve this goal, in December 1989 the General Assembly formally agreed to convene another global conference, which came to be known as the Earth Summit. Even before the General Assembly met, the Canadian government proposed that Maurice Strong serve in the same capacity in 1992 as he had in 1972, as secretary-general of the conference; he was appointed to this position in February 1990. Strong chose as chair of the conference’s preparatory committee (PrepCom) Tommy Koh, of Singapore, known for his masterful chairing of the Third Law of the Sea conference where he brokered North–South, East–West and land-locked coastal state differences.

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Much of the preliminary work for the conference was conducted by PrepCom, which held four substantive sessions from August 1990 to April 1992. At the Earth Summit, conferees agreed on a comprehensive global blueprint for sustainable development called Agenda 21 and on two sets of general principles: the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and the Forest Principles. As well, two binding conventions that had been negotiated separately from Agenda 21 were signed: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Although such a listing of outcomes looks impressive, a number of related facts must be taken into account. All the key documents had been diluted in the process of achieving consensus. On central issues such as population, energy, forest production, and consumption, Agenda 21 was weakened to the point that it had little clout left. Also, the conventions on climate change and biodiversity were little more than frameworks, leaving the tough, substantive issues to the future. And former U.S. President George Bush refused to the sign the Convention on Biodiversity because of compensation requirements for countries that provide plant and animal sources for biotechnology inventions. He stood virtually alone among the leaders of the industrialized world in refusing to accept a climate change convention with deﬁnite targets. The European Union had sought to limit carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. Perhaps even more signiﬁcant, and certainly of greater disappointment to delegates from developing countries, was the inability of UNCED to muster the ﬁnancial commitments necessary to support all of Agenda 21. While developing countries had hoped to obtain commitments for subsidized technology transfer, debt relief, and an increase in ofﬁcial development assistance, the agreement reached at Rio did not commit countries to any new ﬁnancial support. On the other hand, several industrialized countries pledged to provide some additional resources, and UNCED agreed to restructure the World Bank’s Global Environmental Facility (GEF) in ways that would make it somewhat more acceptable to economically less developed countries. For example, GEF decision-making procedures would be more transparent and local governments more involved in GEF project development and administration. In Rio, nongovernmental organization (NGO) activity took two forms. At the governmental conference, there were more than 1,400 NGOs accredited, including NGO observers within ﬁfteen national delegations. In addition, there was a separate global forum, which involved a series of technical, scientiﬁc, and policy meetings and an unprecedented exercise in parallel treaty writing conducted by an international network of NGOs called the International Forum of NGOs and Social Movements. Although forum participants did not receive a chance to present their treaties to the summit and their press conference was poorly attended, the forum provided an international platform for many organizations that are often ignored, short of resources, or actively suppressed in their home countries. Most important, it proved to be a signiﬁcant catalyst for post-Rio NGO activity. The focus of post-Rio follow-up attention has been the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). Its mandate includes, but is not limited to, the monitoring and implementation of Agenda 21. It also involves monitoring activities related to environmental and developmental goals throughout

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the UN system, receiving and analyzing information from governments and NGOs, enhancing dialogue with NGOs, and reviewing ﬁnancial and technology commitments and the implementation of environmental conventions. From the outset, however, the CSD appeared to lack some of the necessary ingredients to fulﬁll its wide-ranging mandate. For example, because of political disagreements, national reports to the commission were not required, even though such reports have proven valuable for other UN monitoring bodies. Thus, it is not surprising that a December 2001 report issued by UN Secretary-General Koﬁ Annan concluded that “progress towards the goals established at Rio has been slower than anticipated and in some respects conditions are worse than they were ten years ago.” As in the past, the UN hopes that a global ad hoc conference—in this instance the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development—would reenergize global efforts proved overly optimistic. S E E A L S O Treaties and Conferences. Bibliography Dodds, Felix, ed. (2001). Earth Summit 2002: A New Deal. London: Earthscan. Paarlberg, Robert L. (1999). “Lapsed Leadership: U.S. International Environmental Policy Since Rio.” In The Global Environment: Institutions, Law, and Policy, edited by Norman J. Vig and Regina S. Axelrod. Washington: CQ Press. Internet Resource “UN Conference on Environment and Development (1992).” Available from http://www.un.org/geninfo.

Michael G. Schechter

Economics Economics is a social science that is applied to the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services. Economists focus on the way in which individuals, groups, businesses, and governments seek to efﬁciently achieve economic objectives. General economics can be divided into two major ﬁelds: • Microeconomics, or price theory, explains how the interaction of supply and demand in competitive markets creates a variety of individual prices, proﬁt margins, wage rates, and rental changes. Microeconomics assumes that people behave rationally, and that consumers generally spend their income in ways that give them as much pleasure as possible. For their part, capitalists are viewed as seeking as much proﬁt as possible from their operations. • Macroeconomics deals with modern explanations of national income and employment. British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) explains macroeconomics as the total or aggregate demand for goods and services by consumers, business investors, and governments.

Economics of Pollution The study of the economics of pollution as it relates to the environment must begin with an understanding of the nature of the economic system. This starting point is essential to any analysis of pollution economics because the basic cause of environmental problems is a speciﬁc type of market (economic) system failure.

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Four Market System Goals All economic systems that are formulated by various economists consider four central objectives: efﬁciency, equity, stability, and growth. Efﬁciency and equity concern the processes of production and consumption (and are concepts that fall under microeconomics). Stability and growth apply to the overall performance of an economy (and are concepts that fall under macroeconomics). When analyzed economically with regard to pollution (or any other subject), these four goals must be considered as interrelated.

Efficiency. The concept of efﬁciency is deﬁned as the maximum consumption of goods and services given the available amount of resources. Perfect efﬁciency occurs when the market resolves all production and consumption decisions so that the market allocation of resources is such that all goods are being produced at the lowest possible cost. No government intervention is necessary in this scenario. In the complex U.S. economic system, perfect allocation efﬁciency is impossible. One of the critical conditions for the analysis of pollution economics is that all costs and beneﬁts be registered (or known) in the marketplace. With regard to pollution, environmental damage has resulted when all costs have not been recorded in the marketplace, either because they were ignored or, more recently, due to the fact that these costs cannot be properly deﬁned. For example, the price of a gasoline-powered vehicle does not include the indirect costs that result from its production and use, such as air pollution and resultant health care. When such environmental damage is deﬁned, then the government must intervene by regulating pollution, funding sewage treatment plants, and other such unmeasured production costs.

Equity. The concept of equity refers to the just (or equitable) distribution of total goods and services among all consumers. People own resources (such as their expertise and talents, along with property and land) that can be used in the production process. The more resources an individual owns, the more income that individual usually generates. This equitable distribution of income does not always hold in the real world. Economists, so far, have not developed a good theory of “equitable income distribution.” As a result, equity considerations are generated on a need-by-need basis, usually by government actions such as minimum wage laws, social security beneﬁts, and unemployment insurance. The correction of existing pollution problems involves equity issues. What is fair to all those involved? The value of human and physical resources will be affected by changes in environmental regulations. For example, if a coal mine is forced to close because of environmental abuses, its workers will suffer. However, other local employees who work at the hydroelectric power plant will beneﬁt directly with better wages and indirectly with cleaner air, water, and land. The coal mine workers will not consider this new arrangement very “equitable” in the redistribution of income, nor will the ﬁshing business sector when ﬁsh cannot travel up the river past the dams to reproduce.

Stability. The concept of stability is deﬁned as a system’s ability to maintain a balance. A real-life economic system, such as in the United States, tends to be unstable. Adjustments in monetary and ﬁscal policies at the federal, state, and local levels are constantly being made. These policies are essential in order to strive for full employment and price stability.

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Improvements in pollution control and prevention have far-reaching implications in economic stability. Large capital expenditures may be required for companies to install new pollution abatement equipment as ordered by the government. This action forces new capital and operating costs on such ﬁrms and—if large enough—can subject the macroeconomic system to instabilities.

Growth. The concept of growth refers to a system’s ability to increase in size or intensity. The ability to regularly achieve economic growth must be present in economic systems. Standards of living will increase as long as the rate of output growth exceeds the rate of population growth. Again, a government acts within an economic system to provide ways (such as tax laws to promote the creation of capital goods) to provide stability. Growth is the one goal that has been viewed critically by environmentalists. The more growth an economy generates, the more pollution it also generates. In theory, the more restraint that the government places on industry with respect to pollution controls, the more likely it is that those companies will decrease their growth rate. Society is then faced with a choice: more goods or less pollution. In fact, the U.S. economy demonstrated robust growth over the past several decades, despite an array of environmental laws and regulations that have cut pollution signiﬁcantly.

Marginalism One of the basic economic approaches is marginalism. This approach seeks a level of operation of some activity that will maximize the net gain from that activity (which is the difference between its beneﬁts and costs). During any activity, the beneﬁts and costs increase, but because of diminishing returns, costs will generally rise faster than beneﬁts. At its maximum level, marginal costs (the cost of increasing the activity) equal marginal beneﬁt (the beneﬁt of increasing the activity) so the activity is said to be optimized, or maximized. In other words, further expansions will cost more than it is worth, and further reductions will reduce beneﬁts more than it will save costs.

Pollution. Marginalism is easy to apply to pollution in the theoretical sense. Unfortunately, it becomes difﬁcult to apply in the real world because of the inability to accurately estimate the cost and beneﬁt functions of pollution. Realistically, pollution is not a question of “having” versus “not having,” but rather what level is optimal. This is where marginalism can prove useful, when used accurately and when taking into account all facets of the problem. Even in this context, reducing the level of pollution will affect other areas. For example, manufacturing car tires that last about 64,000 kilometers (roughly 40,000 miles) at a cost of $200 might contribute 3 percent to the smog in Detroit, Michigan, whereas manufacturing tires that survive approximately 96,000 kilometers (60,000 miles) at a cost of $300 might add 9 percent to Detroit’s smog. Even though the consumer is able to buy tires that last 20,000 miles (or 50 percent) longer and only cost $100 more (representing an increase of 50 percent) than standard tires, it is not as good a deal for the smog count, which triples from 3 to 9 percent.

Self-regulating Economic System Another concept that affects pollution is the self-regulating economic system. Under ideal conditions all the information necessary for making the best

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Phase 2

More

Phase 1

Pollution

Phase 3

Less

Early

Late Time

decisions is known. If a manufacturer made a product with thorough knowledge of all costs of production, including environmental costs, then ideal decisions could be made. But, of course, this is not possible. The efﬁciency of the competitive market depends on private costs (such as direct manufacturing expenses) and social costs (such as resulting pollution) being the same. When they are not equal, and when some of the costs are not known (i.e., some costs of pollution), the competitive market is not able to run at its maximum social efﬁciency. Thus, the failure to factor in all costs and beneﬁts in the market can lead to pollution and environmental deterioration. Such inefﬁciencies of the market have produced pollution in many forms, including greenhouse gases and radioactive wastes.

U-shaped hypothesis. A widely held view by environmental economists is that economic growth does inevitably lead to the increasing pollution of air, water, and land. However, a diversion of resources to pollution control and general environmental objectives will eventually follow. That is, as prosperity increases (based on rising gross domestic product per capita), a more closely watched environmental program slowly replaces the former lack of concern with the environment. Evidence of this inverted U-shaped graph is already clear in many developed countries, such as the United States and England. See the graph for an an illustration of the hypothesis. In phase one a country begins to develop, and growth (increasing at a rapid pace) exceeds pollution. Greenhouse gases, radioactive wastes, and pollution in small bodies of water start to increase. In phase two a country begins to mature, and pollution equals growth (although growth continues to increase). Pollution and wastes have accumulated and pollution becomes noticeable in larger bodies of water, such as oceans and seas. In phase three a country recognizes its pollution problems, and pollution is allowed to

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Inverted U-shaped hypothesis.

SETTING THE OPTIMAL CARBON TAX LEVEL

$ Marginal Cost of Abatement Marginal Damage Costs of Pollution

Optimal Tax

0

A

Q*

B

Quantity of Pollution Emitted

At A marginal cost of abatement exceeds paying the fee so pay fee and pollute. At B the fee is more than the marginal cost so abate and don't pollute. SOURCE:

Graph developed by Professor Elizabeth Bogan at the Princeton Department of Economics.

decrease along with increasing growth. Measures to counteract pollution are instituted, such as sanitation, treatment, regulations, and zoning.

Measuring Pollution Determining pollution problems and costs in the United States (or any country) may appear relatively simple. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. In reality, there is generally a lack of accurate and comprehensive information on the condition of the environment in industrialized countries (and even more so in developing countries). In general, a lack of sufﬁcient understanding by scientists of environmental phenomena and the elements in which to measure them still does not allow a comprehensive deﬁnition and evaluation of critical data. For example, it is easy to estimate the cost to ﬁshers who have a reduced catch based on industrial pollution in the waters. But there are other, less straightforward costs to be considered, such as the loss of recreational opportunities on those waters and the loss of consumers in the consumption of those ﬁsh. In addition, it is difﬁcult to know whether all the pollution came from industry, or whether other sources such as agricultural

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E N E R G Y US E P ER DOLLA R OF GROS S DOMES TI C P RODUCT 1 9 7 0 – 2 00 0

1.2

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0 1970

1980

1990

2000

While the U.S. Gross Domestic Product increased from $1 trillion in 1970 to $10.3 trillion in 2000, the energy intensity of the U.S. economy decreased by 40%. Before 1970, energy use had increased hand in hand with growth in the economy. SOURCE:

Annual Energy Review 2000; DOE Energy Information Administration.

runoff were just as guilty. On the positive side, sufﬁcient data are available that can be used to evaluate the major sources of pollution.

Pricing Pollution One way to measure pollution is to place a price on it. Under such a system, anyone could emit pollution as long as one paid a set price for it. In this way, an approximate marginal social cost of pollution is established and decisions can be made based on that knowledge. Pricing pollution can simplify the process of dealing with pollution, and in the long run, provide a comprehensive and efﬁcient way of handing the problem. Any effort to restore and maintain the integrity of the environment imposes a burden on society with respect to additional costs. The magnitude and complexity of those costs are of great importance. To understand these costs and the beneﬁts that a better environment can provide to society, economists study and analyze pollution through the methods of environmental economics. By doing this, society, in general, is forced to question the relationship between the institutions of society and the environment. In no certain terms is that relationship an easy one to study; it also makes a ﬁnal determination of short-term—and even more difﬁcult—long-term solutions hard to ascertain. How can society best establish a high quality of life? The answer might be to enjoy pure mountain streams, breathe in clean air, and hike in pristine forests; the answer, however, might also be to enjoy good food and drink, comfortable housing, and convenient transportation systems. Environmental economics helps to determine the combination that individuals or groups

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believe is most desirable. S E E A L S O Cost-benefit Analysis; Energy Efficiency; Enforcement; Ethics; Lifestyle; NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement); Poverty; Waste, International Trade in. Bibliography Burrows, Paul. (1980). The Economic Theory of Pollution Control. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Gilpin, Alan. (2000). Environmental Economics: A Critical Overview. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. Pearson, Charles S. (2000). Economics and the Global Environment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Seneca, Joseph J., and Taussig, Michael K. (1984). Environmental Economics, 3rd edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Siebert, Horst. (1987). Economics of the Environment: Theory and Policy, 2nd edition. New York: Springer-Verlag. Silverstein, Michael. (1993). The Environmental Economic Revolution: How Business Will Thrive and the Earth Survive in Years to Come. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Tietenberg, Tom. (1988). Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, 2nd edition. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company. Internet Resource Global Network of Environmental Economists Web site. Available from http:// www.feem.it/gnee.

William Arthur Atkins

Ecoterrorism Ecoterrorism refers to the use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property for environmental-political reasons. Often of a symbolic nature, acts of ecoterrorism are usually committed by individuals who believe that the exploitation of natural resources and despoliation of the environment are becoming so severe that action outside of conventional legal and environmental channels is required.

despoliation deprivation of possessions by force

Using disruptive actions to call attention to an issue is hardly an invention of modern times, and radical environmentalists have taken their cue from the larger arena of sabotage and extreme civil disobedience. Modern radical environmentalists saw themselves inheriting the 1960s mantle of the Weather Underground and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in using “direct actions” to put pressure on corporations, universities, and government agencies to adopt environmentally friendly policies. Although vandalism and property destruction are clearly illegal, the issue of whether it is morally defensible to use such tactics is complicated. A 2001 Gallup Poll shows that a majority of Americans favor strong environmental protections over unfettered economic growth, and a 2002 League of Conservation voters poll showed that 81 percent of voters support either stronger environmental regulations or stricter enforcement of existing environmental laws. This public opinion may contribute to a romantic view of ecoterrorists, with their actions seen as part of a Robin Hood–like struggle—the weak ﬁghting back against the strong. Such a view has been evidenced in popular culture for the last few decades, for example, in Edward Albee’s 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang. Others, usually corporations, trade associations, and property owners, see ecoterrorists as criminals, on par with revolutionaries and anarchists.

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Key Players Ecoterrorism occurred as early as 1977, when disaffected members of Greenpeace formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and began a campaign of cutting ﬁshing vessels’ drift nets. However, the group of radical environmentalists best known for extreme tactics as a key part of their strategy is Earth First!, formed in the early 1980s. The American branch of Earth First! gained notoriety for its tactic of tree-spiking, whereby a large metal spike was driven into the trunk of a tree destined for logging. When loggers’ saws hit such a spike, they would be damaged beyond repair, forcing the workers to stop, slowing the rate of logging, and costing the timber companies time and money. Although Earth First! insisted that it meant no harm to the loggers, several workers were injured with spikes, and some of the popular support for Earth First! waned as a result. Eventually, the group was forced to abandon its tactic of tree-spiking. When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, environmental groups anticipated an administration sympathetic to their concerns, and their rhetoric lost some of its stridency. In reaction to this seeming weakening of resolve, a more radical offshoot of Earth First! renamed itself the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). ELF sees its actions as a matter of self-defense: protecting the earth from the greedy individuals and corporations that it views as destroying the environment’s ability to sustain life. Since the ELF sees the perpetrators as committing violence against the environment, it feels justiﬁed in using violence in the form of economic sabotage, in order to “remove the proﬁt motive” from environmental destruction. Law enforcement and some lawmakers, however, view ELF (and its sister organization, the Animal Liberation Front or ALF) as nothing more than garden-variety terrorists.

Effectiveness of Ecoterrorism and Law Enforcement Response By ﬁnancial standards, ecoterrorists have been very effective. ELF’s campaign of property destruction has cost some $43 million since 1996, including the 1998 ﬁrebombing of the Vail, Colorado, ski resort that resulted in $12 million in damage. It has also generated considerable media attention in order to air its grievances. However, ELF has been less successful at stopping or slowing the development it seeks to prevent. In fact, those who have had property destroyed often feel a renewed resolve to continue with their projects so as “not to give in to terrorists.” Of the sixteen major actions taken by the ELF in 2001, none have resulted in the permanent closure of a business or facility. The Vail ski resort, in fact, was rebuilt on a larger scale. Very few ELF activists have been caught so far, due in large part to the anonymous and decentralized structure of ELF. Each cell operates individually and anonymously, and only notiﬁes the ELF press ofﬁce after an action has occurred. This strategy has frustrated the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, who have referred to the ELF as the nation’s number one domestic terrorist threat. Although ELF claims that one of its primary rules of engagement is to cause no harm to any human or animal, the FBI Counterterrorism Division has argued that the frequency and intensity of its actions are increasing, and it is only a matter of time before someone is killed. The FBI may have some fears on that ground: ELF, along with a British group called Stop

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Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), has openly espoused more violent actions and stated that they may no longer hold the line against harming humans. In addition, congressional hearings chaired by Rep. Scott MacInnes of Colorado on February 12, 2002, called on mainstream environmental organizations to disavow ecoterror groups like ELF.

Arson damage at a ski resort in Vail, Colorado. (© Affleck Jack/Corbis Sygma. Reproduced by permission.

The FBI has also formed joint terrorism task forces with local police around the country to investigate ELF actions. However, although COINTELPRO, the ofﬁcial FBI domestic counterintelligence program, was mothballed in 1971, some environmental groups feel that they have been harassed by FBI investigations of their legal activities, such as demonstrations and protests. Furthermore, they assert that the FBI has intentionally bungled its investigations of violence against environmentalists, such as the 1990 Oakland car bombing of former Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney. In June 2002, a federal jury agreed, awarding $4.4 million to Cherney and the estate of Bari, who died of cancer in 1997. Whether the new Department of Homeland Security will inherit the COINTELPRO mantle remains to be seen. A new nonproﬁt group, Stop Eco-Violence, formed in Portland, Oregon, to demonstrate the harm of ecoterrorism to communities where it occurs. Stop Eco-Violence hopes to expose the terrorists and their funders, and assist law enforcement agencies by serving as a public clearinghouse to track ecoterrorism cases.

Conclusion The ultimate morality of ecoterrorism remains uncertain, mirroring the larger debate of whether the use of violence is justiﬁed for a good cause. Most

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mainstream environmental groups decry sabotage tactics in favor of public education, and law enforcement agencies will continue to prosecute those responsible for acts of ecoterrorism. However, there are those who believe that without such tactics, economic pressures will destroy the environment and all its resources. S E E A L S O Activism; Terrorism. Bibliography Abbey, Edward. (1975). The Monkey Wrench Gang. New York: HarperCollins. North American Animal Liberation. (2001). 2001 Year-End Direct Action Report. Courtenay, BC: North American Animal Liberation Front Press Ofﬁce. Pittman, Alan. (2001). “Ecotage: Sabotage to Save the Earth Generates Backlash.” Eugene Weekly 20(10), March 8, 2001. Richman, Josh. (2002). “Bombshell Verdict: Earth First Activists Win $4.4 million from Cops.” Oakland Tribune, June 12, 2002, pp. 1, 9. Zakin, Susan. (1993). Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement. New York: Viking. Internet Resources Barcott, Bruce. (2002). “From Tree-Hugger to Terrorist.” New York Times Magazine, April 7, 2002. Available from http://www.nytimes.com/2002. Chadwick, Benjamin. (2000). “Jamming the Gears: Are These Front-Line Fighters Eco-Heroes or Eco-Terrorists?” E Magazine, 11(5). Available from http:// www.emagazine.com/september-october_2000/0900curr_jamming.html. Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2002). “Congressional Statement of James F. Jarboe, Domestic Terrorism Section Chief, Counterterrorism Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation on the Threat of Eco-Terrorism before the House Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health.” Available from http://www.fbi.gov/congress. Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2002). “History of the FBI.” Available from http://www.fbi.gov/libref. Gallup Poll. “The Polling Report, March 5–7, 2001.” Available from http:// www.pollingreport.com/enviro.htm. North American Earth Liberation. (2001). Frequently Asked Questions about the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Portland, OR: North American Earth Liberation Front Press Ofﬁce. Available from http://www.earthliberationfront.com. Southern Poverty Law Center Web site. “From Push to Shove.” Available from http:// www.splcenter.org/intelligenceproject/ip-index.html.

Elizabeth L. Chalecki

Education Environmental regulatory organizations such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have historically dealt with pollution problems through control or remediation, as opposed to the pollution prevention (commonly called “P2”) approach. However, treating pollution at its source can minimize, and sometimes eliminate, pollution. Environmental education is one effective, proactive strategy to implement P2.

An Educated Public One goal of environmental education is to educate the public so that it is better informed to handle the issues and problems regarding pollution, whether it comes from industry, agriculture, or from the home. Educational programs, classes, pamphlets, and other informational products provide the public with the necessary skills to make informed decisions and take responsible action.

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For instance, activities at the community level are often successful with such grassroots projects as school environmental curricula, hazardous waste collection days, and stream and river cleanups. However, environmental education programs are often at the mercy of public funding such as at the federal and state levels and of private donations and contributions.

Reasons to Learn An important purpose of environmental education is to teach understanding about pollution in order to best protect the environment. Thus, groups involved with environmental education often teach individuals and groups pertinent information about subjects, such as biology, geology, meteorology, and hydrology, in order to better analyze the various sides of an issue through critical thinking. For example, members of the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) use a wide variety of materials and methods in order to investigate the environment within the context of economics, politics, popular culture, and social equity (just to name a few) as well as natural systems and processes in order to better educate the public. Although the EPA is speciﬁcally constrained from creating environmental education curriculum, its leadership ﬁrmly believes that environmental education can help to: • Protect human health • Promote sustainable development (environmental protection and pollution prevention in conjunction with economic development) • Create interest in a wide variety of jobs in various environmental ﬁelds • Enhance learning in all areas of education • Reinforce the desire to protect natural resources for future generations

Outreach Efforts As a response to the growing pollution problem in the United States and other countries, outreach programs have been set up by various government agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to promote the awareness and prevention of pollution. This educational strategy is effective at reducing (and even eliminating) pollution so that it requires less regulation, monitoring, and cleaning up. The EPA has organized cooperative programs with the Peace Corps, the North American Association for Environmental Education, the Institute for Sustainable Communities, and other organizations to provide training, technical help, and information distribution to aid the international development of environmental education programs. These programs have been successfully used in Eastern and Central Europe, and in South and Central America. On a smaller scale, JT&A, Inc., distributes EnviroScape™, threedimensional landscapes that illustrate residential, agricultural, industrial, recreational, and transportation areas. All landscapes contain possible sources of water pollution, so that children learn by interacting with drink mix (which simulates chemicals) and cocoa (which simulates loose soil) just how

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their actions affect the quality of water. Hands-on demonstrations allow complex problems to be simpliﬁed. Besides being used in elementary schools, the demonstrations are also used by universities, soil and water conservation districts, municipal governments, utility companies, environmental consultants, and environmental groups.

National Pollution Prevention Roundtable The National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR) is one of the largest NGOs in the United States devoted exclusively to P2. It provides a national forum for the dissemination of P2 information with regards to policy developments, practices, and resources in order to diminish or eradicate pollution at the source. The NPPR provides its P2 members—federal agencies, state and local government programs, regional resource centers, small businesses, nonproﬁt organizations, and industry associations—with up-to-date and accurate P2 information. An important aspect of the NPPR is its National Pollution Prevention Week, commonly called “P2 Week,” which is held nationally in the third week of September. When the public is educated about pollution, businesses become more competitive, businesses and governments realize cost savings, individuals play a more informed role, and, in the end, environmental quality of life is enhanced by a reduction of pollution. Bibliography Heimlich, Joe E., ed. (2002). Environmental Education: A Resource Handbook. Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation. Other Resources JT&A, Inc. “Welcome to EnviroScapes.” Chantilly, VA. Available from http:// enviroscapes.com. National Pollution Prevention Roundtable. “Home Page of the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable.” Available from http://www.p2.org. Ofﬁce of the Federal Environmental Executive. (2002). “Federal Government Celebrates National Pollution Prevention Week.” Available from http://www.ofee.gov/ whats/fgcnpp.htm. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ofﬁce of Communications, Education, and Media Relations. (1999). “Environmental Education Improves Our Everyday Lives.” (EPA-171-F-98-015). Available from http://www.epa.gov/enviroed/pdf/ 15envtraining.pdf. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Environmental Resources.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/epahome/educational.htm.

William Arthur Atkins

Ehrlich, Paul AMERICAN WRITER, PROFESSOR OF ENTOMOLOGY AND HUMAN ECOLOGY (1932–)

Malthusian hypothesis idea that populations always grow faster than their food supply, from Thomas Malthus

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In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb, which argued that human population growth was the root cause of society’s environmental problems. Written in just three weeks, the book was a modern redeﬁnition of the Malthusian hypothesis. Curiously, Ehrlich never mentioned Malthus in his book.

Electric Power

The Population Bomb became one of the best-selling environmental books of all time. Its main message was that continued population growth would place tremendous stress on natural resources and the environment. He predicted that, as a result, society would face war, famine, pestilence, and general calamity. Ehrlich asserted that only drastic governmental measures could curtail the impending disaster. He suggested a national Department of Population and Environment to police population growth and, in some instances, order mandatory sterilization. He expressed strong opposition to the antiabortion doctrines of the Catholic Church and the proﬁt motive and aggressive consumption of the free enterprise economic system. The Population Bomb made Ehrlich a celebrity. His views found support largely from the academic community. Many others, including the Catholic Church and the African-American community, vehemently opposed his ideas and his drastic solutions that seemingly sought to curtail free choice. Despite the controversy, The Population Bomb succeeded in focusing attention on the important problem of human population growth. For example, in 2002 the global population is estimated at 6.2 billion people and, given established rates of growth, is expected to double in about ﬁfty years. Most of this growth will be in the world’s poorest countries. Ehrlich continued his studies of human ecology and wrote more than ﬁve hundred articles and books on the subject. He sustained his concerns regarding overpopulation, although his preference for draconian solutions diminished with time. He has received numerous honorary university degrees and awards for his contributions to modern environmentalism. Ehrlich is a founder and Honorary President of Zero Population Growth, a nonproﬁt organization working to slow population growth and achieve a balance between Earth’s people and Earth’s resources. Since 1977, he has been Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University. S E E A L S O Malthus, Thomas Robert; Population; Zero Population Growth.

Paul Ehrlich. (Photograph by Gerardo Ceballos; courtesy of Paul R. Ehrlich. Reproduced by permission.)

Bibliography de Steiguer, Joseph E. (1997). The Age of Environmentalism. New York: McGraw-Hill. Ehrlich, Paul R. (1968; reprint 1997). The Population Bomb. Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books.

Joseph E. de Steiguer

Electric Power Power is deﬁned as the energy that is consumed or converted in a certain amount of time. In a simple electrical circuit, the power is found by multiplying the voltage and current. An electric current is the movement of charged particles measured in amperes and the voltage of the force driving them. Current that ﬂows in one direction only, such as the current in a battery-powered ﬂashlight, is called direct current. Current that ﬂows back and forth, reversing direction again and again, such as household current, is called alternating current. Household electricity bills are computed on the basis of how many thousand-watt hours (kWh) of energy are consumed over a certain period of time. Today’s home consumes, on average, between twelve hundred and two thousand kWh per month. Most of the world’s electric power is generated in steam plants. In a steam turbine generator, fossil fuel, such as coal, oil, natural or synthetic gas

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Two lines of horizontal axis wind turbines create energy on a wind farm in Altamont Pass, California. (Kevin Schafer/Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission.)

are the most common fuels used. Coal-based generation produces about 45 percent of all electricity generated in the United States, and natural or synthetic gas about 35 percent. The remaining, approximately 20 percent of generated electricity derives mostly from nuclear power plants, but includes wind, solar, biomass, diesel, geothermal, hydro, and other sources. In a power plant, electricity is generated when a loop of conducting wire rotates in a magnetic ﬁeld. Burning coal or gas produces hot steam that is forced through a turbine, causing it to spin. The spinning motion drives the generating coils within a magnetic ﬁeld to produce electricity. Modern electricity-generating plants usually have a series of turbines to more effectively utilize the steam heat. The hot water returning to the boiler is used to preheat the fuel, allowing more efﬁcient ﬁring. See the illustration for a diagram of how electricity is generated by burning coal. An electric power system consists of six main components: the electric power generating plant; a set of transformers at the plant to raise the generated electricity to the high voltages used on the transmission lines; the transmission lines; the substations at which the power is stepped down to the voltage that can be distributed to consumers; the distribution lines; and the transformers that lower the distributed voltage to the level needed by residential, industrial, and commercial users. New gas turbine generators (analogous to big jet engines) are now being built that burn natural or synthetic gas as it is injected directly into the turbine system. This reduces heat loss and increases the efﬁciency of the fossil fuel.

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Among the most modern systems are coal gasiﬁcation or biomass gasiﬁcation, which produce synthetic gases (syngas) by reﬁning coal or biomass in a high-heat, pressurized system (gassiﬁers). Syngas is a more efﬁcient fuel and contains less pollutant than either biomass or coal. Nitrogen and sulfur products are captured in the conversion process and become industrial and agricultural chemicals. At present, these systems remain expensive to build and much of the technology is still being improved. However, gasiﬁcation systems are becoming more competitive with coal- or gas-ﬁred steam plants as the costs of pollution abatement continue to rise.

biomass all of the living material in a given area; often refers to vegetation

As energy is converted to electricity, it ﬂows to a transmission station where transformers change a large current and low voltage into a small current and high voltage. The electricity ﬂows over high voltage transmission lines to a series of transmission stations where the voltage is stepped down by transformers to levels appropriate for distribution to customers. Coal has the lowest heat values (British thermal units (BTUs) or BTU per ton) of any of the common fuel sources in the world today. When it is burned to generate steam, the major pollutants are sulfur, nitrogen, very ﬁne ash, and mercury. The amounts of sulfur and nitrogen emitted when coal is burned depend on the kind of coal and where that coal is mined. In the United States, high-sulfur coal is mined in the Appalachian region, New York to Kentucky and the region south of the Great Lakes, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas. These are the bituminous coal types, with high BTU per ton. Low-sulfur coal is mined in the Midwest and the intermountain regions (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and the Dakotas). This coal is mostly bituminous and subbituminous. Subbituminous coal has a lower BTU per ton rating. The nitrogen content of coal varies signiﬁcantly and does not have the unique geographic distribution of sulfur. Finally, in the Dakotas, there is lignite, which is literally carbon-based earth. It has a very low BTU per ton rating, and is one of the most abundant coal types in the northern Great Plains.

British thermal unit (BTU) unit of heat energy equal to the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit at sea level

bituminous soft coal, versus the harder anthracite coal

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Incandescent

Mercury vapor

Fluorescent

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Efficacy (lumens per watt) The energy performance of lamps is expressed as efficacy which is a measure of light output, in lumens, per watt of electrical input (lumens per watt). The efficacy of a regular incandescent light bulb is only a fraction of the efficacy of a flourescent bulb.

Pollution from electric power generation depends on the type and source of fuel. The emissions, when not captured, produce oxides of nitrogen, commonly referred to as NOx, and sulfate aerosols from sulfur and oxygen, commonly referred to as SOx. Both pollutants are chemically unstable when emitted into the atmosphere and combine with oxygen and moisture to form the SOx and NOx particulates that are recognized as the pollutants. NOx is highly reactive with other pollutants found in urban and industrial areas and, with sunlight, forms smog. SOx is often attributed as the primary source of acid deposits across the landscape, particularly in the northeastern United States, which is downwind from power plants in the Midwest. Mercury is emitted as elemental mercury vapor. It settles only a short distance from the stacks of power plants. However, it very quickly changes to a methyl mercury form, and when it settles into water, streams, lakes, or cooling ponds, it is absorbed by plants and transferred up the food chain to ﬁsh and waterfowl eaten by humans. Although the total annual tonnage is small, science is showing that extremely small amounts of mercury can cause signiﬁcant harm to humans, particularly the unborn and very young children. Most ash from burning coal is collected at the bottom of the ﬁre box. However, very ﬁne ash can ﬂoat out of the smokestack. The particle size that concerns present-day regulators falls in the 10 micron and 2.5 micron range. A micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter. Airborne particulate this small may be contributing to increases in childhood asthma. Electric power generation is not the only source of such particulates in urban and suburban

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areas. Vehicle emissions from gasoline and diesel engines are also signiﬁcant contributors. The ash residual from burning coal is often suitable for the production of road surfaces, some forms of concrete, and lightweight blocks used to reduce erosion along rivers and streams. Once considered a pollutant or waste and dumped into open pit coal mines, coal ash is now becoming a valuable commodity.

Pollution Abatement Sulfur and nitrogen are captured by passing the hot gases from the combustion chamber through ﬁlters and water baths or by selective catalytic converters, thus removing them from the heat passed up the smokestack. The ﬁne ash from the burning process is also ﬁltered by a huge vacuum system with bags able to ﬁlter particles as ﬁne as face powder. The concern about emissions of mercury is leading to the design of new systems capable of capturing the mercury vapor before it is released from the smokestack. Environmental air quality standards are continually changing as new information about potential harm is published. It is a continual struggle between electric power generators and regulators to write and meet pollution standards that protect the environment and human health. Changes to a modern coal-based generator or even a natural gas generator cost thousands of dollars per megawatt of generating capacity. This means that every update, which must be designed onsite, as there are no standardized units, results in millions of dollars in additional costs. A steam generation system is designed to last at least ﬁfty years, with initial investments close to a billion dollars, but because continually shifting requirements for pollution reduction systems cannot be incorporated in its design at the time of construction, the costs of later upgrades are almost inevitably incurred. Electricity consumption has continued to rise approximately 2 to 5 percent per year as more and more electrical appliances are required to meet daily needs. Paying attention to the efﬁciency of each appliance, from computers to air conditioners, helps reduce the rate of increase. The higher the efﬁciency, the less total growth in individual consumer electricity use. More efﬁcient lights, such as compact ﬂuorescent bulbs, can effectively reduce the per capita use of electricity. Most electrical equipment manufacturers now provide comparisons of various appliances, machines, or other power equipment so informed consumers can make efﬁcient choices. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a program called Energy Star that rates the efﬁciency of various appliances, computers, and other equipment. Those manufacturers that are compliant with high-efﬁciency standards receive an Energy Star stamp of approval. Deregulation offers opportunities to independent power producers developing green electric power companies, for example, wind, biomass, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectricity generation, that wish to assure consumers their power source will not contribute to the increasing consumption of fossil fuels or emission of greenhouse gases. Such opportunities will, however, continue to come at a slightly increased price over the next decade before technologies to produce green power become more efﬁcient, more

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2002 ELECTRICITY NET GENERATION BY FUEL SOURCE

Coal, 1.9 billion Petroleum, 108 million Natural Gas, 595 million Other Gas and Waste Heat Plants, 15 million Nuclear Energy, 753 million Hydroelectric Pumped Storage, 5.5 million Conventional Hydroelectric Power, 274 million

Geothermal Energy, 14 million Wood, 39 million MSW and Landfill Gas, 21 million Other Waste, 3.3 million Wind Energy, 5 million Solar Energy, Electric Power Sector, 844,000 Renewable Energy, 358 million

generated power of this kind is widely available, and the costs of fossil fuels become more prohibitively expensive. From 1950 to 1999, the most recent year for which data are available, annual world electric power production and consumption rose from slightly less than 1,000 billion to 14,028 billion kWh. The most commonly used form of power generation also changed. In 1950 about 66 percent of electricity came from thermal (steam-generating) sources and approximately 33 percent from hydroelectric sources. In 1998 thermal sources produced 63 percent of the power, but hydropower had declined to 19 percent, and nuclear power accounted for 17 percent of the total. The growth in nuclear power slowed in some countries, notably the United States, in response to concerns about safety. Nuclear plants generated 20 percent of U.S. electricity in 1999; in France, the world leader, the ﬁgure was 76 percent. See the pie chart for 2002 information on the net generation of electricity by fuel source. S E E A L S O Abatement; Acid Rain; Air Pollution; Cleanup; Coal; Energy; Energy, Nuclear; Fossil Fuels; Petroleum; Renewable Energy. Gary R. Evans

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Electromagnetic Fields The potential health effects of human-made electromagnetic ﬁelds (EMFs) have been a topic of scientiﬁc interest since the late 1800s, particularly in the last twenty years. Electromagnetic ﬁelds are natural phenomena that have always been present on earth. However, during the twentieth century, environmental exposure to human-made EMFs increased steadily, predominantly due to increased electricity and wireless technology use. Nearly all people are exposed to a complex mix of different types of weak electric and magnetic ﬁelds, both at home and at work. EMFs can be broadly divided into two categories: extremely lowfrequency electric and magnetic ﬁelds (ELF EMFs), common sources of which include power lines, household electrical appliances, and computers; and high-frequency or radiofrequency electric and magnetic ﬁelds (RF EMFs), of which the main sources are telecommunications and broadcast facilities, and mobile telephones and their base stations.

BODY CURRENTS Electrical currents exist naturally in the human body and are an essential part of normal bodily functioning. Nerves relay signals by transmitting electric impulses. Most biochemical reactions, from those associated with digestion to those involved in brain activity, proceed by means of rearranging charged particles.

Electrical currents exist naturally in the human body and are an essential part of normal bodily functioning. Nerves relay signals by transmitting electric impulses, and most biochemical reactions, from those associated with digestion to those involved in brain activity, proceed by means of rearranging charged particles. ELF EMFs inﬂuence the human body just as they would any other substance consisting of conducting materials and charged particles. ELF EMFs may induce circulating currents within the human body. The strength of these induced currents depends on the intensity of the outside magnetic ﬁeld and the size of the loop through which the current ﬂows. When sufﬁciently large, these currents can cause neural and muscular stimulation (among other biological effects). However, at the EMF exposure levels normally found in the environment, the currents induced in the body by ELF EMFs are much weaker than those occurring in the body naturally.

neural related to nerve cells or the nervous system biological effects effects on living organisms

At RFs, the main biological effect of EMFs is heating, the same effect that microwave ovens utilize. The levels of RF EMFs to which people are normally exposed are far lower than those need to produce signiﬁcant heating.

Research Conclusions ELF EMFs. In 2001, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) evaluated studies to determine whether ELF EMFs could increase cancer risk. Using the standard classiﬁcation that weighs laboratory, human, and animal evidence, magnetic ﬁelds were classiﬁed as possibly carcinogenic (potentially cancer-causing) to humans based on epidemiological studies of childhood leukemia. Evidence for all other cancers, as well as for exposure to static and electric ﬁelds, was considered insufﬁcient. “Possibly carcinogenic to humans” is a classiﬁcation used to denote an agent for which there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans, and insufﬁcient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. This classiﬁcation is the weakest of three categories (“carcinogenic to humans,” “probably

carcinogen any substance that can cause or aggravate cancer epidemiology study of the incidence and spread of disease in a population

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PRECAUTIONARY APPROACH Strategy to reduce risk when information about potential risk is incomplete. For cell phones, one advisory panel, IEGMP, recently recommended the adoption of a precautionary approach: discouraging the use of mobile phones for nonessential children’s calls. They noted that if there are currently unrecognized health effects from the use of cell phones, children might be more vulnerable. Anyone concerned might limit exposure by reducing the length of calls or using “hands-free” devices to keep mobile phones away from the head and body.

carcinogenic to humans,” and “possibly carcinogenic to humans”). For reference, gasoline exhaust and coffee have also been classiﬁed as possible human carcinogens. Despite the classiﬁcation of ELF magnetic ﬁelds as possibly carcinogenic to humans, it remains possible that there are other explanations for the observed association between exposure to ELF magnetic ﬁelds and childhood leukemia. Research and evaluation of this issue are continuing.

RF EMFs. For higher-frequency ﬁelds, the balance of evidence to date suggests that exposure to RF EMFs, such as those emitted by mobile phones and their base stations, does not cause adverse health effects. Some scientists have reported minor effects of mobile phone use, including changes in brain activity, reaction times, and sleep patterns. These effects, however, are small and appear to lie within the normal bounds of human variation. Current debate and research are centered on whether long-term, lowlevel exposure (below thermal) can cause adverse health effects or inﬂuence people’s well-being. Several recent epidemiological studies of mobile phone users found no convincing evidence of increased brain cancer risk. However, the technology is too recent to rule out possible long-term effects. Mobile phone handsets and base stations present quite different exposure situations. RF exposure is far higher for mobile phone users than for those living near cellular base stations. However, apart from infrequent signals used to maintain links with nearby base stations, handsets transmit RF energy only while a call is being made, whereas base stations are continuously transmitting signals. Given the widespread use of technology, the degree of scientiﬁc uncertainty, and the levels of public apprehension, rigorous scientiﬁc studies are needed. S E E A L S O Cancer; Health, Human; Risk. Internet Resources ICNIRP. (1998). “International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection Guidelines for Limiting Exposure to Time-varying Electric, Magnetic and Electromagnetic Fields (up to 300 GHz).” Health Physics 74(4):494–522. Also available from http://www.ICNIRP.de. Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones (IEGMP). “Mobile Phones and Health.” National Radiological Protection Board (UK). Available from http:// www.iegmp.org.uk/IEGMPtxt.htm. Portier, C.J., and Wolfe, M.S., eds. (1998). “Assessment of Health Effects from Exposure to Power-line Frequency Electric and Magnetic Fields.” NIEHS (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) Working Group Report, Research Triangle Park, NC. NIH Publication No. 98–3981. Also available from http:// www.niehs.nih.gov. World Health Organization (WHO). “Background on Cautionary Policies, March 2000.” Available from www.who.int/peh-emf.

Leeka Kheifets and Nathan Thrall

Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) is also known as SARA Title III since it was enacted as a freestanding law included in the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA). This law obligates facilities to provide local, state, and federal

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agencies with information on hazardous materials stored or in use at the premises. EPCRA covers four key issues: emergency response planning, emergency release notiﬁcation, reporting hazardous chemical storage, and toxic chemical release inventory (TRI). It, however, in no way limits what chemicals may be used, stored, transported, or disposed of at a facility. EPCRA was enacted in response to the chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, where residents and emergency responders were unaware of and unprepared for the lethal chemicals in their immediate environment. The State Emergency Response Commission (SERC) and Local Emergency Planning Committees (LEPCs) must be given information concerning facilities in their area where hazardous substances are stored and/or are in use. This information is vital for the development of emergency plans to address the accidental release of toxic chemicals. Facilities must immediately notify the SERC and LEPCs of the release of hazardous material in excess of set regulations. EPCRA also requires facilities to maintain a data sheet enumerating all the hazardous materials at their workplace; they must submit it to the SERC, LEPCs, and local ﬁre departments. Finally, facilities must provide an annual inventory listing releases or other waste management procedures involving hazardous chemicals. Facilities and/or individuals that do not adhere to the rules established by the EPCRA can face ﬁnes and prosecution under the law. EPCRA requirements are aimed at providing communities with the information they need should an accidental release of hazardous material occur through a ﬁre or explosion, for instance. S E E A L S O Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills; Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents; Disasters: Natural; Disasters: Nuclear Accidents; Disasters: Oil Spills; Toxic Release Inventory. Bibliography Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Ofﬁce. (2000). The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act Fact Sheet. Washington, DC. Available from http://www.es.epa.gov/techinfo. Internet Resource DOE Ofﬁce of Environmental Policy and Guidance. “EH-41 Environmental Law Summary: Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.” Available from http://www.tis.eh.doe.gov/oepa.

Lee Ann Paradise

Emissions Standards

See Air Pollution

Emissions Trading Emissions trading brings the rules of the marketplace to environmental regulation. For example, a government trying to control acid rain might set a limit of ten metric tons on emissions of sulfur dioxide SO2 (which causes acid rain) in a particular year. If there are 1,000 electric utilities, it might give each utility 10,000 “allowances,” each of which allows the utility to emit one ton of emissions during that year. In such a timeframe, if one dirty utility is able to reduce its emissions to 8,000 tons of SO2, that utility can sell its

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2,000 excess allowances to another cleaner utility that is quickly growing and for whom it might be prohibitively expensive to further reduce emissions because its operations were already quite clean. Both would beneﬁt from this trade because the allowance value will be higher than what it cost the dirty utility to reduce emissions, but lower than what it would have cost the clean utility to achieve them. During the same twelve months the utilities would monitor their emissions; at the end of year they would be required to prove to the government that they had emitted fewer tons than they have allowances for. Total emissions are limited to ten metric tons but some ﬂexibility exists in regard to which utilities actually reduce emissions. The kind of approach outlined in this hypothetical example makes it cheaper to achieve the target and may lead to stronger environmental controls in the future. This is a simple system. There are some choices in how it is designed. First, the government does not need to give away the allowances; it could sell them to companies. This allows everyone else to beneﬁt from the system. Second, if it does not matter whether emissions happen this year or next, the allowances could be “banked” for future use. For some pollutants, such as the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, what matters is the total accumulation in the atmosphere, not when or where they were emitted. For other pollutants such as carbon monoxide, which is poisonous at high concentrations but disperses quickly, when and where it is emitted is important. Emissions trading is one of the key “ﬂexibility mechanisms” in the Kyoto Protocol (signed in 1997) that aims to control climate change. In this case, governments jointly agreed on the total emissions cap and then decided how many allowances each country would receive. Countries may trade allowances, but they must monitor their greenhouse gas emissions and submit a report to the United Nations every ﬁve years to show that they have as many allowances as emissions. The United States did not sign the Kyoto Protocol. They argued that the U.S. target was too strict and, hence, too costly. They also argued that the agreement would have no value without the participation of developing countries. Emissions trading is particularly useful when there are a lot of different emitters and when companies rather than the government know best how to reduce emissions or improve the technology to reduce emissions. In an emissions trading system, companies will use their knowledge to make the best economic decisions for themselves, while also meeting environmental standards in an efﬁcient way. Emissions trading is not effective when the exact location or method of disposal of the emissions does, in fact, matter (e.g., toxic waste disposal) or when the timing of emissions is critical (e.g., discharging hot water into a river causes substantial damage if a large amount is released all at once, but almost none if it is discharged very slowly). In these situations, environmental standards cannot be met if companies are allowed to trade because any movement or change in the timing of emissions would have signiﬁcant effects on the environmental outcome. Some environmentalists and observers have philosophical objections to “pollution trading.” These concerns can be justiﬁed when the cap is poorly enforced, or when companies or countries are able to exploit others. When

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S O 2 AL L O WA N CE P R I CE S , 1 9 9 2 – 1 9 97 (1995 or Cur r ent Vintage)

$350

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Early Sales $300 Cantor Fitzgerald $250 Emission Exchange $200 Fieldston

This illustration shows allowance prices up to and during the first three years of the U.S. Acid Rain program which commenced in 1995. Prices first were dispersed and unstable, but once the market became established, they converged. Prices initially fell as utilities identified cheaper opportunities for abatement.

$150 EPA Auction $100 $50 $0 Jan92

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markets are well designed, these philosophical concerns seem to decrease with positive experience. Emissions trading is widely used in the United States. Examples include the acid rain program for controlling SO2, the RECLAIM market for criteria pollutants in Los Angeles, and the new nitrogen oxides (NOx) markets on the East Coast. The United Kingdom has introduced a form of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions trading as part of its effort to comply with the Kyoto Protocol. Many other European countries and the European Community (EC) as a whole are seriously considering carbon dioxide trading within the EC.

criteria pollutant a pollutant for which acceptable levels can be defined and for which an air quality standard has been set

The graph shows allowance prices up to and during the ﬁrst three years of the U.S. Acid Rain program, which commenced in 1995. Prices were initially dispersed and unstable, but once the market became established, they converged. In the beginning, prices fell as utilities identiﬁed cheaper opportunities for abatement. S E E A L S O Acid Rain; Carbon Dioxide; Economics; Industry; NOx (Nitrogen Oxides); Ozone. Bibliography Schmalensee, R.P.L.; Joskow, A.D.; Ellerman, J.P. Montero; and Bailey, E.M. (1998). “An Interim Evaluation of Sulfur Dioxide Emissions Trading.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12(3):53–68. Stavins, Robert N. (1998). “What Have We Learned from the Grand Policy Experiment? Positive and Normative Lessons from SO2 Allowance Trading.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12(3):69–88. Tietenberg, Tom. (1985). Emissions Trading: An Exercise in Reforming Pollution Policy. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future. Internet Resources Kopp, Raymond, and Toman, Michael. (1998). “International Emissions Trading: A Primer.” Available from http://www.weathervane.rff.org/features. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Clean Air Markets.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets.

Suzi Kerr

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Endocrine Disruption

Endocrine Disruption In 1971 doctors at the Massachusetts General Hospital reported high rates of unusual cancers of the vagina in teenage girls. Researchers traced the problem to a medicine their mothers were given during pregnancy intended to help prevent miscarriage—a synthetic estrogen called diethylstilbestrol (DES). DES has also been linked to other health problems, ranging from vaginal and uterine malformations and immune problems in girls, to undescended testicles, sperm abnormalities, and possibly testicular cancer in boys exposed to DES before birth. DES is an example of an endocrine disruptor. hormone a molecule released by one cell to regulate development of another

hormone receptors cell proteins that respond to hormones to influence cell behavior fetus unborn young of vertebrate animals; human: developing child in the womb from eighth week to birth metabolism physical and chemical reactions within a cell or organism necessary for maintaining life

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals in our environment that interfere with hormones—natural chemical messengers that travel in the bloodstream and regulate many important physiological activities. Endocrine disruptors may be natural phytoestrogens (estrogenlike chemicals that are made by plants) or synthetic chemicals used in medications, dietary supplements, cosmetics, and household products. They may also show up in pollution. Some examples of endocrine disruptors are listed in the table “Examples of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals.” The endocrine system, which regulates growth and development and controls important functions in humans and animals, includes hormones and hormone receptors distributed throughout the body. The hormone estrogen helps to regulate bone development, blood clotting, female puberty, the menstrual cycle, many of the changes that occur during pregnancy, and fetal development. The hormone testosterone helps male fetuses develop, regulates male puberty, and promotes sperm production. Thyroid hormones affect energy level, appetite, heart rate, and metabolism in adults. In fetuses and infants, thyroid hormones are essential for normal growth and the development of the brain. There are many other hormones that are less well known, but equally important, including hormones secreted by the hypothalamus in the brain, the pineal gland, the pituitary gland, the parathyroid glands, and the adrenal glands (see ﬁgure). Just as a woman’s menstrual cycle returns to normal after she stops taking birth control pills, adult endocrine systems are often able to recover after exposure to artiﬁcial hormones. In the very young, however, short-term exposure can have permanent effects. Hormones regulate the normal development of organs such as the brain and reproductive system. Most scientists have therefore focused on the threat endocrine disruptors may pose to fetuses and infants.

Examples of Research on Endocrine Disruption estrogenic related to estrogens, hormones that control female sexual development DDT the first chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticide chemical name: Dichloro-DiphenylTrichloroethane); it has a half-life of fifteen years and can collect in fatty tissues of certain animals; for virtually all but emergency uses, DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972

176

In 1987 researchers at Tufts Medical Center in Boston were studying breast cancer cells growing in plastic dishes in the laboratory, when they noticed that the cells began to grow rapidly as if exposed to estrogen, even when no estrogen was added to the dishes. They traced the problem to nonylphenol, a chemical leaching from the plastic laboratory dishes. Now researchers use breast cancer cells to test chemicals for estrogenic effects. In the early 1990s, scientists in Florida studying alligators living in a lake contaminated with DDT and related pesticides noticed that the male alligators had tiny penises and the female alligators had abnormal-looking ovaries.

Endocrine Disruption

EXAMP L E S O F E N D O C R I N E D I S R U PTI N G CHEMI CA LS Chemical

Use

Mechanism

Health Effect

Diethylstilbesterol (DES)

Medication

Mimics estrogen

In humans – female – vaginal cancer, reproductive tract abnormalities; male – abnormalities of the penis and testicles, semen abnormalities

Genistein

Naturally occurring in soybeans

Mimics estrogen, blocks testosterone

In adult humans – lowers cholesterol, may decrease breast cancer risk. In animals – infertility.

Bisphenol A

Resin in dental sealants, lining of food cans, and polycarbonate plastics

Mimics estrogen

In male mice – alters prostate size, decreases sperm production, affects behavior

Vinclozolin

Pesticide/fungicide

Inhibits testosterone

In male rodents – feminization, nipple development, abnormal penis development

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)

No longer made; still found as a pollutant

Inhibit thyroid hormones

In humans – delayed neurological development; IQ deficits

Dioxin

By-product of industrial processes including incineration

Decreases estrogen; decreases testosterone; alters thyroid hormone

In female rodents – delayed puberty, increased mammary cancers. In male rodents – decreased testosterone, penis and testicular abnormalities, feminized sexual behavior. In humans – decreased thyroid hormone levels; decreased testosterone; cancers

Most of the alligator eggs in the lake did not hatch that year and this phenomenon has persisted into the twenty-ﬁrst century. These effects may have resulted from pesticide residues in the alligators’ food sources. Research has conﬁrmed that DDT acts like estrogen when it enters the body, and that its breakdown product, DDE, blocks male hormones such as testosterone. Other pesticides in the lake have also been shown to mimic estrogen.

residue the dry solids remaining after evaporation breakdown product part of a whole resulting from a chemical transformation

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are environmentally persistent chemicals that interfere with thyroid hormones. The Great Lakes have been heavily contaminated with PCBs from industrial sources, leaking electrical equipment, and landﬁlls. Researchers have observed that salmon in the Great Lakes have goiter (enlargement of the thyroid gland) and have trouble reproducing. Studies of children born to mothers who ate ﬁsh from the Great Lakes at least two times per month found that PCB levels in these mothers were higher than in women who did not eat Great Lakes ﬁsh. Their infants were born with abnormally small heads and showed signs of abnormal neurological development. Even when they were eleven years old, the exposed children had signiﬁcantly lower IQ scores and were twice as likely to be two years behind their peers in their level of reading comprehension.

The Endocrine Disruptor Controversy The theory that chemicals in the environment may be disrupting hormones and causing health problems in wildlife and humans was ﬁrst published in 1992. Since that time, the general concept of endocrine disruption has gone from a radical theory to an accepted fact. Scientists agree that some chemicals mimic or block hormonal effects, that wildlife populations in some contaminated areas have been affected by the endocrine-disrupting effects of chemicals in the environment, and that some humans have been affected in unusual circumstances. Scientiﬁc debates focus on whether there is a risk to the general population of humans and animals from the low levels of endocrine disrupting

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TH E E N D OC RI NE S YS TE M

Pineal

Melatonin (controls sleep, cancer protection, cell repair)

Pituitary

Stimulating and regulating hormones for thyroid, adrenal, testis, ovary; prolactin (milk production), growth hormone, antidiuretic hormone (signals kidneys to concentrate urine)

Thyroid y

Thyroid hormones (control metabolism, heart rate, fetal brain development)

A Adrenal

Adrenaline, cortisol, aldosterone (control heart rate, blood pressure, stress response, alertness)

Sttomach Pa ancreas (Is slets of La angerhans)

Insulin, glucagon (control blood sugar)

Duodenum

SOURCE:

Ova ary (females)

Estrogen, progesterone (control fetal development, puberty, menstration, keep bones strong, promote blood clotting)

Testis estis (males) male

Testosterone (control fetal development of the male, puberty, sperm production)

Adapted from John W. Kimball, Biology Pages. Available from http://www.ultranet.com/~jkimball.

chemicals they are exposed to on a daily basis. Some scientists point out that even low levels of endocrine disruptors may have subtle effects on development of the fetus. These scientists point to trends such as apparent increases in rates of birth defects of the penis in infant boys, declining sperm counts in adult men (see the graph), and increasing rates of hormone-associated cancers such as breast, testicular, and prostate cancer. Other scientists point out that most endocrine disruptors are far weaker than our natural hormones, and that most people and animals are exposed to such low levels of the chemicals that they are unlikely to have any health effects. This debate is likely to rage for many years, because the research to prove or disprove health effects from low-dose exposures to common chemicals will be difﬁcult, complicated, and time-consuming. Because chemicals that are known or suspected endocrine disruptors are used for a wide variety of purposes, it is difﬁcult for people to know how to

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Energy

In 1996 Congress passed the Food Quality Protection Act, changing how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates pesticides and requiring the EPA to develop an endocrine disruptor screening program. The EPA estimates that there are some 87,000 chemicals used in commerce, and admits there is not enough scientiﬁc data available to evaluate all potential risks. S E E A L S O Health, Human; Pesticides; Risk.

S P E RM COUNT DECLINE IN THE UNI TE D S TA TES AND EUROP E (1 9 3 5 –1 9 9 5) United States Sperm density (millions/ml)

avoid exposure. Some endocrine disruptors are used as pesticides on food and others are used in certain types of plastics such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC or vinyl). These chemicals are not just found industrial and agricultural products, but also in the runoff of pesticides from treated ﬁelds and in the discharge of waste from industrial operations. Certain endocrine disruptors are not used anymore, but their residues linger in the food chain and are consumed by humans in the form of fatty foods. Because it is difﬁcult for people to make decisions as to how to avoid exposure to endocrine disruptors, many environmental health advocates urge the government to regulate these chemicals more strictly.

120

Europe

80 40

1935

Non-Western

1955

1975 Year

1995

Adapted from http://www.ourstolenfuture .org/NewScience.

SOURCE:

Bibliography Colborn, Theo; Dumanoski, Diane; and Myers, John Peterson. (1996). Our Stolen Future. New York: Dutton. Schettler, Ted; Solomon, Gina; Valenti, Maria; and Huddle, Annette. (1999). Generations at Risk: Reproductive Health and the Environment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Internet Resources Colborn, Theo; Dumanoski, Dianne; and Myers, Jonathan Peterson. Our Stolen Future Web site. Available from http://www.ourstolenfuture.org. Environmental Concepts Made Easy Web site. Center for Bioenvironmental Research, Tulane and Xavier Universities. Available from http://www.som.tulane.edu/ecme. Solomon, Gina M., and Schettler, Ted. (2000). “Environment and Health: 6. Endocrine Disruption and Potential Human Health Implications.” Canadian Medical Association Journal 163(11):1471–1476. Also available from http://www.cma.ca/cmaj. Swan, S.H.; Elkin, E.P.; and Fenster, L. (1997). “Have Sperm Densities Declined? A Reanalysis of Global Trend Data.” Environmental Health Perspectives 105(11): 1228–1232.

Gina M. Solomon and Annette Huddle

Energy Energy is the capacity for doing work. In physics, “work” has a more formal deﬁnition than in everyday life: it means the ability to exert a force through a distance. If you pick up this book, energy stored in molecular bonds inside your body is released to move the book’s mass. The energy was stored in the molecules of the foods you ate and is released through a chemical reaction. Food provides the fuel that gives us energy. Similarly, whether we are talking about automobile engines or power plant boilers, we need to have a fuel with stored energy that can be released in a useable way. Fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas provide much of the energy we use in industry and in our personal lives. These fuels were created by geological processes over millions of years, as plants and marine microorganisms consisting largely of carbon became buried under the earth. These fossilized materials were eventually transformed into coal or oil by the high pressures and temperatures inside the planet.

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Energy

A coal-fired power plant. (©Lester Lefkowitz/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Because of the long time and extreme conditions needed to create fossil fuels, we cannot just replace them at will—they are a nonrenewable resource. Every time we pump oil from the ground we are depleting an irreplaceable natural resource. Eventually, we will exhaust the supplies of fossil fuels in the earth, and we will have to develop alternative energy sources to power our society. Exactly when we will run out of fossil fuels is a subject of great debate. A careful distinction must be made here between “reserves” and “resources.” Reserves are deﬁned as economically recoverable with known technology and within a price range close to the present price; resources are theoretical maximum potentials based on geological information, and include reserves. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the United States Department of Energy has estimated the worldwide coal resources at 1,083 billion tons; the oil reserve at approximately 1,200 billion barrels, with resources estimated at three trillion barrels; and the worldwide natural gas reserve at 5,500 trillion cubic feet . The nonproﬁt Corporation for Public Access to Science and Technology (CPAST) in St. Louis, Missouri, has estimated from earlier data published in the United States Department of Energy 1996 Annual Energy Review that these combined fossil fuels resources would last until the year 2111 if usage remained constant at 1995 levels. The EIA predicts that coal resources could last for 220 years at the current usage rates. Estimates change when new technology makes fuel that was previously considered “unrecoverable” suddenly accessible; these numbers should only be used as rough guidelines.

Transforming Energy into Work: Gasoline Engines and Steam Boilers Gasoline, which consists largely of hydrocarbon molecules—chains of connected carbon and hydrogen atoms—acts as a fuel in an automobile engine. It

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Energy

PE R CAPI T A E N E R G Y C O N S U M P T I O N OECD Canada United States Netherlands West Germany United Kingdom Japan France Italy

E. Europe/U.S.S.R. U.S.S.R. Czechoslovakia Poland

Developing Mexico Brazil China Indonesia India 0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

Million BTUs per person per year SOURCE: U.S. Congress, Office Technology Assessment, Energy in Developing Countries, OTA-E-486 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing office, Jan. 19)

is a product of the distillation of raw petroleum. The energy that holds these carbon and hydrogen atoms together is stored in the bonds between each atom. In an automobile, gasoline is mixed with air in the combustion chamber of an engine cylinder, the mixture is compressed by a piston, and a spark from the spark plug ignites the mixture. The ideal chemical reaction for this process is: Hydrocarbons oxygen spark

carbon dioxide water energy

The energy is released in the form of heat, which causes the gases to expand and pushes the piston outward. The piston is connected to a rod and a crankshaft that ultimately transform the energy locked up in molecules into the revolution of wheels, setting your car in motion. The combustion products of carbon dioxide and water are expelled through the exhaust system into the atmosphere. Similarly, a boiler in a power plant relies on the release of energy from burning coal or natural gas to heat water and convert it into steam. The steam turns the blades of a turbine-powered generator that ultimately causes electrons to move through a wire, converting the energy from the fuel into electrical energy that can be used to power appliances in your home.

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Energy

T R E N D S I N DOMES TI C ENE RGY US E (by fossil fuel, in quadrillion BTU) 50 petroleum 46

electricity

45

44

natural gas

42

coal 40

37

35 32 30

30

30 27 25

25

22 20 18

19 17

17

16

15

10

5

5

4

4

3

3

0 1970

SOURCE:

1980

1990

2000

2010 (projected)

Energy Information Administration, DOE

In each of these cases, energy stored in chemical bonds is transformed into useful energy that can perform work.

Energy and Pollution In addition, the chemical reaction shown above is an ideal one, but conditions in the real world are usually far from ideal. If the right amounts of oxygen and gasoline are not present in the cylinder of a car engine (because of a dirty air ﬁlter or a faulty fuel injection system, for example), poisonous carbon monoxide can form. Similarly, some of the hydrocarbons might escape from the engine unburned, releasing pollutants such as methane into the air. Nitrogen from the air inside the cylinder can combine with oxygen to form the pollutants nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide, collectively know as NOx compounds, which can be converted to ground-level ozone in the presence of sunlight. Even carbon dioxide—one of the “ideal” products of complete combustion in an engine or a power plant—has been identiﬁed as a “greenhouse gas” that is partially responsible for global warming. The coal used in power plants does not emerge from the ground as pure carbon. It is laced with varying amounts of different contaminants, including sulfur, which vary from coal mine to coal mine. These, too, can ﬁnd their way into the atmosphere as pollutants when the coal is burned to heat the water in a boiler. Most notably, sulfur oxide, emitted into the air, converts to sulfu-

182

Energy

ric acid, a major component in acid rain. Power plants are required to clean up these emissions before they reach the atmosphere, to varying degrees, but again, no process is 100-percent efﬁcient. Besides the pollutants associated with the use of fossil fuels, drilling for oil and mining coal can be an additional source of pollution. An oil spill while drilling or transporting oil can lead to disastrous ecological damage, and rain runoff from a strip mine can carry coal particles and chemical byproducts into the local water supply.

Nuclear and Alternative Fuels Nuclear energy is not based on combustion of fuel. Rather, the energy is released as unstable radioactive compounds decay into more stable forms. For example, radioactive uranium 238 decays to uranium 235, releasing energy in the process. This energy can be used to heat water without burning coal or oil, so its use is therefore cleaner. However, radiation emitted in the event of an accident at a nuclear power plant could harm people and wildlife and contaminate the food supply. Nuclear waste, in the form of spent fuel rods, is a very long-term by-product of nuclear energy.

U. S . ENE RGY S TA TI S TICS FOR THE Y EA R 2 0 0 0

Type of Energy Petroleum Coal Natural Gas Nuclear Blomass Hydroelectric Electrical Imports

Percentage of U.S. Energy Pool 38.8% 23.0% 23.3% 8.0% 3.7% 3.1% 0.1%

Contribution to Pollution (Percentage of Carbon Emissions) 42.1% 36.7% 21.2% n/a n/a n/a n/a

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Energy & Environment Directorate. "US Energy Flow 2000." Available from http://en-env.llnl.gov/flow.

SOURCE:

Cleaner-burning fuels can be produced by processing agricultural products (“biomass”) into ethanol. Thousands of acres of corn could be grown speciﬁcally for energy production, not consumption by people or animals. Because the ethanol that results comes from a controllable chemical distillation process, it is very pure and uncontaminated, and thus burns cleaner. Also, because a new crop can be grown every year, these are renewable energy sources. Hydropower, or the use of moving or falling water to generate energy, is one of the oldest technologies that still contributes signiﬁcantly to our energy needs. Falling water was often used in old mills to turn a paddlewheel and move the heavy stones that were used to grind grain into ﬂour. Later, the same concept was transferred to the production of electricity. Hydroelectric plants, such as the one in Niagara Falls, divert some of the water from the falls into the power plant. There the kinetic energy (the energy of objects in motion) of the falling water turns turbines and generates electricity that can be sold to residents and industrial users in the area. Solar power, wind power, and fuel cells powered by a reaction of hydrogen plus oxygen to form water are other alternative energy sources that are being explored.

Industry and Environment Suppose you are the owner of a manufacturing plant. You need large amounts of fuel to keep your plant running. To maximize your proﬁts, you would like to purchase this fuel very cheaply. The cheapest option would be if the energy company could take the fuel straight from the ground and sell it to you “as is.” But fossil fuels must be processed before they can be used. Petroleum products must go to the reﬁnery to be separated into various components such as gasoline and diesel fuel, and contaminants such as sulfur have to be minimized. All these processing steps add cost to the fuel. Even after you obtain a relatively clean fuel, your manufacturing process may result in pollutants that could ﬁnd their way into the atmosphere or rivers. Again, efforts to clean up these emissions will cost you money. Chemical

The tiny town of Cheshire, Ohio, lives in the shadow of American Electric Power’s giant coal-burning Gen. James M. Gavin generating plant. Each summer, blue clouds of sulfuric acid rain down on the town, an unintended and ironic by-product of AEP’s efforts to curb other emissions at the plant. Residents sued and in 2002, AEP agreed to buy the town rather than fight the pollution suit. All but a handful of Cheshire’s 221 residents have agreed to sell and move. The cost: $20 million.

183

Energy

systems that scrub the pollutants from the emissions, or ﬁlters that capture particulates, are expensive and raise your production costs. But there may be people who are more concerned about a healthy environment than your proﬁts. They might insist that you take whatever steps are necessary on both the inlet (fuel) side and the outlet (emissions and runoff) side to make the world a better, safer place to live. They may lobby to have laws passed that require you to clean up any emissions from your plant. You want a clean environment too, but even the most environmentally conscious company must make a proﬁt to stay in business. Environmental regulations add to the cost of producing your product, but this is no different than all the other costs you incur (raw materials, labor, transportation, marketing, etc.). If all competitors in an industry are constrained by the same regulations, then the playing ﬁeld is level; every company in the ﬁeld may have to raise its prices to make up for the added costs of compliance, but prices for similar products should remain competitive. However, if competitors in foreign countries are able to operate without these same environmental regulations, they can market their products more cheaply, and make it more difﬁcult for domestic producers to stay in business. It is this kind of imbalance in regulations that lead to job losses, and give the mistaken impression that we must choose either jobs or the environment. If governments can maintain a level playing ﬁeld in environmental regulations, we can have both jobs and a clean environment worldwide. The situation may be further confused by an argument among scientists and health professionals as to how much of a health problem a certain chemical represents. Something that seems safe today may be discovered to be a health risk ten years from now. Until we understand how various chemicals interact with our bodies, there may be room for discussion on allowable levels of emission.

Conserving Energy In light of the depletion of nonrenewable resources, it is important that we try to conserve energy whenever possible. Because the transformation of fuel into useful energy inevitably creates pollutants, we must reduce our energy consumption to reduce pollution. Using your air conditioner less during the summer by setting the thermostat higher can reduce the demand for electricity experienced by your energy provider. Your energy provider can burn less fossil fuel and still meet the needs of its customers, resulting in less pollution. Carpooling removes unnecessary vehicles from the road, reducing gasoline consumption and air pollution. Energy conservation efforts thus help at both ends of the cycle: they slow down the depletion of fuel reserves and, at the same time, clean up the environment.

The Politics of Energy Because the conditions necessary for the creation of fossil fuels varied geographically throughout the earth’s history, fossil fuels are not distributed evenly around the globe. Signiﬁcant concentrations of oil occur in the Middle East, the North Sea, Russia, Texas, and Alaska, for example. Countries that control the world’s access to oil have economic power over countries that need their oil, which can lead to political tensions. The “energy crisis” cre-

184

Energy, Nuclear

ated by the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) nations in the 1970s, when they artiﬁcially reduced the supply of oil available on the world market, was a display of this political and economic power. Iraq’s attack on Kuwait in 1991 to take over Kuwaiti oil ﬁelds led to the ﬁrst Persian Gulf War. As long as there is uneven access to energy sources throughout the world, political tensions over the availability and cost of energy will continue. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Alternative Energy; Carbon Dioxide; Coal; Disasters: Nuclear Accidents; Disasters: Oil Spills; Electric Power; Fossil Fuels; Nuclear Energy; Nuclear Wastes; Petroleum; Renewable Energy; Thermal Pollution. Bibliography Tipler, Paul A. (1982). Physics, 2nd ed. New York: Worth Publishers. Other Resources Brain, Marshall. (2002). “How Car Engines Work.” HowStuffWorks. Available from http://www.howstuffworks.com/steam.htm. Brain, Marshall. (2002). “How Steam Engines Work.” HowStuffWorks. Available from http://www.howstuffworks.com/steam.htm. Energy Information Administration of the United States Department of Energy. (2003). “World Crude Oil and Natural Gas Reserves, Most Recent Estimates.” Available from http://www.eia.gov/emeu/international/reserves.html. Greenpeace. (1997). “Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Fossil Fuel Resources.” Available from http://archive.greenpeace.org/~climate/science/reports/carbon/clfull-3.html. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Energy & Environment Directorate. “U.S. Energy Flow 2000.” Available from http://en-env.llnl.gov/ﬂow. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Energy & Environment Directorate. “U.S. 2000 Carbon Emissions from Energy Consumption.” Available from http:// en-env.llnl.gov/ﬂow. Mabro, Robert, ed. (1980). World Energy Issues and Policies: Proceedings of the First Oxford Energy Seminar (September 1979). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Myhr, Franklin. (1998). “Overview of Fossil Fuel Energy Resources.” Corporation for Public Access to Science and Technology (CPAST). Available from http:// www.cpast.org/articles/fetch.adp?artnum=14.

Tim Palucka

Energy, Alternative

See Renewable Energy

Energy, Nuclear Nuclear energy is produced during reactions in the nucleus of an atom. Atoms can be thought of as miniature solar systems with the nucleus at the center like a sun and electrons orbiting around it like planets. Densely packed neutrons and protons make up the nucleus, which is held together with great force, the “strongest force in nature.” When the nucleus is bombarded with a neutron, it can be split apart, a process called ﬁssion. Uranium is the heaviest natural element and has ninety-two protons. Because uranium atoms are so large, the atomic force that binds it together is relatively weak, so ﬁssion is more likely with uranium than other elements. Fusion, another type of nuclear reaction, is the joining of atoms and can occur with elements of low atomic number, such as hydrogen, the lightest element, which has one proton. The ﬁrst time physicists achieved fusion was in the 1950s with the hydrogen bomb. Fusion releases a tremendous amount

185

Energy, Nuclear

N U C L E AR ELECTRI CI TY GE NERA TI ON % (World average 16%)

Lithuania France Belgium Ukraine Sweden Bulgaria Slovakia Switzerland Hungary Slovenia Japan Taiwan South Korea Germany Finland Spain UK Armenia USA Czech Canada Russia Argentina Romania South Africa Mexico Netherlands India Brazil China Pakistan Kazakhstan 0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Percent

of energy, but the energy is released so quickly and uncontrollably that fusion has not yet been harnessed as a usable source of energy. Physicists formulated the principles of nuclear power in the early twentieth century. In 1939 German scientists discovered the process of nuclear ﬁssion, triggering a race with American scientists to use the massive energy release of ﬁssion to create a bomb. The atomic bomb was created by the United States in 1945; it was used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II. After World War II, atomic power was seen as a potential new energy source. The U.S. government thought atomic explosions would be a laborsaving way to dig canals and reservoirs and to mine for gas and oil. As late as

186

Energy, Nuclear

CH E R N O B YL G LO B A L R A D I A T I O N PA T T E RNS

1200 800

400

Chernobyl

Higher contamination

Radius

the 1960s, bombs were being set off above and below ground to test different ideas, resulting in radionuclide contamination of the soil that is still being addressed today. A more successful use of atomic power was nuclear reactors that controlled the release of energy. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover guided the development of small reactors to power submarines, greatly extending their range and power. By the late 1950s, nuclear power was being developed for commercial electric power, initially in England. Morris, Illinois, was the site of the ﬁrst U.S. commercial reactor. Nuclear weapons research was advanced by Russia and the United States during the Cold War, and a number of other countries, including China and India, have now developed nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Power Plants Uranium is one of the least plentiful of minerals, making up only two parts per million (ppm) in the earth’s crust. But because of its radioactivity, it is a plentiful supply of energy: one pound of uranium has as much energy as three million pounds of coal. In 2002 there were 104 nuclear power reactors licensed to operate in the United States, and they accounted for 20 percent of the nation’s electricity production and more than one-fourth of nuclear power capacity in the world. Many other countries, including France, Japan, and the United Kingdom, have nuclear power plants. Nuclear power accounts for about 80 percent of France’s electrical power production.

How Nuclear Power Works In nuclear power plants, neutrons collide with uranium atoms, splitting them. This split releases neutrons from the uranium that, in turn, collide

187

Energy, Nuclear

with other atoms, causing a chain reaction. This chain reaction is regulated (or governed) by “control rods” that absorb neutrons. Fission releases energy that heats water to approximately 520°F in the core of the plant. The steam that is created is then used to spin turbines that are connected to generators, which produce electricity. After the steam is used to power the turbine, it is cooled off and condensed into water. Some plants use water from rivers, lakes, or the ocean to cool the steam; returning this water to the environment can cause thermal pollution. Other plants use the hourglass-shaped cooling towers that are the familiar hallmark of many nuclear plants. For every unit of electricity produced by a nuclear power plant, about two units of wasted heat are sent into the environment. Nuclear reactors are also used to power military submarines and surface ships. As in land-based reactors, nuclear-powered vessels use the heat produced by the chain reaction to make steam for a turbine. The turbine is connected to the propeller shafts aboard the ships rather than generators that produce electricity.

Radioactive Pollution from Nuclear Energy By 1995 over 32,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste had been produced by American nuclear reactors. That number is expected to rise to 75,000 metric tons by 2015. Before the mid-1970s, the plan for fuel removed from nuclear reactors was to reprocess it and recycle the uranium into new fuel. Because a by-product of reprocessing is plutonium, a highly unstable element that can be used to make nuclear weapons, President Jimmy Carter ordered the end of reprocessing in 1977 due to security risks. Reprocessing also had a difﬁcult time competing economically with the production of new uranium fuel. Since then, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been studying storage sites for the long-term burial of such waste and is now focusing on Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The DOE has built a full-scale system of tunnels in the mountain at a cost of over $5 billion. Although the Yucca Mountain site is still controversial, there are no other sites presently under consideration. Meanwhile, radioactive waste continues to be stored at the nuclear plants where it is produced. The most common option is to store it in a large steellined pool. As these pools ﬁll up, fuel rods are stored in large steel and concrete casks. S E E A L S O Radioactive Fallout; Radioactive Waste; Thermal Pollution; Yucca Mountain. Bibliography Mazuzan, George T., and Walker, J. Samuel. (1984). Controlling the Atom: The Beginnings of Nuclear Regulation 1946–1962. Berkeley: University of California Press. Asimov, Isaac. (1991). Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos. New York: Truman Talley Books. Daley, Michael J. (1997). Nuclear Power: Promise or Peril? Minneapolis: Lerner Publications. Ramsey, Charles B., and Modarres, Mohammad. (1998). Commercial Nuclear Power: Assuring Safety for the Future. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Internet Resource Columbia College Web site. “Nuclear Energy Guide.” Available from http://www .spacekid.net/nuclear.

David Lochbaum

188

Energy Efficiency

Energy Efficiency Energy efﬁciency is a ratio of energy input to useful energy output, often expressed as a percentage. It measures how much energy of one kind is converted into usable energy of another kind. Incandescent light bulbs convert just 5 percent of the electrical energy they use to light, whereas the energy efﬁciency of compact ﬂuorescent bulbs is between 15 and 20 percent. Power plants fueled by natural gas convert up to 50 percent of their heat energy to electrical energy, compared to about 38 percent for coal-burning power plants. Energy efﬁciency is never 100 percent, because some energy is always lost as heat, either directly or as a result of friction in between moving parts in such equipment as motors and generators.

Energy Efficiency in Industry and Transportation Increasing energy efﬁciency conserves fossil fuels, cuts down on pollution, and saves money. Steam turbine power plants reduce their energy or heat loss by insulating pipes and by returning condensed steam to the boiler for reheating. New combined-cycle plants increase energy efﬁciency by using hot exhaust from gas turbines to produce steam for steam turbines in the same plant. On-site electricity generators often increase energy efﬁciency by cogeneration, or by combined heat and power (CHP), in which waste heat is captured to heat buildings. Cogeneration is employed in many different industries, with chemical, paper, and petroleum reﬁning plants being the largest users. A number of colleges have also installed CHP generators. Improved technologies, the use of catalysts, renewable or recycled raw material, and recovery and reuse of waste in industry increase energy efﬁciency. In transportation, fuel efﬁciency or miles per gallon (MPG) depends on vehicle design, on reducing air resistance by reducing the weight of a vehicle, and on the type of fuel used. Carbon-ﬁber composites are strong, extremely light materials that could signiﬁcantly increase fuel efﬁciency if employed in the manufacture of vehicles. One such material is waiting to be patented, and research into reducing composite production cost, using agricultural and paper-manufacturing waste, along with recycled bottles and plastic car parts, is ongoing. New technologies, such as regenerative braking, which converts momentum to electricity when the brakes are stepped on in hybrid electric vehicles, also increase energy efﬁciency. Advances in engine-technology design include Compression Ignition Direct Injection engines, which result in less heat loss in gasoline burning engines and which also increase fuel efﬁciency.

The EnergyGuide label that is affixed to new appliances sold in the United States. (© 2003, Kelly A. Quin. Reproduced by permission.)

catalyst a substance that changes the speed or yield of a chemical reaction without being consumed or chemically changed by the chemical reaction

Hybrid electric vehicles, as well as alternative fuel vehicles, use less gasoline and cut down on pollution. Flex-fuel vehicles can use gasoline, ethanol, or methanol for fuel. Bifuel vehicles have two tanks—one for gasoline and one for natural gas or propane. There were over 100,000 vehicles fueled by natural gas on the road in the United States in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Effect of Supply and Demand Improvement in energy efﬁciency depends on legislation and funds for research to develop the necessary technology, both of which are inﬂuenced by supply and demand. For example, fuel economy standards were ﬁrst enforced in 1975 in response to the 1973 energy crisis. In 2002 Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were 27.5 MPG for passenger cars and 20.7 MPG for light

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trucks, including sports utility vehicles (SUVs). Due to the increasing popularity of SUVs in the United States starting in the late 1980s, the combined average MPG rating fell from 25.9 in 1987 to 24.6 in 1997. Energy efﬁciency in many areas increased through the late 1980s because of the shortage or threatened shortage of cheap imported oil. This was followed by a reversal or slowing of efﬁciency gains through the 1990s, when there were ample supplies of cheap fuel.

The Energy Star Program One way in which individuals and business managers can increase energy efﬁciency is by using Energy Star products. Energy Star is a voluntary labeling program, introduced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1992, that identiﬁes energy-efﬁcient products. Manufacturers must test all major appliances to meet energy-efﬁciency standards set by the Department of Energy. These are displayed on an EnergyGuide label that speciﬁes how much energy the appliance uses, compares this with the energy use of similar products, and notes the approximate annual operating cost. To warrant the Energy Star certiﬁcation, often displayed on the EnergyGuide label, products must meet stricter energy-efﬁciency guidelines, set by the EPA and the Department of Energy. For example, Energy Star homes must be at least 30 percent more energy efﬁcient in terms of heating, cooling, and water heating than comparable homes built to the 1993 Model Energy Code. Homeowners can save energy by using low-ﬂow showerheads, lowering thermostat settings, turning off lights and appliances when not in use, sealing windows, installing storm windows, and insulating hot-water tanks. Walking or biking, carpooling, using public transport, and driving a hybrid electric car are ways to conserve gasoline and reduce vehicular pollution. The environmental importance of energy efﬁciency is highlighted in a 2001 EPA report stating that Americans, partly by choosing energy-efﬁcient products, have reduced greenhouse-gas emissions by 38 million metric tons of carbon, which is equivalent to removing about twenty-ﬁve million cars from the road. S E E A L S O Vehicular Pollution. Bibliography Bertoldi, Paolo; Ricci, Andrea; and de Almeida, Anibal, eds. (2001). Energy Efﬁciency in Household Appliances and Lighting. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Internet Resources Energy Information Administration. (1998). “25th Anniversary of the 1973 Oil Embargo.” Available from http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/25opec/anniversary.html. Rocky Mountain Institute. (2003). “The Hypercar Concept.” Available from http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid386.php. U.S. Department of Energy. “Energy Efﬁciency and Renewable Energy: Energy Efﬁciency Technologies.” Available from http://www.eere.energy.gov/EE. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Department of Energy. “Energy Star.” Available from http://www.energystar.gov. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Department of Energy. “Fuel Economy.” Available from http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/index.htm.

Patricia Hemminger

Enforcement Both within the United States and other countries, enforcement by government agencies and individual private citizens is widely viewed as a crucial aspect of the implementation of environmental laws. It is critical as a legal

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control on individuals and companies who violate pollution control standards and serves as a negative incentive for those who might otherwise violate the law. Moreover, enforcement is an important indicator of the seriousness with which government authorities regard environmental goals and policies.

Enforcement Authority Under a typical U.S. federal environmental statute, after ﬁnding a source of pollution—such as a steel mill or an electric utility—to be in violation of some pollution control requirement of the statute itself, or a permit or regulation issued under it, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may pursue one or more of several legal enforcement options. The EPA may (1) issue a formal written notice of violation to the owner or operator of the violating source, with a copy to the state in which it is located; (2) issue an administrative order requiring the source to comply with applicable pollution control requirements; (3) make an administrative penalty assessment; (4) bring a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court, seeking civil penalties and/or compliance with Clean Air Act requirements; and (5) request that the U.S. Department of Justice commence criminal prosecution of the polluter. Potential civil penalties may be as high as $25,000 per day of violation in some cases; criminal violators of pollution control laws may be imprisoned as well as required to pay signiﬁcant criminal ﬁnes.

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 charged with making major modifications to its facilities without installing required pollution control equipment. The settlement is expected to result in the annual elimination of 237,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.

Most U.S. environmental laws allow enforcement of pollution control standards by state government ofﬁcials and private citizens as well as federal ofﬁcials. Beginning in the early 1980s, EPA ceded an increasing amount of enforcement responsibility to individual states, while retaining oversight authority. State environmental laws often are similar to federal statutes with respect to the legal options open to enforcement ofﬁcials. The attitudes and capabilities of state ofﬁcials in the United States vary. Some states put a higher value on traditional environmental enforcement activities than other states; some states have larger environmental enforcement staffs, and more and better enforcement resources than other states. Many U.S. environmental laws also authorize citizen suits, lawsuits brought by any citizen against another party thought to be in violation of a pollution control standard. These citizen suits are generally barred, however, if federal or state authorities are “diligently prosecuting” an action against the same defendant for the same violation. In addition, citizen suits must be pursued with respect to environmental infractions that are “ongoing,” as opposed to violations of pollution laws that occurred in the past. Outside of the United States, the authority to enforce pollution control standards is often widely disbursed among different levels of government authorities. In Argentina, for example, environmental enforcement power is divided among federal, provincial, and municipal ofﬁcials, depending on the type and extent of the pollution involved and the regulations that govern it. In Australia the responsibility for enforcing environmental laws is within the (sometimes overlapping) jurisdiction of a number of government ministries at both the state and commonwealth level. Very few nations, however, have followed the example of the United States in permitting citizen enforcement of domestic environmental standards as a supplement to the government’s enforcement efforts.

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

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Most environmental enforcement results in monetary settlements. But not all. An executive of a New Jersey electroplating company was sentenced to twelve years in prison after he pleaded guilty to abandoning vats of sludge containing cyanide, arsenic, chromium, and other toxic materials. The cleanup at the Meadowlands Plating and Finishing Inc. factory cost the EPA more than half a million dollars.

development, and litigation. The agency initially gathers information about potential environmental violations from corporate records, on-site inspections by EPA personnel, and the speciﬁc complaints of citizen informants. The EPA then makes a strategic determination on how to address any violations that it has identiﬁed. Such case-speciﬁc decisions take into account a number of factors, including the duration and seriousness of the violation, the violator’s past record of compliance or noncompliance, national EPA enforcement policies, the potential deterrence value of the case, i.e., the likelihood that it will set an example for others who might be tempted to violate the law, and the enforcement resources available to the EPA and other governmental authorities. In cases that involve particularly serious violations and/or willfulness or bad faith on the defendant’s part, the agency may initiate a criminal investigation, and request that the U.S. Department of Justice proceed with a criminal prosecution of the violator (i.e., a suit by the government) that may result in the imposition of criminal ﬁnes and/or the incarceration of guilty individuals. In fact, most enforcement cases are resolved on the basis of negotiated settlements well before more costly, time-consuming courtroom proceedings start. In the event that enforcement litigation does go forward without settlement, however, the EPA is generally represented in federal court by attorneys from the Department of Justice. Similarly, most state environmental agencies are represented in state enforcement litigation by lawyers from the ofﬁce of the state’s Attorney General.

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 noncompliance penalties sufﬁciently high, and the probability that violations will be detected sufﬁciently great, that it becomes economically unfeasible for regulated business to violate pollution control standards. Environmental infractions should thus be met with sanctions (i.e., ﬁnes and other punitive measures), and governmental enforcement responses should be timely and appropriate, and have a deterrent effect. In contrast, the cooperation-based enforcement approach advocated by others begins with the notion that most businesses are “good citizens,” generally inclined to comply with environmental standards. This view holds that when regulated ﬁrms violate pollution control requirements, they should not generally be subject to enforcement sanctions. Rather, in the event of noncompliance, regulatory agencies should advise regulated parties on how to come into compliance. Cooperation-based enforcement programs typically feature one or more of a variety of approaches. They frequently include compliance incentives that encourage regulated companies to “police themselves” by engaging in environmental audits and self-correction of violations, or by adopting cleanup measures that go above and beyond what the law requires, in exchange for enforcement forgiveness or ﬂexibility. Cooperation-based programs may also incorporate compliance assistance efforts, in which public agencies assist

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regulated ﬁrms and communities to comply with environmental laws through education and the provision of technical or ﬁnancial assistance. Additionally, in limited instances, government ofﬁcials rely exclusively on nonbinding, voluntary agreements under which industrial ﬁrms afﬁrm their intention to comply with environmental legal requirements. The debate between proponents of these two competing enforcement philosophies is ongoing. In practice, no regulatory system rigidly adheres to one enforcement model or the other. Instead, most are “hybrids,” which pursue deterrent enforcement with varying levels of emphasis and enthusiasm, in combination with specialized compliance-assistance and compliance-incentive programs that do not involve enforcement penalties. S E E A L S O Arbitration; Clean Air Act; Clean Water Act; Environment Canada; Environmental Protection Agency; Laws and Regulations, International; Laws and Regulations, United States; Mediation; Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Bibliography Cohen, Mark A. (April 2000). “Empirical Research on the Deterrent Effect of Environmental Monitoring and Enforcement.” Environmental Law Reporter 30:10245. Hawkins, Keith, and Thomas, John M., eds. (1984). Enforcing Regulation. Boston: Kluwer Nijhoff. Landy, Marc K.; Roberts, Marc J.; and Thomas, Stephen R. (1990). The Environmental Protection Agency: Asking the Wrong Questions. New York: Oxford University Press. Mintz, Joel A. (1985). Enforcement at the EPA: High Stakes and Hard Choices. Austin: University of Texas Press. Mintz, Joel A. (October 1996). “EPA Enforcement and the Challenge of Change.” Environmental Law Reporter 26:10538. Rechtschaffen, Clifford. (1998). “Deterrence Versus Cooperation and the Evolving Theory of Environmental Enforcement.” Southern California Law Review 71:1181. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and Environment. (1990). International Enforcement Workshop Proceedings. Utrecht, Netherlands: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov/ compliance.

Joel A. Mintz

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). Environment Canada has three main areas of responsibility: • Weather and environmental prediction—collecting environmental data and forecasting weather, as well as researching climate change and other human environmental impacts • Clean environment—developing pollution standards and controlling the use of toxic substances

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• Nature—conserving biological diversity, primarily through parks and the protection of endangered species Environment Canada also has responsibility for upholding Canada’s end of international agreements, and working with the environmental agencies of other nations on issues of regional or global importance. The Commission for Environmental Cooperation, for example, is an organization established by the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States to address regional environmental concerns, help prevent potential trade and environmental conﬂicts, and promote the effective enforcement of environmental law. In contrast to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has complete control over the implementation of American environmental legislation, Environmental Canada shares its responsibilities with the provincial governments. However, the distinction between what falls under federal authority and what belongs to the provinces is rarely clear, especially when it comes to environmental protection. In an effort to minimize overlap, the Canadian federal government typically limits its involvement in environmental protection to a few key areas where its constitutional authority is clear and undisputed. Those areas include national parks, aboriginal title lands, inland and offshore ﬁsheries, and issues of “national concern,” such as toxic substances and endangered species, and are the focus of Environment Canada’s authority. Otherwise, environmental protection responsibilities such as assessments, inspections, and enforcement generally fall to the provinces. S E E A L S O U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Internet Resource Environment Canada Web site. Available from http://www.ec.gc.ca.

Burkhard Mausberg

Environment Mexico

See Mexican Secretariat for Natural

Resources

Environmental Crime Environmental crime is a relatively new concept in U.S. and international law; thus, it is still being deﬁned. In a general sense, an environmental crime is any violation of an environmental regulation for which criminal liability may be imposed. Almost all of the major environmental regulations in the United States contain provisions that establish criminal liability under certain circumstances, and most of these liability provisions are mirrored in state statutes. Criminal enforcement of environmental regulations is currently used in only the most egregious of cases, where the actual or potential damages are excessive or where the violator is a repeat offender. Although criminal enforcement actions are mainly taken to deter future misconduct by the individuals charged, their greater impact may be to deter those who are contemplating similar offenses. Environmental crimes can be perpetrated at any legal level. They may arise out of violations of international, federal, or state laws. Prosecutors can bring charges for such violations at each of these levels. In international cases, U.S. attorneys prosecute violations of federal laws drawn from treaty

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EXAMPLES OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMES Statutes

Violations

Fines

Imprisonment

Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)1

(RCRA) Taking part in any portion of the hazardous waste disposal process, including transporting, storing, and disposing of hazardous waste without a permit. (subcategory) "Knowing endangerment"1

(RCRA) up to $50,000 per day (subcategory) up to $250,000 per day

(RCRA) up to 5 years (subcategory) up to 15 years

Clean Water Act (CWA)2

(CWA) Negligent or intentional violations of the statute. (subcategory) "Knowing endangerment"

(CWA) up to $25,000 per day (subcategory) up to $250,000 per day

(CWA) up to 1 year (subcategory) up to 15 years

Clean Air Act (CAA)3

(CAA) Anyone who knowingly violates the statute. (subcategory) "Knowing endangerment"

(CAA) up to $250,000 per day/ $500,000 per day for corporations (subcategory) up to $1,000,000 per day for corporations

(CAA) up to 5 years (subcategory) up to 15 years

1"Knowing

endangerment" exists when an individual "places another person in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.

provisions. On the local level, state or district attorneys can ﬁle charges based on state or local environmental regulations. Environmental crimes typically involve the unauthorized disposal of hazardous material or discharge of pollutants into the air, water, or ground. In order for such activity to be deemed criminal, the government must usually be able to show that the discharge was not accidental. Most criminal laws require that a prosecutor demonstrate the defendant was aware of the activity for which the charge was ﬁled. Because this requirement is not clearly speciﬁed in many environmental statutes, the government has had some difﬁculty successfully prosecuting environmental crimes. The more extreme the violation, however, the easier it becomes to prove in a court of law that the action should be considered criminal. Several environmental statutes have established a special category of criminal liability in which the “knowing endangerment” of people or the environment has occurred. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for coordinating all environmental protection actions at all levels in the United States. Although the EPA is the federal agency that most frequently investigates environmental crimes, Congress has not granted it the power to prosecute environmental crimes. Instead, after an agency ofﬁcial has determined that the violation of an environmental regulation is potentially criminal in nature, EPA issues a recommendation to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that charges should be ﬁled against the violator. After investigating the case further, a U.S. attorney uses prosecutorial discretion in deciding whether or not to proceed with a criminal case. Several factors are important to the prosecutor in deciding whether the behavior should be considered criminal, including the severity of the actual or potential damages, whether intent has been shown, whether the violator was cooperative, and whether there is a history of similar violations. If the prosecutor decides to ﬁle charges, the defendant has the same constitutional rights and protections that are provided in any criminal case. S E E A L S O Environmental Justice; Environmental Regulatory Agencies; Laws and Regulations, International; Laws and Regulations, United States; Treaties and Conferences.

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Bibliography Sullivan, Thomas, F.P., ed. (2001). Environmental Law Handbook, 16th edition. Washington, DC: Government Institutes. Clifford, Mary. (1998). Environmental Crime: Enforcement, Policy, and Social Responsibility. New York: Aspen. Internet Resource Brickey, Kathleen F. “Environmental Crime at the Crossroads: The Intersection of Environmental and Criminal Law Theory.” Available from http://law.wustl.edu/Faculty.

Mary Elliott Rollé

Environmental Impact Statement The U.S. 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 broadly deﬁned to include discussion of natural systems, human health, and the man-made environment. A draft EIS is then circulated to government agencies, in some cases NativeAmerican tribes, and other interested parties for comment. The ﬁnal EIS must include responses to any substantive comments received on the draft. For the sake of efﬁciency and improved public participation, regulatory agencies frequently combine pollution-release permit review with the EIS process. Impact mitigation that is within the scope of the regulation, such as water discharges, can be required as an enforceable condition of the permit. From the outset of NEPA, courts have held that citizens and environmental groups have “standing” to challenge the adequacy of an EIS. This potential for protracted litigation provides the incentive for involving interest groups throughout the decision process. Many states and countries have adopted EIS requirements similar to those of NEPA. S E E A L S O Activism; Environmental Movement; Environmental Protection Agency; Industry; Laws and Regulations, International; Laws and Regulations, United States; National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); Public Participation; Systems Theory. Internet Resource U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). NEPA Web site. Available from http://tis.eh.doe .gov/nepa.

John P. Felleman

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

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policymaking, the enforcement of laws, and targeting communities of color for disposal sites and polluting industries. Issues central to environmental justice revolve around the siting of municipal landﬁlls, hazardous waste facilities, and nuclear-waste dumps; manufacture and sale of hazardous products; the international distribution of toxic wastes; emissions from chemical plants; lead paint exposure and other public health risks in urban residences; and occupational hazards including pesticides on agricultural lands. In addition, environmental racism not only applies to African-Americans, but also Native Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and other people of color throughout the world.

A rally before the march to Laidlaw dump in Buttonwillow, California. (Zachary Singer, Greenpeace.)

The emergence of the environmental justice movement in the 1980s stimulated debate on the extent to which race, class, and political power have been or should become central concerns of modern environmentalism and environmental management. Movement leaders charged that mainstream environmental organizations and environmental policy demonstrated greater concern for preserving wilderness and animal habitats than protecting the homes and workplaces of humans. Some advocates disassociate themselves from environmentalism altogether, identifying instead with a heritage of broader social justice imbedded in the civil rights activities of the 1950s and 1960s. Some observers date the environmental justice movement to Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Corp. (1979), in which African-American residents of the Northwood Manor subdivision in Houston, Texas, ﬁled the ﬁrst class action lawsuit (later unsuccessful) challenging the siting of a waste facil-

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ity in their neighborhood as a violation of civil rights. The key event was a related protest in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982. Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., executive director of the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice (CRJ), is credited with coining the term “environmental racism.” He became interested in the connection between race and pollution when residents of predominantly African-American Warren County asked the CRJ for help in preventing the siting of a PCB dump in their community. The protest did not reverse plans for the disposal site, and it resulted in the arrest of more than 500 people, including Chavis. However, this event galvanized environmental justice advocates, and a full-scale movement formed as a result. In October 1991 a multiracial group of more than 600 advocates met in Washington, D.C., for the ﬁrst National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. In their Principles of Environmental Justice, conference participants asserted the hope “to begin to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to ﬁght the destruction and taking of our lands and communities. . . .” Dramatic charges of environmental racism, and the call for a new program of environmental justice took center stage. Among the goals stated in the principles was “to secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our peoples.” The movement found strength at the grassroots level, especially among low-income people of color who faced serious environmental threats from hazardous wastes. Its leaders are academics like sociologist Robert Bullard and social activists like Chavis. For those articulating the goals of environmental justice, grassroots resistance to environmental threats is seen as a reaction to more fundamental injustices brought on by economic and social disparities. In some instances, the critique extends to questioning the capitalist system and bias in favor of Eurocentric—or Western white—social viewpoints. On one level, efforts to characterize the environmental justice movement as having its historic roots in civil rights activism, but not in the environmental movement, grew out of a desire to maintain a unique identity for the sake of its political goals. The Warren County incident and other cases convinced Chavis and his colleagues that a national study correlating race and toxic waste sites was in order. In 1987 the CRJ published Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States (1987), the ﬁrst comprehensive national study of the demographic patterns associated with the location of hazardous waste sites. It stressed that the racial composition of a community was the single variable best able to predict the siting of hazardous waste facilities in a community, and added that it was “virtually impossible” that these facilities were distributed by chance. The report, especially its strong inference of deliberate targeting, strengthened the position of environmental justice advocates, but it also set off a controversy over the importance of race as the central variable in that targeting. Contradictory opinions stressed the importance of economic class instead of or in addition to race, and some questioned the extent to which the placement of toxic facilities was clearly intentional. For environmental justice advocates, the culprit in deliberate targeting was not simply private companies, but government inaction ampliﬁed by political impotence linked to race and class. The federal executive branch,

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however, became more visible in the 1990s in helping to elevate environmental justice concerns to national attention. In 1992 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established the Ofﬁce of Environmental Justice. Its purpose was to ensure that all citizens, especially those of color or low income, received protection under existing environmental laws. Other initiatives within the EPA soon followed, and the Department of Energy (DOE) also drafted environmental justice guidelines for consideration in compliance issues. Similar action to craft policy on the basis of environmental justice concerns was carried out in states like New York and Texas. A 1992 EPA report supported some of the claims regarding the exposure of racial minorities to high levels of pollution, but it linked together race and class in most cases. A study conducted by the National Law Journal that same year questioned the EPA’s environmental equity record, pointing out that in the administration of the Superfund program, disparities existed in dealing with hazardous waste cleanups in minority communities as compared with white neighborhoods. Although President Bill Clinton signed an executive order “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and LowIncome Populations” in 1994, frustrations among environmental justice advocates deepened when an ofﬁcial Environmental Justice Act failed to pass Congress. Furthermore, no successful lawsuits have been litigated to date. Not surprisingly, enthusiasm for government action on environmental justice issues has waned among activists, and the movement’s programmatic activities have instead primarily focused on public information campaigns, media outreach, brownﬁeld economic redevelopment pilot projects, and internal organizational changes. Debate also centers on what determines ‘disproportionate burden’ for the poor and people of color as stated in the EPA deﬁnition of environmental justice. Aggressive litigation against polluters or congressional support for more stringent protection have not been forthcoming. There is little doubt that the environmental justice movement has gained the attention of federal and state governments, mainstream environmentalists, scholars, and others. Some traditional environmental groups and environmental justice activists have made attempts to form alliances or sponsor joint ventures such as an environmental consortium for minority outreach in Washington, D.C. The successful campaigns for social justice have publicized the movement’s cause and continued its mission. It has drawn on traditional grassroots support to reinforce its claim of being a broad-based movement and it has questioned the will and objectives of modern environmental groups to offer a deﬁnition of environmentalism that is sufﬁciently broad to encompass the interests of minority groups, the poor, the disadvantaged, and the politically impotent. S E E A L S O Activism; Earth Summit; Gauley Bridge, West Virginia; Poverty; Warren County, North Carolina; Yucca Mountain. Bibliography Bullard, Robert D. (1994). Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books. Foreman, Christopher H., Jr. (1998). The Promise and Peril of Environmental Justice. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Lester, James P.; Allen, David W.; and Hill, Kelly M. (2001). Environmental Injustice in the United States: Myths and Realities. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

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Internet Resources Environmental Justice Resource Center Web site. Available from http://www.ejrc.cau .edu. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov/ swerosps.

Martin V. Melosi

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 and early 1900s, and forester Aldo Leopold, in the 1930s and 1940s, invested their time and spirit extolling the virtues of the U.S. wilderness. Both men shared a common vision for protecting the dynamic landscape of mountains and grasslands that was a distinguishing characteristic of the United States. The ensuing battles over damming rivers and logging forests helped shape the modern environmental ethic.

A 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 McDowell, Hull House was formed in 1888. The creation of Hull House helped mark what is known as the Settlement House era. Across the United States, settlement houses sought to reform communities by raising public awareness about problems to ﬁnd resolutions. Working-class neighborhoods were in the most dire straits, with overcrowding and poor sanitation. Hull House was concerned with the need for solid waste and sewage management in poor working neighborhoods. To remedy this, Addams became trash inspector for her Chicago ward. Likewise, McDowell motivated people to consider reduction, and pressured industries to take responsibility for their trash and sewage disposal. The crusade for reforming working-class neighborhoods continued as McDowell opened a new settlement house in the meat-packing section of Chicago. Between the polluted waters of the Chicago River and the ﬁelds of slaughterhouse waste, McDowell began to make a strong connection between the conditions of work and daily life. Most people working in the industrial sections of the city couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. Industrial byproducts that contaminated the city’s air and water were unregulated, and industries weren’t compelled to address the problem. Under Teddy Roosevelt, reformers

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like Addams were drawn to the Progressive Party. Joining the political ranks, reformers provided greater visibility to the problems of pollution and social injustice. Consequently, leagues representing women and consumer interests gained popularity. In the 1920s the National Consumer’s League exposed the use of dangerous chemicals in the watch industry, and the Gauley Bridge deaths put the national spotlight on the role played by industry in the health of its employees.

The Clearwater, a sloop built to promote the antipollution cause, is sailing down the Hudson river past a junkyard on its way to the first Earth Day activities in 1970. (© Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

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 an immediate environmental impact, society could ignore it. The postwar impact on the environment was difﬁcult to ignore. Within ten years, three major bouts of air pollution paralyzed the United States and Europe. In 1943 a thick smog trapped residents of Los Angeles in an unhealthy shroud of air pollution that came to be known as Black Monday. Five years later, in the Pennsylvania town of Donora, another deadly smog hung over the Monongahela Valley leaving six thousand people ill and twenty

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dead. In perhaps the worst case of air pollution, a deadly fog descended on London in 1952, killing several thousand. Yet in spite of these and other environmental problems, the general public and policymakers remained relatively unconcerned. What did ﬁnally awaken the public was the growth of an antinuclear movement in the early 1950s. As the United States performed aboveground testing of nuclear weapons, the implications for human life were startling. Protest efforts in neighboring Great Britain and the aftermath of Bikini Atoll created widespread fear about the risk of radioactive fallout from nuclear testing. Housewives and high school and college students mobilized against testing, and communities protested. Everyone, it seemed, had a stake in the debate.

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. César E. Chávez, leader of the United Farm Worker’s Union, raised awareness of the diseases farmworkers suffered due to chemical exposure. Eventually farmworkers were able to use public awareness as a bargaining tool in their work contracts, calling for a national boycott on grapes. Carson, like the reformers before her, felt an explicit need to make information accessible to the public, and many other scientists agreed. Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb, published in 1968, sounded the alarm about overpopulation and the environmental damage that would inevitably result from a population too large for Earth to support. Garrett Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons,” also published in 1968, explored the concept of the environment as a common area, subject to misuse in the absence of regulation. The proliferation of publications and community protests sent the message to state and national government that the pollution problem needed to appear on their agendas. Environmental issues were swept up in a time of great social unrest. Marked by counterculture ethics and the tool of protest, citizen groups began to make connections between technological progress and pollution. Traditional wilderness preservation environmental groups dating back to the turn of the twentieth century, like the Sierra Club and the National Audubon Society, were now working alongside a new breed of antipollution activists. Protesters considered quality-of-life issues to be environmental issues. If the industries supporting their lifestyles were also degrading their neighborhoods, change needed to occur. Among the organic farms, counterculture communes, and underground publications, society was seeking to reestablish a connection with the environment.

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

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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/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

up onto British and French shores. Americans were assured that such a tragedy could never occur in their waters, but two years later, in 1969, the Union Oil Company’s Platform A leaked over 200,000 gallons of crude oil that spread across forty miles of Paciﬁc coastline. The beaches in Santa Barbara, California, were soaked with oil, choking thousands of birds and mammals. Less than ﬁve months later, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught on ﬁre from chemical and sewage pollution. The relationship between industries, communities, and the environment was far from harmonious. In 1969, in response to the public’s demand for action after the Storm King case on the Hudson River, President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). With NEPA, the national government was

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taking a stand for the ﬁrst time to integrate public concerns into the national environmental agenda. NEPA gave the national government the responsibility to help eliminate environmental destruction and seek a balance between the needs of industry and the environment. The Council on Environmental Quality was created to help advance this cause. The 1970s are noted by many as the doomsday decade. Nixon’s enactment of NEPA was a ﬁrst step. Interest in environmental issues had remained strong from the debate over nuclear testing in the 1950s to the uninhibited use of DDT and the devastating effects of pollution on aquatic ecosystems. Environmental issues had been tied into larger social movements, but as the United States moved into a new decade, concern for the environment became a stand-alone issue. Urban pollution issues, both air and water, were tied into social interests/human health before gaining acknowledgement as purely environmental issues that had consequences for life other than humans. The intrinsic value of nature, with the exception of the wilderness preservation movement at the turn of the twentieth century, was not truly addressed until this time.

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, cautious of the activism that typiﬁed the era. Many of the older environmental organizations worked from a much more traditional standpoint—within political and social parameters. They believed the extremism of groups like EarthFirst! and Greenpeace threatened the progress they had made thus far and would alienate mainstream public support. Despite their hesitancy, the day met with great success. In the end, more than twenty million Americans participated in the nation’s ﬁrst Earth Day events on April 22, 1970. Shortly after the Earth Day celebration demonstrated public concern about environmental problems, Barry Commoner, a notable scientist and professor, published The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology. Commoner wrote about the need for humans to return to a state of equilibrium with nature. Citizen action groups like the Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP) and the Campaign Against Pollution (CAP) lobbied their local governments for change. In Pittsburgh, GASP activists brought attention to pollution by selling cans of clean air and opening their own complaint department. The League of Conservation Voters published lists of top-polluting industries and rated politicians based on their environmental voting record. The national government responded and took steps towards regaining the balance discussed by Commoner and those before him. The existing Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were amended to better address the causes and effects of pollution, and regulatory measures were put into place. Between 1972 and 1976, several new federal acts were also passed, regulating ocean dumping, pesticides, and the transportation of waste. The pressure of

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local groups, acting independently of larger mainstream groups, paid off. Several pieces of environmental legislation were passed, addressing the transportation and cleanup of chemicals and waste.

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 Island, New York, was a leading antipollution group. Compelled to push for the litigation of chemical use, especially pesticides, they reestablished themselves as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Throughout the 1970s the EDF, also with the help of Ford, gained notoriety for its success in waging the war on pollution in court.

A view of earth from space. (United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA].)

The legal and scientiﬁc services offered by groups like the NRDC and EDF became important assets to the environmental movement during the 1970s. From 1976 to 1978, communities were ﬁnding themselves more widely exposed to pollution than they had ﬁrst realized. Hazardous chemicals were being dumped in Virginia, the Hudson River was heavily contaminated with PCBs, and cows in upper Michigan were poisoned by polybrominated biphenyls (PBB). In Love Canal, New York, where many homes had been built on a chemical waste dump, Lois Gibbs worked endlessly to rectify the situation, lobbying polluters, politicians, and attorneys for support. In 1978 President Jimmy Carter declared a state of emergency. Gibbs later formed the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes (CCHW), which helped other communities with toxic waste problems, while calling for greater toxics controls. Love Canal led directly to the passage of the Superfund law.

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 transported by precipitation and deposited across the land came to be known as acid rain. The idea that pollution did not remain a local problem but could be carried long distances alarmed the international community. By 1979 thirty-ﬁve countries signed the ﬁrst international air-pollution agreement, the Geneva Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution. During the course of the 1970s, the face of environmentalism had shifted to civil action. Just as it seemed that environmental policies were effectively in place, the political climate was about to make a complete turn—but not before the fear of nuclear power reared its head again. In 1978 a partial meltdown at the nuclear plant in Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, generated a ripple of fear and uncertainty throughout the public. Residents were evacuated, and radiation-contaminated water was released in the nearby Susquehanna

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River. One year after the enactment of the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation Liability Act, also known as Superfund, a national law dealing with the cleanup of contaminated areas, the alarms sounded again. This time it was exposure to toxins in Times Beach, Missouri. Over 2,000 residents were evacuated when the roads were contaminated with oil-containing dioxin. The government spent around $40 million buying back homes from residents, and the cleanup efforts under Superfund ensued. As of 2003, the town remains vacant.

A 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 threats, and a new environmental agenda focused on acid rain, ozone depletion, and global warming. Without the willing support of the national government, environmental groups began to take matters into their own hands. Organizations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, which had always encouraged direct action, had an ally with the radical Earth First!, which used similar tactics. Often referred to as direct-action groups, their methods embraced the prevention of nuclear testing, whaling, and logging through physical means. Their actions met with mixed reviews. Some felt that the movement had outgrown this type of action and that such efforts undermined the legislative progress that had been established. But activists felt that national legislation was being relied on too heavily to provide all the answers. Reintroducing the activism of the earlier movement seemed to be one of the few methods that educated the public about hazards of pollution and kept the debate alive. With greater access to information, increasing numbers of antitoxics groups, and pressure from the international community, the pollution problem was not going to disappear. An incident in Bhopal, India, in 1984 prompted much debate about the need for uniform environmental standards and it brought a dire problem into the spotlight that had for years been ignored: environmental injustice. In Bhopal over 2,000 people died and nearly 250,000 others suffered lung and eye damage when a poorly maintained chemical storage tank overheated. The Union Carbide Company, which operated the plant internationally, was not abiding by the same regulations that applied to its West Virginia branch. The accident echoed eerily of the Gauley Bridge deaths in the late 1920s, when Union Carbide knowingly exposed hundreds of African-American miners to dangerous silica deposits. The environmental movement expanded throughout the 1990s, becoming more international in its efforts. In 1992 the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro was attended by over 142 heads of state. Environmental organizations joined the proceedings with hopes of inﬂuencing the outcome. Five years later, organizations reconvened to assess the progress that had been made since the Earth Summit. Bound by the underlying desire to improve the environment, grassroots actions, national organizations, and legal proceedings have combined to present a positive force for change. NGOs were excluded

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from the 1992 Earth Summit. A satellite conference was established instead. The result was that the NGOs drafted their own alternative plans, put together daily news on their conference and delivered it to the hotels of those attending the main conference, and essentially—not much was truly accomplished at the ﬁrst Earth Summit. However, the satellite conference put NGOs on the board as the key players in the environmental movement. They were perceived as more knowledgeable and could network more easily in the absence of red tape that government parties encountered. The movement represents an amalgamation of issues, from species protection and land conservation to pollution. It has also propelled itself by employing a variety of tactics to attract attention, from petitions and protests to publications and organizations. The prospect of danger to human life in the form of pollutants has motivated people from all classes and walks of life to engage in the movement to improve the quality of life. The ability to relate the causes of pollution back to human industry gave communities a sense of empowerment. Witnessing the perils of pollution in several different forms, the public has been moved to respond. The issue of pollution has compelled nations to consider the wider implications of their decisions and actions. It has shaped the course of the environmental movement, as the realization has grown that the environment extends beyond a county sign or a border patrol—and that the issue of pollution is about the shared responsibilities of consumers, manufacturers, and all residents of the larger, global community. S E E A L S O Activism; Addams, Jane; Agenda 21; Antinuclear Movement; Brower, David; Carson, Rachel; Chávez, César E.; Citizen Suits; Commoner, Barry; Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA); Dioxin; Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills; Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents; Disasters: Natural; Disasters: Nuclear Accidents; Disasters: Oil Spills; Dioxin; Donora, Pennsylvania; Earth Day; EarthFirst!; Earth Summit; Ehrlich, Paul; Environmental Racism; Gauley Bridge, West Virginia; Gibbs, Lois; Government; Green Party; Greenpeace; Hamilton, Alice; LaDuke, Winona; Nader, Ralph; National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); National Toxics Campaign; New Left; Politics; President’s Council on Environmental Quality; Progressive Movement; Property Rights Movement; Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs); Public Participation; Public Policy Decision Making; Right to Know; Settlement House Movement; Smart Growth; Snow, John; Times Beach, Missouri; Tragedy of the Commons; Treaties and Conferences; Union of Concerned Scientists; Wise Use Movement; Zero Population Growth. Bibliography Allen, Thomas B. (1987). Guardian of the Wild: The Story of the National Wildlife Federation, 1936–1986. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Brandon, Ruth. (1987). The Burning Question: The Anti-Nuclear Movement Since 1945. London: Heinemann. Buck, Susan J. (1991). Understanding Environmental Administration and Law. Washington, DC: Island Press. Carson, Rachel. (1962). Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin Co. Chiras, Daniel D. (1991). Environmental Science. Redwood City, CA: Benjamin/ Cummings. Commoner, Barry. (1971). The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology. New York: Knopf.

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de Steiguer, J. E. (1997). The Age of Environmentalism. New York: McGraw-Hill. de Villiers, Marq. (2000). Water. Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin Co. Ehrlich, Paul. (1968). The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine Books. Gottlieb, Robert. (1993). Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington, DC: Island Press. Gottlieb, Robert. (2001). Environmentalism Unbound. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Grossman, Mark. (1994). The ABC-CLIO Companion to the Environmental Movement. San Francisco: ABC-CLIO. Guha, Ramachandra. (2000). Environmentalism: A Global History. New York: Longman. Hardin, Garrett. (1968). “The Tragedy of the Commons.” In Science 162:1243–1248. Hays, Samuel P. (2000). A History of Environmental Politics Since 1945. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Kline, Benjamin. (1997). First along the River. San Francisco: Acada Books. Markham, Adam. (1994). A Brief History of Pollution. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Nash, Roderick. (1982). Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Nicholson, Max. (1987). The New Environmental Age. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Papadakis, Elim. (1998). Historical Dictionary of the Green Movement. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Rubin, Charles. (1994). The Green Crusade. New York: Macmillan. Willets, Peter. (1982). Pressure Groups in the Global System. London: St. Martin’s Press. Other Resources Citizen’s Campaign. “Coalitions and Afﬁliations.” Available from http://www .citizenscampaign.org. Environmental Defense Fund. “Notable Victories.” Available from http://www .environmentaldefense.org. Natural Resources Defense Council. “Environmental Legislation.” Available from http://www.nrdc.org. United Nations. (1997). “UN Conference on Environment and Development (1992).” Available from http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html. Worldwatch Institute. “WTO Confrontation Shows Growing Power of Activist Groups.” Available from http://www.worldwatch.org.

Christine M. Whitney

Environmental Protection Agency

See U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency

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, researchers argue that to limit the understanding of racism to prejudicial and discriminatory behavior misses important aspects of racism. Racism is also a system of advantages or privileges based on race. In the

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American context, many of the privileges and advantages available to whites stem directly from racial discrimination directed at people of color. Therefore, racism results not only from personal ideology and behavior, but also from the personal thoughts and actions that are supported by a system of cultural messages and institutional policies and practices. Racism is thus more fully understood if one sees it as the execution of prejudice and discrimination coupled with power, privilege, and institutional support. It is aided and maintained by legal, penal, educational, religious, and business institutions, to name a few. Environmental racism is an important concept that provided a label for some of the environmental activism occurring in minority and low-income communities. In particular, it links racism with environmental actions, experiences, and outcomes. In the broadest sense, environmental racism and its corollary, environmental discrimination, is the process whereby environmental decisions, actions, and policies result in racial discrimination or the creation of racial advantages. It arises from the interaction of three factors: (1) prejudicial belief and behavior, (2) the personal and institutional power to enact policies and actions that reﬂect one’s own prejudices, and (3) privilege, unfair advantages over others and the ability to promote one’s group over another. Thus, the term environmental racism, or environmental discrimination, is used to describe racial disparities in a range of actions and processes, including but not limited to the (1) increased likelihood of being exposed to environmental hazards; (2) disproportionate negative impacts of environmental processes; (3) disproportionate negative impacts of environmental policies, for example, the differential rate of cleanup of environmental contaminants in communities composed of different racial groups; (4) deliberate targeting and siting of noxious facilities in particular communities; (5) environmental blackmail that arises when workers are coerced or forced to choose between hazardous jobs and environmental standards; (6) segregation of ethnic minority workers in dangerous and dirty jobs; (7) lack of access to or inadequate maintenance of environmental amenities such as parks and playgrounds; and (8) inequality in environmental services such as garbage removal and transportation. During the 1980s people of color began organizing environmental campaigns to prevent the poisoning of farm workers with pesticides; lead poisoning in inner-city children; the siting of noxious facilities—landﬁlls, polluting industrial complexes, and incinerators—in communities like Warren County, North Carolina; Altgeld Gardens (the “toxic doughnut” on Chicago’s Southside); Convent, Louisiana’s “cancer alley;” and Kettleman City, California. Activists also demanded the cleanup of communities like Triana, Alabama that had been contaminated with dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT), and the monitoring or closure of facilities like Emelle, Alabama’s commercial hazardous landﬁll (the largest of its kind in the United States). In addition, they questioned the placement of large numbers of nuclear waste dumps on Native-American reservations. Meanwhile, activists, scholars, and policymakers began investigating the link between race and exposure to environmental hazards. Two inﬂuential studies exploring this relationship—one by the U.S. General Accounting Ofﬁce (USGAO) and the other by the United Church of Christ (UCC)—found that African-Americans and other people of color were more likely to live close to hazardous waste sites and facilities than whites. The study by the UCC was particularly important because it made an explicit

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connection between race and the increased likelihood of being exposed to hazardous wastes. The studies also made the issue of race and the environment more salient in communities of color. In 1977 Sidney Howe, Director of the Human Environment Center, argued that the poor were exposed to more pollution than others, and that those creating the most pollution live in the least polluted places. He used the term environmental justice to describe the corrective measures needed to address this disparity. The term environmental racism came into popular use at a conference held at the University Michigan’s School of Natural Resources in 1990. The conference, which focused on race and environmental hazards, brought together scholars and policymakers to discuss the relationship between racism and the environment. In addition, the term environmental equity movement was used in the late 1980s to describe the growing movement to address racial, gender, and class environmental inequalities. However, by the early 1990s the term justice replaced equity because environmental justice activists felt justice was a more inclusive term that incorporated the concepts of equality and impartiality. The movement focuses on two kinds of justice: (1) distributive justice, who bears what costs and beneﬁts, and (2) corrective justice, concerned with the way individuals are treated during a social transaction. The environmental justice movement is concerned with distributive justice especially as it relates to identifying past racial injustices and advantages as well as the quest for future remedies. The movement is also concerned with corrective justice as it relates to corporate-worker–community relations and government–local community interactions. S E E A L S O Environmental Justice. Bibliography Aguirre, Adalberto Jr., and Turner, Jonathan H. (1998). American Ethnicity: The Dynamics and Consequences of Discrimination. 2nd ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Bryant, Bunyan, and Mohai, Paul. (1992). Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards: A Time for Discourse. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Bullard, Robert. (1990). Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Healey, Joseph F. (1998). Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Class: The Sociology of Conﬂict Group Change. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge. Howe, Sidney. (1977). “Making Polluters Pay.” Washington Post, Jan. 30, p. C8. Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State and Utopia. New York: Basic Books. Omi, Michael, and Winant, Howard. (1994). Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge. Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Taylor, Dorceta E. (2000). “The Rise of the Environmental Justice Paradigm: Injustice Framing and the Social Construction of Environmental Discourses.” American Behavioral Scientist 43(4):508–580. United Church of Christ (UCC). (1987). Toxic Waste and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites. New York. U.S. General Accounting Ofﬁce (USGAO). (1983). Siting of Hazardous Waste Landﬁlls and Their Correlation with the Racial and Socio-Economic Status of Surrounding Communities. Washington, DC. Internet Resource Environmental Justice Resource Center. Available from http://ejrc.cau.edu. Minority Environmental Leadership Development Initiative. Available from http:// sitemaker.umich.edu/meldi.

Dorceta E. Taylor

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Ethics

Environmental Regulatory Agencies

See Environment Canada; Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

EPA

See U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Ethics The term environmental ethics applies to the study of the moral foundation of our relationship with the environment. Questions posed by environmental ethics are varied, but all deal with our responsibility to the environment— what is our responsibility and how far does it go? Possibly the most basic discussion in environmental ethics begins with examining the value of nature—does nature have value on its own (intrinsic value), or is the environment only valuable to the extent that it beneﬁts humans (instrumental value)? The answers to this question dictate how different people approach issues of conservation and pollution. Two opposing approaches to environmental ethics became evident as the ﬁeld emerged. The approach that sees the environment only in terms of what in the environment can beneﬁt humans is called the anthropocentric approach. The nonanthropocentric approach, conversely, considers the intrinsic value in every part of the environment, from the oceans to bacteria. But there are many variations in both of these main approaches, as each seeks to expand or limit its scope for reasons of practicality and common sense. For instance, as J. Baird Callicott points out, a strictly anthropocentric view holds that humans alone are morally valuable because only they possess the property of rationalism, and they are the only inhabitants of the environment that do. However, if we follow the logic of such a point of view, infants, for example, would have no moral value and thus not merit our consideration or protection. Anthropocentrism must therefore “lower the bar” of moral consideration such that it includes groups like the one just cited. On the other hand, an ecocentric approach that requires us to give moral consideration to every living thing on the planet would be too broad to be of any practical value, since inevitably certain human requirements will come into conﬂict with some parts of the environment. If mosquitoes carry diseases that kill humans (malaria, for instance), it is not practical nor would it be acceptable to claim that we should not try to eradicate the disease-carrying mosquitoes, because they deserve the same moral consideration as humans. It is interesting to note that there are times when both approaches would arrive at the same conclusion regarding the moral justiﬁcation (or lack thereof) for a certain action on the environment. In light of what we now know about dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT), its use would be wrong from an ecocentric point of view because it causes massive damage to many different species. From an anthropocentric point of view, the damage that DDT contamination causes in humans, both physically and through destruction of the beneﬁcial parts of their environment, would make its use unjustiﬁed. Nonetheless, DDT, although it is banned in developed countries, was still being manufactured by China and Mexico, as late as 1999, and exported

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“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” —Aldo Leopold, The Land Ethic, (1949)

to developing countries. It is mainly used to control malaria, for which scientists claim there is no economically feasible alternative, and was formerly employed to protect crops imported by the United States (though this has not been the case since 1986). Is the use of DDT to control malaria justiﬁed, in the absence of feasible alternatives? What about the protection of crops? For people living in poverty, healthy crops that can be exported mean a better life—a desirable outcome. But the environmental damage to the region that is sprayed, including its human population, is as bad as it has always been. Furthermore, importing sprayed crops reintroduces DDT into our environment. Even the anthropocentric views that strictly consider human beneﬁts vs. risks would agree that the latter use of DDT is morally unjustiﬁed, but can the same be said about its use to control malaria? Approximately one million people die each year as a result of this disease. The problem here is not scientiﬁc—alternative control methods exist. Therefore, it seems that the only morally justiﬁed action would be to make the alternative available at a reasonable price, so that neither the environment nor the people who survive the malaria suffer the consequences of exposure to DDT. As environmental ethics matured and expanded, so did the questions it raised. Who is responsible for the cost of cleaning up hazardous waste? Or for the harm an old dump site caused when the chemicals there leaked? What if at the time the site was created, the company dumping wastes at that location only suspected this action would present a problem in the future, but had no concrete evidence of this? A holistic view (neither anthropocentric nor ecocentric) would say that the morally correct course of action would be to err on the side of caution. The precautionary principle, as it is known, places the burden of proof on the entity trying to promote the action it says would be beneﬁcial—for example, the DDT manufacturer—since an action cannot be reversed once it is taken. At that point, one can only control the damage, if it occurs. Another area environmental ethics expanded into is distributive justice, which calls for everyone involved in a process or decision to receive their due consideration. Distributive justice is important in siting a hazardous waste disposal site, for instance. Currently, these sites often end up in lowincome or politically powerless areas, where the local population has no adequate representation. Distributive justice seeks to remedy this kind of discrimination. Environmental ethics became the basis for many political movements with sometimes contradictory ideas, but the many successful campaigns associated with such movements improved our lives by protecting the environment and reducing pollution. However, in light of the fact that the overall global picture is not improving where the environment is concerned, it would appear beneﬁcial to all of us to adopt personal environmental ethics and live by them day to day. S E E A L S O Carson, Rachel; Commoner, Barry; DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl Trichloroethane); Earth Day; Earth Summit; Economics; Precautionary Principle; Tragedy of the Commons. Bibliography Cooper, David E., and Palmer, Joy A. (1992). The Environment in Question. New York: Routledge. Rolston, Holmes III. (1988). Environmental Ethics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Rolston, Holmes III. (1989). Philosophy Gone Wild. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

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Internet Resources Brennan, Andrew, and Lo, Yeuk-Sze. “Environmental Ethics.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2002 edition, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Available from http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archive. Callicott, J. Baird. “Environmental Ethics: An Overview.” Available from http://www. environment.harvard.edu/religion.

Adi R. Ferrara

FDA

See U.S. Food and Drug Administration

F

Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act 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 were amended further in 1964, partially in response to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, to cover a variety of potentially harmful environmental effects, such as improved labeling of products with precautionary information. In 1972, 1978, and 1998, additional modiﬁcations of the act mandated the provision of data by the manufacturers on all potential health and environmental impacts of the chemicals. When it appears that a pesticide may cause unreasonable environmental risks, a review process is initiated to consider general ecotoxicological and environmental testing data, at various tiers or ecological trophic levels, on the environmental effects and fate of the pesticide. This review includes a risk assessment study to determine whether the continued use of a pesticide presents unreasonable environmental risks. The onus is on the manufacturer to demonstrate that the contested product can be used in regulated ways, with no unreasonable adverse environmental effects, or all or some registered uses may be withdrawn. S E E A L S O Carson, Rachel; Laws and Regulations, United States; Pesticides.

trophic related to feeding

Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).” Available from http://www.epa.gov/pesticides.

Clive A. Edwards

Fertilizers Filtration

See Agriculture See Water Treatment

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.

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Fish Kills

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.)

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 the dinoﬂagellate Pfeisteria piscicida caused ﬁsh kills, ranging from a few hundred to a million ﬁsh at one time, in estuaries of the southeastern United States.

Disease aquaculture practice of growing marine plants and raising marine animals for food

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In natural environments, disease alone does not usually result in mass mortality, but under the artiﬁcial conditions of a hatchery or an aquaculture

Fossil Fuels

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 concentration, temperature extremes, or pollution. When ﬁsh move from cold water into much warmer water such as a heated effluent from a generating station, bubbles may form in their tissues and they die from gas bubble disease.

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 a lake or stream may kill large quantities of aquatic vegetation, causing low-oxygen conditions.

effluent discharge, typically wastewater—treated or untreated—that flows out of a treatment plant, sewer, or industrial outfall; generally refers to wastes discharged into surface waters

Nuisance algal blooms may also cause suffocation. In 1994 in St. Helena Bay, South Africa, a large bloom of toxic and nontoxic algae formed in an estuary and extended into the open sea more than thirty kilometers out from the shore. The bloom sank and decomposed, forming an area with almost no oxygen and with lethal levels of hydrogen sulﬁde. Approximately ﬁfteen hundred tons of dead ﬁsh and sixty tons of dead rock lobsters were washed ashore. Many ﬁsh kills could be prevented by reducing the amount of pollution, especially nitrogen and phosphorus, entering waterways. Applications of fertilizers should be matched to the needs of the crop, sewage efﬂuent should receive advanced treatment, and atmospheric emissions from industry and transport should be carefully controlled at source. S E E A L S O Acid Rain; Agriculture; Hypoxia; Oxygen Demand, Biochemical; Phosphates; Thermal Pollution; Water Pollution; Water Pollution: Marine. Bibliography Burkholder, J.M. (1999). “The Lurking Perils of Pfeisteria.” Scientiﬁc American 282:42–49. Meyer, Fred P., and Barclay, Lee A., eds. (1990). Field Manual for the Investigation of Fish Kills. Resource Publication 177. Washington, DC: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Internet Resource “Fish Kills Offer Challenge to DEQ.” Available from http://www.leeric.lsu.edu/le.

Kenneth H. Mann

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

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of their heat content (hence the derivation of the word hydrocarbons). Coal has a relatively high carbon content; petroleum and natural gas have much higher hydrogen contents. The burning of fossil fuels releases large quantities of the powerful greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, where it remains for a long time and contributes to global warming. Fossil fuels have powered the industrialization of the world for several centuries. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, coal was the primary source of energy. Then, after World War I, petroleum and later natural gas became increasingly important and together they contribute approximately 62 percent of the primary energy sources in the United States. Coal nevertheless still provides about 23 percent, mostly by conversion into electricity at large power plants. S E E A L S O Coal; Electric Power; Energy; Petroleum. Internet Resource Energy Information Administration. “Monthly Energy Review.” Available from http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer.

Heinz H. Damberger

Fuel Cell Fuel cells convert chemical energy to electrical energy by combining hydrogen from fuel with oxygen from the air. Hydrogen fuel can be supplied in two ways—either directly as pure hydrogen gas or through a “fuel reformer” that converts hydrocarbon fuels such as methanol, natural gas, or gasoline into hydrogen-rich gas. A fuel cell’s only emission is water. Fuel cells have been used in the space program since the early 1960s and are currently used in approximately six hundred ofﬁce buildings, industrial facilities, and hospitals in the United States. Most automobile makers are experimenting with fuel cell–powered vehicles. DaimlerChrysler and United Parcel Service are testing fuel cell–powered delivery vans and fuel cell– powered city buses are being tested in Washington, DC. In his 2003 State of the Union, President George W. Bush proposed spending $1.2 billion to fund fuel cell research. All fuel cells contain two electrodes—one positively and one negatively charged—with a substance that conducts electricity (electrolyte) sandwiched between them. Fuel cells can achieve 40- to 70-percent efﬁciency, which is substantially greater than the 30-percent efﬁciency of the most efﬁcient internal combustion engines. Differences in size, weight, cost, and operating temperature all affect potential uses and, for a variety of reasons, a number of fuel cell technologies are not practical for transportation. The Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell is the focus of vehicle-power research. The following are the major different types of fuel cells: • Proton exchange membrane (PEM—sometimes also called “polymer electrolyte membrane”): Considered the leading fuel cell type for passenger car application; operates at relatively low temperatures and has a high power density. • Phosphoric acid: The most commercially developed fuel cell; generates electricity at more than 40-percent efﬁciency.

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2H2

O2 Polymer Electrolyte Membrane

2H2 o 4H4e 4eⴚ

A N O D E

Hⴙ Hⴙ

Hⴙ Hⴙ

C A T H O D E

O24H4e o 2H2O

4eⴚ

2H2O Electrical Load All fuel cells contain two electrodes–one positively and one negatively charged–with a substance that conducts electricity (electrolyte) sandwiched between them.

• Molten carbonate: Promises high fuel-to-electricity efﬁciencies and the ability to utilize coal-based fuels. • Solid oxide: Can reach 60-percent power-generating efﬁciencies and be employed for large, high powered applications such as industrial generating stations. • Alkaline: Used extensively by the space program; can achieve 70percent power-generating efﬁciencies, but is considered too costly for transportation applications. • Direct methanol: Expected efﬁciencies of 40 percent with low operating temperatures; able to use hydrogen from methanol without a reformer. (A reformer is a device that produces hydrogen from another fuel like natural gas, methanol, or gasoline for use in a fuel cell.) • Regenerative: Currently being researched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); closed loop form of power generation that uses solar energy to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The main difﬁculties in employing fuel cells on a large scale are the source and storage of hydrogen and conversion from a gasoline to a hydrogen refueling infrastructure. Ideally, hydrogen can be obtained by breaking down water with solar electrical power to produce hydrogen and oxygen. Major U.S. oil companies are already extracting hydrogen from gasoline for industrial uses and natural gas can be reacted with steam to form hydrogen in a process known as steam reforming. However both methods also produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. To power vehicles over reasonable distances hydrogen gas must be stored at extremely high pressures or as a liquid at very low temperatures. Researchers are looking at ways to store hydrogen in solids, such as super porous nanotech materials that soak up hydrogen like a sponge. It can also be extracted from methane, natural gas or gasoline by a fuel processor that reduces efﬁciency and does emit some pollutants. Patricia Hemminger

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Fuel Economy

Fuel Economy 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 that each manufacturer meet the same standard but that a manufacturer’s cars and trucks be treated differently since trucks were primarily used for work at the time. It mandated an average fuel efﬁciency of 27.5 MPG for cars by 1985, roughly doubling car fuel economy over ten years. The car standard remains the same as of 2003. The law also directed the Department of Transportation (DOT) to establish a standard for light trucks, deﬁned by the DOT to include sport utility vehicles (SUVs), minivans, and pickups. The DOT established a fuel economy standard of 20.5 MPG for light trucks by 1987, an increase of about 50 percent. Small changes in light truck standards were made thereafter, with the standard increasing to 20.7 by 1996 and then, in 2003, being set to increase to 22.2 MPG by 2007. This government-driven improvement in fuel economy has helped to limit the increase in fuel use by the United States to 30 percent over the last twenty-ﬁve years, despite the fact that vehicle miles traveled have nearly doubled over that time. In 2000 the increased fuel economy of the U.S. car and truck ﬂeet resulted in a savings of more than forty billion gallons of gasoline, representing a 25 percent reduction compared to what the demand would have been if fuel economy had not increased. This amounts to a savings of more than 430 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gasses that cause global warming. Vehicle travel over the coming decades is projected to rise at nearly unprecedented rates, and fuel economy is not expected to improve sufﬁciently to compensate for this trend. Due mostly to the explosion in sales of SUVs and other light trucks for passenger travel, the average fuel economy of a new vehicle sold in the United States has actually been declining since 1987 and by 2002 was at a two-decade low of less than twenty-four MPG.

variable vale control a system for automatically adjusting engine valve timing for better fuel efficiency

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Many factors contribute to a vehicle’s fuel economy, including aerodynamics, weight, tire inﬂation, and engine efﬁciency. Simple steps that can be taken by drivers, such as properly inﬂating and rotating tires and keeping engines properly tuned, can improve a vehicle’s MPG. Conventional technology improvements, such as continuously variable transmission systems and the use of high-strength steel and aluminum, can also make a vehicle go farther on a gallon of gas, as can advanced engine technologies such as lowfriction, variable vale control engines. These and other conventional technologies can increase fuel economy by 40 to 70 percent. Even larger improvements in fuel economy can be achieved by combining conventional technology improvements with hybrid electric technology. Hybrid electric vehicles obtain driving power from both a gasoline or diesel engine and an electric motor/battery system. When combined with conventional technology improvements, hybrids can achieve more than a doubling of today’s car and truck fuel economy. As of 2003 every major automaker had either put into production or announced the planned production of at least one hybrid car or truck in small volumes.

Gauley Bridge, West Virginia

The issue of fuel economy is a controversial one, and is directly linked to the economic and environmental costs of U.S. passenger vehicle travel. In 2000, American drivers consumed over 120 billion gallons of gasoline at a total cost of more than $185 billion, and passenger vehicles accounted for 40 percent of the oil products that the nation consumed. Cars and trucks are also the largest single source of smog-forming air pollution in most urban areas. Most of this pollution comes from a vehicle’s tailpipe, but emissions from fuel production and delivery, so-called “upstream emissions,” are also a problem. Also involved in the debate over fuel economy standards is global warming. The production, transportation, and use of gasoline for cars and light trucks in 2000 resulted in over one-ﬁfth of the U.S. emission of the heattrapping gases that scientists say are contributing to global warming. In the year 2000, U.S. cars and trucks emitted more of the heat trapping gasses that cause global warming than the individual emissions from every country other than the U.S., China, Russia, and Japan from all sources combined. Supporters of increased fuel-economy standards say that if the mileage performance of the U.S. ﬂeet of light trucks and cars was improved, it would help reduce the cost to drivers at the gas pump, the economic and military risks resulting from our nation’s reliance on foreign oil, changes to the global climate, and would improve consumer choice. Those opposed to signiﬁcant increases in fuel economy say that the auto industry could not economically withstand the cost of technology improvements to their ﬂeets, consumers are not interested in better fuel economy and consumer choice would be reduced, and that better alternatives exist, such as increasing gasoline taxes. Both sides of the debate also raise opposing perspectives on the safety impacts of changes to fuel economy standards. S E E A L S O Energy Efficiency; Vehicular Pollution. David Friedman

Furan

See Dioxin

Gauley Bridge, West Virginia Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, was the scene of a landmark case of environmental racism—one involving a conﬂict between the powerful and the powerless, between African-Americans and whites in 1930 to 1931. A contracting company, Rinehart and Dennis, recruited nonunion workers from the Deep South to drill the three-mile Hawk’s Nest Tunnel through Gauley Mountain. The tunnel diverts the New River through giant turbines owned by Union Carbide to power Electro-Metallurgical Company, a producer of ferrosilicon.

G

Gauley Mountain consists of sandstone rich in silica. African-American migrants constituted 75 percent of the ﬁfteen hundred workers employed to drill the tunnel. Supervised by armed white foremen, workers tunneled without the protection of respirators, dust suppressors, or mine ventilators. The workers—in six-day, ten-hour shifts—lived in a life-threatening environment. By 1933 the contractor and Union Carbide faced over ﬁve hundred lawsuits. The plaintiffs claimed exposure to the risk of acute silicosis leading to lung damage, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. Because of worker transience, the number of deaths and disabilities occurring at Gauley Bridge remains

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unknown. An out-of-court settlement included the dispossession of plaintiffs’ evidence. In The Hawk’s Nest Incident, Martin Cherniak writes, “The death rate of black males nineteen and older in Fayette County from 1930 to 1935 exceeded the rate [for three similar mining counties] by 51 percent, although it was almost identical from 1928 to 1930” (p. 100). An estimated 764 workers died from silicosis. The tragic Gauley Bridge episode led all but two states to amend worker compensation laws to include silica as a hazard that could be compensated. The struggle by people of color to avoid exposure to toxic materials, however, continues. Police arrested Washington D.C.–congressional delegate Walter Fauntroy, leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and four hundred others in 1982. They protested North Carolina’s decision to use Afton, an African-American community, as the ﬁnal resting place for 3,200 cubic yards of soil contaminated by polychlorinated biphynels (PCBs). For the protestors, the decision to put the PCBs in Afton was a racially discriminatory action that they suspected to be common nationwide. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Environmental Racism; Industry. Bibliography Bullard, Robert D. (1994). Dumping in Dixie. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Cherniack, Martin. (1986). The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Humphrey, Craig R.; Lewis, Tammy L.; and Buttel, Frederick H. (2002). Environment, Energy, and Society: A New Synthesis. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Craig R. Humphrey

Geographic Information System

See GIS

Gibbs, Lois GRASSROOTS ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST AND THE “MOTHER OF SUPERFUND” (1951–)

grassroots individual people and small groups, in contrast to government

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 “mother of Superfund.” Superfund, or the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), is the federal program to clean up toxic waste sites. Her work through the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) helps grassroots organizations nationwide demand accountability from industrial polluters and the U.S. government. Love Canal was the brainchild of William T. Love, an entrepreneur who wanted to link the upper and lower Niagara River for a hydroelectric power project in the late 1800s. Halted by an economic depression, the sixty-footwide by three-thousand-foot-long pit became a dump site for the Niagara Falls municipality, the U.S. Army, and the Hooker Chemical Corporation. After the pit was ﬁlled to capacity and covered with topsoil, Hooker sold the land to the Niagara Falls Board of Education. A school and single-family homes were built on the site in the 1950s.

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Gibbs, Lois

In 1978, after reading a Niagara Gazette series on local hazardous waste problems, Gibbs wondered if her son’s epilepsy, urinary tract, and respiratory problems could be traced to his school’s location on the former Love Canal dump site. She began petitioning for the closure of the elementary school, and gained the support of fellow concerned neighbors and friends. In the process, Gibbs learned about other health problems in the community—including liver disorders, blood disease, asthma, and urinary problems—and of residents’ fears that their homes would soon be worthless, trapping them in the polluted neighborhood. In August 1978, Gibbs and two neighbors took the petition with 161 signatures to the Commissioner of the State Department of Health, who immediately closed the school and recommended that pregnant women and children living close to the school leave the area. Within a week of that meeting, President Jimmy Carter declared Love Canal a federal emergency area, or emergency declaration area (EDA), and allocated funds to relocate the 239 families living in the ﬁrst two rings of homes around the school.

Lois Gibbs, at left. (©Wally McNamee/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.) epilepsy seizure disorder respiratory having to do with breathing

But another level of struggle was about to begin. In Gibbs’ memoir, Love Canal: My Story, she relates the two-year nightmare for the neighbors remaining on the canal. The cleanup effort to drain toxins from the area only released more dangerous chemicals. As president of the Love Canal Homeowners Association, Gibbs spearheaded a ﬁght to get the government to purchase Love Canal homes at a fair price. Dramatic events of 1980, a key election year, forced government action. The U.S. Environmental Protection

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Agency (EPA) released its study showing that residents exhibited chromosomal damage and angry Love Canal residents took two EPA representatives hostage. Gibbs took the Democratic National Convention by surprise in order to appeal for mortgage assistance for the residents of Love Canal. Her tenacious work publicized the severity of the pollution problem at Love Canal that inaction by Congress and President Carter would have had a political cost. President Carter ﬁnally agreed to fund permanent relocations for all Love Canal families, and the federal Superfund program was established to clean up toxic waste sites similar to Love Canal. Superfund would serve to enforce strict polluter liability so that no company could abandon a site as Hooker attempted to do in the case of Love Canal. After moving her family to Washington, D.C., Gibbs founded the Citizens Clearinghouse on Hazardous Waste (1981), later renamed the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice (CHEJ), an organization dedicated to helping community organizations facing toxic waste issues, especially exposure to dioxin. In 1990, Gibbs was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize. S E E A L S O Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA); Superfund. Bibliography Gibbs, Lois Marie, as told to Murray Levine. (1981). Love Canal: My Story. Albany: State University of New York Press. Gibbs, Lois Marie. (1998). Love Canal: The Story Continues. Stony Creek, CT: New Society Publishers. Gibbs, Lois Marie, and the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste. (1995). Dying from Dioxin: A Citizens Guide to Reclaiming Our Health and Rebuilding Democracy. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Internet Resources Center for Health, Environment, and Justice Web site. Available from http:// www.chej.org. Science and Engineering Library, University of Buffalo. “Love Canal @ 20.” Available from http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries.

Anne Becher and Joseph Richey

GIS (Geographic Information System) spatial related to arrangement in space

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 manipulated. A GIS works by storing a number of different data sets that each have geographical references. The various data for any given geographic location can then be integrated based on the user’s needs. A powerful feature of GIS is that data from different sources may be combined into the same database and integrated in order to make it useful for several purposes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) makes a dynamic GIS system available on its Web site that allows one to search and integrate information from several databases to create a map of pollution sources in his or her neighborhood.

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F ra nk l i n

St

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Legend Discharges to water SOURCE:

Hazardous waste

Air releases

Multiple

Streets

Water bodies

Counties

EPA Enviromapper.

GIS is a valuable tool that is commonly used by engineers, scientists, government ofﬁcials, geographers, planners, environmental modelers, geologists, epidemiologists, and others. Professionals in these ﬁelds may use GIS on a regular basis for the analysis, mapping, and integration of geographical data. GIS incorporates geography through the review of spatial distribution, land features, and location, by referencing data such as an address, parcel identiﬁer, or latitude/longitude. Approximately 85 to 90 percent of government agencies require the evaluation of geographic data and use of a GIS. Problems related to location, proximity, trends, and patterns are typically addressed by using a GIS. It also has modeling capabilities that allow speciﬁc scenarios and situations to be evaluated and used in decision-making processes. Examples of GIS applications in state and local government agencies include land records management, land use planning, scientiﬁc/environmental investigations, infrastructure management, and natural resources planning and management. GIS is an extremely valuable analytical tool for professionals, providing support for decision-making processes, such as determining if a site is suitable for a future landﬁll, calculating the soil erosion

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potential in a speciﬁc region, or determining the best location for remediation treatment systems for contaminated groundwater plumes. GIS is frequently used by environmental engineers and other professionals to produce and maintain maps for sites they may be working on, watershed analyses, hydrologic studies, and many other applications. Bibliography Fairchild, Michael F.; Parks, Bradley O.; and Steyaert, Louis T. (1993). Environmental Modeling with GIS. New York: Oxford University Press. Internet Resources GeoCommunity. “GIS Data Depot.” Available from http://www.gisdatadepot.com. “National Center for Geographic Information & Analysis Core Curriculum in Geoscience.” Available from http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/education. U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey Web site. Available from http://www.usgs.gov/research. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Enviromapper.” Available from http:// www.epa.gov/enviro.

Margrit von Braun and Deena Lilya

LEADIN G C O AL - B UR N I N G STAT E S F O R E L E CT R I C POWE R G E N E R AT I O N I N TH E U N ITE D ST AT E S Rank

State Use

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Texas Indiana Ohio Pennsylvania Illinois Kentucky Missouri West Virginia Alabama Michigan Georgia North Carolina Florida Wyoming Tennessee North Dakota Other States Total

(million tons) 99.7 59.5 55.9 52.1 46.6 40.2 37.3 37.0 35.6 33.7 33.5 29.9 29.9 26.5 26.1 25.1 322.4 990.966

SOURCE: Adapted from U.S. Department of Energy. Electric Power Annual 2000, vol. 1. Available from http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epav1.

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 has warmed to a greater extent than the Southern Hemisphere, and mid to high latitudes have generally warmed more than the tropics. Since the advent of satellites, it has become possible for scientists to thoroughly monitor the earth’s climate on a global scale. To examine the historical climate record, however, scientists have to use earlier, sparser forms of measurement, such as long-standing temperature records and less exact “proxy” data, such as the growth of coral, tree rings, as well as information from ice cores, which contain trapped gas bubbles and dust grains representative of the climate in which they were deposited. The bubbles in these cores contain oxygen, particularly oxygen isotopes 180 to 160, which are sensitive to variations in temperature. From the ratio between these isotopes at varying ice depths scientists can reconstruct a picture of the temperature variations over time in speciﬁc locations. Greater measurement uncertainty surrounds the earlier parts of this record because of sparse coverage (especially in ocean regions). Despite this uncertainty, the balance of scientiﬁc evidence conﬁrms that there has been a discernable warming over the last century.

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

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GLOBAL MEAN SURFACE AIR TEMPERATURE (Departure from 1880 to 1920 base period)

3.0 Model (CO2 + IPCC Aerosol estimate) Observed (Jones, et al., pers. comm., 1996)

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Degrees Celsius

2.0

1.5

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0.0

0.5 1850

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effect—keeps the earth warm: In its absence, the earth would be about 33°C cooler than it is now. However, as the concentration of greenhouse gases increases (due largely to human activities), most scientists agree that the effect is expected to intensify, raising average global temperatures.

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The Antarctic Larsen B shelf is breaking up, as shown in these photographs from February and March 2002, causing fears of global warming. Seen in these photographs is the loss of 500 billion tons of ice. (© Reuters NewMedia Inc./Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

However, the earth’s climate is known to vary on long timescales. The existence of naturally occurring ice ages and warm periods in the distant past demonstrates that natural factors such as solar variability, volcanic activity, and ﬂuctuations in greenhouse gases play important roles in regulating the earth’s climate. A minority of scientists believe that purely natural variations in these factors can account for the observed global warming.

Climate in the Twenty-first 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, in addition to concentrations of greenhouse gases. However, this uncertainty does not stop one from making some broad statements about (1) the likelihood of the sources of observed global warming and (2) the likely effects of continued warming. In the ﬁrst case, attempts by climate modelers to reproduce the observed global near-surface temperature

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SEA LEVEL RISE Thermal expansion only

2.0 6

4CO2

4

Feet

Meters

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2

2CO2 0.5

0.0 0

100

300

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0 500

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GFDL climate model

record using only natural variability in climate models have proved inadequate. The Third Assessment Report (2001) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) attributes some 80 percent of recent rises in global temperature to human activities, with other important contributions coming from volcanic and solar sources. Over the coming century, likely effects of continued warming include higher daily maximum and minimum temperatures, more hot days over most land areas, fewer frosts in winter, fewer cold days over most land areas, a reduced daily range of temperatures, more extreme precipitation events (all very likely), increased risk of drought, increases in cyclone peak wind, and precipitation intensity (likely). Other effects, such as the disintegration of Antarctic ice sheets, carry potentially enormous implications, but are considered very unlikely.

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, low lying areas such as the Netherlands and Bangladesh may be ﬂooded. A mitigation strategy would involve trying to cut emissions to forestall the heat-driven sea level rise, whereas an adaptation strategy might be to build large barriers to prevent the sea level rise from ﬂooding these countries. In wealthy countries such as the Netherlands this is perhaps a viable option. It is not so clear that Bangladesh—one of the world’s poorest countries—will be in a position to implement this sort of strategy.

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SURFACE AIR WARMING (˚F) 2x CO2

4x CO2

SOURCE:

GFDL R15 Climate Model; CO2 transient experiments, years 401–500

Because of the potentially serious ramiﬁcations of continued global warming, the World Meteorological Organisation and United Nations Environment Programme jointly established the IPCC in 1988. It assesses scientiﬁc and socioeconomic information on climate change and related impacts, and provides advice on the options for either mitigating climate change by limiting the emissions of greenhouse gases, or adapting to expected changes through developments such as building higher ﬂood defenses. In the wake of the general increase in the awareness of environmental issues in the Western world since the 1970s, global warming has become an important political issue in the last decade. Following the successful implementation of the Montréal Protocol (1987) that prohibited the production of ozone-depleting gases (i.e., chloroﬂuorocarbons [CFCs], halons, and carbon tetrachloride) starting in 2000, the international community sought to address the problem of global warming in the Kyoto Protocol (1992). This

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involves industrialized countries taking the lead on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The protocol requires them to decrease their emissions to 90 percent of their 1990 levels. The Kyoto Protocol comes into effect if ﬁfty-ﬁve parties to the convention ratify the protocol, with “annex 1” (or industrialized) parties accounting for 55 percent of that group’s carbon dioxide emissions in 1990. This approach has proved controversial for a variety of reasons: (1) It applies primarily to industrialized countries, freeing some of the world’s worst polluters, such as China and Saudi Arabia, from having to comply; (2) the reductions are arbitrarily ﬁxed at 10 percent of a country’s 1990 level, irrespective of whether that country is a big polluter, like the United States, or a relatively small polluter, like Sweden; (3) disagreements about whether the cuts imposed by the treaty will actually be worth the economic costs; (4) the treaty targets only gross emissions rather than net emissions—during the negotiations key differences emerged between a group of nations that favored the use of man-made forests as “carbon sinks” planted to soak up carbon emissions, and countries that believed this to be an inadequate response. Although the Kyoto Protocol has been enthusiastically backed by European countries, various wealthy countries remain outside the treaty, most notably Australia and the United States. The U.S. decision to not sign the Kyoto Protocol has proved particularly controversial, as the United States emits some 23 percent of global greenhouse emissions, while only containing 5 percent of the global population. The current Bush administration does not intend to ratify the agreement on the grounds “that the protocol is not sound policy,” according to U.S. Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky. S E E A L S O Carbon Dioxide; CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons); Greenhouse Gases; Halon; Methane (CH4); NOx (Nitrogen Oxides); Ozone; Treaties and Conferences. Bibliography Burroughs, William James. Climate Change: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Climate Change 2001: The Scientiﬁc Basis, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Harvey, L.D. Danny. Global Warming: The Hard Science. Prentice Hall, 1999. Internet Resources Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Web site. Available at http://www.ipcc.ch. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Climate Change 2001: IPCC Third Assessment Report.” Available at http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar.

David Frame

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 cities or towns.

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FE D E R A L A GE NCY A REA S OF E NV I RONME NTA L RES P ONS I BI LITY Federal Agency EPA http://www.epa.gov

Area of Responsibility Air pollution Water pollution Solid waste disposal Hazardous waste disposal Pesticides Toxic substances

Department of the Interior http://www.doi.gov Fish and Wildlife Service National Park Service Bureau of Land Management

Threatened and endangered species (nonmarine) Wildlife refuge management National parks management Mining on public lands

Department of Defense http://www.defenselink.mil/ Army Corps of Engineers

Regulation of filling in waters and wetlands

Department of Commerce http://www.commerce.gov National Marine Fisheries Service National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration http://www.noaa.gov

Threatened and endangered species (marine) Marine mammal protection Coastal zone management

Department of Agriculture http://www.usda.gov National Forest Service Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service

Forest management Animal and plant health

Food and Drug Administration http://www.fda.gov

Food and drug safety

Council on Environmental Quality http://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq/

National Environmental Policy Act

Antista, James V.; Boardman, Dorothy Lowe; Cloud, Thomas A.; et al. (2001). "Federal, State, and Local Environmental Control Agencies" In Treatise on Florida Environmental and Land Use Law. Tallahassee, FL: The Florida Bar. SOURCE:

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. Politicians campaign or make decisions based on a mix of their political party’s position and their constituents’ needs and viewpoints. If constituents view an issue as important, they are likely to make their preferences known to their representatives. These active attentives are aware of issues and communicate their preferences, thus demanding that elected ofﬁcials act as delegates. If an issue does not affect constituents directly, they are likely to remain quiet, allowing representatives to act as trustees and make the decision themselves.

The Development of the U.S. Government The ﬁrst U.S. government, established in 1781, was a “treaty of friendship” called The Articles of Confederation. This treaty among independent nation

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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 president and no bureaucracy; the government engaged in no day-to-day operations. This confederation soon proved ineffective, and in 1787 a Constitutional Convention was called to create a stronger system. This new government required each state to give up power to the national, or federal, government so it could act without requiring unanimous agreement by the individual states. The modern U.S. government system consists of three levels of government and three branches. The three levels of government are the federal (national), state, and local governments. The federal government deals largely with international agreements, treaties, and broad public issues affecting constituents across the nation. State governments primarily govern areas that affect the well being of its citizens; some of these are national in scope. When states address issues that are national, the general rule is that they can always “do more” than the federal government, but not less. They can require cleaner air and water than federal standards, for example. Local governments (counties, cities, towns, and special districts such as school districts) are seen as service providers who make our daily life easier; these services include snowplowing, public schools, and garbage collection. Citizens may fail to notice all that local and state governments do. Yet, decisions to plow roads have a great deal to do with protecting the water supply for both drinking and recreation, because it includes a decision to use sand or salt to create safer winter driving. And a heavy spring snowmelt, once it enters the sewage treatment system, can cause ﬂooding, sewage backups, and create health risks. Likewise, garbage collection is just the ﬁrst step in local solid waste management that can end at an incinerator or a landﬁll. Thus the direct delivery of services such as snowplowing and garbage collection that citizens normally see, bring into being the less visible management programs of our state and local governments. Often, local and state governments are seen as “policy laboratories” for the federal government. When a problem reaches national attention, the federal government looks to states and local governments with existing policies for examples of what works, and uses their policy as a model for a national one. This “ratcheting effect” is particularly evident in pollution control policies during the twentieth century. Cities enacted the ﬁrst clean air statutes around 1900; county and state air quality policies grew out of these local laws by the 1950s. The national Clean Air Act of 1970 was, in turn, modeled after several state policies. The three branches of government—executive, legislature, and judiciary— serve as a system of checks and balances to limit the power of any one branch of government. These limits derive from separate powers (authority given to one branch to act on an issue), shared powers (where it takes two or more branches acting together to accomplish something), and checks (where one branch can stop another branch from acting).

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

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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 Senate, with a greater focus on international policy and administration of government, and the House of Representatives, with a stronger focus on domestic or internal policy and budget and taxation. While members of most legislatures are elected by citizens to represent their interests by geographic region, this is not always true. The parliament of the United Kingdom has one house whose members are elected, the House of Commons, and a second house, the House of Lords, composed of members of the aristocracy, or peers, who inherit their seats. In the late 1990s, the parliament of the United Kingdom was reorganized, and the seats held by a number of the peers were eliminated. The Executive The branch of government that implements the laws and conducts the daily operations of government. In the United States, the national executive branch consists of the president and various administering bureaucracies. These bureaucracies include cabinet offices (such as the Department of Interior, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce), independent agencies (like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency), regulatory com-

unitary system a centralized system or government

missions (including the Securities Exchange Commission, the Federal Elections Commission, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission), and government corporations (the U.S. Postal Service). The executive branch often promotes particular policies and so works to enact laws as much as it enforces and implements laws. In the United Kingdom and other unitary systems, lower levels of government (counties or “shires”) are seen as administrative arms of the national government. In the United States, the states enact and carry out their own laws as well as being responsible for upholding federal laws. The Judiciary In the United States, the judiciary is the branch of government that resolves disputes. Some disputes are over facts, as in a jury trial for a criminal case between the plaintiff (government) and the defendant (one or more citizens). Civil cases are controversies between two or more citizens or a citizen and an organization. In all disputes over facts, there is some previous rule, law or policy established that specifies appropriate behavior. The disagreement over facts determines who did, or did not, violate that appropriate behavior. Disputes also arise over questions of what the law is intended to mean. These cases, called appellate cases, are decided by a panel of judges. Usually, there are between three and nine justices who vote on the best way to interpret the law, and agreement occurs by majority vote (the U.S. Supreme Court has nine justices; lower federal and state appellate courts generally have fewer justices).

United States under the Articles of Confederation. The EU is a representative overgovernment, (i.e., a governing body that is instituted with authority to make and representatives from the existing EU nations). The EU now shares a single currency (the Euro) among these several nations and formal administrative agencies, including the European Environment Agency, something the early U.S. system lacked. The unitary system is also a form of democratic government. It is used in the United Kingdom and other nations that have a parliamentary government. A unitary government combines the executive and legislative branches

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and operates on several levels. Elected legislators choose by vote from their own group a prime minister to run the government. The lower levels of government carry out national policies, but do not make their own. Canada is part of the British Commonwealth and has a parliamentary system that combines the executive and legislative branches. While the monarchy of the United Kingdom is also the monarchy of Canada, and appoints a governor-general to act as its representative, the governor-general is a symbol of the monarchy, rather than a political leader. Governance of Canada resides in the prime minister and the parliament. The Canadian parliament has two houses, similar to the U.S. Congress. However in Canada, the prime minister recommends and the governor-general appoints the members of the upper house, the Senate. Senators may hold ofﬁce until age seventy-ﬁve. Elections are held for members of the lower house, the House of Commons. Canada is a federal system with multiple provinces, each having their own constitutions and laws. The ability to legislate over certain natural resources is a shared power between the Canadian provinces and the federal Canadian government. The United Mexican States, the U.S. southern neighbor, shares with Canada and the United States a federal system of states and a centralized national government. But like the United States, Mexico has a presidential system with a separate executive branch. The bicameral, or two house National Congress (Congreso de la Union) consists of a Senate (Camara de Senadores) and a Federal Chamber of Deputies (Camara Federal de Diputados). As in the United States, the Senate has fewer members than the Federal Chamber of Deputies (128 to ﬁve hundred). However, in both houses the members are chosen in two ways. Some members are elected to a particular seat, while others are allocated a seat in their house of the legislature based on the proportion of a party’s vote in the last election, (thirty-two seats allocated in the Senate, two hundred allocated in the Chamber of Deputies). This proportional method of allocating seats ensures that minor parties have a voice in government. While this broadens the democratic input, it can sometimes cause more conﬂict and gridlock. Sharing borders with the United States, both Canada and Mexico have joined with the United States to create the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a treaty similar to that which gave rise to the European Union. Rather than creating a new level of government over the nations, this treaty addressed commerce across borders. However, many citizens believed NAFTA caused many social problems, including environmental problems. To address public concern, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, along with other side agreements, was drafted to protect the environments of the three nations. Among the provisions of this agreement are the promotion of sustainable development within Canada, the United States, and Mexico, and to foster protection of the natural environments of these nations.

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.

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Are people and corporations self-interested (or bad) and thus in need of governmental regulation? Or are people able to act for the good of society as well as themselves, requiring less regulation? The United States has historically responded to this question with mixed answers. From the federalists (who wanted a larger, more powerful government) and antifederalists beliefs about the appropriate size and functions for government have combined with what citizens “value” for society make up a set of commonly held ethics that are referred to as the political culture. In the United States, multiple views or cultures exist; ours is seen as a pluralist. nation. These disagreements form the basis of environmental policy debates. The government achieves its goals through different policy mechanisms. Environmental legislative policies use two primary methods: regulation that prescribes particular allowed behaviors, which are then monitored and enforced, and market incentives that offer ﬁnancial incentives to obtain a desired outcome, but allow individuals and ﬁrms to decide how to achieve it. Interactions between levels and branches of government are common. Organizations of government ofﬁcials, such as mayors and governors, have been created. These act as interest groups that jointly address common problems or lobby higher levels of government for policy solutions. Transboundary pollution agreements between states evolved this way, ratcheting policy from local to state to national governments. Increasingly, such escalation has included shifting policy to the international level. Common international problems require the negotiation of treaties among often very different countries. The interests of each country therefore inﬂuence the governance of international issues. But international policies specify standards, often calling for changes in national policies, as seen in the Kyoto Protocol and the environmental side agreements of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Similarly, the United Nations Environment program Agenda 21, an outgrowth of the UN Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, is a global plan of action that inﬂuences individual national policies. Agenda 21 encompasses international efforts to promote sustainable development and provides guidance on how nations may change their own environmental policies. S E E A L S O Agenda 21; Environment Canada; Laws and Regulations, International; Laws and Regulations, United States; Legislative Process; Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources (La Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales); Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC); Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); Politics; President’s Council on Environmental Quality; Public Policy Decision Making; Right to Know; Treaties and Conferences; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Bibliography Arnold, R. Douglas. (1990). The Logic of Congressional Action. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bagdikian, Ben H. (1983, revised 1990). The Media Monopoly, 3rd edition. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Dahl, Robert A. (1989). Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gandy, Oscar H., Jr. (1982). Beyond Agenda Setting: Information Subsidies and Public Policy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Company. Hetherington, Marc J. (1996). “The Media’s Role in Forming Voters’ National Economic Evaluations in 1992.” American Journal of Political Science 40(2):372–395.

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Ito, Youichi. (1990). “Mass Communication Theories from a Japanese Perspective.” Media, Culture, and Society 12:423–464. Lowi, Theodore J. (1985). The Personal Presidency: Power Invested Promise Unfulﬁlled. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Negrine, Ralph. (1989). Politics and the Mass Media in Britain. London, UK: Routledge. Neustadt, Richard E. (1990). Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: The Free Press. Weber, Edward P. (1998). Pluralism by the Rules. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Internet Resources U.S. Congress Web site. “Legislative Process—How a Bill Becomes a Law.” Available from http://www.house.gov/house. U.S. Library of Congress. “Committees and Their Procedures in the U.S. Congress.” Available from http://thomas.loc.gov/home. The United Kingdom Parliament. “Welcome to the UK Parliament.” Available from http://www.parliament.uk.

Sara E. Keith

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 or the environment. It has been applied to a wide range of industrial and consumer goods, including paints, dyes, fertilizers, pesticides, plastics, medicines, electronics, dry cleaning, energy generation, and water puriﬁcation. At the heart of green chemistry is the recognition that hazard is simply another property of a chemical substance. Properties of chemicals are caused by their molecular structure; they can be modiﬁed by changing that structure. The types of hazards that can be addressed by green chemistry vary. They include physical hazards (being explosive or ﬂammable), toxicity (being carcinogenic or cancer causing, or lethal), or global hazards (climate change or stratospheric ozone depletion). Therefore, in the same way that a substance can be designed to be red or hard, it may also be designed to be nontoxic.

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. Historically, many of the materials used to make products often were toxic or depleted limited resources such as petroleum,

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but green chemistry research is developing ways to make products from renewable and nonhazardous substances, such as plants and agricultural wastes. For example, cellulose and hemicellulose, which constitute up to eighty percent of biomass, can be broken down to sugars, then fermented to chemical commodities such as ethanol, organic acids, glycols, and aldehydes. Converting biomass to ethanol has become economically and technically viable due to a new class of genetically modiﬁed bacteria capable of breaking down the different sugars in hemicellulose.

Benign manufacturing. The methods used to make chemical materials, called synthetic methods, have often employed toxic chemicals such as cyanide or chlorine. In addition, these methods have at times generated large quantities of hazardous wastes. Green chemistry research is developing new ways to make these synthetic methods more efﬁcient and to minimize wastes while also ensuring that the chemicals used and generated by these methods are as nonhazardous as possible. For example, a number of industries, such as the pulp and paper industry, use chlorine compounds in processes that generate toxic chlorinated organic waste. Green chemists have developed a new technology that converts wood pulp into paper using oxygen, water and polyoxometalate salts, while producing only water and carbon dioxide as by-products. Designing safer chemicals. Once it is certain that the feedstocks and methods needed to make a substance are environmentally benign, it is important to ensure that the end product is as nontoxic as possible. By understanding what makes something harmful (the ﬁeld of molecular toxicology), scientists are able to design the molecular structure so that it is not dangerous. Green analytical chemistry. The detection, measurement, and monitoring of chemicals in the environment through analytical chemistry have long been a tool for environmental protection. Instead of measuring environmental problems after they occur, however, green chemistry seeks to prevent the formation of toxic substances and thus prevent such problems. By making sensors and other instruments part of industrial manufacturing processes, green analytical chemistry is able to detect even tiny amounts of a toxic substance and to adjust process controls to minimize or stop its formation altogether. In addition, although traditional methods of analytical chemistry employ substances such as hazardous solvents, green analytical methods are being developed to minimize the use and generation of these substances while conducting analysis.

Why Green Chemistry? Green chemistry is effective in reducing the impact of chemicals on human health and the environment. In addition, many companies have found that it can be cheaper and even proﬁtable to meet environmental goals. Proﬁts derive from higher efﬁciency, less waste, better product quality, and reduced liability. Many environmental laws and regulations target hazardous chemicals, and following all these requirements can be complicated. But green chemistry allows companies to comply with the law in much simpler and cheaper ways. Finally, green chemistry is a fundamental science-based approach. Addressing the problem of hazard at the molecular level, it can be applied to all kinds of environmental issues.

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Since 1991, there have been many advances in green chemistry, in both academic research and industrial implementation. For example, Spinosad, an insecticide manufactured by fermenting a naturally occurring soil organism, was registered by the EPA as a reduced-risk insecticide in 1997. Spinosad does not leach, bioaccumulate, volatilize, or persist in the environment and in ﬁeld tests left 70 to 90 percent of beneﬁcial insects unharmed. It has a relatively low toxicity to mammals and birds and is slightly to moderately toxic to aquatic organisms, but is toxic to bees until it dries. In another advance, an industrial cleaning solvent, ethyl lactate, made from cornstarch and soybean oil was patented in 2000 and is competitively priced with petrochemical solvents. It biodegrades to carbon dioxide and water and has no known harmful effects for the environment, humans, or wildlife. These advances, however, represent an extremely small fraction of the potential applications of green chemistry. Because the products and processes that form the basis of the economy and infrastructure are based on the design and utilization of chemicals and materials, the challenges facing this ﬁeld are enormous. S E E A L S O Biodegradation; Renewable Energy. Bibliography Anastas, Paul T., and Warner, John C. (1995). Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Internet Resources Green Chemistry Institute at the American Chemical Society. “Green Chemistry Institute.” Available from http://www.acs.org/greenchemistryinstitute. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “EPA’s Green Chemistry Program.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/greenchemistry.

Paul T. Anastas

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 which harm the environment in how they are harvested, made, or used. Environmentalists support green marketing to encourage people to use environmentally preferable alternatives, and to offer incentives to manufacturers that develop more environmentally beneﬁcial products. The concept of green marketing has been around at least since the ﬁrst Earth Day in 1970. But the idea did not catch on until the 1980s, when rising public interest in the environment led to a demand for more green products and services. Manufacturers responded to public interest by labeling hundreds of new products “environmentally friendly”—making claims that products were biodegradable, compostable, energy efﬁcient, or the like. In spite of its growing popularity, the green marketing movement faced serious setbacks in the late 1980s because many industries made false claims about their products and services. For instance, the environmental organization

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CorpWatch, which issues annually a list of the top ten “greenwashing” companies, included BP Amoco for advertising its “Plug in the Sun” program, in which the company installed solar panels in two hundred gas stations, while continuing to aggressively lobby to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Without environmental labeling standards, consumers could not tell which products and services were truly beneﬁcial. Consumers ended up paying extra for misrepresented products. The media came up with the term “greenwashing” to describe cases where organizations misrepresented themselves as environmentally responsible. In 1992, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stepped in to prevent further deception. The FTC created guidelines for the use of environmental marketing claims such as “recyclable,” “biodegradable,” “compostable,” and the like. The FTC and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deﬁned “environmentally preferable products” as products and services that have a lesser or reduced effect on human health and the environment when compared to other products and services that serve the same purpose. The label “environmentally preferable” considers how raw materials are acquired, produced, manufactured, packaged, distributed, reused, operated, maintained, or how the product or service is disposed. Today, special labels help the public identify legitimate environmentally preferable products and services. Several environmental groups evaluate and certify products and services that meet FTC standards—or their own tougher standards. One popular product that has received certiﬁcation is shade-grown coffee, an alternative to coffee beans that are grown on deforested land in the tropics. During the late 1990s, green marketing received a large boost when President Bill Clinton issued executive orders directing federal ofﬁces to purchase recycled and environmentally preferable products. Some industries adopted similar policies. Examples of environmentally-beneﬁcial products and services: • Paper containing post-consumer wastepaper • Cereals sold without excess packaging • Shade-grown coffee beans • Cleaning supplies that do not harm humans or environment • Wood harvested from sustainable forests • Energy-efﬁcient lightbulbs • Energy-efﬁcient cars • Energy from renewable sources of energy such as windmills and solar power Bibliography Ottoman, Jacquelyn, and Miller, Edmond Shoaled. (1999). Green Marketing Opportunities for Innovation.New York: McGraw-Hill. Internet Resource Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Consumer Protection. Environmental Marketing Claims. Available from http://www.ftc.gov.

Corliss Karasov

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Green Party The Green Party movement is rooted in sustainable environmental democracy, which derives historically from the early confederacy of ﬁve NativeAmerican 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 sustainability originated in the confederacy. American revolutionaries Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin incorporated these Iroquoian concepts into their politics. In the last forty years, the democratic model has evolved into the bioregionalist or “green” model of integrative commons governance. This political approach is equally based on electoral consensus, environmental economics, and public welfare. Green Party policy focuses on watershed patterns of resource use and control. Large-scale watersheds, or “bioregions,” cross many jurisdictions, for example the Mississippi and Amazon Basins, the Arctic Circle, and wartorn regions. Ultimately, Green Party members, or “Greens,” envision an integrated global commons congress, a “United Bioregions of Earth.” Greens organize against environmental risks from nuclear power and rainforest destruction to chemical-biological-nuclear warfare, and social risks from military oppression to the enslavement of women and children. Greens organize for human health as well as preservation of biological capital. Primary Green movement source materials are all the nongovernmental organization (NGO) treaties ﬁnalized at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Green caucus of 30,000 people ratiﬁed many comprehensive agreements concerning diverse threats to sustainable society, and developed an entirely new language of public policy discourse. These treaties are of two categories: biological (deforestation, desertiﬁcation, loss of biological diversity) and social (indigenous rights, militarism, and transnational corporations, or TNCs). The Green Party believes that the TNC global agenda targets all major environmental and community self-determination laws for elimination. These are contested as “nontariff trade barriers” under World Trade Organization (WTO) treaty obligations. Meanwhile, massive, internationally organized street protests against the WTO continued episodically.

environmental stewardship human commitment to care for the environment intergenerational sustainability ability of a system to remain stable and productive over several generations integrative commons governance a governing system which recognizes and protects publicly shared resources, usually under local control electoral consensus the will of the voters

biological capital oceans, forests, and other ecosystems that provide resources or other values

Shortly after the 1992 Earth Summit, the number of countries with active Green Parties doubled from thirty-ﬁve to approximately seventy. The “European Green Parliament” is well established, and a Green/Social Democrat coalition governs Germany. Green infrastructure in the Americas is strongest in British Columbia. The United States lags far behind Europe: Only parliamentary political systems effectively admit Green proposals. Operational principles, models, and priorities for the Greens in the United States were developed by Ralph Nader and his associates in the 1970s and 1980s. Nader cowrote the federal Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, and as the Green candidate in 1996, he opposed WTO supporters President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential elections. Nader’s work derives from a 1963 Senate subcommittee testimony given by Rachel Carson, who pointed out that, regarding watershed toxicity, communities had both the “right to know” and the “right to protection” by

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government, thus establishing the ﬁrst conceptual bridge between environmental law and human rights law. S E E A L S O Earth Summit; LaDuke, Winona; Nader, Ralph. Bibliography Ehrlich, Paul, and Ehrlich, Anne. (1992). Healing the Planet: Strategies for Resolving the Environmental Crisis. Boston: Addison-Wesley. Johnson, Huey, and Brower, David. (1997). Green Plans: Greenprint for Sustainability. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Korten, David. (1995). When Corporations Rule the World. Bloomﬁeld, CT: Kumarian Press. Meadows, Donella, and Meadows, Dennis. (1993). Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Ostrom, Elinor. (1991). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sen, Amartya. (2000). Development as Freedom. New York: Anchor Books. Shiva, Vandana. (2002). Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Proﬁt. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Steingraber, Sandra. (1997). Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer. Boston: Addison-Wesley. Thomas, Janet. (2000). The Battle in Seattle: The Story Behind and Beyond the WTO Demonstrations. Golden, CO: Fulcrum. Internet Resource Green Parties World Wide Web site. Available from http://www.greens.org.

Kender Taylor

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 as Amartya Sen have argued that poverty and inequality must also be vigorously attacked since the poor typically cannot afford to buy enough food. Others, like Kenneth Dahlberg and Vandana Shiva, have argued that its high social, environmental, and energy costs of the green revolution make it unsustainable. United States and European seed-breeding technologies devised in the 1930s were used from the 1940s onward to develop high-yielding varieties (HYVs) adapted to the climate and soil conditions of different developing countries. Research on maize (corn) begun in Mexico in the 1940s by the Rockefeller Foundation was extended in 1959 to rice in the Philippines in partnership with the Ford Foundation. By the 1960s, fears of famine in Asia caused by rapid population growth led to major aid programs to increase agricultural production though a package of inputs (HYVs, fertilizers, and pesticides) and ﬁnancial support. Plant breeder Norman Borlaug, who led the Mexican research, was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to the green revolution. A network of international agricultural research centers managed by the World Bank was also created to further spread the green revolution.

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A new phase of the green revolution began in the mid-1980s in response to two emerging global developments. The ﬁrst was growing international concerns about the increasing gap in wealth between the rich countries of the northern hemisphere and the poor countries of the southern hemisphere, the continuing population explosion, discrimination against women, environmental degradation, the loss of genetic diversity, and global warming. The international response has been that vigorous pursuit of sustainable development is the only answer to these problems. Interest in sustainable agriculture and food systems that are more energy efﬁcient and less socially and environmentally destructive has grown rapidly in all countries. The Rockefeller Foundation, for example, is promoting proposals, made by Conway in his work The Doubly Green Revolution, which seeks rural development of the world’s poorest regions though sustainable farming systems developed with full farmer participation, including women subsistence farmers. The second development raising concern is the increasing global power of multinational corporations. Proposed responses have been divided along the same rich-poor lines as with other international problems. In agriculture, new plant genetic engineering techniques, plant and animal patenting, and free-trade agreements have combined to give multinational corporations a signiﬁcant ability to shape agricultural policies, as well as the structure of food systems world wide. This power raises fundamental questions about the ability of governments to continue to set national food safety and labeling standards. These protect citizens and enable them to choose foods produced in a sustainable manner, which includes providing farm families and farm and food workers reasonable incomes and working conditions. Many farm, environmental, and consumer groups, as well as the poor countries of the world, are seeking ways to protect their food sovereignty and promote more equitable food systems. Reconciling this increasing corporate power with the need to develop sustainable food and agricultural systems will be a serious source of contention for years to come. S E E A L S O Agriculture; Economics; Environmental Justice; Sustainable Development.

HIGH YIELDING VARIETIES (HYVS) These new seed varieties were based on disease-resistant seed varieties found in the developing countries which were crossbred: 1) to make them respond more to fertilizer and irrigation, thus increasing their yield; 2) to make them less sensitive to annual variations in day length so that they can be used in many different latitudes and climatic zones, and 3) with rice, to make them mature faster so that two crops a year can be grown. genetic diversity the broad pool of genes that insures variety within a species global warming an increase in the near-surface temperature of the Earth; the term is most often used to refer to the warming believed to be occurring as a result of increased emissions of greenhouse gases sustainable development economic development that does not rely on degrading the environment

Bibliography Borlaug, Norman E. (1997). Norman Borlaug on World Hunger. San Diego, CA: Bookservice International. Conway, Gordon R. (1998). The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the 21st Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Dahlberg Kenneth A. (1979). Beyond the Green Revolution: The Ecology and Politics of Global Agricultural Development. New York: Plenum Press. Sen, Amartya K. (1981). Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. New York: Oxford University Press. Shiva, Vandana. (1991). The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics. London: Zed Books. Steinhart, John, and Steinhart, Carol. (1974). “Energy Use in the United States Food System.” Science 184:307–316. Internet Resources Consulative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Web site. Available from http://www.cgiar.org. Rockefeller Foundation Web site. Available from http://www.rockfound.org.

Kenneth A. Dahlberg

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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 and anthropogenic greenhouse gas. Anthropogenic inputs of CO2 mainly from the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation continue to rise, making it the number-one contributor to global warming. Other anthropogenic greenhouse gases include methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), sulfur hexaﬂuoride (SF6), chloroﬂuorocarbons (CFCs), and hydroﬂuorocarbons (HFCs). The last three compounds are synthetic greenhouse gases, which did not exist in the atmosphere before the twentieth century. Molecule for molecule, these gases trap more energy than CO2, but are less abundant in the atmosphere. One molecule of CH4, for example, traps as much heat as twenty-three molecules of CO2. SF6 traps as much heat as 22,200 molecules of CO2. In 1997 the Kyoto Protocol proposed legally binding restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, targeting a 5-percent reduction over 1990 levels by 2012. As of December 2001, 186 countries had ratiﬁed the protocol. The United States, however, is not one of them. S E E A L S O Carbon Dioxide; CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons); Global Warming; Methane; Montréal Protocol; NOx; Treaties and Conferences. Bibliography Turco, Richard P. (1997). Earth under Siege: From Air Pollution to Global Change. New York: Oxford University Press. Internet Resources U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Global Warming.” Available from http:// www.epa.gov/globalwarming. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. “Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Available from http://unfccc.int/resource.

Marin Sands Robinson

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

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Greenpeace is the largest environmental organization in the world with 2.8 million supporters worldwide and national as well as regional ofﬁces in fortyone countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the Paciﬁc. It is a nonproﬁt organization founded in 1971 and based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Greenpeace is one of the nongovernmental organizations that have consultative status to the United Nations, and is an active participant in international conferences on the environment such as the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the 2002 Johannesburg Earth Summit and their treaty processes. As a global organization, Greenpeace focuses on what it feels are the most crucial worldwide threats to the planet’s biodiversity and environment. Using nonviolent means, it campaigns to stop climate change, protect the oceans, stop whaling, stop genetic engineering, stop nuclear threats, eliminate toxic chemicals, and encourage sustainable development. Greenpeace does not

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accept donations from governments or corporations but relies on contributions from individual supporters and foundation grants. Greenpeace was founded by a small group of activists in an old ﬁshing boat, the Phyllis Cormack. They wanted to stop and “bear witness” to U.S. underground nuclear testing at Amchitka, a tiny island off the west coast of Alaska. Although their boat was intercepted and the bomb was detonated, nuclear testing there ended a year later. Greenpeace’s creative communication and media-savvy tactics of bringing vivid images to the public, of individuals confronting huge corporations and governments, and of using speciﬁc cases to highlight broader issues sparked worldwide interest and changed the way advocacy groups conduct campaigns. In one of its bestknown campaigns, activists placed small inﬂatable boats called zodiacs between whaling ships and the whales to protest the hunting practice and highlight toxic threats facing oceans. In 1987, Greenpeace’s ﬂagship the Rainbow Warrior was preparing to lead a peace ﬂotilla of ships from New Zealand to the island of Moruroa to peacefully protest against French nuclear testing. Three days after arrival in Auckland, French agents bombed and sank the Rainbow Warrior in the harbor, killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira. After two years of international arbitration, a panel of three arbitrators awarded a U.S. $8.159 million damage claim settlement in favor of Greenpeace. The money, paid by the French government, was used in part by Greenpeace to support a worldwide ﬂeet of ships and its campaigns for a nuclear- and pollution-free Paciﬁc. S E E A L S O Activism; Antinuclear Movement; Arbitration; Earth Summit; Environmental Movement; Ethics; Global Warming; Hazardous Waste; Mass Media; Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs); Ocean Dumping; Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs); Petroleum; Public Participation; Technology, Pollution Prevention; Treaties and Conferences; War; Water Pollution: Marine. Bibliography Internet Resources EnviroLink Network Web site. Available from http://www.envirolink.org. Greenpeace Web site. Available from http://www.greenpeace.org.

Susan L. Senecah

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 pesticides) can be transported downward with percolating water to reach groundwater. Underground petroleum storage tanks (USTs) or buried pipelines also pose threats if they should leak. Over 400,000 leaking USTs have been identiﬁed in the United States as of 2001. Dissolved chemicals are transported with the ﬂowing groundwater. Once groundwater is contaminated, remediation can be expensive and time-consuming; billions of dollars are spent annually in the United States on the remediation of contaminated sites and

percolating moving of water downward and radially through subsurface soil layers, usually continuing downward to groundwater; can also involve upward movement of water

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FLOW OF GROUNDWATER

Recharge ditch Recharging precipitation Stream fed by groundwater discharge Unsaturated zone (soil moisture) Groundwater discharge to the sea

Saturated zone (groundwater)

Goundwater flow

Sea

Aquifer SOURCE: Adapted from Montana State University.

some of the groundwater contamination cannot be reversed. Groundwater discharges naturally into lakes, rivers, oceans, and springs. It is also extracted via pumping wells. Approximately 80 percent of municipal water systems and close to 99 percent of rural residents in the United States rely on groundwater. In total, approximately 51 percent of the U.S. population depends on it for their water supply. The 1986 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act requires that well head protection plans be developed by each state to protect the land around municipal water supply wells from contamination. Individuals can help protect groundwater by disposing of household chemicals properly and fertilizing plants in limited quantities and can help conserve groundwater by limiting water use at home by taking shorter showers, not running water while brushing teeth, running dish and clothes washers with full loads, ﬁxing leaky faucets and pipes, and limiting plant watering in the garden. recharge the process by which water is added to a zone of saturation, usually by percolation from the soil surface (e.g., the recharge of an aquifer) land subsidence sinking or settling of land

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If withdrawals exceed recharge over a long period, groundwater levels fall and aquiﬁers can become depleted. This results in decreased groundwater discharge and may adversely impact on ecosystems dependent on an aquatic habitat. Excess lowering of groundwater levels may result in land subsidence. In central California, for instance, groundwater withdrawals from 1930 to 1955 for crop irrigation caused approximately three meters of subsidence. In some arid regions (like the Middle East), little groundwater recharge occurs because of low amounts of rainfall and high amounts of evaporation. Ancient groundwater that inﬁltrated thousands of years ago during climates wetter than those of the present is being extracted via pumping. This practice is termed groundwater mining because groundwater at this location is

Hamilton, Alice

a nonrenewable resource that is being depleted. S E E A L S O Drinking Water; Pesticides; Superfund; Underground Storage Tanks; Water Pollution. Bibliography U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1990). Citizen’s Guide to Ground-Water Protection. EPA 440/6-90-004. Washington: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Ofﬁce of Water. Alley, William M., Richard W. Healy, James W. Labaugh, and Thomas E. Reilly (2002). “Flow and Storage in Groundwater Systems.” In Science Magazine, 296:1985–1990. Internet Resources U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Ofﬁce of Ground Water and Drinking Water Information Page. Available from http://www.epa.gov/safewater. U.S. Geological Survey Ground Water Information Page. Available from http:// water.usgs.gov/ogw.

Karen M. Salvage

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 CBrClF2, denoted as H-1211 in an industry-devised shorthand. The compounds live long enough in the atmosphere (eleven years in the case of H-1211) to reach the stratosphere, an upper region of the atmosphere located between ﬁfteen and ﬁfty kilometers above the earth’s surface, where the sun’s more intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation breaks down the molecule and releases chemically active bromine and chlorine atoms. These free atoms enter into cycles of chemical reactions that destroy ozone.

H subset a smaller group within a larger one

chemically active able to react with other chemicals

An international agreement known as the Montréal Protocol was forged in 1987 and subsequently amended to phase out and eventually end the use of ozone-depleting chemicals. Under the terms of the agreement, developed countries must ﬁrst phase out the use of halons and other halocarbons. Developing countries are given additional time to acquire the new technologies needed to meet the requirements. S E E A L S O CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons); Montréal Protocol; Ozone. Bibliography World Meteorological Organization. (2003). Scientiﬁc Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2002. Global Ozone Research and Monitoring Project, Report No. 47. Geneva: Author.

Christine A. Ennis

Hamilton, Alice WORKERS’ ADVOCATE (1869–1970)

During the Progressive Era, Alice Hamilton became part of the revolution of thought about the causative factors of disease, explicitly linking environmental

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factors to serious illnesses or epidemics. To satisfy her passion for social activism, Hamilton joined Jane Addams in Chicago at Hull House, the ﬁrst of many settlement houses in America. Hamilton focused her activities on worker health, an issue neither employers nor the federal government expressed much concern about at the time. One of Hamilton’s main contributions to eliminating worker hazards was a study of the health effects of lead. Through an exhaustive investigation, Hamilton demonstrated the harmful effects of the toxin on humans. She also conducted research connecting typhoid to ﬂies and improper sewage disposal, and linked the use of white phosphorous to the disease “phossy jaw.” From left to right: Mrs. F. Louis Slade, Marion Edward Park, and Alice Hamilton. (©Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

In 1925, while serving as the ﬁrst female staff member at Harvard University, Hamilton published her classic Industrial Poisons in the United States. Her work continued to emphasize several themes over the course of her life, including the effects of many toxic substances, the improvement of safety standards for workers, and the future effects of toxins on human health. Many regarded Hamilton as one of America’s best-known experts on occupational hazards. S E E A L S O Activism; Addams, Jane; Environmental Movement; Industry; Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); Politics; Progressive Movement; Public Policy Decision Making; Settlement House Movement; Workers Health Bureau. Bibliography Hamilton, Alice. (1943). Exploring the Dangerous Trades: The Autobiography of Alice Hamilton, M.D. Boston: Little, Brown. Internet Resource “Biography of Alice Hamilton.” Available from http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/ biographies.

Elizabeth D. Blum

Hayes, Denis AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALIST; ORGANIZER OF FIRST EARTH DAY (1944–)

grassroots individual people and small groups, in contrast to government

teach-in educational forum springing from a protest movement (derived from sit-in protests)

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 environmental acts during the following years. As an intern for Wisconsin’s Democratic senator and environmentalist Gaylord Nelson, Hayes was selected to organize and coordinate teach-ins, addressing topics such as pollution and environmental degradation, on college campuses across the United States. Students inspired by the teach-ins and the ensuing publicity that Hayes orchestrated went on to organize thousands of cleanup activities and protest actions to mark the ﬁrst Earth Day in 1970. Following the ﬁrst, overwhelmingly successful, Earth Day, Hayes became an alternative energy expert: He worked for Worldwatch Institute, wrote Rays of Hope (1977) about solar energy, and directed the government’s

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Solar Energy Research Institute. He organized a twentieth-anniversary Earth Day celebration in 1990, in which 200 million people from 141 countries worldwide participated. In 1978, Hayes was awarded the American Institute for Public Service’s Jefferson Medal for Greatest Public Service by an United States citizen under thirty-ﬁve years of age. He was also recognized by the Audubon Society in 1998 as one of the twentieth century’s one hundred “Champions of Conservation.” Since 1993, Hayes has directed the Bullitt Foundation of Seattle, which funds environmental protection and restoration projects in the Northwestern United States. S E E A L S O Activism; Earth Day; Laws and Regulations, United States; Nelson, Gaylord; Politics. Bibliography Hayes, Denis. (2000). The Ofﬁcial Earth Day Guide to Planet Repair. Washington, DC: Island Press. Internet Resource Earth Day Network Web site. Available from http://www.earthday.net.

Anne Becher and Joseph Richey

Denis Hayes. (©Dan Lamont/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

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 producers, agriculture, and mining, as well as many others. Most hazardous waste comes from industrial sources. The EPA speciﬁes four different categories of hazardous waste that are subject to regulation: hazardous wastes from nonspeciﬁc sources involved in industrial processes such as spent halogenated solvents; hazardous wastes from speciﬁc industrial sources, such as untreated wastewater from the production of the herbicide 2,4dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,-d); commercial chemical products that may be discarded (such as benzene) used in the manufacture of drugs, detergents, lubricants, dyes and pesticides; and wastes that are classiﬁed as toxic, such as vinyl chloride. Hazardous waste from many industrial processes include solvents such as methylene chloride, a probable carcinogen that is commonly used in paint removers. Trichloroethylene, a solvent that has been found in groundwater is monitored and regulated in drinking water in the United States. Drinking or breathing high levels of trichloroethylene can lead to damage of the liver, lung, and nervous system. In many industries the sludge remaining after treatment of wastewater accounts for much of the generated hazardous waste. Sludges and wastewater from electroplating operations commonly contain cadmium, copper, lead, and nickel. These heavy metals are found in the sediment of Lake Huron and have been associated with degradation of benthos and planktonic communities. Heavy metals can impact the health of humans and wildlife in a variety of ways: lead interferes with the

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nervous system and can lead to learning disabilities in children and cadmium accumulates in humans and animals and can lead to kidney disfunction. Household products that contain hazardous ingredients are not regulated under RCRA but should be disposed of separately from municipal garbage following label instructions. Household hazardous waste (HHW) can include used motor oil, paint thinners and removers, wood preservers, batteries, ﬂuorescent lights that contain mercury, and unused pesticides. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state regulatory agencies collect information about the generation, management, and ﬁnal disposal of hazardous wastes regulated under RCRA. This report gives detailed data on hazardous waste generation and waste management practices for treatment, storage, and disposal facilities.

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, nonhazardous material substitutions, reuse, or recovery also reduce hazardous waste production. For example biodegradable, nontoxic lactate esters are solvents manufactured from renewable carbohydrate sources that can be substituted for toxic halogenated solvents. The EPA’s Industrial Toxics Project is a nonregulatory program initiated in 1990 to achieve, voluntarily, overall reductions for seventeen toxic chemicals reported in the government’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), including cadmium, lead, mercury, trichloroethylene, and toluene. The recycling of waste through waste exchanges is one aspect of industrial ecology and another way to address the issue of hazardous waste disposal. For example the sludge that accumulates in scrubbers removing sulfur dioxide from power plant smokestacks contains calcium sulfate, which can be recycled in wallboard. Waste exchange also promotes the use of one company’s waste as another company’s raw material. Waste exchanges typically list both available and desired materials. Several regional waste exchanges exist, as well as exchanges within small geographic regions. Some exchanges charge for their services, whereas others are supported by grants. injection well a well into which fluids are pumped for purposes such as underground waste disposal, improving the recovery of crude oil, or solution mining bioremediation use of living organisms to clean up oil spills or remove other pollutants from soil, water, or wastewater; use of organisms such as non-harmful insects to remove agricultural pests or counteract diseases of trees, plants, and garden soil

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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 contamination. The ideal disposal method is the destruction and conversion of hazardous waste to a nonhazardous form. New technology for hazardous and mixed low-level radioactive waste conversion includes a high-temperature plasma torch that converts low-level radioactive wastes to environmentally safe glass. Conversion to

Hazardous Waste

environmentally safe substances can be very expensive for some types of hazardous wastes and technically impossible for others, creating the need for alternative disposal methods. The most common form of hazardous waste disposal in the United States is landﬁlling. Hazardous waste landﬁlls are highly regulated and are required to include clay liners, monitoring wells, and groundwater barriers. The 1984 Hazardous Solid Waste Amendments require the monitoring of groundwater near landﬁlls for thirty years. Injection wells may be used to inject hazardous waste deep into the earth, but problems result with aquifer contamination and the ultimate fate of the hazardous waste after injection is unknown.

Workers wearing hazardous materials suits, neutralizing hazardous materials. (©Pete Saloutos/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Incineration may be an effective way to convert hazardous waste into a nonhazardous form while greatly decreasing its volume. The waste is burned and converted into carbon dioxide, water, and inorganic by-products. The problems associated with incineration are high capital and operating costs, and the disposal of ash, which may contain hazardous substances. In addition, incinerating wastes can cause mercury and dioxin air pollution. Bioremediation may also be used in situ or ex situ to convert hazardous wastes to nontoxic by-products using microorganisms and natural degradation processes. Biodegradation requires very long treatment times and it may be difﬁcult to control or enhance natural degradation processes. Phytoremediation, the process by which plants absorb and in some cases degrade hazardous

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substances in the environment, is being investigated as an emerging cleanup technology. For example poplar trees have been shown to break down the herbicide atrazine, mustard plants will remove lead from soil, and the alpine pennycress plant will take large amounts of heavy metals and also uranium from soil. When hazardous waste is to be transported off-site for disposal, the waste generator prepares a shipping document called a manifest. This form must accompany the waste to its ﬁnal destination and is used to track the waste’s movements from “cradle to grave.”

Hazardous Waste Production in the United States Facilities that produce hazardous waste, usually as a result of an industrial process, are considered large-quantity generators (LQG) or small-quantity generators (SQG) depending on the quantities produced. Hazardous waste may be transported to alternate locations to be treated, stored, or disposed of, or may be managed at the place of generation. In 1995, 20,873 LQGs produced 214 million tons of hazardous waste regulated by RCRA. There were 3,489 fewer LQGs and a reduction of 44 million tons of waste by 1995 compared to 1993. The ﬁve states generating the largest amount of hazardous waste were Texas (69 million tons), Tennessee (39 million tons), Louisiana (17 million tons), Michigan (13 million tons), and Illinois (13 million tons), accounting for 70 percent of the national totals. The industrial trade of hazardous waste has become an extensive problem. Many third world countries accept large volumes of hazardous waste for disposal in return for sizable ﬁnancial compensation. Unfortunately, the large proﬁts reaped by such poor countries do not compensate for the longterm environmental impacts from improperly managed hazardous waste. Many wastes have also been dumped illegally on international shores where environmental regulation and controls are often lacking. S E E A L S O Abatement; Brownfield; Cleanup; Green Chemistry; Incineration; Industrial Ecology; Injection Well; Landfill; Medical Waste; Radioactive Waste; Resource Conservation and Recovery Act; Waste, Transportation of. Bibliography Davis, Mackenzie L., and Cornwell, David A. (1998). Introduction to Environmental Engineering. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Graedel, T.E., and Allenby, B.R. (1995). Industrial Ecology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. La Grega, Michael D.; Buckingham, Philip L.; Evans, Jeffrey C.; and Environmental Resources Management. (2001). Hazardous Waste Management. Boston: McGrawHill. Vesiland, P. Aarne; Worrell, William; and Reinhart, Debra. (2002). Solid Waste Engineering. Australia: Brooks/Cole. Watts, Richard J. (1998). Hazardous Wastes: Sources, Pathways, Receptors. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Margrit von Braun and Deena Lilya

Health Effects Human

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Health, Human

Health, Human 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 that degrade ingested compounds and prepare them for excretion. When these systems become overwhelmed or operate inefﬁciently, disease and death can occur. The awareness that the environment inﬂuences disease dates back at least to the time of Hippocrates. The ﬁrst proven case of an illness linked to an environmental cause did not occur, however, until 1854 in London when physician John Snow showed that water pollution was responsible for a local outbreak of cholera. His proof was simple: after disabling the use of a contaminated well by removing its pump handle, a subsequent reduction in new cholera cases was noted. The bacterial contamination of water polluted by human or animal wastes was probably the most common environmental problem of the preindustrial world. Its control in the twentieth century represents one of the greatest triumphs of public health. The chlorination of public drinking water to prevent waterborne diseases began in the early 1900s in the United States and is responsible for the virtual elimination of cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and hepatitis A in this country.

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 polluted environments. For instance, the air surrounding Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and other steel mill towns was laden with particulates, and pulp and paper mills would release the stench of sulphurous gases into the air and discharge dioxin-contaminated efﬂuents into the water. Such activities, though, brought with them jobs and the ﬁnancial incentive for communities to ignore the noxious conditions under which some were forced to live. This level of tolerance did not last, however. In the post-World War II world, several incidents around the world began to focus attention on the consequences of polluting the natural environment. One of these incidents occurred in 1948 in the steel mill town of Donora, Pennsylvania. A pollutant-induced smog was found to be responsible for twenty-one deaths, providing clear proof that the effects of air pollution were not limited to aesthetics. Later, in 1952, London, England, also experienced a “killer smog” blamed for the deaths of 4,000 people. Governments began to act to protect the air from industrial and automobile pollution.

Diarrheal diseases (caused by unsafe water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene) and acute respiratory infections associated with indoor air pollution caused by burning wood, peat and other biomass fuels killed at least three million children under age five in the year 2000. The World Health Organization says that 40 percent of global disease caused by environmental factors falls on children.

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What these examples had in common was that the connection between a pollutant and a health outcome was fairly unambiguous. Severe illness and death were the end points examined and both would occur fairly soon after exposure to a highly polluted situation. This lack of ambiguity was vital in fueling the determination to reduce pollutant levels, regardless of the economic costs to some industries. The pollution control measures enacted led to improvements in environmental quality. But were they enough? In 1962 Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, alerting the world to the unintended consequences of chemical pesticide use. Her concern was the rampant use, and often overuse, of insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides in the post-World War II world. Not conﬁned to agricultural ﬁelds, these products leached into ground water, rivers, lakes, and the food supply. Her book brought to the political arena the concept that synthetic chemicals could be responsible for cancer and other diseases. Her warnings proved prescient. The chlorinated hydrocarbons, such as the insecticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) [1,1-trichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethane] and its metabolite DDE (dichlorodiphenyl dichloroethylene) [1,1-dichloro-2,2bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethylene], were discovered to not only persist in the environment but to concentrate at greater than ambient levels as they moved up the food chain. Many of these compounds, DDT and DDE included, have the ability to interfere with normal hormone levels in the body, leading to the disruption of endocrine systems. DDT was found to cause thinning of eggshells and a subsequent drop in the population of large birds of prey such as the eagle. This information led to the banning of DDT in the United States in the 1970s. Although DDT was outlawed based on evidence that it was a reproductive toxin in some wildlife species, evidence now exists that it is also a human reproductive toxin. Recent analysis of serum taken from pregnant mothers enrolled in the U.S. Collaborative Perinatal Project during the 1960s revealed that women exposed to DDE were more likely to give birth prematurely, and to babies who were unusually small. Both of these events can adversely affect the infant’s long-term health.

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 toxicants. As mentioned earlier, organisms have evolved a complex environmental response machinery to protect against foreign compounds or xenobiotics. Such machinery includes DNA repair enzymes and metabolizing enzymes in the liver and other organs. Except in a few rare cases, everyone has the genes coding for these enzymes. But there is tremendous variability in these genes and some variants are more effective than others. Thus, some people are more sensitive to speciﬁc environmental toxicants and some people less so. Even under the same exposure conditions, there can be wide variation in how people’s bodies react to environmental agents. This variability in the general population

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can often mask very real effects that occur in a sensitive segment of the population. The second difﬁculty is that age and the timing of exposures can greatly inﬂuence both sensitivity to an environmental agent and the type of health effect it will cause. Infants and children can be particularly vulnerable and can sustain lifelong damage at exposures that have no impact in adults. As an example, the metal lead is a known neurotoxicant. At high exposures of lead (80 µg/dL or higher in the bloodstream), encephalopathy, epilepsy, mental retardation, and blindness are the probable outcomes. Thus ﬁfty years ago a level of 60 µg/dL of lead would be acceptable because immediate neurological symptoms did not occur in adults at these levels.

Protestors outside the Cleveland, Ohio, city hall on January 20, 1970, protesting the city’s air pollution. (©Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

neurotoxicant chemical that is toxic to neurons, or brain cells

The “concern” threshold has been steadily dropping, however, because of new information about subtle health effects of lead, as well as the greater vulnerability of children to lead exposures. Now banned from use in products such as household paint and automotive gasoline, the “concern” threshold for lead is currently 10 µg/dL of lead in the bloodstream of children. This level was determined based on research ﬁndings that even low lead exposures can cause unexpected problems for children. There is now evidence that every 10 µg/dL of lead in the bloodstream of children is associated with a two- to three-point IQ deﬁcit. Although these decrements are low, they translate into later problems in school, particularly decreased attention spans, increased aggression as juveniles, and failure to graduate from high school. Thus,

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A female student uses an inhaler for her asthma. (© Angela Hampton; Ecoscene/ Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

regulatory standards based on studies in adults can potentially fail to protect children and other sensitive groups. Childhood is not the only vulnerable life stage. Puberty could represent another sensitive time point. Exposure to hormonally active agents (HAA) such as DDT, polycholorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, and certain classes of plasticizers, could adversely affect hormonally sensitive tissue, such as breast tissue. For example, women exposed to these compounds might be at greater risk of breast cancer, particularly if their exposures occur around puberty. The critical exposures could occur much earlier than clinical

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manifestations of disease, though, making it difﬁcult to establish an association between the exposure and breast cancer. Additionally, the aging body might be less able to hold up against a lifetime of low-level, but persistent, environmental assaults and could begin to experience neurodegeneration, cancers, or heart disease as a consequence.

neurodegeneration loss of function and death of brain cells

Environmental Health in the Twenty-first Century Most diseases arise from the interaction of several events: an individual’s inherited genetic susceptibility, his or her subsequent environmental exposures, and modifying factors such as behavior, age, and the time of exposure. The health consequences of low-level environmental exposures are more likely to be discovered when studies are designed to accommodate this greater complexity of knowledge. The payoff of such knowledge is potentially tremendous because the environment has been shown to play a role in so many chronic diseases. Recent twin studies in Scandinavia show that nongenetic inﬂuences, presumably environmental, account for more than 50 percent of cancer risk. For Parkinson’s disease, environmental triggers might account for the greater number of late-onset diagnoses. And for autoimmune diseases, the concordance among identical twins usually falls in the 25- to 40-percent range, suggesting that environmental inﬂuences have a major impact on either the initiation or progression of these diseases. Thus, accurate and realistic assessments of environmental contributions to diseases are critical. Fortunately, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), through its Human Genome Project [see sidebar], is providing the tools necessary for a more thorough investigation of geneenvironment interactions in disease development. This project has identiﬁed the nucleotide sequences of human genes, including environmental response genes. Additionally, it has led to the development of new assaying techniques that can assess the activity (or expression) of hundreds of genes simultaneously. These events create the opportunity to systematically catalogue the genetic variation of environmental response genes and to determine the biological consequence of these variations. This information, generated by the United States Environmental Genome Project (funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and found on their web site http://niehs.nih.gov), can subsequently be used in population studies to determine the health effects of environmental pollutants at relatively low exposure levels. Human understanding of environmental disease risks is constantly evolving. New understanding, particularly of how individuals differ in response to environmental agents, will reveal new public health strategies. Even current successes, such as the chlorination of water supplies mentioned earlier, are being reassessed. It is now known that organic compounds in water can react with chlorination to produce halogenated organic compounds that are suspected bladder carcinogens. Though the cancers potentially caused by these disinfection by-products are much less frequent than the deaths that would occur without disinfection, they are nonetheless troubling. New technologies such as chloramination and ozonation are increasingly being substituted for chlorination and may lead to even better public beneﬁt from water disinfection.

late-onset occurring in adulthood or old age autoimmune reaction of the body’s immune system to the body’s own tissues concordance state of agreement

nucleotide building block of DNA and RNA in a cell

halogenated organic compounds organic (carboncontaining) compounds containing fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, or astatine chloramination use of chlorine and ammonia to disinfect water ozonation application of ozone to water for disinfection or for taste and odor control

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HUMAN GENOME PROJECT The Human Genome Project (HGP) is an international research effort to sequence and map all of the genes—together known as the genome—of humans. Many of these genes are environmental response genes and are being further investigated under the Environmental Genome Project for their role in environmentally associated diseases. Contributors to the HGP include the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), numerous universities throughout the United States, and international partners in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and China. The HGP also includes efforts to characterize and sequence the entire genomes of several other organisms, many of which are used extensively in biological research. These organisms include mice, fruit flies, and roundworms. Identification of the sequence or function of genes in model organisms is an important approach to finding and understanding the function of human genes. Information on the HGP can be found on the website of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at http://www.nhgri.nih.gov.

Environmental regulation and pollution control will remain an important cornerstone of public health policy in the twenty-ﬁrst century. Because the focus is on prevention, rather than disease treatment, pollution control is a highly cost-effective means of ensuring public health. The cost-effectiveness can only be realized, however, when it is based on an accurate determination of the real human health consequences of environmental exposures. This information is well worth generating, given the broad array of environmentally associated diseases. These include cancer, infertility, autoimmune diseases, birth defects, heart disease, and neurodegeneration. In addition to regulatory policy, pollution control can also affect social policy. In the United States there is a measurable disparity in the health status of poor populations compared to their afﬂuent counterparts. Given that the poor more often live in contaminated environments and work in hazardous occupations, improved pollution control might well lead to a reduction in such current health disparities. It is only when the health of all citizens is protected that a nation can realize its full potential. S E E A L S O Asbestos; Asthma; Cancer; Cryptosporidiosis; DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl Trichloroethane); Donora, Pennsylvania; Endocrine Disruption; Indoor Air Pollution; Lead; Mercury; Risk; Snow, John; Water Treatment. Bibliography Carson, Rachel. (1962). Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifﬂin. Goyer, R.A. (1996). “Toxic Effects of Metals.” In Casarett and Doull’s Toxicology: The Basic Science of Poisons, 5th edition, edited by C.D. Klassen. New York: McGrawHill, pp. 691–736. Lichtenstein P., et al. (2000). “Environmental and Heritable Factors in the Causation of Cancer.” In New England Journal of Medicine 343:78–85. Longnecker, M.P.; Klebanoff, M.A.; Zhou, H.; and Brock, J.W. (2001). “Association between Maternal Serum Concentration of the DDT Metabolite DDE and Preterm and Small-for-Gestational-Age Babies at Birth.” Lancet 358:110–114. Needleman, H.L., and Gatsonis, C.A. (1990). “Low-level Lead Exposure and the IQ of Children.” Journal of the American Medical Association 263:673–678. Needleman, H.L.; Riess, J.A.; Tobin, M.J.; Biesecker, G.E.; and Greenhouse, J.B. (1996). “Bone Lead Levels and Delinquent Behavior.” Journal of the American Medical Association 275:363–369. Powell J.J.; Van de Water, J.; and Gershwin M.E. (1999). “Evidence for the Role of Environmental Agents in the Initiation or Progression of Autoimmune Conditions.” Environmental Health Perspectives 107, suppl. 5:667–672. Tanner C.M., et al. (1999). “Parkinson Disease in Twins: An Etiologic Study.” Journal of the American Medical Association 281:341–346.

Kenneth Olden and Janet Guthrie

Healthcare Waste

See Medical Waste

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 coenzyme B12 and

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L IST O F D R I N K I N G W A T E R C O N TA MI NA NTS A ND MCLs

Contaminant

MCL or TT1 (mg/L)2

Potential Health Effects from Ingestion of Water

Cadmium

0.005

Kidney damage

Corrosion of galvanized pipes; erosion of natural deposits; discharge from metal refineries; runoff from waste batteries and paints

Chromium (total)

0.1

Allergic dermatitis

Discharge from steel and pulp mills; erosion of natural deposits

Copper

TT3; Action level1.3

Short term exposure: Gastrointestinal distress

Corrosion of household plumbing systems; erosion of natural deposits

Sources of Contaminant in Drinking Water

Long term exposure: Liver or kidney damage People with Wilson's Disease should consult their personal doctor if the amount of copper in their water exceeds the action level TT3; Action level0.015

Lead

Infants and children: Delays in physical or mental development; children could show slight deficits in attention span and learning abilities

Corrosion of household plumbing systems; erosion of natural deposits

Adults: Kidney problems; high blood pressure Mercury (inorganic)

0.002

Kidney damage

Erosion of natural deposits; discharge from refineries and factories; runoff from landfills and croplands

Notes 1Definitions: Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL)–The highest level of a contaminant that is allowed in drinking water. MCLs are set as close to MCLGs as feasible using the best available treatment technology and taking cost into consideration. MCLs are enforceable standards. Treatment Technique–A required process intended to reduce the level of a contaminant in drinking water. 2Units are in milligrams per liter (mg/L) unless otherwise noted. Milligrams per liter are equivalent to parts per million. 3Lead and copper are regulated by a treatment technique that requires systems to control the corrosiveness of their water. If more than 10 percent of tap water samples exceed the action level, water systems must take additional steps. For copper, the action level is 1.3 mg/L, and for lead is 0.015 mg/L. SOURCE:

U.S. Envionmental Protection Agency. Ground Water and Drinking Water. Available from http://www.epa.gov/safewater/mcl.html#/mcls

vitamin B12. It is possible to be deﬁcient in these metals, or to have an optimal or a damaging or lethal intake. However, nonessential elements such as chromium, lead, and mercury have little or no beneﬁcial role in the human body, and the daily intake of these metals is often toxic or lethal. Many heavy metals cause nervous-system damage, with resulting learning disorders in children. Ingestion of mercury can cause the severe breakdown of the nervous system, and metals such as lead and nickel can cause autoimmune reactions. Chromium occurs in a relatively harmless form and a much more dangerous, oxidized hexavalent form. Several studies have shown that chromium (VI) compounds can increase the risk of lung cancer and that ingesting large amounts of chromium (VI) can cause stomach upsets and ulcers, convulsions, kidney and liver damage, and even death, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The dangers of hexavalent chromium in drinking water were popularized in the movie Erin Brockovich. Many ﬁsh are very sensitive to heavy-metal pollution. For example, trout cannot live in waters that contain more than about ﬁve parts per

hexavalent an oxidation state characterized by the ability to make six bonds; symbolized by (VI)

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billion of copper. Heavy-metal contamination is very widespread, especially lead and mercury.

flux 1. a flowing or flow; 2. a substance used to help metals fuse together

Most heavy-metal contamination stems from high-temperature combustion sources, such as coal-ﬁred power plants and solid-waste incinerators. Local metal sources may include metal-plating industries and other metal industries. The use of leaded gasoline has led to global lead pollution even in the most pristine environments, from arctic ice ﬁelds to alpine glaciers. The metal fluxes from point sources have been strictly regulated, and the introduction of unleaded gasoline has taken a major lead source away. Several sites with severe heavy-metal pollution have become Superfund sites, most of them still under study for decontamination. Site decontamination can be done with large-scale soil removal and metal stripping, or through more gradual methods, like phytoremediation. Nonetheless, even today metals are delivered from the atmosphere to the landscape. In the United States, drinking water is monitored for heavy metals to ensure that their concentration falls below the safe limit or maximum contaminant level (MCL) set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Many urban estuaries like Boston Harbor, San Francisco Bay, and Long Island Sound are severely contaminated with heavy metals. These sedimentary basins will remain polluted for decades, and a small percentage of the sediment-bound metals is released back into the water and occasionally transformed into more dangerous forms. S E E A L S O Arsenic; Health, Human; Lead; Mercury; Risk; Superfund. Internet Resource U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration. “Safety and Health Topics: Toxic Metals.” Available from http://www.osha-slc.gov/ SLTC/metalsheavy.

Johan C. Varekamp

History Pollution is not a new phenomenon. 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 Europe. Yet all this early pollution was limited in its effects on the environment. As humans moved from nomadic to settled societies, however, pollution increased in magnitude, becoming a real problem for the environment and its human and nonhuman inhabitants. Although pollution of major proportions has been a problem since the centuries preceding the Middle Ages, it is worth noting that after World War II, the type of pollution involved changed signiﬁcantly. Industries began manufacturing and using synthetic materials such as plastics, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and inorganic pesticides like dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT). These materials are not only toxic, they also accumulate in the environment—they are not biodegradable. Thus, increased rates of cancers, physical birth defects, and mental retardation, among other health problems, are now being observed. A worrisome loss of biodiversity

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exists in the environment—animal and plant species become extinct at an alarming rate. There is an increased risk of catastrophic industrial accidents, such as the one that occurred in Bhopal, India. The tremendous cleanup costs of hazardous waste dumps, and the difﬁculty in disposing of these chemicals safely, assure that water, land, and air pollution will continue to be a problem for generations to come. Throughout history and to this day, pollution touches all parts of the environment—the water, the air, and the land.

The Exxon Valdez leaking oil; the slick is visible along side of ship. (Courtesy of Richard Stapleton. Reproduced by permission.)

Water Pollution Water is essential to life. 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 century, a relatively recent development. In ancient Rome, sewers carried human waste into the Tiber River. By 312 B.C.E. the river was so polluted the Romans had to construct aqueducts to obtain clean drinking water. The pollution of water with raw sewage was the catalyst for many typhoid and cholera outbreaks throughout the centuries, in many parts of the world. Even today, in numerous developing nations,

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cholera still kills tens of thousands each year because clean drinking water is not available, or accessible, to everyone. The connection between water pollution with human waste and the outbreaks of diseases such as cholera was not understood until the 1850s. In 1854, a devastating cholera outbreak gripped the Soho part of London, centering around the Broad Street well. A physician named John Snow, in what has become one of medicine’s most celebrated sleuthing cases, deduced that the cause of the outbreak was contamination of the Broad Street well. Since no one believed him, Snow suggested taking off the well pump’s handle. Once the well was not in use, the epidemic ended. The cause was later traced to washing a sick baby’s dirty diapers in a cesspool that seeped into the well. Unfortunately for Soho, calls for eliminating cesspools from the vicinity of wells in that area went unheeded for quite some time. In the United States, human waste was carried in American rivers for centuries. Not only were freshwater sources used as sewage dumps in most of the Western world (certain Asian countries used human waste as fertilizer, instead), but industrial waste was also discarded in rivers and streams. Leather tanning waste and butchering waste were frequent early polluters of water sources too. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, water pollution became a major crisis. Factories found water sources, especially rivers, a convenient means of waste disposal. The trend continued well into the twentieth century. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught ﬁre several times since the 1930s, a result of oil slicks and ﬂammable industrial waste dumped in it. Coupled with widespread and human waste contamination of rivers, a ﬁre on the Cuyahoga in 1969, led to the enactment of the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA). The CWA prohibits pollutants’ discharge into navigable waterways, and there is no doubt it has improved water quality in the United States considerably. However, there is no realistic standard as to how clean is clean, and the act has been criticized for leading to wasted money without effective controls and monitoring systems. There is also the difﬁculty inherent in controlling nonpoint source pollution—pollution from diffuse or not-easilyidentiﬁable sources—a harder task than controlling point source pollution, which can be predicted, controlled, and monitored. The post–World War II era saw an explosion of industries and technological advances in developed nations, ranging from engineering to medicine. Many advances that occurred during wartime proved invaluable in peacetime. Antibiotics saved millions of lives, as did pesticides such as DDT, a compound that greatly reduced the incidence of typhus during the war, and later helped control malaria worldwide. But many industrial waste byproducts found their way into the water, either through direct dumping by companies, or through leaching into groundwater from dumping sites. These by-products caused massive wildlife dieoffs, and are also blamed for elevated cancer rates, birth defects, and a lower IQ in people who subsisted on water polluted by heavy industries. In 1962 scientist Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, an explosive exposé condemning the use of long-lasting pesticides in general, and DDT in particular. Her carefully researched material and its masterful presentation were the driving forces behind the emerging environmental movement in the United States and around the world. The book focused attention on the problem of pollution in the environment. It is believed that many pollution

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control laws, including CWA, were inﬂuenced by Silent Spring. The use of DDT in many nations was subsequently banned. Globally, DDT is currently approved only for control of insect-borne diseases such as malaria, while safer alternatives are being researched.

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 residences, smoke and industrial pollution claimed more and more lives. In the United States, Donora, Pennsylvania, became famous for a tragedy that symbolized the dangers of industrial air pollution. On October 26, 1948, a thick, malodorous fog enveloped the small industrial town. Unlike usual fogs, it did not burn off as the day progressed. Instead, it stayed on the ground for ﬁve days. Twenty people died in Donora and 7,000 were hospitalized with respiratory problems. The cause was a weather anomaly that trapped toxic waste emissions from the town’s zinc smelting plant close to the ground. The Donora disaster brought air pollution into focus in the United States, and paved the way for the Clean Air Act, enacted in 1963 and strengthened in 1970. Between December 5 and 9, 1952, 4,000 people died in London as a result of smog trapped in a thermal inversion (a condition where the air close to the ground is colder than the layer above it, and is therefore unable to rise above it). This incident brought about England’s Clean Air Act in 1956. Smoke from coal-ﬁred power plants creates the related problem of acid rain. Gases (sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides) released by burning fossil fuels make the rain more acidic and therefore corrosive. Acid rain kills plants and trees and damages structures. It also accumulates in rivers and streams, and has resulted in lakes that are already devoid of life in large parts of eastern North America and Scandinavia. All around the world, the advent of the internal combustion engine-powered vehicles compounded air pollution, adding particulate and gaseous contaminate to the air people breath. The use of leaded gasoline raised lead levels in populations around the world. Leaded gasoline was phased out in the U.S. starting in 1976, but is still in use in many parts of the world In 1987, scientists discovered a hole in the ozone layer and recognized a serious threat to the layer that protects the earth from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. The Montréal Protocol, drafted in 1987, addressed the damage caused to the ozone layer by a chemical group known as CFCs, which were common in aerosol spray containers and air conditioners. The Montréal Protocol set as a goal the elimination of CFCs in consumer and industrial products. The global climate change accord signed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992 addressed the so-called “greenhouse gases,” gases which trap heat in the atmosphere and lead to a global warming trend. The Rio Accord, and the Kyoto Protocol (1997) call for a reduction in greenhouse gases emissions but little progress has been made as the United States, a major generator of greenhouse gases, never signed the treaty and President George W. Bush has rejected the Kyoto Protocol outright.

261

History

Woman planting flowers in New York’s Union Square Park on the first Earth Day. (©Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Land Pollution At the beginning of the twentieth century, William T. Love imagined a model community in New York, on the edge of Niagara Falls. Love dug a canal to supply water power to what he envisioned would be a combination of industrial and residential areas in his community. Love was unable to complete his project. During the 1920s the canal he dug was turned into a landﬁll operated by the Hooker Chemical Company. In 1953 Hooker sold the site to the Niagara Falls Board of Education for $1, with the disclaimer “. . .that the premises above described have been ﬁlled . . . to the present grade level thereof with waste products resulting from the manufacturing of chemicals. . . .” The city built an elementary school on the site. Houses were later added. Over the years, the underground containers ﬁlled with approximately 21,000 tons of chemical waste corroded. In 1977 a record rainfall brought about a tragic consequence: The waste began to leach into people’s homes, backyards, and playgrounds. Love Canal has been ofﬁcially associated with high rates of birth defects, miscarriages, and other severe illness resulting from land contamination.

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History

The tragedy of Love Canal is perhaps the most famous incident of chemical waste dumps harming people, but it is deﬁnitely not the only one. Health effects range from cancer to birth defects. The practice of chemical dumping persisted for years in the early twentieth century, in many places, without a thought to the possible risks or consequences of these actions. When Love Canal leached its deadly contents, the United States took notice. In 1980 Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), the ﬁrst U.S. federal law to address toxic waste dumps. CERCLA, also known as Superfund, is the emergency fund to clean toxic waste dumps when the owners of the dumps are unknown or unable to pay for a necessary cleanup. While Superfund is helping clean up many hazardous sites, litigation over liability led to delay and costly legal battles over who pays for cleanups. Another criticism is that Superfund lacks clear standards as to what constitutes a “clean” site. Across the globe, developing countries have been buying hazardous waste from developed nations, where disposal is more expensive. Historically, there has been little or no regulation of hazardous waste disposal in developing nations; as the world becomes more of a global community, however, this problem will no doubt haunt future generations.

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 town residents. Deeply concerned about the possibility of a Bhopal-like disaster in the United States, Congress acted swiftly to enact the Emergency Planning and Community Right-toKnow Act (EPCRA). The law requires companies that handle hazardous waste to furnish complete disclosure of their annual polluting activities, storage and handling facilities, any accidental release of hazardous material into the environment in a quantity above an established safe limit, and all material necessary for local authorities to respond to an accident involving the hazardous material(s) on site. Since the law was enacted, a substantial reduction in toxic releases was reported by companies who are required to participate in EPCRA disclosures. Oil pollutes land and water sources, the most tragic example of which is the Exxon Valdez. While not one of the largest spills in the world, it is considered the worst in terms of the damage to the environment. On the night of March 24, 1989, the oil tanker ran aground at Bligh Reef, Alaska, spilling eleven million gallons of oil into the fragile environment of Prince William Sound. A lack of containment and cleanup equipment compounded the problem, and even ﬁfteen years after the spill the Prince William Sound environment was still struggling to recover from the massive damage. One response to the Valdez disaster was the passage of the 1990 Oil Pollution Act, which, among other things, required oil tankers to be doublehulled, and gave states more say in their spill-prevention standards. The spill-response equipment and safeguards procedures at Prince William

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History

Residents of Bhopal, India, standing outside the gate of the Union Carbide factory where a chemical leak killed thousands and blinded many others. (©Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Sound, loading terminal for the major tanker route on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, have been brought up to date. Nuclear power is one of the most controversial issues of our time. For many people, the beneﬁts it brings are dwarfed by the immense dangers inherent in the nature of its fuel. Release of radioactivity into the air and the atmosphere occurred over the years, but accidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island terrify people, and with good reason. On March 28, 1979, a partial meltdown of the reactor in Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, released radioactivity into the atmosphere. The release itself was small, according to authorities. But inside the containment building a hydrogen bubble was growing, threatening to blow the building and spew radioactivity into an area inhabited by some 300,000 people. The effects such an explosion would have had on the population were only theorized until 1986, when the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, did explode. Though the immediate loss of life was small according to ofﬁcial ﬁgures, within several months the death toll was growing. Cancer rates, especially in children, have soared in the Ukraine and Belarus. And while the blown reactor is buried in concrete, evidence show the cover is deteriorating.

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History

The Three Mile Island accident led to the establishment of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO). INPO is tasked with promoting safety in commercial nuclear plants in the United States, and cooperates with similar international organizations. While safety regulations and oversight bodies were upgraded and tightened as a result of the two accidents above, nuclear waste, both civilian and military, presents a huge problem of disposal. The decay of some nuclear waste can take thousands of years. Disposal of the short-lived waste is easy compared to ﬁnding a place that can safely store highly radioactive materials for thousands of years. Moreover, many communities oppose the transportation and/or burial of such waste in their area. Environmental pollution is not new, but its scope, type, and complexity have worsened since World War II. The good news is that nations across the globe now have an awareness of the consequences of pollution, and the dangers they pose to our very existence. Both governments and nongovernmental organizations are working on the many facets of pollution. Among the answers they seek are alternative, nonpolluting energy sources, a way to control harmful emissions and toxic discharges into the air and water, and methods for cleaning up damaged ecosystems and bringing species back from the brink of extinction. Coincident with this work is the growing understanding that a safe and protected environment must begin with social healing, that both poverty and afﬂuence perpetuate environmental degradation. Poor societies must concentrate on immediate survival before they can spare the time or energy to worry about environmental health. Rich societies must understand that their comfortable lifestyle comes at the high price of increased pollution—from sources such as factories, car engines, and power plants. The challenges that face the global community as it tries to combat an ecological crisis involve creating social conditions that allow all members of the community to be equally committed to, and equally capable of, healing the place we all call home. S E E A L S O Carson, Rachel; Clean Air Act; Clean Water Act; Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills; Disasters: Nuclear Accidents; Disasters: Oil Spills; Donora, Pennsylvania; Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know; Environmental Movement; Laws and Regulations, International; Laws and Regulations, United States; Mass Media; Superfund. Bibliography Asimov, Isaac, and Pohl, Fredrick. (1991). Our Angry Earth. New York: Tor. Leinwand, Gerald. (1990). The Environment: American Issues. New York: Facts on File. Markham, Adam. (1994). A Brief History of Pollution. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Nebel, Bernard J., and Wright, Richard T. (2000). Environmental Science: The Way the World Works. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Ponting, Clive. (1992). A Green History of the World. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Internet Resources “The Environmental History Timeline.” Available from http://www.runet.edu/ ~wkovarik. Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science at Case Western Reserve University. “Rachel Carson: A Scientist Alerts the Public to the Hazards of Pesticides.” Available from http://www.onlineethics.org/moral.

Adi R. Ferrara

265

Hospital Waste

Hospital Waste

See Medical Waste

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 chemicals, and health and beauty aids. Many commonly used household products in these categories release toxic chemicals. As an alternative, manufacturers are introducing products, often referred to as green products, whose manufacture, use, and disposal do not become a burden on the environment.

Chemicals in Household Products and Their Effects Many household products like detergents, furniture polish, disinfectants, deodorizers, paints, stain removers, and even cosmetics release chemicals that may be harmful to human health as well as cause environmental concerns (see the table, “Household Products and Their Potential Health Effects”). Insecticides, pesticides, weed killers, and fertilizers that are used for maintaining one’s lawn and garden are another source of household pollution. Their entry into the house could occur through air movement or adsorption by shoes and toys, which are then brought inside the house. A common class of pollutants emitted from household products is volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Sources for these pollutants include paint strippers and other solvents, wood preservatives, air fresheners, automotive products, and dry cleaned clothing. Formaldehyde is a major organic pollutant emitted from pressed wood products and furniture made from them, foam insulation, other textiles, and glues. Exposure to very high concentrations of formaldehyde may lead to death. Other household products that contain harmful chemicals are antifreeze, car cleaners and waxes, chemicals used in photo development, mice and rat poison, rug cleaners, nail polish, insect sprays, and wet cell batteries. Such household chemicals may pose serious health risks if not handled, stored, and disposed of properly.

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 organic solvents, and lead dust are the main pollutants released during remodeling. Homes built before 1970s may pose additional environmental problems because of the use of leadand asbestos-containing materials. The use of both materials was common in

266

Household Pollutants

HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS AND THEIR POTENTIAL HEALTH EFFECTS Product Type

Harmful Ingredients

Potential Health Hazards

Air fresheners & deodorizers

Formaldehyde

Toxic in nature; carcinogen; irritates eyes, nose,throat and skin; nervous, digestive, respiratory system damage

Bleach

Sodium hypochlorite

Corrosive; irritates and burns skin and eyes; nervous, respiratory, digestive system damage

Disinfectants

Sodium hypochlorite

Corrosive; irritates and burns skin and eyes; nervous, respiratory, digestive system damage Ignitable; very toxic in nature; respiratory and circulatory system damage Toxic in nature; vapor irritates skin, eyes and respiratory tract

Phenols Ammonia

Drain cleaner

Sodium/potassium hydroxide (lye)

Corrosive; burns skin and eyes; toxic in nature; nervous, digestive and urinary system damage

Flea powder

Carbaryl

Very toxic in nature; irritates skin; causes nervous, respiratory and circulatory system damage Toxic in nature; irritates skin; causes nervous and digestive system damage Toxic in nature; irritates eyes and skin; cause respiratory, digestive and urinary system damage

Dichlorophene Chlordane and other chlorinated hydrocarbons

Floor cleaner/wax

Diethylene glycol Petroleum solvents Ammonia

Toxic in nature; causes nervous, digestive and urinary system damage Highly ignitable; carcinogenic; irritate skin, eyes, throat, nose and lungs Toxic in nature; vapor irritates skin, eyes and respiratory tract

Furniture polish

Petroleum distillates or mineral spirits

Highly ignitable; toxic in nature; carcinogen; irritate skin, eyes, nose, throat and lungs

Oven cleaner

Sodium/potassium hydroxide (lye)

Corrosive; burns skin, eyes; toxic in nature; causes nervous and digestive system damage

Paint thinner

Chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbons Esters Alcohols

Toxic in nature; cause digestive and urinary system damage Toxic in nature; irritate eyes, nose and throat Ignitable; cause nervous system damage; irritate eyes, nose and throat Ignitable; toxic in nature; digestive system damage Ignitable; toxic in nature; respiratory system damage

Chlorinated aromatic hydrocarbons Ketones

Paints

Aromatic hydrocarbon thinners Ignitable; toxic in nature; carcinogenic; irritates skin, eyes, nose and throat; respiratory system damage Mineral spirits Highly ignitable; toxic in nature; irritates skin, eyes, nose and throat; respiratory system damage

Pool sanitizers

Calcium hypochlorite

Ethylene (algaecides)

Corrosive; irritates skin, eyes, and throat; if ingested cause severe burns to the digestive tract Irritation of eyes, mucous membrane and skin; effects reproductive system; probable human carcinogen of medium carcinogenic hazard

Toilet bowl cleaner

Sodium acid sulfate or oxalate Corrosive; toxic in nature; burns skin; causes or hypochloric acid digestive and respiratory system damage Chlorinated phenols Ignitable; very toxic in nature; cause respiratory and circulatory system damage

Window cleaners

Diethylene glycol Ammonia

Toxic in nature; cause nervous, urinary and digestive system damage Toxic in nature; vapor irritates skin, eyes and respiratory tract

SOURCE: Compiled by author.

267

Household Pollutants

A L T E R N ATI V ES TO COMMON HOUS EHOLD P RODUCTS Product

Alternative(s)

Air refresher

Open windows to ventilate. To scent air, use herbal bouquets, pure vanilla on a cotton ball, or simmer cinnamon and cloves.

All-purpose cleaner

Mix 2 3 cup baking soda, ¼ cup ammonia and ¼ cup vinegar in a gallon of hot water. Doubling all the ingredients except the water can make stronger solution.

Brass polish

Use paste made from equal parts vinegar, salt and flour. Be sure to rinse completely afterward to prevent corrosion.

Carpet/rug cleaner

Sprinkle cornstarch/baking soda on carpets and vacuum.

Dishwashing liquid

Wash dishes with hand using a liquid soap or a mild detergent.

Drain opener

Add 1 tablespoon baking soda into drain and then slowly pour 1 3 cup white vinegar to loosen clogs. Use a plunger to get rid of the loosened clog. Prevent clogs by pouring boiling water down drains once a week, using drain strainers, and not pouring grease down drains.

Fabric softener

Use ¼ to ½ cup of baking soda during rinse cycle.

Fertilizer

Use compost and organic fertilizers.

Floor cleaner

Mix 1 cup vinegar in 2 gallons of water. For unfinished wood floors, add 1 cup linseed oil. To remove wax buildup, scrub in club soda, let soak and wipe clean.

Floor polish

Polish floors with club soda.

Furniture polish

Mix 1 teaspoon lemon oil and 1 pint mineral oil. Also, use damp rag.

Insecticides

Wipe houseplant leaves with soapy water.

Laundry bleach

Use borax on all clothes or ½ cup white vinegar in rinse water to brighten dark clothing. Nonchlorinated bleach also works well.

Methylene chloride paint stripper

Use nontoxic products.

Mothballs

Place cedar chips or blocks in closets and drawers.

Oil-based paint, thinner

Use water-based products.

Oven cleaner

Wash the oven with a mixture of warm water and baking soda. Soften burned-on spills by placing a small pan of ammonia in the oven overnight. Sprinkle salt onto fresh grease spills and then wipe clean.

Pesticide

Use physical and biological controls.

Silver cleaner

Add 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt and a 2" x 2" piece of aluminum foil to a small pan of warm water. Soak silverware overnight.

Toilet cleaner

Use baking soda, a mild detergent, and a toilet brush.

Window cleaner

Mix ¼ cup ammonia with 1 quart water.

Based on information available from various sources including the Web site of Air and Waste Management Association

SOURCE:

building construction prior to the 1970s (e.g., lead-based paint used to paint homes).

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

268

Household Pollutants

TOXIC RELEASES FROM CARPET 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 longer time because it is also less volatile. Vinyl-backed carpets emit an entirely different set of chemicals, notably vinyl acetate and formaldehyde. Health complaints associated with carpets include severe neurological and respiratory problems; health problems usually arise more frequently in individuals with multiple chemical sensitivities or sick building syndrome. Carpet material may not be the largest contributor to indoor air quality

problems after a new carpet has been installed. Studies indicate that carpet adhesives and seam sealants emit far more pollutants, especially in the first seventy two hours after installation. Carpet cushions, or pads, may be at fault as well. The majority of adhesives are based on SB latex and generally the most significant short-term source of VOC emissions. Since 1991, adhesive manufacturers have been actively researching ways to reduce solvent levels even further, and by 2002 some claimed a calculated VOC level of zero. Seam sealants, another major culprit, release known toxins, including toluene and 1,1,1-trichloroethane.

collection center; many communities have such a center. Chemicals received at these centers are recycled, disposed of, or offered for reuse. One may also purchase just the amount needed or share what is left over with friends. In addition, one should always avoid mixing different household chemicals.

sick building syndrome shared health and/or comfort effects apparently related to occupation of a particular building

Most of the chemicals released during remodeling projects are toxic in nature, and some of them are even carcinogenic. Proper care, such as employing wet methods for suppressing dust, use of high-efﬁciency ﬁlters to collect ﬁne particulates, and sealing the remodeling area, must be taken while remodeling to prevent the emission of harmful chemicals into the surrounding air. Reducing material use will result in fewer emissions and also less waste from remodeling operations. Another good practice is to use lowenvironmental-impact materials, and materials produced from waste or recycled materials, or materials salvaged from other uses. It is important to avoid materials made from toxic or hazardous constituents (e.g., benzene or arsenic). Indoor air quality should improve with increasing consumer preference for green products or low-emission products and building materials. Green products for household use include products that are used on a daily basis, such as laundry detergents, cleaning ﬂuids, window cleaners, cosmetics, aerosol sprays, fertilizers, and pesticides. Generally, these products do not contain chemicals that cause environmental pollution problems, or have lesser quantities of them than their counterparts. Some chemicals have been totally eliminated from use in household products due to strict regulations. Examples include the ban of phosphate-based detergents and aerosols containing chloroﬂuorocarbons. A list of green products available in the United States and other countries is provided in an adjacent table. Materials like plaster boards, urea-formaldehyde foam insulation, soldering glue, switches, and panel boards, which are known to cause indoor air quality problems, have been substituted with other eco-friendly products, which serve the same purpose but have low emissions. S E E A L S O Asbestos; Chemistry, Green;

269

Hypoxia

CO MMO N L Y AVAI L A B L E GR E EN P R O D U C T S

Indoor Air Pollution; Lead; Pesticides; Recycling; Reuse; VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds). Bibliography

Nontoxic skin care products Odor-controlling equipment Composting toilets Natural pesticides Nontoxic pet care products Unleaded gasoline Low-emission products Paints and varnishes Organic food products Air cleaning equipment Pest control equipment Nontoxic cleaning products Organic gardening supplies Recycled products Jute, coir, and woolen carpets Energy-efficient appliances Note: All products are not available in all countries SOURCE:

Compiled by author.

Baird, Colin. (1999). Environmental Chemistry, 2nd edition. New York: W.H. Freeman. Internet Resources Confederate Chemicals Limited Web site. Available from http://www.poolandspachemicals.co.uk. Ecology America Web site. Available from http://www.ecomall.com. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Web site. Available from http://www.osha-slc.gov/SLTC/indoorairquality.

Ashok Kumar and Rishi Kumar

Hypoxia Hypoxia is a drastic reduction in the amount of oxygen dissolved in water— a state that can be fatal to ﬁsh and other gill-breathing animals. Hypoxia is most often caused by pollution from nitrogen and phosphorus compounds derived from fertilizers, animal waste, sewage, or atmospheric contaminants. The pollutants stimulate an excessive growth of plant material. When these plants—typically algae—die and decay, they support large populations of bacteria, which take oxygen from the water. Pollution with sewage solids has a similar effect. Prevention involves controlling the sources of pollution by improved agricultural practices, treatment of sewage, and, to a lesser extent, reduction of emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. S E E A L S O Fish Kills; Wastewater Treatment; Water Pollution. Kenneth H. Mann

I

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 gaseous emission contaminates. There are still many health concerns connected with incineration systems, especially for populations living near incinerators. However, the stringent regulations that have been enacted by federal and state regulators ensure that the design, operation, testing, and maintenance of these systems provide maximum safety and minimum risk to the surrounding area and inhabitants. In 1992 the United States had 190 operating incinerators with a design capacity of 114,339 tons/day and an annual capacity of 35.5 million tons. Germany, which has the highest concentration of incinerators in Europe, has 53 units with an annual capacity of 10.7 million tons. Incineration can be adapted to the destruction of a wide variety of wastes. This includes but is not limited to household wastes, often referred to as

270

Incineration

municipal wastes, industrial wastes, medical wastes, sewage, Superfund soils and liquids, and the hazardous wastes (liquids, tars, sludges, solids, and vent fumes) generated by industry. Unlike many other methods of waste disposal, incineration is a permanent solution. The major beneﬁt of incineration is that the process actually destroys most of the waste rather than just disposing of or storing it. Many local community incinerators were built after World War II. The suburban communities surrounding large urban centers selected incineration as the method of disposal over landﬁlls. There was a lack of consideration of exhaust emissions from these units in the original designs: Tall stacks were used for dispersion rather than proper air pollution controls. The combustion furnaces operated at high excess air levels resulting in lower temperatures, incomplete combustion and high levels of carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons. Typical conditions surrounding these facilities were high soot and odor levels as well as corrosion from acid gas deposition. It was an unhealthy and unsafe environment for the neighbors. This created the well-known NIMBY syndrome—“Not in My Backyard.” In the 1960s and 1970s, more units were shut down than planned for new construction. The Resource Recovery Act (RRA) was passed in 1965, followed by the Clean Air Act (CAA) in 1970, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976, the Hazardous and Solid Wastes Amendments (HSWA) in 1984, and the Maximum Achievable Control Act (MACT) in 1999. New and existing systems require the proper controls for combustion and air pollution control to receive a construction, retroﬁt, and operating permit. This has reduced the past concerns about health and the environment surrounding these facilities. Incinerator regulations in the twenty-ﬁrst century are considered the most stringent of all types of combustion and energy recovery systems. They are also the most protective for the health and environment of local communities.

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 oxygen for the support fuel (gas, oil, or coal) and the combustible wastes without forming high levels of CO and unburned hydrocarbons. This will raise the temperature to the level needed for good combustion. • Turbulence refers to the constant mixing of fuel, waste, and oxygen. • Residence time is the time of exposure to combustion temperatures. • Oxygen must be available in the combustion zone.

Types of Incinerators Waste incinerators are used to destroy solids, sludges, liquids, and tars. Depending upon the physical, chemical characteristics of the waste and the

271

Incineration

handling they require, different incinerator designs will be applied. Solids, sludges, and tars are incinerated in ﬁxed-hearth and rotary kiln incinerators. Liquids may also be burned in these systems and used as support fuel. In many plants where liquids are the primary wastes, liquid injection incinerators are used. Boilers, process furnaces, cement kilns, and lightweight aggregate kilns also utilize the energy available from liquid wastes and burn liquid wastes as well as the fossil fuels (natural gas and oil).

Fixed-Hearth Incinerators. Fixed-hearth incinerators are used extensively for medical and municipal waste incineration. Fixed hearths can handle bulk solids and liquids. A controlled ﬂow of “underﬁre” combustion air (70 to 80 percent of the theoretical air required) is introduced up through the hearth on which the waste sits. Bottom ash is removed by dumping into a water bath. Unburned combustibles and high levels of carbon monoxide and hydrogen exit above the hearth. These volatiles are oxidized in the combustion zone where overﬁre air provides sufﬁcient excess air and residence time at temperature to ensure complete burnout. The three Ts of combustion and oxygen provide high combustion efﬁciency. Natural gas or oil is supplied to maintain temperatures as high as 2,000°F. In some large municipal waste combustors, called waste-to-energy plants, heat recovery boilers are used to generate steam for electric generation. These plants are also referred to as trash-to-steam plants. All incinerator systems are now regulated by exhaust emissions. Air pollution control systems are installed to control emissions of particulate matter including metals and ash, hydrocarbons including dioxins and furans, and acid gases created from the combustion of wastes containing chlorine, sulfur, phosphorous, and nitrogen compounds.

refractory resistant (to heat: difficult to melt; also to authority)

volatilize vaporize; become gaseous oxidize react with oxygen

Rotary Kiln Incineration. Solid wastes as well as liquid wastes generated by industry are destroyed by on-site and commercial-site rotary kiln incinerator systems. The rotary kiln is a cylindrical refractory-lined shell that is rotated to provide a tumbling and lifting action to the solid waste materials. This exposes the waste surface to the ﬂames from fuel burning as well as liquid waste burning in the rotating kiln. Flames will also be generated over the surface of waste solids exposed to the heat and incoming air. Pumpable sludges and slurries are injected into the kiln through nozzles. Temperatures for burning vary from 1,300 to 2,400°F. Lower temperatures are often necessary to prevent slagging of certain waste materials. The rotary kiln provides excellent mixing through a rotating-tumbling action that distributes heat evenly to all the waste materials contained within it. The kiln is the primary combustion chamber (PCC) where organic compounds in the wastes are volatilized and oxidized as air is introduced into the kiln. The unburned volatiles enter the secondary combustion chamber (SCC) along with the hot products of combustion from the PCC where additional oxygen is introduced and ignitable liquid wastes or fuel can be burned. Complete combustion of the volatized waste from the PCC, liquid wastes and fuel occurs in the SCC.

Liquid Injection. The chemical industries generate liquid wastes that contain toxic organics. Typical wastes from the agricultural and pharmaceutical plants may contain compounds such as chlorinated benzenes, vinyl chloride, toluene, phosphorous, and naphthalene. On-site liquid injection incinerators are used to destroy these wastes. Liquid injection incinerators are refractory-

272

Incineration

R O T A R Y K I LN—A F T E R B U R N E R

H 2O

CO2 N2 O2

P 2O 5

SO2 HCI CI2

1,800–2,200˚F

Air, Gas, Oil Waste Chemicals C, H, O, N, CL, P, S

Air, Solvent, Wastes

Air

NO 1,400 to 1,800˚ F

Waste Fuel

CO2

O2

SO2

HC HCI N2

Sludge

CI2 CO

P 2O 5 H 2O

Ash Air

lined chambers, generally cylindrical in shape and equipped with a primary combustor and often secondary injection nozzles for high-water-content waste materials. The liquids are atomized through nozzles, exposed to high temperature fuel burner ﬂames, vaporized, superheated, and when combined with air in a turbulent zone attain temperature levels from 1,800 to 3,000°F. Residence time in the chamber is based on the ﬂow volume of these combined products of combustion (fuel, air, and liquid wastes) in actual cubic feet per second. The physical volume of the chamber in cubic feet determines the total time of these gases in the chamber. This time may vary from 0.5 seconds up to 2.5 seconds. The toxic organic components of the liquid waste are oxidized to carbon dioxide, water vapor, oxygen, nitrogen, and acid gases. Acid gases formed are cleaned from the exhaust stream by wet scrubbers, thus allowing clean products to leave the exhaust stack. Incineration has resulted in the ultimate answer to the disposal of these waste materials.

Emission-Control Systems

scrubber an air pollution control device that uses a spray of water or reactant or a dry process to trap pollutants in emissions

A great amount of effort has gone into the proper design of air pollution control systems associated with incinerators. Most liquid injection incinerators generate acid gases: hydrogen chloride, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and others. A proper scrubber is required for the absorption of acid gases. In systems burning solid and liquid wastes, the wastes may contain toxic metals such as arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, lead, and mercury.

273

Indoor Air Pollution

COMPARISON OF AIR POLLUTION CONTROL SYSTEM COMPONENTS Parameter/ Components Particulate Removal Heavy Metal Removal Acid Gas Removal Residue Auxiliary Equipment Needed Turndown Plume Suppression Pressure Drop Capital Cost aSpray Dryer absorber bElectrostatic Precipitator cWhen used with a baghouse dStorage and Treatment

spray dryers dryer used to remove heavy metals and other pollutants from incineration gases baghouse large fabric bag, usually made of glass fibers, used to eliminate intermediate and large particles

SDAa Poor to Fair Excellentc Good to Exc. Fly Ash Baghouse Ash Handling 3:1 Easy Low Moderate

Venturi Good Good Good Scrub Liquor Demister Liquid S&Td 2:1 Difficult High Low

Packed Bed

Dry ESPb

Poor Poor Excellent Scrub Liquor Demister Liquid S&T 5:1 Difficult Moderate Low

Excellent Good Poor Flyash Ash Handling 5:1 Easy Low High

or ESP

Particulates that form may be submicron in size and carried in the combustion gases. These particulates are removed in high-efﬁciency scrubbers. Wet scrubbers are also used to neutralize acid gases formed from burning wastes containing chlorine, sulfur, phosphorous, and nitrogen compounds. Dry scrubbers are typically bag ﬁlters. Most recent larger systems incorporate spray dryers for acid-gas removal followed by baghouses for ash-particulate removal. When wet packed tower absorber scrubbers are used for HCl, SOx, and NOx scrubbing, a lean acid solution is generated that is then delivered to a lagoon for neutralization with caustic or lime solutions prior to discharge to the plant’s wastewater treatment system. See the table for a comparison of scrubber types used for waste incineration. S E E A L S O Hazardous Waste; Medical Waste; Solid Waste; Waste to Energy. Bibliography American Society of Mechanical Engineers. (1984). Hazardous Waste Incineration: What Engineering Experts Say, Vol. 32. New York. Oppelt, E.T. (1987). “Incineration of Hazardous Waste—A Critical Review.” Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association 37(5):558–586. Santoleri, J.J. (1985). “Design and Operating Problems of Hazardous Waste Incinerators.” Environmental Progress 4(4):246–251.

Joseph J. Santoleri

Indoor Air Pollution Indoor air pollution is the presence of one or more contaminants indoors that carry a certain degree of human health risk. Indoor air issues may be traced to the beginning of civilization. Prehistoric records note the problem of smoke in caves. However, over the last three decades the public has become more aware of indoor air pollution. Various studies show that people spend 65 to 90 percent of their time indoors; 65 percent of that time is spent at home. Field studies of human exposure to air pollutants indicate that indoor air levels of many pollutants may be two to ﬁve times, and on occasion more than one hundred times, higher than outdoor levels.

274

Indoor Air Pollution

MAJ O R IN D O O R A I R PO L L U TA N TS , S O U R CES , HEA LTH EFFECTS A ND CONTROL Pollutants

Sources

Health Effects

What To Do

By-products of combustion (such as CO, CO2, NOx)

Unvented kerosene and gas heaters, gas appliances, wood- and gas-burning fireplaces, leaking chimneys and furnaces, tobacco smoke, automobile exhaust in attached garages

Eye, nose, and throat irritation, impaired lung function and respiratory function in children, bronchitis, lung cancer, flu-like symptoms.

1. Avoid use of unvented gas or kerosene space heaters 2. Keep gas appliances and furnaces properly adjusted 3. Install and use exhaust fans 4. Change filters on heating/ cooling systems and air cleaners 5. Increase of supply of outside air 6. Proper location of air intakes to avoid exhaust from vehicles

Environmental tobacco smoke

Cigarettes, cigars, pipes

Eye, nose, and throat irritation, headaches, pneumonia. Increased risk of respiratory and ear infections in children. Lung cancer and increased risk of heart disease.

1. Stop smoking 2. Discourage others from smoking 3. Isolate smokers outdoors

Formaldehyde

Pressed wood products (hardwood, plywood wall paneling, particleboard, fiberboard) used in buildings and furniture, urea-formaldehyde foam insulation, permanent press textiles, glue, ETS, vehicle exhaust, stoves, fireplaces

Eye, nose, and throat irritation, coughing, fatigue, rashes, and allergic reactions. Causes cancer in animals. Death at very high concentration.

1. Use products with lower emission rates of formaldehyde 2. Keep humidity low in house 3. Increase ventilation 4. Aging or baking of products

Other volatile organic compounds

Paints, solvents, wood preservatives, aerosol sprays, cleaners and disinfectants, moth repellents, air fresheners, hobby supplies, and dry cleaned clothes

Eye, nose, and throat irritation, headaches, loss of coordination; nausea, damage to kidney and central nervous system. Some cause cancer in animals. Some may cause cancer in humans.

1. Buy only what you need 2. Read labels and follow instructions 3. Use in well-ventilated areas or outdoors 4. Hang dry cleaned clothes in an open area for about 6 hours.

Radon

Local geology, soil, water

Lung cancer, possibility of stomach cancer

1. Seal cracks and openings in the basement 2. Ventilate crawl space 3. Subslab suction 4. Increase ventilation

Pesticides

Garden and lawn chemicals, poisons for pest control

Eye, nose, and throat irritation, damage to central nervous system and kidney, cancer

1. Use nonchemicals if possible 2. Avoid storage in the house 3. Follow manufacturer's instructions 4. Increase ventilation

Asbestos

Deteriorating or damaged insulation, fireproofing, or acoustical materials

Cancer and lung diseases (smokers at higher risk)

1. Test the suspected material 2. Remove asbestos by a trained contractor or develop a maintenance plan 3. Encapsulation of material containing asbestos

Heavy metals

Paints, automobiles, tobacco smoke, soil, and dust

Headaches, irritation in mouth, rash, excessive perspiration, kidney damage

1. Vacuum regularly 2. Removal of lead based paint

Bioaerosols

Humans, pets, moist surfaces, humidifiers, ventilation systems, drip pans, cooling coils in air handling units, plants, outside air

Legionnaires' disease, humidifier fever, influenza

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

SOURCE:

Remove the source Maintenance of equipment Humidity control to 40% to 60% Use of filters in ventilation Air cleaning by the use of disinfectants

Adapted from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Sources of Indoor Pollution There are various sources of indoor air pollutants in any building. A partial list of common sources is given in the table. Several types of combustion sources release inorganic gaseous pollutants, formaldehyde, suspended particulates that can be breathed, and other toxic chemicals. Tobacco products also release a mixture of over 4,000 compounds.

275

Indoor Air Pollution

H E A L TH S Y MP TOMS A S S OCI A TE D WI TH D I F F E RENT E NV I RONME NTA L CONDI TI ONS Environmental Condition(s)

carcinogen any substance that can cause or aggravate cancer

Symptoms

• Ergonomic Conditions • Noise and Vibration

• • • • • • • •

• Relative Humidity

• Dry throat • Shortness of breath or bronchial asthma • Irritation and infection of respiratory tract

• Relative Humidity • High Temperatures

• Nasal problems (stuffiness, irritation)

• Warm Air • Low Relative Humidity • Excessive Air Movement

• Skin problems (dryness, irritation, rashes)

• Artificial Light

• Eye problems (burning, dry gritty eye)

Headache Fatigue Poor Concentration Dizziness Tiredness Headache with nausea Ringing in ears Pounding heart

The pollutants released from building materials include formaldehyde, asbestos, and to a lesser extent radon. Formaldehyde is used in a variety of products, ranging from lipstick and shampoo to kitchen cabinets and carpeting, because it is an excellent preservative and bonding agent. Pressed wood products and furniture made with these products are found in ofﬁces and homes throughout the world. Urea-formaldehyde foam insulation is one of the major sources of formaldehyde. Asbestos, a known human carcinogen, is a mineral ﬁber that was widely used in a variety of building materials and as an insulating material and ﬁre retardant in the United States until its use was banned in the early 1970s. Indoor radon problems generally result from the entry of radon gas released as a result of the radioactive decay of uranium found in soil around the house and in the geological formation under the foundation. Building materials such as granite, clay, bricks, rocks, sandstone, and concrete containing alum shale may also be major sources of radon, depending on their uranium content.

bioaerosol very fine airborne particles produced by living organisms

heavy metals metallic elements with high atomic weights; (e.g. mercury, chromium, cadmium, arsenic, and lead); can damage living things at low concentrations and tend to accumulate in the food chain

276

The pollutants released due to overcrowding of humans or animals include bioaerosols. Most of the bioaerosols present in the outdoors are induced indoors either by natural or mechanical intake of the ventilation systems. Humidiﬁers, air conditioning systems, cooling towers, mechanical ventilation systems, air-distribution ducts, and areas of water damage are the best breeding places for these bioaerosols. Pets are sources of saliva and dander. Heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and chromium have been found indoors. Their levels depend on the concentrations in outdoor air and the surrounding soil and dust. The residential use of lead paint was banned in the United States in 1978, decades after being outlawed in much of Europe because of the danger it posed to children. Residual lead paint is still present in many older buildings.

Indoor Air Pollution

R E ASO N S F O R I N D O O R A I R Q U A L I T Y PROBLE MS

Bioaerosols 5%

Inside contamination 15%

Outside contamination 10%

Inadequate ventilation 53%

Building products 4%

Unknown causes 13% SOURCE:

Adapted from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.

Household products and personal care items are a constant source of indoor air pollution. Hobbies such as welding and soldering can easily add more pollutants to indoor environments. Ofﬁce machines and domestic air cleaners are a major source of ozone.

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 ventilation system. Other factors that can aggravate this situation are temperature, humidity, and microbial contamination. The early shutdown and late startup of a ventilation system and insufﬁcient fresh outdoor air entering a ventilation system are often the direct result of overzealous energy-saving procedures. The problems of poor air distribution by a ventilation system within a building, limited air mixing in occupied areas, and clogged ﬁlters can contribute to poor air quality. Since the early 1970s buildings have been built to be more airtight to conserve energy. This has resulted from using improved construction techniques and caulking and sealing. Unfortunately, this practice limits the amount of polluted air that escapes, which can cause pollutants to build up to unhealthy levels inside a building. Temperature and humidity extremes can affect the emission rates of some pollutants as well as the perceptions of building occupants. High

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Indoor Air Pollution

Legionnaires’ disease is a relatively rare type of pneumonia that is caused by Legionella pneumophila, a bacterium found primarily in warm-water environments. It was first identified when thirty-four people attending a 1976 American Legion convention in Philadelphia contracted the disease and died. The exact source of the outbreak is not known with certainty, but it is believed the bacterium was growing in an air conditioning tower on the roof of the old but well-maintained hotel where the conference was held. The disease is contracted by inhaling airborne water droplets containing Legionellae. It infects 10,000 to 15,000 persons annually in the United States and has a mortality rate of 20 to 50 percent.

humidity and high temperature cause people to feel lethargic and want more air movement. Low humidity induces coughing, dry throats, and dry eyes. An additional problem with low humidity is that it accentuates sense of smell. Noise from mechanical systems or glare from lights can cause headaches and fatigue. These are all symptoms of sick building syndrome and are thus usually blamed on poor air quality.

Health Effects of Indoor Air Pollutants Health effects due to indoor air pollutants may be short- as well as longterm. 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 reactions, including hypersensitivity pneumonitis, allergic rhinitis, and some types of asthma, are triggered by bioaerosols. Symptoms related to bioaerosols include sneezing, coughing, shortness of breath, fever, and dizziness. Infections such as inﬂuenza, measles, and chicken pox are also transmitted through the air. Overall, poor air quality may be responsible for a decrease in work performance, general feeling of poor health, reduced ability to concentrate, or illness.

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 sourcecontrol 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. Sourceisolation strategy is used in situations where a source cannot be completely eliminated. For instance, copy machine areas, food service stations, and bathrooms are often separately vented outside buildings to avoid the recirculation of return air. Existing sources of pollution such as leaded paint and asbestos insulation may either be removed or encapsulated. Increased ventilation and ﬁltration are traditional approaches to ensuring good indoor air quality. Dehumidiﬁcation helps in the reduction of microbial growth. Low humidity should be maintained inside a house to limit the growth of such bacteria.

desiccant a chemical agent that absorbs moisture; some desiccants are capable of drying out plants or insects, causing death

278

Devices based on the principles of absorption and adsorption are ﬁnding applications in controlling indoor air pollutants and moisture. Solid and liquid desiccants have been found effective in removing moisture and a wide range of pollutants. Silica gel, activated alumina, and activated carbon are also used to adsorb gases and vapors. Spider plants have been found to absorb some volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from indoor air. The number of lawsuits ﬁled in the area of indoor air pollution dramatically increased between 1970 and 2001. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Building Assessment Survey Evaluation found that in the worst buildings of the ﬁrst study group, approximately 30 to 40 percent of occupants experienced headaches, unusual fatigue or drowsiness, and dry, itching,

Industrial Ecology

or otherwise irritated eyes at least once a week. In the best buildings of the same study group, 6 percent of occupants experienced unusual fatigue or drowsiness. Under these circumstances, the possibility of complaints ﬁled in relationship to indoor air quality will not become remote in coming years. S E E A L S O Asbestos; Asthma; Household Pollutants; Lead; Mold Pollution; Pesticides; Radon; Tobacco Smoke. Bibliography Hays, Steve M.; Gobbell, Ronald V.; and Ganick, Nicholas R. (1995). Indoor Air Quality: Solutions and Strategies. New York: McGraw-Hill. Turiel, Isaac. (1985). Indoor Air Quality and Human Health. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Internet Resources American Lung Association Web site. Available from http://www.healthhouse.org/iaq. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Web site. Available from http://www.osha-slc.gov/SLTC. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Available from www.epa.gov/iaq.

Ashok Kumar and Rishi Kumar

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 efﬁciencies. Industrial ecology draws on and extends a variety of related approaches including systems analysis, industrial metabolism, materials ﬂow analysis, life cycle analysis, pollution prevention, design for environment, product stewardship, energy technology assessment, and eco-industrial parks. Greater material efﬁciency, the use of better materials, and the growth of the service economy can contribute to the “dematerialization” of the economy. Resources that are cheap, abundant, and environmentally benign may be used to replace those that are expensive, scarce, or environmentally harmful. Such a substitution can be seen in the many important changes in energy sources that have occurred over the past century. As the energy sources have shifted from wood and coal toward petroleum and natural gas, the average amount of carbon per unit energy produced has decreased signiﬁcantly, resulting in the “decarbonization” of world energy use.

SICK BUILDING SYNDROME Symptoms associated with building-related health problems are commonly referred to as sick building syndrome. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers describes a building in which more than 20 percent of its occupants report building-related illness as a sick building. Symptoms include, but are not limited to, irritation of eyes, nose, and throat; dryness of mucous membranes and skin; erythema; mental fatigue; headaches; airway infections; coughing; hoarseness; wheezing; nausea; dizziness; and unspecific hypersensitivity. It is difficult to identify specific causes of the problem. The complaints reported by the occupants of “sick buildings” are generally nonspecific in nature and, therefore, it is very hard to establish a causal relationship between symptoms and pollutants present in the building.

industrial metabolism flow of resources and energy in an industrial system stewardship care for a living system

Another strategy for reducing environmental impact is the substitution of services for products, meaning that customers do not seek speciﬁc physical products, but rather the services provided by those products. For example, an integrated pest management service might provide crop protection rather than selling pesticides. The service thus saves money by using only as much pesticide as needed. Another industrial ecology strategy is to use waste products as raw materials. These efforts often come into conﬂict with concerns about hazardous materials in the wastes, such as the concern that trace metals in ash from

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INDUSTRIAL ECOSYSTEM AT KALUNDBORG, DENMARK

plasterboard plant

road construction

pig farmers

sludge

gas

yeast

gypsum

gas

steam

oil refinery

waste heat

waste heat

sulfur

bioplant

waste heat (return)

electric power station

steam

fermentation sludge volitile ashes

Municipality of Kalundborg fish culture

sludge sulfuric acid producer

cement factory local farmers

power plants recycled in fertilizer may contaminate soil. However, in some cases, such waste reuse can be successful. In the industrial district in Kalundborg, Denmark, several industries, including the town’s power station, oil reﬁnery, and plasterboard manufacturer, make use of waste streams and energy resources, and turn by-products into products. There are many examples of technological innovations that have had signiﬁcant environmental beneﬁts. An important example is the replacement of chloroﬂuorocarbons (CFCs) with new compounds in order to protect the

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stratospheric ozone layer. Other examples are the elimination of mercury in batteries, and the elimination of lead in gasoline, paint, and solder. The challenge of industrial ecology is to understand how technological and social innovation can be harnessed to solve environmental problems and provide for the well-being of the entire world. S E E A L S O Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs); Industry; Lead; Life Cycle Analysis; Recycling; Reuse. Bibliography Frosch, R.A., and Gallopoulos, N.E. (1989). “Strategies for Manufacturing.” Scientiﬁc American 261(3):144–152. Graedel, T.E., and Allenby, B.R. (1995). Industrial Ecology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Socolow, R.; Andrews, C.; Berkhout, F.; and Thomas, V., eds. (1994). Industrial Ecology and Global Change. New York: Cambridge University Press. Internet Resource Journal of Industrial Ecology. MIT Press. Available from http://www.yale.edu/jie.

Valerie M. Thomas

Industrial Revolution

See Industry

Industry Throughout the world there are various types of pollution that interfere with the quality of life for all living creatures and with the natural functioning of the earth’s ecological systems. Although some environmental pollution is a result of natural causes (such as methane emissions from cattle and toxic materials expelled from volcanoes), most pollution is caused by human activities.

Human Industrial Activities In the United States, as is the case in most industrialized nations, the greatest source of pollution is the industrial community. According to the 2000 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), over 2.95 million metric tons (6.5 billion pounds) of toxic chemicals from about 2,000 industrial facilities are annually released into the environment, including nearly 45,360 metric tons (100 million pounds) of recognized carcinogens.

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 Technology, has stated that samples detected in Greenland ice cores at depths just over one kilometer (about 0.6 mile) show small but signiﬁcant levels of lead present throughout the last eight thousand years. In 1994 scientists reporting in the journal Science (September 23, 1994) concurred with Patterson, saying, “Analysis of the Greenland ice core covering the period from 3,000 to 500 years ago—the Greek, Roman, Medieval and Renaissance times—shows that lead is present at

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concentrations four times as great as natural values from about 2,500 to 1,700 years ago (500 B.C.E. to C.E. 300).”

Industrial Revolution During the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, pollution became a major problem with the introduction of the steam engine and a series of technological advances that led to the production of goods shifting from homes and small factories to large industrial factories. The invention of more productive processes to manufacture cotton textiles contributed greatly to the number of mills located in England, and later in the northeastern United States. The steam engine allowed capitalists to transfer their manufacturing plants away from naturally ﬂowing waters (outside the city) to areas inside and around cities where more abundant labor was available. Pollution increased because of the more concentrated conditions within the industrializing cities and because of the use of artiﬁcially produced power (such as coal) that replaced the natural power of fastrunning rivers. Evidence of pollution during the early Industrial Revolution in England and the European continent is widespread. South Wales, located in southwestern England, was described by Adam Markham in A Brief History of Pollution (1994) as a “veritable witches cauldron of industrial pollution.” Samples of hair from historical ﬁgures such as Isaac Newton and Napoleon Bonaparte show the presence of antimony and mercury at toxic levels not normally found in human hair.

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 deal with manufacturing as they take raw materials, convert them in various ways, and produce tangible goods (e.g., automobile factories). • Tertiary industries produce services for individuals and groups (e.g., advertising). These three groups are distinctive regarding the amount of pollution produced in their operations. Some sectors (such as tourism) have a close relationship with the environment, whereas others have adopted a particularly proactive environmental response (such as the automobile industry with regard to recycling old cars) and still others continue to have a noticeable detrimental impact on the environment (such as the automobile industry with regard to exhaust emissions). Since the largest impact from pollution (and associated waste products) is produced within the secondary industries, this sector will be the topic of discussion in this article. Most economists commonly refer to the secondary industries (the manufacturing sector) as

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“industry,” whereas the primary industries are usually referred to as the agricultural and mining sector, and the tertiary industries as the service sector.

Public Perception

A factory emitting large amounts of smoke into the air. (©Royalty-Free/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

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 one side are businesses that attempt to decrease any negative impacts their activities have on the environment. For example, the 3M Corporation’s Product Responsibility Program encourages its employees and business units to think from “cradleto-the-grave” with respect to their products. On the other hand, some businesses have continued to pollute the environment while professing to be

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environmentally conscious. For example, Royal Dutch/Shell has spent millions of dollars to create the impression that it is an environmentally responsible oil company. According to Jack Doyle, author of the book Riding the Dragon: Royal Dutch Shell and the Fossil Fire (2003), the company actively continues its efforts to suppress governmental articles that report on its environmental malfeasance.

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 are often outside the traditional manufacturing sector—but nevertheless contribute to environmental degradation—include the construction industry, to name but one example.

Profit-principle Balancing Act For industry, the bottom line is proﬁts. In 1998 the chairman of The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies, Mark Moody-Stuart, stated, “We believe that without principles, no company deserves proﬁt. Without proﬁts, no company can sustain principles.” Alasdair Blair and David Hitchcock, authors of Environment and Business (2001), respond to this statement by noting the following about the remarks of the Shell chairman: He acknowledges the fact that proﬁts without principles is immoral but, on the other hand, realizes that no company can afford to possess principles which go counter to proﬁts. There is an inevitable balancing act that must be played out by companies each and every day with respect to “principle” and “proﬁt.” No company can operate on purely proenvironmental decisions, nor can a company run solely on the basis of maximum proﬁts. In the end, a company must choose a course of action that is somewhere in between the two extremes.

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 an obvious example of a locality steeped in considerable pollution. The manufacturing industries of the nineteenth century mostly involved the processing of natural materials such as cotton, leather, and other natural ﬁbers along with the mining and fabrication of metal products. As the scale of operations grew in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the amounts of pollution and land despoliation and the area over which it took place dramatically increased. The railroads paralleled this expansion. As the rails expanded westward from the New England states, pollution

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followed in Chicago, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; and Detroit, Michigan; and later in Houston, Texas; Denver, Colorado; and Los Angeles, California (to name a few of the states affected). The twentieth century saw the rapid development of industries based on the chemical manufacturing of such items as dyes, plastics, and pharmaceuticals. Oil replaced coal as industry’s primary power and energy source. The same era witnessed drastic changes in the structure, nature, and organization of factories as they quickly converted to mass production techniques to keep up with demand. By the close of the twentieth century, companies had advanced from plant-wide organizations to worldwide operations. Throughout the twentieth century, the advancement of technology allowed large corporations to dominate the industrial landscape, and to have a most drastic effect on the environment. To counter some negative environmental impact, the ﬁnal decade of the twentieth century saw a positive shift in emphasis from “end-of-pipe” controls on releases into the environment to the elimination of potential pollution at its source (“beginning of pipe”). Rather than trying to “ﬁx” a problem that had already occurred, industry began to “eliminate” the problem before it occurred.

Environmentalism. During the Industrial Revolution, companies were virtually consumed with production and proﬁts. There was little time for or concern with the effects of pollution. Companies were by and large concerned with the means of production rather than the effect of production on the environment. Once the wealth generated by the mass production of goods slowly drifted down to common workers, more questions were raised about the air and water pollution being generated by factories. Environmental changes did occur gradually in the next hundred years. But it was the 1960s that saw the greatest increase in environmental concerns raised by the public. Business was perceived as the enemy, and the mass environmental movement brought on by a rejection of social and political traditions of the past forced many changes to the indifference previously displayed by business toward the environment. The pressures on companies to reduce pollution have varied over time with societal expectations and attitudes. For example, air pollution was a concern in the 1850s when English companies emitted noxious pollutants from their chimneys. In England beginning in 1863, legislation was passed, the socalled Alkali Acts, which eventually improved atmospheric conditions. However, companies continued to emit smoke as a result of coal burning. This problem continued to worsen, and smog became an increasing concern in the mid-twentieth-century skies over London. Public concern was generated after health problems were linked to such soot emissions, and passage of the British Clean Air Act of the 1950s was the result. Today, power stations in England are under pressure to ﬁt scrubbers to their emission systems to reduce atmospheric sulfur emissions.

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

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increase costs in order to limit their wastes. Industrial polluters then passed on the environmental costs of their operations, instead of incorporating them into their own cost structure. Today, the attitude is completely different: The originator is responsible, on both a legal and moral basis, for the spread of pollutants into the air, land, and water, and must shoulder the cost of any required cleanup. Environmental costs are a legitimate and justiﬁable part of doing business, but as with any cost, it is desirable to minimize these costs as much as possible. Environmental costs may be brought into a company as an internal cost for these reasons: • Compliance with regulations or anticipation of future regulations: Directed by national or state requirements, all companies must obey laws enacted by governments. For example, coal-burning factories install desulfurization equipment when mandated by the government. • Image building or eco-efﬁciency: Even though no laws apply, companies might voluntarily use environmentally safe processes when seen as not living up to social norms. For example, Shell Oil towed its faulty Brent Spar oil platform to shore after public protest against its planned disposal on the seaﬂoor. • Sustainable development initiatives: Companies might add environmental policies when potential savings could be realized in the long term. This concept is basic to the guidelines established by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, which sees sustainable development as an essential part of its pollutionprevention philosophy. • Voluntary cleanup programs: Companies often volunteer to clean up pollution as a result of pressures from politicians, the public, and the government. Many companies would rather pay the extra cost to clean up, rather than ﬁght the problem in court and risk bad publicity in the media. • Initiatives to attain international certiﬁcation: Often, in order to expand to overseas markets, companies must strengthen their regulatory standards to achieve certiﬁcation throughout all trading countries. For instance, a company that wishes to trade internationally must meet the rules enacted by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which is the principal international group whose rules govern the majority of international trade.

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 material standard of living— that is, giving consumers what they want. If products continue to take priority over pollution control, then the fault must be one shared between the consumer and the producer.

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Throughout modern history, individuals and small groups have agitated against various types of pollution. The advent of U.S. and English conservation societies, beginning with the Industrial Revolution, brought to the forefront new environmental issues. There are presently thousands of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that exist in virtually all the world’s free-speech countries, including international organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and the Sierra Club, to small local organizations that ﬁght to control the pollution of their waters and lands. However big or small, environmental groups help to publicize industries that pollute. In every case, industry has important decisions to make regarding how it conducts business. It may pollute the environment, but the very pollution that it expels may one day bring an end to its proﬁts. The balancing act that industry now faces with regard to pollution and proﬁts is difﬁcult, at best. The industrialization of the world has had a profound effect on its people and environment. Industry has not always performed admirably with respect to its responsibility for the pollution it expels into the ecosystem. Nonetheless, with current governmental regulations, the efforts of individuals and environmental groups, and the realization by leaders of industry, themselves, that a healthy environment is good for business and proﬁts, the industrial community is more effectively balancing proﬁts with its environmental responsibility to the general satisfaction of most people. S E E A L S O Laws and Regulations, International; Laws and Regulations, United States; Lifestyle; Mass Media. Bibliography Allenby, Braden R., and Richards, Deanna J., eds. (2001). The Greening of Industrial Ecosystems. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Blair, Alasdair, and Hitchkock, David. (2001). Environment and Business. New York: Routledge. Breach, Ian. (1975). The Living Earth: Pollution. Madrid and London: The Danbury Press. Doyle, Jack. (2003). Riding the Dragon: Royal Dutch Shell and the Fossil Fire. Boston: Environmental Health Fund. Markham, Adam. (1994). A Brief History of Pollution. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Melosi, Martin V., ed. (1980). Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870–1930. Austin: University of Texas Press. Internet Resources Connor, Steve. “Ice Pack Reveals Romans’ Air Pollution.” In The Independent (23 September 1994), University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Available from http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/earth. Environmental Defense Network. Scorecard. “Pollution Locator: Toxic Chemical Releases from Industrial Facilities.” Available from http://www.scorecard.org/envreleases. Manning, Adam. “The Development of the Pragmatic Approach.” In A Study of the Legislative Controls of Atmospheric Pollution, Chap. 2. Available from http://www.ionadz.com/legjot2.html.

William Arthur Atkins & Philip Koth

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

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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 classiﬁed as infectious waste: sharps (i.e., needles, scalpels, etc.), laboratory cultures and stocks, blood and blood products, pathological wastes, and wastes generated from patients in isolation because they are known to have an infectious disease. Infectious wastes can be treated (disinfected or sterilized) by thermal or chemical means prior to disposal. For an infectious disease to be transmitted from contact with waste, there must be a sufﬁcient concentration of pathogens (e.g., bacteria, viruses), a portal of entry, a mode of transmission, and sufﬁcient virulence of the pathogen to affect a susceptible host. As a result the wastes of greatest concern in transmitting diseases are sharps (needles, scalpels, etc.). S E E A L S O Medical Waste. Bibliography Rutala, William A., and Mayhall, C. Glen. (1992). “Medical Waste: The Society for Hospital Epidemiology of America Position Paper.” Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology 13:38–48. World Health Organization. (1999). Safe Management of Wastes from Health-Care Activities, edited by A. Pruss, E. Giroult, and P. Rushbrook. Geneva: World Health Organization Publications. Internet Resource Centers for Disease Control Web site. Available from http://www.cdc.com.

Hollie Shaner and Glenn McRae

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 acquiring, analyzing, and disseminating environmental data for agency use, promoting business, and educating citizens. With the discovery of the germ theory of disease in the late nineteenth century, states began mandatory testing of public water supplies. In the twentieth century, government rapidly expanded as the population grew and the economy was transformed from agricultural to industrial. Rapid increases in energy and chemical use were soon followed by widespread problems of pollution. Public concern led to increased regulation. From the 1970s onward major environmental laws were enacted to protect human health and the ecosystem. Each regulation contains speciﬁc data requirements that classify substances, and document location, utilization, and dispersal. The result is that numerous agencies now collect, process, and disseminate environmental information.

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E VO L U T IO N O F PO L L U T I O N I N F O R M A TI ON A CCE S S Date

Policy

Content

Access Process

1946 1966 1986

APA—"Need to Know" FOIA—"Right to Know" EPCRA—Community Response

In Person Copying Written Request Written Local Request

1986

TRI—Toxic Release Inventory

1996 1999

E-FOIA—Web Reading Room EPA Office of Environmental Information Response to 9/11/01 Terrorist Attack

Agency Record Series Agency Record Series Local Facility On-Site Chemical Storage Annual Chemical Releases to receiving media: air, water, surface, subsurface, offsite Frequently Requested Data Centralized "Envirofacts" Data Warehouse Maps and Data regarding dams, Power Plants, Water Supplies, and other potential Terrorist targets

2001

Digital disk-facility, zip, municipality, county, state Internet Search Internet Interactive GIS Removed from Public Internet Access

Public data acquisition is shaped by four factors: legitimacy, resources, access, and will. Agencies can only collect data that meet a speciﬁc program objective, such as a metropolitan smog reduction program requiring automobile exhaust testing. Compiling data requires staff, equipment, and travel. Most monitoring programs rely on statistical sampling, and some have insufﬁcient budgets to meet desired quality standards. Pollution often involves activities by private enterprise such as manufacturing. Governments must follow strict procedures before entering these facilities to collect data. Periodically, elected and appointed ofﬁcials decide not to mandate data collection activities that are unpopular with constituent groups including businesses, farmers, or homeowners.

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 Carson encountered this roadblock while researching how DDT was deforming and killing wildlife for her book, Silent Spring. In 1966 Congress amended APA with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It establishes a broad public “right to know,” requiring agencies to process a data request unless it conﬂicts with one of nine categories of speciﬁc exclusion such as national defense. FOIA entails a speciﬁc written request and often takes months to process. Most states also now have similar APA and FOIA laws for state and local agencies. When FOIA was enacted, computers were not widely available. The digital information revolution has dramatically changed all aspects of data acquisition, analysis, and dissemination. FOIA was amended in 1996 as the Electronic FOIA (E-FOIA) to expand the deﬁnition of “records” to include digital ﬁles, and requires agencies to create Internet-based electronic reading rooms, where the public can locate, access, and download frequently requested data without ﬁling a formal request.

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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 is, regulations require businesses to selfmonitor their discharges and report them to the appropriate governmental unit in a standard format to become part of the public record. Most land disposal, air, water, and hazardous waste permits are of this type. Under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), businesses must report chemicals stored on-site to local emergency response committees, and annually report pollution releases to the states (the Toxic Release Inventory, TRI). Some hazard data are third party, with the government requiring the exchange of information between two private parties. For example, Florida requires home sellers to test for radon, and report the results to prospective buyers. Unless speciﬁed, third party information is typically not a public record. A fourth approach, increasing in importance, is ﬁeld monitoring programs conducted by not-for-proﬁt groups and academic institutions under the technical guidance of a government agency. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (NEPA) states that citizens have a major responsibility for creating a healthy environment. Challenges such as the nonpoint pollution of water supplies need locally based continuing data collection. Citizens are then prepared to take proactive roles in management decisions. These programs often combine chemical analyses with the recording of bio-health indicators such as stream organisms. Examples include the Pennsylvania Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring and the Rivers of Colorado Water Watch.

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 major innovation, integrating multimedia pollution data. In recent years the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has integrated databases in its “Envirofacts” data warehouse. With the advent of the Internet, the user interface for selecting information has become highly ﬂexible and interactive. EPA’s TRI data can be accessed by geography (zip code, county, state, or nation), chemical, industry sector, or year. Users can also specify the type of report desired, such as a trend analysis. The agency’s EnviroMapper program uses an interactive geographic information system (GIS) that allows point-and-click zoom access for location selection. The user can then select which data to display. In addition to data dissemination, public agencies and some nonproﬁt organizations are now using the Internet to communicate summary analyses

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Information, Access to

of environmental quality. EPA’s GIS-based “Surf Your Watershed” creates a multifactor index of water indicators (IWI) “scorecard” total for current quality and future vulnerability. Graphs of factors can also be produced. Many innovative approaches to disseminating pollution information are being developed around the world. Canada’s National Water Resource Institute has developed the RIASON system for local and international use that integrates multiple databases, GIS, and analysis capabilities. It has been used to assess acid rain in North America, and protect rural water supplies in African Lake Malawi (Lake Nyasa). In England, the U.K. National Air Quality Information Archive Web site provides interactive access to historical and current monitoring data, including health alert bulletins.

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 complex systems, for establishing and enforcing standards, and for education. Open access to pollution information plays a critical role in shaping public policy. Locally, information provides the foundation for land-use plans, emergency response, Brownﬁeld cleanup, the protection of community water supplies, and the issuance of health alerts. At the state and national levels, pollution monitoring is essential for measuring the effectiveness of existing programs and establishing the need for new interventions. Pollution knows no political boundaries. Global warming, ocean dumping, and safe drinking water challenge the sustainability of the planet. The United Nations Environment Program is leading the collaborative effort to establish standardized, long-term public and private global monitoring and data sharing. S E E A L S O GIS (Geographic Information System); Right to Know. Bibliography Chemical Safety Information, Site Security and Fuels Regulatory Relief Act (CSISSFRRA). (1999). 42 USC 7412 (r). Cole, Luke, and Foster, Sheila. (2000). From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement. New York: New York University Press. Department of Justice. (1966). Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). 5 USC 552 et seq. Felleman, John. (1997). Deep Information: The Role of Information Policy in Environmental Sustainability. Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishing. Liu, Feng. (2000). Environmental Justice Analysis: Theories, Methods, and Practice. Boca Raton, FL: Lewis Publishers. McClure, Charles; Hernon, Peter; and Relyea, Harold. (1996). Federal Information Policies in the 1990s. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing. Internet Resources Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring Web site. Available from http://www .dickenson.edu/storg/allarm. Rivers of Colorado Water Watch Web site. Available from http://wildlife.state.co.us/ riverwatch. U.S. Department of Justice. “Freedom of Information Act Guide.” Available from http://www.usdoj.gov/oip.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Envirofacts Data Warehouse and Applications.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/enviro.

John P. Felleman

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 brine salty water

aquifer an underground geological formation, or group of formations, containing water; are sources of groundwater for wells and springs septic tank an underground holding tank for wastes from homes not connected to a sewer line cesspool holding compound for sewage in which bacterial action breaks down fecal material casing the exterior lining of the well double containment use of two independent protection systems around a potential pollutant integrity wholeness and stability

Injection wells use high-pressure pumps to inject liquid wastes into underground geologic formations (e.g., sandstone or sedimentary rocks with high porosity). Many geologists believe that wastes may be isolated from drinking water aquifers when injected between impermeable rock strata. However, injection wells are still controversial and many scientists are concerned that leaks from these wells may contaminate groundwater. As of 1994, twenty-two out of 172 deep injection wells contaminated water supplies. There are ﬁve classes for injection wells based on the type of ﬂuid injected and the location of the wells. Class I wells inject hazardous or nonhazardous ﬂuids into isolated rock formations, approximately four thousand feet below the surface, and are strictly regulated under the Resource, Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Their use must demonstrate that underground drinking water sources won’t be contaminated. Class II wells are commonly used for the disposal of brine created during oil and gas production. Class III wells inject superheated steam or ﬂuids and then extract them from the geologic formation to remove valuable minerals. Class IV wells were used for injection of hazardous or radioactive wastes, but are currently banned in the United States due to possible contamination of shallow drinking water sources. Class V wells (those not included in Classes I–IV) inject waste into the ground and allow it to drain by gravity into shallow aquifers, providing little or no protection against groundwater contamination. Examples include drainage wells, septic tanks, and cesspools. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that over 400,000 injection wells, receiving nine billion gallons of hazardous waste annually, exist in the United States. As of 2002, there were 473 Class I injection wells of which 123 were used to dispose of hazardous waste. Lesserdeveloped countries (e.g., Mexico) also use injection wells for waste disposal and often have fewer regulations than the United States. In the United States, injection well casings must provide double containment to compensate for any structural failure. Wells are tested every ﬁve years for integrity (more frequently for hazardous waste) and are monitored continuously for possible contamination. Because of the threat of contaminating underground drinking water sources, the EPA establishes minimum requirements for the location, construction, operation, maintenance, monitoring, testing, and closure of injection wells. All such wells require authorization or speciﬁc permits. Although some believe that properly constructed and operated injection wells are an environmentally sound disposal method for hazardous waste, fractures in rock layers often allow drinking water sources to become contaminated, and the ultimate fate of injected contaminants is unknown. S E E A L S O Hazardous Waste; Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA); Water Pollution.

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D IAG R AM O F I N J E C T I O N W E L L

Wellhead P

Injection Pressure

Inflow Annulus Pressure P Ground Surface Fresh Water Typical Injection Well

Grout

Tubing Annulus

Confining Zone Packer

Injection Zone

SOURCE:

Adapted from the National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Bibliography Spellman, Frank R., and Whiting, Nancy E. (1999). Environmental Science and Technology: Concepts and Applications. Rockville, MD: Government Institutes. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Ofﬁce of Water Underground Injection Control Program.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/safewater.

Margrit von Braun and Deena Lilya

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, encouragement, and/ or release in high numbers of appropriate natural enemies of plant pests. However, in many cases, particularly those involving pests other than insects, biological control may be insufﬁcient to provide economic management of pests on crops or other plants valued by humans. Therefore, IPM utilizes an arsenal of additional strategies to accomplish its goals. These tactics may include periodic sampling of plants to determine if and when pesticides must be used to avoid economic damage, and when the target pests are most

arthropod insects, spiders, and other organisms with jointed appendages and hard outer coverings nematode worm-like organisms common in soil

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susceptible to the least amount of pesticidal treatment. Elements of cultural or physical management, such as crop rotation, destruction of infested plant material which may serve as a source of subsequent pest problems (sanitation), or use of high temperatures or moisture (ﬂooding) to destroy pests. Most of these strategies can be used by home gardeners, as well as by farmers, and are site or situation speciﬁc to a particular plant environment. There are many variants of IPM philosophy. These differences form a continuum from simply using knowledge of pest biology to apply pesticides with timing that is optimal for managing pests, while minimizing applications of pesticides, to the total exclusion of “hard” pesticides in favor of “soft” or naturally derived materials that are less disruptive to nontarget organisms and the environment (“bio-intensive” or “bio-based” IPM). This type of bio-intensive IPM is not much different from some forms of organic or ecological plant culture. Like IPM, organic growing philosophy has many variants, and most of these allow the use of certain naturally derived, as opposed to synthetic, pesticides. However, many of these types of natural materials can also become pollutants, if used unwisely or in large quantities. S E E A L S O Agriculture; Pesticides; Sustainable Development. Bibliography Flint, Mary Louise, and Dreistadt, Steven H. (1998). Natural Enemies Handbook: The Illustrated Guide to Biological Pest Control. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Stapleton, James J. (1995). “Evolving Expectations for Integrated Disease Management: Advantage Mediterranea.” Journal of Turkish Phytopathology 24(2):93–98. Reuveni, Reuven, ed. (1995). Novel Approaches to Integrated Pest Management. Boca Raton, FL: Lewis Publishers. Internet Resource University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program. “What Is IPM?” Available from http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/IPMPROJECT.

James J. Stapleton

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 ﬁshermen. Michiko Ishimure was a shy housewife from Minamata who was concerned about the plight of the villagers, who became ill from ingesting high levels of mercury. Ishimure, who talked with many of the sick and dying, wrote Cruel Tales of Japan: Modern Period, her ﬁrst account of the toxic effect of mercury poisoning in 1960. Her second, deﬁnitive work on the “Minamata disease” (Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow) appeared in 1969. This book won several awards, all of which Ishimure refused as long as the plight of the victims was not recognized. She organized a photo exhibition to bring the horrors of the disease to the world, but the powers of industry and government refused to take notice

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ISO 14001

for a long time. It was not until 1968 that the Japanese government placed the responsibility of the pollution with the chemical plant. Even then it took a long time for the victims to receive monetary compensation. Michiko Ishimure has been compared to Lois Gibbs, another woman activist, who rose from the status of common housewife to a leader-activist in the Love Canal pollution case. Ishimure is generally credited with keeping up the pressure on both industry and the Japanese government by publishing books and articles about a “disease” that most Japanese did not want to hear about. That she was a mother turned poet, writer, and activist in a country where women in general were subservient to men makes her contribution even more remarkable. Although she is no longer a leader in the movement for the rights of Minamata disease victims, her book has gone through thirty printings, and she still writes articles and gives lectures on the topic. S E E A L S O Mercury. Bibliography Breton, Mary Joy. (1998). Women Pioneers for the Environment. Boston: Northeastern University Press. George, Timothy S. (2000). Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Ishimure, Michiko. (1990). Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow: Our Minamata Disease. Translated by Livia Monnet. Kyoto: Yagamuchi Publishing House. Internet Resource Ramon Magsaysay Center. “The 1973 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts: Michiko Ishimure.” Available from http://www.rmaf.org.ph/RMAFWeb/Documents/Awardee/Citation/mi_01cit.htm.

Johan C. Varekamp

ISO 14001 One of the more successful outcomes of the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 was the initiation of a process that would lead to the creation of an international environmental management standard. At the conclusion of the summit, the organizing committee asked the International Organization for Standardization (IOS) to evaluate the feasibility of developing such a standard in order to create some consistency in regulation among and discourage pollution by foreign interests in the many countries that were each developing their own set of environmental rules and laws. The IOS agreed and in August 1996 published the ISO 14001 Environmental Management Standard, the ﬁrst in a series of standards to help organizations systematically improve their environmental performance. ISO 14001 is not, however, a performance standard. Rather, it speciﬁcally lists the elements and processes that need to be in place and fully operational within an organization to ensure that it is capable of achieving the level of environmental performance deemed appropriate to the nature, scale, and environmental impacts of its activities, products, and services. ISO 14001 follows the “plan, do, check, act” strategy inherent in modern quality-management systems. The three basic tenets of the standard involve these commitments: compliance with all applicable environmental laws and regulations; prevention of pollution; and continual improvement. Conformance with the ISO 14001 standard is a voluntary measure that has been

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widely adopted in the European Union (EU) and to a lesser degree in the United States as a prerequisite to doing business. Thus, although voluntary, it has become an economic necessity, and unlike government initiatives, it is driven by concerns of commerce rather than regulatory mandates. S E E A L S O Economics; Industry; Laws and Regulations, International. Bibliography International Organization for Standardization TC 207/SC 1. (1996). Environmental Management Systems: Speciﬁcation with Guidance for Use. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization. Internet Resource International Organization for Standardization Web site. Available from http:// www.iso.org/iso/en/ISOOnline.frontpage.

John Morelli

296

Labor, Farm The rise of organized labor in agriculture is epitomized by the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), the largest and oldest union of agricultural laborers in the nation, and its inﬂuence on environmental public policy, operations, and worker conditions. Many salient actors, events, and campaigns have contributed to this inﬂuence.

L

The National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), precursor to the UFW, was cofounded in 1962 by César E. Chávez and Dolores Huerta. Their lifelong commitments were to win recognition and respect, better wages, and safer working conditions for agricultural laborers in California and elsewhere. Earlier efforts to organize agricultural labor in the United States, such as the National Agricultural Workers Union, which Chávez joined in 1947, were not successful. Moreover, no labor union in the United States had ever expressed much concern about the effects of pesticides on farm workers and their families. La huelga en general (also known as the general strike) catapulted the Chávez-led UFW to international attention after September 16, 1965, when it joined a strike against grape growers started eight days earlier by a union of Filipino workers in Delano, California. From the beginning, Chávez expressed concern about the harmful effects of commonly used pesticides on farm workers. In 1969 he marched with several hundred other protesters to the national headquarters of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and demanded increased government surveillance of pesticide use on food crops. By the early 1970s, following Chávez-led fasts, secondary boycotts, and protest marches, Huerta had negotiated UFW contracts with many central California grape growers that required protective clothing for workers laboring in ﬁelds sprayed with pesticides and effectively banned the use of DDT (dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane) and other dangerous pesticides. These contracts also required longer periods before reentry into pesticide-sprayed ﬁelds—beyond state and federal standards—and also mandated the testing of farm workers on a regular basis to monitor for pesticide exposure, several years before comparable government rules were established. The UFW was also the ﬁrst union to require joint union-management committees to enforce state safety regulations regarding the use of pesticides in vineyards.

DDT the first chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticide; it has a half-life of 15 years and can collect in fatty tissues of certain animals; for virtually all but emergency uses, DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972

From the beginning, Chávez urged farm workers like Pablo Romero and activists like Marion Moses to become physicians committed to addressing

1

Labor, Farm

the many pesticide-related health threats to farm workers. After medical school, Romero worked as a physician at the UFW clinic in Salinas, California, where he also helped form a community task force that set new rules to minimize the risk of accidental pesticide exposure. Moses, a native West Virginian and former UFW nurse, became Chávez’s personal physician and union researcher, after studying internal and occupational medicine. Moses later founded the Pesticide Education Center in San Francisco, California, with the mission of educating the public about the adverse health effects of exposure to pesticides in the home, within the community, and at work. The UFW initiated another antipesticide boycott against grape growers in 1984 after research found hundreds of thousands of local residents suffering from pesticide-related illnesses and an unusually high incidence of cancer among children in central California. Chávez called on Americans to once again stop buying grapes until the industry stopped using pesticides known to cause, or suspected of causing, cancer in laboratory animals. The UFW used an innovative direct-mail campaign to carry Chávez’s antipesticide plea to consumers all over North America. Following two mid-1980s incidents near Salinas in which hundreds of farm workers received emergency hospital treatment after they were twice accidentally sprayed with pesticides, the UFW pushed for Monterey County’s enactment of the toughest pesticide restriction laws in the nation, which prompted similar policy changes throughout the state of California. Thus, the UFW became the ﬁrst labor union to demand government protection for farm workers and others from dangerous pesticides, including airplane-sprayed chemical drifts. After Chávez’s unexpected death in 1993, the UFW’s leadership maintained its strong antipesticide position by continuing to advocate for more protection for farm workers and other who work and live near and around the ﬁelds. S E E A L S O Activism; Agriculture; Chávez, César E.; Pesticides. Bibliography Griswold Del Castillo, Richard, and Garcia, Richard A. (1995). César Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit. University of Oklahoma Press. Ferriss, Susan, and Sandoval, Ricardo. (1977). The Fight in the Fields—César Chávez and the Farmworker Movement. New York: Harcourt and Brace. Ross, Fred. (1989). Conquering Goliath—César Chávez at the Beginning. Keene, CA: El Taller Graﬁco Books. Internet Resources Children’s Environmental Health Network Web site. Available from http://www.cehn. org/cehn. San Francisco State University Web site. “César E. Chávez Institute for Public Policy.” Available from http://www.sfsu.edu/~cecipp. United Farm Workers Web site. Available from http://www.ufw.org.

José B. Cuellar

Labor, Industrial

See Labor Unions

LaDuke, Winona ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST (1959–)

Winona LaDuke, an Ojibwe Indian, is an internationally recognized, longtime environmentalist, feminist, and indigenous rights activist. She was vice

2

Landfill

presidential running mate for Ralph Nader’s 1996 and 2000 U.S. presidential campaigns on the Green Party ticket. Through her speaking, writing, international conference participation, and activist activities, she has increased public awareness of the environmental degradation of Native American lands by nuclear and toxic dumping, water pollution, mining, and toxic exposure. She also builds support for self-determined solutions and protections that honor the cultural and spiritual values of Native Americans. Indian lands hold large supplies of uranium, coal, and timber, and the vast, isolated lands are attractive to industries searching for radioactive, hazardous, and other waste-disposal sites. LaDuke advocates for Native American environmental groups to wage a vigilant battle to protect their environment for future generations. She is the founding director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project and the program director of the annual Honor the Earth Foundation. In 1994, Time magazine named LaDuke one of its “50 for the Future.” S E E A L S O Activism; Environmental Justice; Environmental Movement; Environmental Racism. Bibliography White Earth Land Recovery Project. Available from http://www.welrp.org.

Susan L. Senecah

Winona LaDuke. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.)

Landfill A landﬁll is a large area of land or an excavated site that is designed and built to receive wastes. There were 3,536 active municipal landﬁlls in the United States in 1995 according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Today, about 55 percent of America’s trash (more than 220 million tons annually) is disposed of in landﬁlls. Municipal solid-waste landﬁlls (MSWLFs) accept only household, commercial, and nonhazardous industrial waste. Hazardous waste generated by industrial sources must be disposed of in special landﬁlls that have even stricter controls than MSWLFs. In the past, garbage was collected in open dumps. Most of these small and unsanitary dumps have been replaced by large, modern facilities that are designed, operated, and monitored according to strict federal and state regulations. These facilities may be distant from urban centers, requiring the large-scale transport of waste. About 2,300 municipal solid waste landﬁlls were operating in the United States in 2000. A typical modern landﬁll is lined with a layer of clay and protective plastic to prevent the waste and leachate (liquid from the wastes) from leaking to the ground or groundwater. The lined landﬁll is then divided into disposal cells. Only one cell is open at a time to receive waste. After a day’s activity, the waste is compacted and covered with a layer of soil to minimize odor, pests, and wind disturbances. A network of drains at the bottom of the landﬁll collects the leachate that ﬂows from the decomposing waste. The leachate is usually sent to a recovery facility to be treated. Methane gas, carbon dioxide, and other gases produced by the decomposing waste are monitored and collected to reduce their effect on air quality. EPA regulations require many larger landﬁlls to collect and burn landﬁll gas. EPA’s Landﬁll Methane Outreach Program was created in 1994 to educate communities and local government

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Landfill

DIAGRAM OF A PROPERLY CLOSED LANDFILL

When landfill is full, layers of soil and clay seal in trash.

topsoil sand clay garbage

Wells and probes to detect leachate or methane leaks outside landfill.

Pipes collect explosive methane gas, used as fuel to generate electricity.

Cutaway view of a modern landfill designed to prevent the two main hazards of the dump: explosions or fires caused by methane gas, and leakage of rainwater mixed with dangerous chemicals (or leachate).

Leachate pumped up to storage tank for safe disposal.

garbage sand synthetic liner sand clay

Clay and plastic lining to prevent leaks; pipes collect leachate from bottom of landfill.

subsoil

about the beneﬁts of recovering and burning methane as an energy source. By 2002 the program had helped develop 220 projects that convert landﬁll gas to energy. Such projects, when analyzed in 2001, offset the release of carbon dioxide from conventional energy sources by an amount equivalent to removing 11.7 million cars from the road for one year. Fresh Kills Landﬁll in Staten Island, the largest landﬁll in the United States, accepting approximately 27,000 tons of garbage a day in the late 1980s, closed in March 2001. Although landﬁlls occupy only a small percentage of the total land in the United States, public concern over possible ground water contamination as well as odor from landﬁlls makes ﬁnding new sites difﬁcult. S E E A L S O Solid Waste; Waste, Transportation of. Internet Resources Freudenrich, Craig C. “How Landﬁlls Work.” Available from http://www.howstuffworks.com/landﬁll.htm. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Ofﬁce of Solid Waste Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer.

Ofﬁce of Solid Waste/U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

4

Laws and Regulations, International

Laws and Regulations, International The problems of pollution are not limited to the borders of any one country. Because the harmful effects of pollution often extend to areas beyond the country where the pollution originated, the international legal system is an important means of controlling pollution. (The text here refers to “countries,” but the reader should be aware that countries are usually termed “states” in the parlance of international law.) International efforts to control pollution are numerous and complex. The following section identiﬁes some of the main features of the system.

International Legal System The two primary sources of international law are custom and treaties, and both play a role in regulating international pollution. Customary international law emerges when countries engage in certain practices in the belief that those practices are required by international law. To become customary law, a practice must be generally followed, rather than just being the practice of a few countries. In contrast, treaties, which are often referred to as conventions or protocols, are legally binding agreements between countries or intergovernmental organizations. Treaties typically do not enter into force until a speciﬁed number of countries have expressed their consent to be bound by the treaty; even after the treaties enter into force, only the countries that expressed their consent are bound. A treaty is only effective to the extent it is implemented domestically by the parties to it. Each treaty raises its own questions of domestic implementation.

French police officer performing pollution test on a car in Paris, France. (©Le Segretain Pascal/Corbis Sygma. Reproduced by permission.)

Customary International Law Many environmental activists and other observers believe that countries have an obligation through customary international law to not cause transboundary environmental harm. Principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration (1972) and Principle 2 of the Rio Declaration that emerged out of the 1992 Earth Summit both clearly state this principle. The Rio Declaration afﬁrms that countries have “the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.” Under this principle, countries are prohibited from undertaking or allowing actions that will cause pollution in other nations. Another important concept, known as the precautionary principle or precautionary approach, addresses circumstances where signiﬁcant health, safety, or environmental risks may be involved although full scientiﬁc certainty is lacking. Many countries, especially those in Europe, consider the precautionary principle to be a part of customary international law, but this legal status is debated by other countries, such as the United States. Considerable controversy also exists over exactly what the precautionary principle means. Principle 15 of the 1992 Rio Declaration reads, “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of scientiﬁc certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” Another formulation is that a country is not prohibited from taking measures to protect health or the environment because of the existence

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Laws and Regulations, International

of scientiﬁc uncertainty. A more aggressive formulation is that countries should err on the side of caution when dealing with environmental problems rather than wait until a risk is certain to occur before acting, by which time it will often be too late to reverse the damage. For example, under this more aggressive interpretation of the precautionary principle, if there is evidence that a pollutant might be dangerous, even if the risk is not certain, a country should take action to prevent the risk involved despite the scientiﬁc uncertainty. Under any formulation, questions remain about what level of risk warrants precautionary action and what level of precaution may or should be taken.

Treaties and Regulations There are hundreds of treaties and other international instruments relating to pollution. Some prominent examples include the following: The 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) calls for an immediate ban on certain chemicals, severely restricts the use of others, and provides for POPs to be disposed of and managed using environmentally sound methods. To address the problem of climate change, which is caused by an increased concentration of carbon in the atmosphere, countries negotiated the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which entered into force in 1994, and ﬁnalized the Kyoto Protocol related to that convention in 1997 (not yet in force). A treaty that addresses other forms of air pollution is the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution formulated by the UN Economic Commission for Europe in 1979 and its protocols. The 1981 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, several regional agreements on speciﬁc seas, and various other treaties address maritime pollution. The 1998 Convention for the Application of Prior Informed Consent (PIC) Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (not yet in force) would ensure that countries have the opportunity to make informed decisions on whether to allow hazardous chemicals to enter their borders. There have also been important treaties regulating oil and nuclear pollution, such as the International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Cooperation in 1990, and the International Atomic Energy Agency Convention on Nuclear Safety in 1994. Since food is often imported and exported among countries, international regulations can be signiﬁcant in reducing the amount of pollution contained in food that travels beyond national borders. The Codex Alimentarius Commission, created in 1963 by the United Nations, has as its highest priorities the protection of consumer health and guarantee of fair practices in trade. With those objectives in mind, it develops standards for, among other criteria, food labeling, food additives, contaminants, methods of analysis and sampling, food hygiene, nutrition and foods for special dietary uses, food import and export inspection and certiﬁcation systems, residues of veterinary drugs in foods, pesticide-residue levels in food, and guidelines to protect consumer health. These standards are not automatically binding, either domestically or internationally. However, because most countries must at some point conform to international trade law—which requires that certain healthrelated standards be science-based and recognizes following codex standards as one way of meeting that requirement—some pressure exists for them to adopt codex-sponsored standards in their own regulations.

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Laws and Regulations, International

Enforcement An important question is how international law regarding pollution can be enforced. There is no international police agency with the authority to enforce international law or any international court system with broad compulsory jurisdiction to make binding decisions on countries without their consent. Despite the lack of a central force, however, countries generally comply with their international legal obligations. Among other reasons, this is because countries will usually only assume obligations in the ﬁrst place if they believe it is in their best interest to do so. In the event of noncompliance, economic sanctions may sometimes be imposed under the terms of certain agreements, and nonviolating countries may sometimes take other measures against countries that violate international law. The risk of negative publicity may also persuade countries to comply with their obligations. Studies have shown that noncompliance, especially among developing countries, more often results from a lack of capacity than willful deﬁance. Compliance with international agreements regarding pollution usually requires a signiﬁcant amount of scientiﬁc expertise that not all countries possess. In addition, some governments may not have the administrative capability necessary for monitoring actions, such as the emissions of pollutants, which take place within their countries, or a legal system capable of enforcing laws. Finally, countries, especially developing countries, also may be unable or unwilling to comply with their international legal obligations to restrict pollution because efforts to alleviate poverty in the immediate term take priority over environmental protection. The United States, generally speaking, takes compliance with pollutionrelated treaties very seriously. For example, the United States has not become a party to the PIC and POPs Conventions, mentioned above, as well as the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste (1989) because it does not have the domestic legal authority to implement those agreements fully. On the other hand, many environmentalists would argue that the United States has not fulﬁlled its obligations under the framework convention on climate change.

Voluntary Corporate Codes of Conduct Transnational corporations exercise enormous economic power and engage in practices that result in the release of large amounts of pollution. However, the conduct of transnational corporations frequently is not effectively regulated by any environmental regime; since domestic law (especially in developing countries) often is not adequately enforced, it typically does not address the environmental activities of overseas corporations, and international law is not adequate to ﬁll in the gaps. Given the lack of effective laws concerning pollution that govern transnational corporations, a recent trend has been the emergence of voluntary corporate codes of conduct. Although corporations have no legal obligation to follow these codes, the demands of the market may persuade international companies to adopt voluntary environmental codes in order to remain competitive. Compliance with these voluntary codes can result in reduced pollution. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a nongovernmental body that develops worldwide standards to facilitate the international

7

Laws and Regulations, International

exchange of goods, has created a series, ISO 14000, of voluntary environmental management standards for corporations. ISO 14000 does not include speciﬁc environmental regulations for corporate compliance. Instead, the series contains general procedures for developing management systems that address the environmental impacts of corporate activities, including pollution, and thus can be adapted to different types of organizations. In order to become certiﬁed under ISO 14000, the top-level management of an organization must establish an environmental policy that takes into account all activities of the company which have environmental implications, and commits the organization, among other things, to the prevention of pollution. The environmental management system must have a planning process that creates speciﬁc environmental goals, methods of implementation and operation, and a system of monitoring and measuring environmental performance. Because ISO 14000 certiﬁcation—like compliance with other voluntary codes of conduct—is sometimes contractually required by a company’s customers to do business, ISO 14000 can encourage organizations to develop policies that reduce pollution. Several other corporate codes of conduct relating to pollution prevention have been established. One example is the Ceres Principles, a moral code of environmental conduct that corporations can choose to adopt. It facilitates investment by shareholders in companies that have taken steps to improve their environmental performance. By 2000 approximately ﬁfty-four major U.S. corporations, including General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, and Domino’s Pizza, had endorsed the Ceres Principles. The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), a nongovernmental organization, has developed a set of environmental standards known as the Business Charter for Sustainable Development. The ICC also documents examples of successful environmental management practices for other companies to model. In addition, the United Nations has established the Global Compact, a set of voluntary corporate codes that incorporates principles from international environmental and human rights treaties. A ﬁnal example is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for multinational corporations, which include a chapter on the environment. S E E A L S O Enforcement; Environmental Crime; Government; ISO 14001; Laws and Regulations, United States; Legislative Process; Precautionary Principle; Public Policy Decision making; Right to Know; Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Bibliography Barber, Jeffrey. (1998). “Responsible Action or Public Relations? NGO Perspectives on Voluntary Initiatives,” in Industry and Environment, 21 (United Nations Environment Programme, January-June). Brown Weiss, Edith; Magraw, Daniel Barstow; and Szasz, Paul C., eds. (1992). International Environmental Law: Basic Instruments and References. Brown Weiss, Edith; Magraw, Daniel Barstow; and Szasz, Paul C., eds. (1999). International Environmental Law: Basic Instruments and References 1992–1999. Handl, Gunther, and Lutz, Robert E. (1989). Transferring Hazardous Technologies and Substances: The International Legal Challenge. Magraw, Daniel Barstow, ed. (1991). International Law and Pollution. Internet Resource Center for International Environmental Law Web site. Available from http://www.ciel.org.

Daniel Barstow Magraw & Janice Gorin

8

Laws and Regulations, United States

Laws and Regulations, United States Although pollution control laws have been in use in the United States for a century, it was not until the 1970s, the “Environmental Decade,” that modern pollution-control laws began to take shape. The American public was awakened to the need for better pollution control through the 1967 publication of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking Silent Spring and environmental disasters such as Love Canal, New York; the Donora, Pennsylvania, inversion; and the Cuyahoga River ﬁre in Ohio. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, citizens began to demand comprehensive environmental protection laws. In the thirty years since, those early environmental laws have been used as the broad framework on which national pollution control are based laws in the twentyﬁrst century.

Overview of U.S. Pollution-Control Laws and Regulations Pollution-control laws in the United States can take several different forms. Federal pollution-control statutes are enacted by Congress in response to domestic problems or needs, or to implement international treaties. They are complex laws that state a goal for lowering or eliminating the release of certain pollutants, generally within a speciﬁc medium. These laws assign a duty to an agency, typically the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to implement the law. The agency then creates rules and regulations to further establish and advance the statute’s goals. Virtually every federal pollution control law delegates authority to states, entrusting them to create their own programs for implementing the law. Usually states have some leeway in deciding how implementation of a federal statute is best achieved on the state level. However, as a general rule, state programs that are derived from a delegation of federal regulatory authority can

THE PERMITTEE EXPERIENCE Owning a piece of land does not always mean having the freedom to do with it what you want. For example, if you want to build a boathouse on your lakefront property, you will have to follow a legal process before ensuring that such a project will be allowed under local, state, and/or federal law. Your property’s proximity to the water may mean that it will be classified as wetlands. Under various wetlands protection laws, you will have to be granted permission from numerous government sources before going forward with your project. Under the Clean Water Act, you will have to apply to the Army Corps of Engineers for a 404 permit. You will also need to provide an environmental assessment for NEPA purposes, certify

that your project is consistent with your state’s Coastal Zone Management Act program policies, and ensure that no other federal licenses will be required for your project. Then you will need to figure out which state and local regulations apply to your plan, and request any permits that may be required on the local level. While there will likely be some overlap in the state and federal requirements, it is often difficult to determine exactly what is needed before you can be assured that you are in compliance with all applicable laws. This complicated process can produce great frustration, and can lead applicants to avoid meeting legal requirements because complying with the rules is too difficult.

9

Laws and Regulations, United States

be more, but cannot be less stringent than the federal law. This leads to state and local laws and regulations that mirror their federal counterparts and allow for enforcement on the local level. Although this cooperative effort may ensure that federal environmental statutes reach a larger share of violators, it can also lead to confusion for individuals who try to comply with the law, and may make it difﬁcult for agencies to apply the law with uniformity.

Major U.S. Pollution-Control Statutes One of the ﬁrst modern environmental protection laws enacted in the United States was the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), which requires the government to consider the impact of its actions or policies on the environment. NEPA remains one of the most commonly used environmental laws in the nation. In addition to NEPA, there are numerous pollution-control statutes that apply to such speciﬁc environmental media as air and water. The best known of these laws are the Clean Air Act (CAA), Clean Water Act (CWA), and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) commonly referred to as Superfund. Among the many other important pollution control laws are the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), Oil Pollution Prevention Act (OPP), Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), and the Pollution Prevention Act (PPA). Pollution-control laws focus on the regulation of activities that utilize materials that are potentially harmful to human health and the environment. These laws frequently vary in terms of their expectations and potential penalties for violators, depending on the risks associated with the materials involved. For example, CERCLA and RCRA are similar in terms of the activities they address. Both statutes focus on the storage, transport, and disposal of waste. However, the penalties for violating CERCLA are much more serious because that statute covers activities surrounding accidental or negligent releases of hazardous wastes, after the fact. RCRA’s penalties are less severe, because the threat of harm is lower. U.S. pollution-control statutes are numerous and diverse. Although many of the environmental statutes passed by Congress are useful tools in pollution prevention, they often need to be expanded before their impact is fully realized. Pollution-control laws are generally too broad to be managed by existing legal bodies, so Congress must ﬁnd or create an agency for each that will be able to implement the mandated mission effectively. The statute then serves as a framework for the agency in organizing its agenda. At each level, the law becomes more speciﬁc and targeted.

Regulations: Role of the Agency in U.S. Pollution Control Federal agencies in the United States are established through enabling legislation known as organic acts. These acts create and empower agencies, as well as deﬁne and limit their roles. Congress delegates a certain amount of authority to each agency, allowing its ofﬁcials to develop regulations to ensure that the agency’s duties will be achieved. Congress grants this authority to agencies because the legislature cannot always foresee all the elements that will be

10

Laws and Regulations, United States

M AJ O R U .S. P OL L U T I O N C O N TR O L L A W S Medium

Statute

Goal/Description

Agency

Air

Clean Air Act (1970) 42 USC §§7401–7671q, 40 CFR Part 50

To prevent & control air pollution/Regulates air emissions through National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS)

EPA

Water

Clean Water Act (1977) 33 USC §121 et. seq. 40 CFR Parts 100–140; 400–470

To restore & maintain the integrity of U.S. waters/limits discharges to U.S. waters through National Pollutant Discharge System (NPDES)

EPA

Drinking Water

Safe Drinking Water Act (1974) 43 USC § 300f et. sec. 40 CFR Parts 140–149

To protect U.S. drinking water & supplies from contaminants/ Establishes safe standards for drinking water

EPA

Ocean

Oil Pollution Act of 1990 33 USC §6602 et. seq. 40 CFR Part

To prevent and clean up oil spills in U.S. waters/Establishes fund for response costs and requires vessels & facilities to make plans for responding to oil spills

EPA/Coast Guard

Ground/Toxics

Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (1976) 42 USC §321 et. seq. 40 CFR Parts 240–271

To promote protection of human health and the environment/ Oversees the handling of solid & hazardous wastes from "cradle to grave"

EPA

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, & Liability Act (1980) 42 USC §§9601–9675 40 CFR Part 300

To oversee the clean up of the worst U.S. hazardous waste sites/ Establishes a "Superfund" to aid in the costs that arise in remediating CERCLA sites.

EPA

Toxic Substances Control Act (1976) 15 USC §2601 et. seq. 40 CFR Parts 700–799

To understand the health risks of certain chemical substances/ Promotes the development of scientific health risk data

EPA

Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (1972) 7 USC §§136–136y 40 CFR Parts 162–180

To prevent harm to human health and the environment from pesticide use/To register and classify all pesticides in use and analyze risks & benefits of use

EPA

Food Quality Protection Act (1996) Public Law 104–170

To protect human health from the risks associated with exposure to pesticides/Uses a "risk cup" test for all pesticides & establishes maximum exposure levels for each

EPA/FDA

Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 42 USC §13101 et. seq.

To reduce or eliminate pollution/To improve technology & manufacturing & products in order to lower pollution levels

Emergency Planning & Community Right-to-Know Act (1986) 42 USC §11011 et. seq.

To improve local solutions to pollution emergencies/Directs the creation of State Emergency Response Commissions (SERCs)

States

Occupational Safety & Health Act (1970) 29 USC §61 et. seq.

To ensure that workers will be safe from harmful activities & hazardous exposures in the workplace/Establishes maximum exposure limits for workplace hazards

OSHA

Noise Control Act (1972) 42 USC §4901 et. seq. 40 CFR Parts 204, 211

To prevent damage to human health from the effects of noise pollution/Establishes noise emissions standards and other noise-control measures; Congress has not funded the NCA since 1982, effectively gutting the law.

National Environmental Policy Act (1969) 42USC 4321–4347

Established Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ); requires environmental impact statements (EIS) for all "legislation and major federal actions"

General

EPA

EPA

All Federal Agencies

necessary for pollution-control laws to be effective. Agencies can develop the expertise needed to execute their lawmaking and legally required oversight duties because they have a narrower focus than the legislature. Agencies spend a great deal of time considering the effectiveness of their regulations. When an agency determines that its goals would be better achieved if its approach was changed or updated, the agency may propose that a new rule be created. The agency then must announce the proposed rule in

11

Laws and Regulations, United States

the Federal Register, where the public is able to consider the change and return feedback on it to the agency. Federal law requires that agencies consider all public comments that are submitted regarding new rules before making their ﬁnal decision. Any changes to the proposed rule must again be reported in the Federal Register, with new comments solicited from the public. When the ﬁnal rule is complete, it is printed in the Federal Register as a new statute before it is codiﬁed, or entered into the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Several federal agencies oversee pollution control in the United States. At the top of the regulatory pyramid of agencies focused on pollution control is the EPA, which is assigned the duty of coordinating and overseeing all environmental protection laws nationwide. EPA also monitors the implementation of a number of comprehensive pollution-control laws. In addition, there are numerous federal agencies that regulate more narrowly concentrated areas of pollution control law. These agencies include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Nuclear Safety Regulatory Board (NSRB).

Jurisdiction and Enforcement of U.S. PollutionControl Laws Agencies can achieve regulatory compliance through different approaches. One method is to enforce regulations through frequent inspections and stringent penalties. Another is to offer incentives to those who are out of compliance, in order to bring them in line with regulations. Several federal pollution-control statutes offer such alternatives to violators. For example, through the CAA, EPA offers emissions trading as an option to those whose emissions levels are above the agency’s set limits. By making a deal with a neighboring industry whose emissions are similar in type, one plant can maintain its higher emissions levels in exchange for an agreement by the other to keep its emissions below the limit to a comparative degree. By allowing such agreements, EPA maintains acceptable emissions levels within corridors without drastically affecting the viability of individual industries. EPA responds to all violations of pollution-control laws in one of four ways, depending on the severity of the violation. In the least extreme cases, EPA issues informal letters that advise violators to correct their behavior. The next level of violation leads to a formal agency response, a legal order that requires violators to come into compliance. For more severe violations, EPA initiates civil lawsuits, demands compliance, and imposes potential ﬁnancial penalties. Finally, the agency may bring criminal charges against the most ﬂagrant violators, leading to large ﬁnes and prison sentences. In all cases involving court actions, the U.S. Department of Justice takes over as attorney for the agency. Although U.S. pollution control laws are very broad and complex, they are implemented in an organized system that focuses on the most effective strategies for approaching problems and bringing about compliance with the law’s stated goals. Because of the United States’ comparatively long history of environmental regulation, it is ahead of many other nations of the world in certain

12

Lead

aspects of pollution control. However, there are still many hurdles to overcome. Chemical corporations, pharmaceutical companies, the farm bureau, property-rights advocates, and other interested groups continually lobby Congress to weaken environmental laws. Such activities have had major impacts in some cases, including in 1982, when efforts by opponents of the Noise Control Act led to the effective gutting of that law. Organized lobbying groups also challenge existing laws when circumstances arise under which court cases can be won that will impact the application or effectiveness of a given law. Conversely, environmental and human health groups also lobby Congress in hopes of making pollution control laws even stricter. Such groups also bring a number of lawsuits each year to push for agency enforcement of existing laws. Ultimately, the effects of pollution control laws are usually visible, which suggests that they will stay in place for years to come. S E E A L S O Carson, Rachel; Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA); Donora, Pennsylvania; Enforcement; Environmental Crime; Government; Laws and Regulations, International; Legislative Process; National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); Politics; Public Policy Decision making; Regulatory Negotiation; Right to Know; Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Bibliography Arbuckle, J.G., et al. (1983). Environmental Law Handbook, 7th edition. Rockville, MD: Government Institutes. Percival, Robert V. (1996). Environmental Regulation: Law, Science, and Policy, 2nd edition. Boston: Little, Brown. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. CFR Chapter 40, “Protection of the Environment.” Available from http://www.epa.gov.

Mary Elliott Rollé

Lead Lead (symbol Pb, atomic number 82) is a soft, dense, bluish-gray metal that melts at the relatively low temperature of 328°C (662°F). It has many beneﬁcial uses in compounds as well as in its metallic form, but is toxic at almost any level in the body. Mentioned in the Bible, lead was one of the ﬁrst known metals. Its toxicity was also recognized long ago; Greek physicians made the ﬁrst clinical description of lead poisoning in the ﬁrst century B.C.E., and lead is arguably the earliest known industrial pollutant. Lead taken internally in any of its forms is highly toxic. At higher body levels, the symptoms of lead poisoning are anemia, weakness, constipation, colic, palsy, and often a paralysis of the wrists and ankles. At low levels, there may be no symptoms. Young children are especially at risk from lead, even at levels once thought safe. Low-level lead poisoning can reduce intelligence, delay motor development, impair memory, and cause hearing problems and troubles in balance. Higher levels of lead poisoning are reduced with the use of chelating agents that help the body to excrete the lead in urine. Although this may

chelating agents chemicals that trap metal ions (chele = claw)

13

Lead

address the physical symptoms mentioned above, there is no cure for the loss of IQ and other neurological effects that lead poisoning has on young children.

malleable able to be shaped and bent alloy mixture of two or more metals leach dissolve out

Lead was used by the Romans to make water pipes and create elaborate urban water systems. The word plumbing comes from the Latin word for lead, plumbum. Lead was, and still remains, a natural choice for plumbing, Widely available, it is durable and easily malleable, and it does not rust. Water is still delivered to homes in many U.S. cities via lead supply pipes. Alloys of lead are also used in solder and in brass faucets and ﬁxtures. Drinking water can leach lead out of a plumbing system, and this may be one source of lead exposure. The most common uses of lead today are in lead-acid storage batteries and to shield against radiation. Computer screens are made of leaded glass to contain the electromagnetic radiation within, and as a consequence, two U.S. states have banned the disposal of CRT monitors in landﬁlls and incinerators.

drier a compound that increases the drying rate

Lead is useful in many compounds. Lead carbonate, called white lead, has been used for over 2,000 years as a white pigment in paint and ceramic glazes, and other lead compounds have been used as pigments and driers. Lead-based paint was ﬁrst identiﬁed as the source of deadly childhood poisoning in Australia in 1904. Subsequently, lead-based paint was banned in Australia and much of Europe in the 1920s, but the United States did not prohibit its residential use for another ﬁfty years. By 1971 it was determined that two hundred children a year died annually in this country as a result of lead poisoning. That year Congress passed the Lead-Based Poisoning Prevention Act, but delayed implementation of its ofﬁcial ban until 1977. The lead-based paint applied to homes during the ﬁrst two-thirds of the twentieth century continues to be the primary cause of childhood lead poisoning. Children who eat ﬂakes of peeling and chipping paint in older, unmaintained housing are at serious risk. The National Survey of Lead and Allergens in Housing for 1998 to 2000 found that some 38 million housing units contain lead-based paint. Some 25 million of these units have “signiﬁcant” lead-based paint hazards. Even lead-based paint that is in good condition can pose a risk as the dust created by the friction of opening and closing windows may cause low-level lead poisoning. The renovation of an older home, when done improperly, can poison adults and children as well as pets living in that residence. Residential lead-based paint should never be sanded or burned off.

A little girl is standing and gazing out a window. Dust settling in windows may contain lead, a result of the use of lead-based paint in homes. (©2003, Robert J. Huffman, Field Mark Publications. Reproduced by permission.)

14

Lead poisoning is an important health problem, affecting an estimated 890,000 preschoolers, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means that about 4.4 percent of children aged one to ﬁve have unacceptably high levels of lead in their bodies. Although lead poisoning crosses all socioeconomic, geographic, and racial boundaries, the burden of this disease falls disproportionately on low-income families and those of color. In the United States, children from poor families are eight times more likely to be poisoned by lead than those from higher-income families. Another compound, tetraethyl lead, was once routinely added to gasoline to prevent knocking or premature detonation in internal combustion

Lead

engines. The lead survived the combustion process and became a signiﬁcant contributor to air pollution. Leaded gasoline was phased out in the United States starting in 1976. All gasoline-powered cars and trucks now sold in this country must burn unleaded gasoline. Leaded gasoline nevertheless remains a problem in many other countries. In 1995 fewer than thirty countries worldwide had banned leaded gasoline. In 1996 the World Bank called for the international phasing out of leaded gasoline, claiming that most of the 1.7 billion urban dwellers in developing countries were at risk from lead poisoning. The United Nations Commission on Human Settlements—known as Habitat—approved a resolution in 1999 that committed member nations to begin phasing out leaded gas. By 2001 forty-ﬁve nations worldwide had banned its use. Because lead is an element; it does not biodegrade. Lead pollution from the dawn of civilization remains in the environment. Ice-core researchers in North Greenland have found layers of glacial ice contaminated with lead from ancient Rome’s smelters. The lead pollution emitted by smelters can reach staggering levels. In Herculaneum, Missouri, where the nation’s largest lead smelter has been in operation for more than one hundred years, health ofﬁcials documented that almost 28 percent of children under seven have elevated levels of lead in their bloodstream; close to the facility that ﬁgure rose to 45 percent. Dust samples along the roads used by trucks serving the

Sign warning residents of high lead levels from Doe Run Smelting. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.) biodegrade to decompose under natural conditions

110 16

100

90 14

80 13

70 12 Lead used in gasoline

Average Blood Lead (µg/dL)

Total Lead Used per 6-Month Period (thousands of metric tons)

15

Average blood lead 60

11

50

10

40

9 1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

Year SOURCE:

Adapted from Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning.

15

Legionnaires’ Disease

smelter contained extremely high concentrations of lead (up to 300,000 parts per million), and the site has been declared an urgent public health hazard.

remediate reduce harmful effects; restore contaminated site

pathway the physical course a chemical or pollutant takes from its source to the exposed organism

Enforcement actions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources led to an agreement by the Doe Run Company, the smelter’s owner, to install new controls on air emissions, remediate lead contamination in residential yards, and stabilize a contaminated slag pile located in the Mississippi River ﬂood plain. Although lead is a persistent and widespread contaminant in both natural and man-made environments, lead poisoning is an entirely preventable disease. The key to prevention is the elimination of sources and pathways. The positive results of bans on leaded gasoline, lead in paints and glazes, lead solder, and lead plumbing can be seen in the reduction in the number of leadpoisoning cases as well as the decreased levels of lead found in the general population. Bibliography Stapleton, Richard. (1994). Lead Is a Silent Hazard. New York: Walker and Company. Warren, Christian. (2001). Brush with Death; A Social History of Lead Poisoning. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Internet Resources Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning. Available at http://www.aeclp.org. CDC Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. Available at http://www.cdc. gov/nceh/lead/lead.htm.

Richard M. Stapleton

Legionnaires’ Disease

See Indoor Air Pollution

Legislative Process Simply, legislative process means the steps required for a proposed bill to become a law, but the whole process includes much more than what happens in Congress. At the federal level in the United States, this process has six major steps. First, a written draft of the proposed law, called a bill, is sponsored by a member in one of the two houses of Congress—House or Senate—and recommended for consideration. The presiding ofﬁcer of the house puts the bill on the agenda and assigns it to a standing, or permanent, committee for consideration. The standing committees consider all bills and oversee government actions on specialized issue areas. In the House of Representatives, committees that deal with environmental issues include the Agriculture, National Security, Resources, Science, and Appropriations Committees. In the Senate, standing committees relating to the environment include Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Energy and Natural Resources, Environment and Public Works, and Judiciary Committees, although others in both houses may also consider related issues. Within the standing committee, the bill goes to a subcommittee to study and modify; here, the bill is debated and edited in a line-by-line, and often word-by-word, manner, with the agreed upon changes literally written on the original draft bill.

16

Legislative Process

T H E P O L IC Y P RO C E S S

Political Culture

Society

Political Economy

Culture and Economy shape and socialize each individual's values and beliefs about government

Individual's views are combined to form Public Opinion

The Media, Interest Groups, and Political Parties, join with Individuals in Political Dialogue about a Policy Idea or Issue

Policy Proposed as Legislation in Congress: Six Steps

Signed by President, Legislation is sent to appropriate Bureaucracy for Rule Making and Program Administration

Bureaucratic Program Administration Regulates Scope of Actions Permitted to Individuals and Industries

Once modiﬁcation is completed and the subcommittee and committee approve the bill, the committee sends the bill back to the full house for ﬂoor action, or more debate and a vote, this time will all the members of the house participating. After a bill passes in one house (gets a majority of “yea” votes), the bill is sent to the other house of Congress where the process begins all over again. Because of this process, it is unlikely that both houses will approve identical bills. However, when both houses have recommended a bill on the same issue, the two versions are sent to a conference committee of members of both houses, where the differences are discussed and argued over. If the conference committee arrives at a compromise bill, that bill is sent back to both houses for approval. When this last legislative approval is obtained, Congress sends the bill to the president for approval or rejection. If the president agrees with the provisions of the bill, it is signed, and the bill becomes a law. However, if the president disagrees with the provisions in a bill, the bill will be vetoed, and a veto message will be sent with the bill back to Congress. Congress can override a presidential veto with a supermajority vote, or a vote in support of the bill by two-thirds of both houses. The more complex legislative process begins before Congress drafts a bill and ends after legislation is signed. Other governmental institutions are involved, including various executive branch agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Outside government, other actors, such as

17

Life Cycle Analysis

the media and interest groups, are also involved in lawmaking. These external, unofﬁcial actors help to mediate the political dialogue about what government should do.

interest groups corporate or citizen groups with a stake in influencing legislation

Mediated politics occurs when there are institutions or individuals who carry the message between an individual and the representative, telling government what the public prefers. Legislative representatives receive messages in various forms from individuals (as letters, votes, and contributions), as well as from media reports and editorials, public opinion polls, political parties, lobbyists, and interest groups. Taken together, these convey what it is the public wants on an issue in addition to the level of interest. If an issue and opinion on it are compelling enough, then one or more legislators will introduce a bill in one of the houses of the legislature, and lawmaking begins. Once a bill is passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, it goes to an executive agency where another part of the process begins. The agency creates a way to implement the policy, often by writing rules and regulations, stated in the law. Rule writing is based on implementation guidelines established in the Administrative Procedures Act, which include holding public hearings for citizen feedback. The legislative process ends here with an implemented and enforceable law. Some members of society may be negatively affected by new legislation. These individuals may form interest groups, write their legislators, or go to court in order to get the law changed. This is where the policy process starts and where active citizens dissatisﬁed with what the government is, or is not, doing ask for a change in policy. S E E A L S O Public Participation; Public Policy Decision Making. Bibliography Douglas, Arnold R. (1990). The Logic of Congressional Action. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Downs, Anthony. (1972). “The Issue-Attention Cycle.” The Public Interest 28 (Summer):38–50. Internet Resources U.S. Congress. Legislative Process—How a Bill Becomes a Law. Available from http:// www.house.gov/house/Tying_it_all.html.

Sara E. Keith

Life Cycle Analysis impact a change to the environment resulting from a human activity or product

18

A typical product has a range of environmental impact arising from its manufacture, use, and disposal. A life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluates the entire environmental impact of a product through its life cycle. An LCA might, for example, compare the environmental impact of ordering an item online to going to a store to buy it. The analysis would include the environmental impact of having the item mailed to the purchaser’s home directly from the distributor versus having it sent from the distributor to the store, and then having the customer drive to the store to buy it. In this example, an LCA has shown that it can be environmentally preferable to buy products online, but only if the item is sent by standard truck mail rather than by express airmail. Other LCAs have shown that lightweight plastic bumpers are superior to heavier steel bumpers for cars, and that the relative merits of cloth versus

Lifestyle

disposable diapers depend on how the cloth diapers are dried, because electric drying uses so much energy. Life cycle analyses of products are typically coupled with efforts to reduce their environmental impact. Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is the concept that the producer of a product is also responsible for recycling the product. In Germany, producers are required to take back the packaging of their products, and in the Netherlands, the cost of cars incorporates a recycling tax. S E E A L S O Recycling; Reuse. Internet Resources Journal of Industrial Ecology. Available from http://www.yale.edu/jie. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Life-Cycle Assessment Web site. “LC Access.” Available from http:// www.epa.gov/ORD.

Valerie M. Thomas

Lifestyle It might be said that, whether conscious of it or not, everyone has a lifestyle. From this perspective, lifestyle refers simply to the deﬁning characteristics or qualities of a particular way of life, be it of an individual, a nation, or an entire culture. On the other hand, some argue that lifestyle is a Western concept, meaningful only to the citizens of afﬂuent countries, not to those whose main concern is mere survival because of their absolute poverty. From this perspective, the concept of lifestyle applies only to variants of consumerism, a largely materialistic way of life that assumes: (1) that what one wants is entirely a matter of choice; (2) that almost all choices are within one’s grasp; and (3) that consumer choices can and should be hierarchically ranked from the most to the least desirable, according to what the mass media and corporate enterprise decide is most worth having and doing. Underlying high-end consumerism is the belief that the most desirable lifestyle is dependent on having the most prestigious occupations, which are, in turn, associated with the highest incomes. The concept and its implications are closely connected to the values associated with extreme individualism, corporate capitalism, and an open market, preferably one that is global in its reach. To critics, what is excluded from lifestyle is even more important than what is included. While most people would generally consider lifestyle to be a neutral or amoral concept, others, on looking more closely, see it as having an immoral side. Discussions of lifestyle generally exclude any thoughts of justice, respect for human rights, or fairness. In short, questions of “ways of being” are left out of the equation: We tend to forgo contemplation of what society has become and what it should be in pursuit of the favored lifestyle. This is innocent enough as long as people are truly ignorant of global circumstances, but it becomes increasingly inexcusable as the consequences of gross social inequity become better known and the income gap yawns ever wider. Countries most closely identiﬁed with a consumer lifestyle include the United States (where shopping is the most popular leisure-time activity),

19

Lifestyle

A consumer is selecting bulk foods. (M. Stone, U.S. EPA. Reproduced by permission.)

Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and a few others where post-Enlightenment “scientiﬁc materialism” has taken hold as the dominant way of seeing the world. In these generally democratic countries, the economy functions more or less according to the laws of supply and demand—if people buy a lot of some good or service, then private businesses organize to produce as much of that good as they can and still make a proﬁt (keeping in mind that at least some of the demand may be stimulated by advertising in the ﬁrst place). People spend their money as they see ﬁt with little interference by governments. As a result, the economy produces what is wanted by citizens who have the money to pay rather than what might be needed by impoverished members of society who cannot “vote” in the marketplace. In the end, the citizens of free-market countries have access to the most prodigious outpouring of manufactured goods and consumer services, both necessary and trivial, ever made available to members of the human species. Little wonder that in most market democracies many citizens seek social status and deﬁne their self-worth in terms of the quality and quantity of their personal possessions, particularly automobiles, houses and furnishings (especially home entertainment products), and clothes. Indeed, the accumulation of private goods is a deﬁning characteristic of a consumer lifestyle. It is often remarked that even the average person in the world’s wealthy consumer societies enjoys greater personal comfort and convenience, if not outright wealth, than European monarchs of only a few centuries ago. Given its pervasiveness in the West, many people will be surprised to learn that the consumer society was, in effect, deliberately constructed. In the years following World War II, North America was endowed with great industrial overcapacity (war-time factories) and large numbers of underemployed

20

Lifestyle

workers (returning soldiers). At the same time, the general population, having endured the material deprivation of the Depression and subsequent wartime rationing, was quite used to living modestly. To break people of their habit of “underconsuming,” American industry purposefully organized to encourage North America to become a throw-away society and embrace a consuming way of life. In 1955, retail analyst Victor Lebow argued that Americans should make consumption their way of life. He suggested that if they succeeded in making the buying and use of goods into a kind of ritual, they would ﬁnd spiritual satisfaction and ego gratiﬁcation in consumption. His point was that to keep the economy going things had to be consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate. Today, a multibillion dollar advertising industry is still dedicated, in part, to creating needs that some new or improved product claims to meet. Technology has also played a major role in helping industry to persuade people that material goods will help to ﬁll the spiritual void that gnaws at the heart of techno-industrial society. For example, television has so successfully sold conspicuous consumption that the world consumed as many goods and services between 1950 (when commercial television was launched) and the mid-1990s as had all previous generations combined. For all that, a growing number of studies show that there is no correlation—indeed, there may even be a negative correlation—between growing incomes and subjective measures of “happiness” in the world’s richest countries. It turns out that money really does not buy happiness.

The Pollution Connection The promotion of consumerism, however it is portrayed in the media, leads to increasing pollution, resource scarcity, biotic impoverishment, and other forms of environmental degradation all over the world. Moreover, while a quarter of humanity enjoys the beneﬁts of material plenty, the negative impacts of economic growth contribute to the loss of health and life among the poor in every country. The economic production process often creates a vastly larger mass of waste than useful product. The packaging, distribution, use, and consumption of the product produce still more waste. Waste becomes pollution when the level of contamination impairs the aesthetic quality or productive capacity of the atmosphere, water, soil, or landscape; that is, when ecosystems are signiﬁcantly damaged. Of course, as members of a human-centered, materialistic society, we tend to pay the most attention to pollution when it affects our own health or the health of other commercially valuable species. However they are perceived, waste and pollution are the inevitable and sometimes pernicious by-products of a consumer society, and the consumer lifestyle is spreading around the globe. It is of little comfort that despite the best efforts of scientists, engineers, and technological optimists, progress in solving our waste and pollution problems has been decidedly erratic even in the world’s most “advanced” economies. For example, studies show that although a greater number of people recycle, more waste than ever is also being hauled to landﬁlls and incinerated. Often seeming improvements in one problem area are wiped out by worsening conditions in another—waste simply has to go somewhere. In 2002, the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation

21

Lifestyle

(CEC), an agency created under the North American Free Trade Agreement, reported in Taking Stock (its sixth annual study on pollution in Canada and the United States) that the total amount of toxic releases and transfers fell by three percent between 1995 and 1999. This slight decline was partially attributable to a 25-percent reduction in air emissions by the manufacturing sector. (It is probably also the result of economic restructuring, including the migration of some polluting industries or activities to developing countries.) However, reduced air pollution was offset by a 25-percent jump in on-site releases to land, a 35-percent surge in off-site releases—mainly to landﬁlls, and a 26-percent rise in the waste dumped into lakes, rivers, and streams. Almost 3.4 million tons of toxic chemical waste were produced in 1999, roughly one million tons of that released on-site into the air. Almost 8 percent of total releases included chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive problems. The following year, Taking Stock reported a continuing improvement overall—the reduction in industrial releases and transfers of chemicals in North America reached ﬁve percent in the six years from 1995 to 2000. However, there was a signiﬁcant increase in toxic discharges among smaller manufacturing ﬁrms. A group of ﬁfteen thousand industrial facilities across North America released and transferred 32 percent more toxic chemicals from 1998 to 2000. These facilities, with chemical releases and transfers up to 110 tons, represent the majority of polluters in Canada and the United States. Victor Shantora, acting executive director for the CEC, noted that “The small ‘p’ polluter might not grab the same headlines as a large power plant or chemical manufacturer, but their effect is being felt throughout the North American environment” (CEC 2003b). In Canada, these small ‘p’ polluters registered a 66-percent increase in chemical releases and transfers. In the United States, the same group recorded an increase of 29 percent. Overall, wealthy industrial countries like the United States and Canada are responsible for more than 90 percent of the 350 million metric tons of hazardous waste produced globally each year. Approximately 65 percent of the world’s economic production, consumption, and pollution is associated with cities in rich countries. The World Resources Institute (WRI) describes the general problem of waste production in consumer economies in a particularly telling report, The Weight of Nations, released in 2000. This report documents the ﬂow of certain materials through ﬁve of the world’s most advanced, efﬁcient, and wealthy industrial economies—Austria, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States—over a twenty-year period up to 1996. The WRI analysis shows that, despite successful waste-reduction measures for some contaminants, signiﬁcant improvements in the efﬁciency of material use and a slight reduction in resource throughput per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), both gross and per capita processed output (solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes) generally increased; the extraction and use of fossil energy resources dominated waste ﬂows in all countries examined; and except in Germany, carbon dioxide emissions rose in both total and per capita terms in all countries studied (the data on Germany were distorted by uniﬁcation and by that nation’s one-time shift from coal to other more efﬁcient hydrocarbon fuels). These results may come as a surprise to those who believe that increased economic efﬁciency and resource productivity (technological efﬁciency),

22

Lifestyle

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combined with the shift to more “knowledge-based” sources of wealth creation, would signiﬁcantly “decouple” the economy from nature. On the contrary, The Weight of Nations concludes unambiguously that the resource savings from efﬁciency gains and economic restructuring have been negated by population growth, growing consumption, and increasing waste output. Moreover, The Weight of Nations shows that despite the growing economic role of high-end services and other knowledge-based activities, modern industrial economies are carbon-based economies driven by fossil fuel; their predominant waste-generating activity is burning material. The WRI study might actually be optimistic because it apparently examined only the energy and materials ﬂows through the domestic economies of the countries studied. One may then ask how the data on resource consumption and waste generation would be affected if the calculations were corrected for trade ﬂows. Does the embodied energy and material content of imported manufactured goods exceed that of exports? If so, the reduction in material consumption suggested by the modest decoupling of GDP growth from domestic energy and material use may be exaggerated.

Comparative Ecological Footprints Ecological footprint analysis (EFA) provides another way to understand the problem of material throughputs in the modern world. The ecological footprint of a speciﬁed population may be deﬁned as the area of productive land and water ecosystems required, on a continuous basis, to produce the resources that the population consumes and to assimilate its wastes, wherever on Earth the relevant land/water is located. Because of trade and natural ﬂows, portions of any modern nation’s eco-footprint are scattered all over the world.

23

Lifestyle

Since eco-footprint estimates are based on the resource use and waste generation associated with ﬁnal consumption by study populations, they provide a way to compare the ecological impacts of differing lifestyles. Recent national eco-footprint estimates underscore the fact that high-income countries—including the most technologically efﬁcient economies examined in the WRI study—are the most material-intensive and polluting economies on Earth on a per capita basis. The bar graph shows the per capita ecological footprints (EFs) of a selection of countries across the income spectrum, from among the richest to the poorest on Earth. To facilitate comparison, the EFs are reported in hectares at world average productivity (data drawn from WWF 2002). Note the enormous disparity between high-income “northern” countries and the poorer developing countries of the south. North Americans and Europeans typically consume ten to twenty or more times as much per capita of various resources as do the impoverished citizens of the poorest countries such as the people of Bangladesh and Sierra Leone; the wealthy therefore impose a correspondingly massive pollution load on the world’s ecosystems. Because of the ﬁnite volume of “ecological space” on Earth, it would not be possible to raise the entire world population to North American or western European material standards on a sustainable basis using prevailing technologies. The total eco-footprints of many densely populated high-income countries are already considerably larger than their domestic territories. Indeed, the world average eco-footprint is about 2.3 ha while there are fewer than 2 ha of productive land and water on Earth. Although the basic economic needs of a billion people have not yet been met, the world population has already overshot global carrying capacity. Humans are living and growing, in part, by depleting the biophysical resource base of the planet. There can be little doubt that political factors help to maintain the disparity between high-income and developing countries. For example, the structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as a condition for development loans force borrowing countries to lower their standards of living and to export more minerals, timber, and food both to pay down their loans and to purchase imports from high-income countries. However, in the increasingly open global marketplace, developing countries must compete with each other and with ﬁrst world subsidies for ﬁrst world markets. This forces down the prices for developing countries’ commodity exports in relation to the prices of the manufactured goods and services they must import. According to economist J.W. Smith, current terms of trade create a relative price difference that is even more effective than colonialism in appropriating the natural resources and in exploiting the cheap labor of less-developed countries. Remarkably, while developed countries claim to be ﬁnancing the developing countries, the poor countries are actually ﬁnancing the rich through low pay for equally productive labor, investment in commodity production for the wealthy world, and other dimensions of unequal trade. Most signiﬁcantly, many observe that the terms of trade and structural adjustments forced on third world countries are quite opposite to the policies under which the wealthy nations developed. This suggests that the power brokers of the developed countries know exactly what they are doing. Critics such as Smith claim that their grand strategy is to impose unequal trades on

24

Lifestyle

the world so as to lay claim to the natural wealth and labor of weaker nations. Intentional or not, the strategy is clearly effective: In the 1960s only $3 ﬂowed north for every dollar ﬂowing south; by the late 1990s the ratio was seven to one. It is worth emphasizing here the extent to which wealthy industrialized countries are dependent on cheap commodities, particularly low-cost fossil fuel, to maintain their consumer economies. This reality is becoming an increasing strain on geopolitical stability. For example, both our highly productive intensive agriculture and almost all forms of transportation are directly or indirectly petroleum based. This dependence has, in turn, led to instances of aggression to control oil-producing countries thus assuring ready access to critical fuel supplies. (To some oil is certainly one of the motivating factors implicated in the 2003 war on Iraq.) It also encourages injustice, violations of human rights, and ecological degradation in order to extract oil as cheaply as possible. A clear example of this is the alleged genocide and ecocide committed by Royal Dutch Shell Oil in Ogoniland, Nigeria, a case that has been widely reported and is on trial in U.S. courts under the Alien Torts Claims Act (ATCA). Although such gross human rights violations are particularly egregious, even normal day-to-day business activities that promote consumerism and the ever-expanding eco-footprints of wealthy consumers can be interpreted as a form of “institutionalized violence” if we continue these practices in full knowledge of the distant social and ecological consequences.

Eco-Apartheid Worldwide, the urban poor tend to live in neglected neighborhoods, enduring pollution, waste dumping, and ill health, but lacking the political inﬂuence to effect improvements. Indeed, since the time of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s, the urban poor, particularly racial and ethnic minorities, have had neither the resources to avoid, nor the power to control, noxious hazards in the workplace or in their homes. These are the people who have borne the greatest ecological costs of two centuries of continuous material growth. Today, the consumer lifestyle of the world’s wealthy elite imposes an unprecedented burden of pollution, ecological disintegrity, and global climate change on the world. The costs of this burden are paid most heavily by the most vulnerable members of the human family: the poor and people of color. Indeed, some see an intensifying pattern of “eco-apartheid” throughout the world. Extreme examples of city-level environmental distress are found both in the industrial cities of the former socialist and communist economies and in middle- and low-income megacities in the developing world. Certainly, the urban environmental hazards causing the most ill health are those found in the impoverished homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces located principally in the poorer countries of the Southern Hemisphere. The problem, however, is hardly conﬁned to second and third world cities. Even in the United States, the geographic distribution of air pollution, contaminated waters and ﬁsh, toxic waste sites, and landﬁlls, correlates strongly with the distribution of both racial minorities and poverty. People have therefore begun to speak passionately of the need to ensure environmental justice

25

Lifestyle

for environmentally beleaguered communities. Some analysts emphasize that the correlation between chronic exposure to ecological hazards and race is much stronger than that between exposure and income poverty. A National Wildlife Federation review of sixty-four studies of environmental inequity found sixty-three cases of disparity by race or income but race proved to be the more important factor. Similarly, the Argonne National Laboratory found that of U.S. population, 33 percent of whites, 50 percent of African-Americans, and 60 percent of Hispanics live in the 136 counties in which two or more air pollutants exceed standards. To make matters worse, the evidence is clear that even in these enlightened modern times, rich neighborhoods are often better served by environmental law and regulatory agencies than are less advantaged ones. It seems that if a community is poor or inhabited largely by racial minorities, it will likely receive less protection than a community that is afﬂuent or white. In his article “Decision Making,” Robert Bullard has argued that: . . . the current environmental protection paradigm has institutionalized unequal enforcement, traded human health for proﬁt, placed the burden of proof on the “victims” rather than on the pollution industry, legitimated human exposure to harmful substances, promoted “risky” technologies such as incinerators, exploited the vulnerability of economically and politically disenfranchised communities, subsidized ecological destruction, created an industry around risk assessment, delayed cleanup actions, and failed to develop pollution prevention as the overarching and dominant strategy. (p. 3) It seems that in the United States economic privilege and power not only insulate the wealthy from the worst effects of ecological degradation, but also confer additional protection under the law.

Personal Responsibility While overconsumption, particularly in northern rich countries, is a major contributor to accelerating human-induced global change, the situation is not totally hopeless. Human beings are consumers by nature—we have to consume to survive—but informed consumers can learn to consume responsibly. What, then, can the individual do to reduce his or her personal “load” on nature? The fact is that making careful consumer choices can greatly reduce the negative impacts of one’s personal lifestyle. For example, the most ecologically harmful consumer activities are associated with fuel-guzzling private automobiles and light trucks, diets rich in industrially produced meat, poultry and other products of intensive agriculture, home heating and cooling (including water heating), modern appliances, home construction and household water/sewage. Personal transportation, food, and household operations alone account for between 59 and 80 percent of total household environmental impact in several categories of pollution and environmental damage (see table). Deciding to take public transportation, walk, or bicycle (generally reducing automobile dependence) in the city, switching to a mostly organic lowmeat diet, living in a modestly scaled house or apartment and ensuring that it is adequately insulated, and using only essential, certiﬁed high-efﬁciency appliances are some of the best ways for residents of high-income countries

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Lifestyle

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS PER HOUSEHOLD

Activity Transportation Food Household operations Subtotal

Climate Change

Air Pollution

Water Pollution

Habitat Alteration

Greenhouse gases 32% 12 35

Common

Toxic

Common

Toxic

28% 17 32

51% 9 20

7% 38 21

80%

77%

80%

67%

23% 22 14

Water use 2% 73 11

Land use 15% 45 4

59%

86%

64%

SOURCE:

Brower, M., and Leon, W. (1999). The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices. New York: Three Rivers Press.

to shrink their personal ecological footprints. Consumers can also demand “fair trade” goods (such as coffee and other third world agricultural commodities) that ensure adequate returns to peasant producers in the developing world. Unfortunately, shifting consumer preferences alone will not create a green and fair economy. For example, the unfettered market is unlikely to provide the ﬁnancial incentives that are needed to stimulate the private sector to take advantage of technologies that already exist and that could be used to increase resource productivity (efﬁciency) and conservation. Citizens everywhere should therefore also support their governments to undertake the ecological tax reforms (e.g., pollution charges and resource depletion taxes) necessary to move their economies into a more efﬁcient conservation mode. No country can go it entirely alone. International cooperation in this endeavor is necessary to create and maintain a level economic playing ﬁeld. There are of course, more radical solutions. Increasing numbers of people are taking an additional step to reduce their load on the earth in the movement toward “voluntary simplicity.” These individuals adopt less hectic and materially simpler lifestyles in an effort both to reduce their ecological footprints and to provide the psychological space needed to enrich their lives spiritually. S E E A L S O Activism; Environmental Justice; Industry; Mass Media; Popular Culture; Poverty. Bibliography Brower, M., and Leon, W. (1999). The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices. New York: Three Rivers Press (for The Union of Concerned Scientists). Bullard, R. (1995). “Decision Making.” Chapter 1 in Faces of Environmental Racism, edited by L. Westra and P. Wenz. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleﬁeld. CEC. (2002 and 2003a). Taking Stock. Montreal: North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation. Colborn, T.; Dumanoski, D.; and Myers, J. P. (1994). Our Stolen Future. New York: Dutton. Goldman, B. (1994). Not Just Prosperity: Achieving Sustainability with Environmental Justice. Washington, D.C.: National Wildlife Federation Corporate Conservation Council. Hardoy, J.; Mitlin, D.; and Satterthwaite, D. (1992). Environmental Problems in Third World Cities. London: Earthscan. Haughton, G. (1999). “Environmental Justice and the Sustainable City.” Chapter 4 in The Earthscan Reader in Sustainable Cities, edited by D. Satterthwaite. London: Earthscan. Lane, Robert. (2000). The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

27

Light Nonaqueous Phase Liquid (LNAPLs)

McGranahan, G.; Songsore, J.; and Kjellén, M. (1999). “Sustainability, Poverty, and Urban Environmental Transitions.” Chapter 6 in The Earthscan Reader in Sustainable Cities, edited by D. Satterthwaite. London: Earthscan. Motavalli, J. (1966). “Enough!” E Magazine 7(2):28–35. Rees, W. E. (1996). “Revisiting Carrying Capacity: Area-Based Indicators of Sustainability.” Population and Environment, 17(3):195–215. Rees, W.E. (2002). “Globalization and Sustainability: Conﬂict or Convergence?” Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, 22(4):249-268. Rees, W.E., and Westra, L. (2003). “When Consumption Does Violence: Can There Be Sustainability and Environmental Justice in a Resource-Limited World?” Chapter 5 in Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World, edited by Julian Agyeman, Robert Bullard and Bob Evans. London: Earthscan and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Robins, N., and Kumar, R. (1999). “Producing, Providing, Trading: Manufacturing Industry and Sustainable Cities.” Environment and Urbanization, 11(2):75-93. Smith, J.W. (2000). Economic Democracy: The Political Struggle of the 21st Century. Armonk: NY: M.E. Sharpe. Wackernagel, M., and Rees, W. E. (1996). Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on Earth. Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers. Wackernagel, M.; Onisto, L.; Bello, P.; Linares, A. C.; Falfán, I. S. L.; Garcia, J. M.; Guerrero, A. I. S.; and Guerrero, M. G. S. (1999). “National Natural Capital Accounting with the Ecological Footprint Concept.” Ecological Economics, 29:375–390. Westra, L. (l998). Living in Integrity. Lanham, MD: Rowman Littleﬁeld. Westra, L. (2000). “Institutionalized Environmental Violence and Human Rights.” Chapter 16 in Ecological Integrity: Integrating Environment, Conservation and Health, edited by D. Pimentel, L. Westra, and R. Noss. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. World Resources Institute. (2000). The Weight of Nations. Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute. World Wide Fund for Nature. (2002). Living Planet Report 2002. Gland, Switzerland: World Wide Fund for Nature (and others). Internet Resource CEC. (2003b). “Latest News.” Montreal: North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation. http://www.cec.org/news/details/index.cfm?varlan=english &ID=2529.

William E. Rees and Laura Westra

Light Nonaqueous Phase Liquid (LNAPLs)

See

Nonaqueous Phase Liquids (NAPLs)

Light Pollution As humankind enters the twenty-ﬁrst century, ours is the ﬁrst generation where the majority of children cannot routinely see the night sky in all its splendor and glory. The problem is caused by light pollution, excess or misdirected artiﬁcial light that alters the natural night sky. In the night sky, light pollution causes an atmospheric phenomenon known as skyglow. You may have seen overhead clouds at night glowing with strange pink or orange colors; this is wasted light reﬂecting off the water particles that form clouds. Even without clouds, light shoots into the sky and reﬂects off of tiny airborne dust and moisture particles. The skyglow phenomenon directly affects the scientiﬁc research of amateur and professional astronomers. It also affects everyone else who simply enjoys a dark night sky abundant with stars overhead. Scientists say that nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population can no longer see the Milky Way.

28

Light Pollution

On Hawaii’s big island, Mauna Kea towers almost fourteen thousand feet above sea level and is home to the greatest collection of large telescopes on the earth. In several communities around the base of the mountain, the types of allowed nighttime lights have been restricted to keep the skies dark at the mountaintop—assuring that this site will remain one of the best in the world for astronomical research. This approach has also been successful in communities such as Tucson, Arizona, whose nearby Kitt Peak National Observatory has been in operation since the late 1960s.

Map of Earth at night, taken from NASA space satellites. Bright areas are those that are more developed. (Data courtesy Marc Imhoff of NASA GSFC and Christopher Elvidge of NOAA NGDC. Image by Craig Mayhew and Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC. Reproduced by permission.)

On a somewhat smaller scale, in Springﬁeld, Vermont, an annual telescope makers convention named Stellafane was threatened in the late 1990s by the lights of a nearby, newly constructed planned prison called Vermont Southern State Correctional Facility. Since 1920 as many as 3,000 telescope makers and stargazers from around the world have converged at this site to scan the dark New England skies with their homemade telescopes. When stargazing was threatened by the corrections facility’s bright lights, telescope makers worked closely with prison ofﬁcials to install appropriate lighting that maintained security, while minimizing its impact on the dark night sky. Unfortunately, when the growth of lighting has gone unchecked, as in parts of California, instruments of great historical value, such as the twohundred-inch Hale Telescope on Mount Palomar, have had their usefulness severely limited. In an effort to assess the magnitude of the light pollution problem, a comprehensive World Atlas of Artiﬁcial Night Sky Brightness was produced in 2001 by researchers at the University of Padua, Italy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Thanks to work like this, light pollution is rapidly gaining recognition as a global economic issue. Although the problem is most pronounced among developed industrialized nations, it is also responsible for squandering the limited resources of poor and developing nations that can least afford the waste. In 1988 a nonproﬁt educational research organization known as the International Dark Sky Association (IDA) was founded to increase awareness of

29

Light Pollution

and offer solutions to the problems associated with light pollution. The IDA currently has almost ten thousand members around the world, and has created the deﬁnitive collection of resources for the study of light pollution and its impact on the planet. Just a glance through the archives of the IDA reveals that light pollution has an impact on everything from humans to moths. For example, in Florida, sea turtle hatchlings become disoriented by inland artiﬁcial lighting that confuses them during their ﬁrst trip to the sea. It appears that artiﬁcial lights can distract the young turtles from needed optical clues (e.g., the sky reﬂecting off the ocean) which would normally lead them to the sea shortly after hatching. In some cases, nesting females also go astray for the same reason. This problem has prompted sixteen counties and forty municipalities in Florida to adopt coastal lighting ordinances. However, even with these ordinances, in 1998 almost 20,000 hatchlings were reported to have become disoriented, and it is suspected that even this number might be underestimated. Another example of light pollution’s impact on wildlife may be found on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Here, young birds called Newell’s Shearwaters become disoriented by artiﬁcial lighting as they try out their wings for the ﬁrst ﬂight from mountainside nests to the ocean. The result is that many of the endangered seabirds die or collapse from exhaustion before making it to sea. In 1998 it was determined that 819 shearwaters had been disoriented by nighttime lighting on Kauai. Fortunately, a volunteer rescue effort saved 89 percent of these exhausted or injured birds. These examples are representative of a much larger global problem that extends well beyond Florida and Hawaii. In 2002 a conference entitled the Ecological Consequences of Artiﬁcial Night Lighting was sponsored by the Urban Wildlands Group and the UCLA Institute of the Environment. Findings from a wide range of research focusing on the effects of light pollution on wildlife demonstrated that nighttime lighting is having a profound (and usually negative) impact on animals in both urban and rural areas. Although there is no question that wild animals are affected by light pollution, there is emerging evidence that humans might share some of the same light-induced (or dark-induced) chemical reactions that affect other animals. A key ﬁnding are the chemical bases for the circadian rhythm that regulates sleep/awake cycles in some insects. If humans share a similar photochemical basis for the sleep/awake cycle, then how does excess nighttime lighting inﬂuence this natural cycle in humans? There are currently more questions than answers regarding the impact of artiﬁcial nighttime lighting on humans, but it now appears possible that nighttime lighting could inﬂuence human lives well beyond the ability to play baseball at night! It is estimated that each year the total value of wasted light in the United States alone is equal to about $1 billion. This is clearly a signiﬁcant waste of resources. When the environmental impact of energy generation is considered, then light pollution is observed to have considerable secondary effects as well. A dramatic illustration of this problem occurs whenever one ﬂies over a metropolitan area at night. While the thousands of tiny lights below might look impressive, all the light visible from an airplane window represents wasted illumination (and energy). Obviously, light pollution is a problem with many negative ramiﬁcations. Fortunately, however, it is also a problem that has many positive solutions. One is to shield nighttime lighting and direct it appropriately so that all the

30

Limits to Growth

light is directed down to the ground where it is needed rather than up into the sky. By doing this, lights with lower wattage can be used and a signiﬁcant amount of energy and money saved. Another solution is to simply reduce the number and brightness of lights. Often it is argued that this will reduce security, but research has shown that if done properly, less light can actually increase visibility (and thus security) by reducing glare and eliminating dark, high-contrast shadows. Finally, replacing inefﬁcient ﬁxtures with modern energy-efﬁcient (and shielded) models, as well as using motion sensors and timers, can all help to save energy and reduce wasted light. These examples illustrate what can be done to reduce light pollution. Lawmakers are beginning to address these issues more and more, as many communities, parks, and even entire countries are enacting lighting controls, ordinances, and regulations. As of 2002 many national parks throughout the United States enforce strict lighting plans to protect wildlife and to ensure that visitors will experience the outdoors and nighttime sky under natural (often only celestial) illumination. The same year the Czech Republic became the latest country to enact a national light-control policy, as Australia previously had. Many towns and cities worldwide have enacted local lighting-control laws to protect the night sky for reasons that include aesthetics, economics, security, and even astronomical research and amateur stargazing. Once light pollution is addressed, it leaves no residual pollutants behind and results in saved energy and better visibility. S E E A L S O Electric Power.

In 2002 the Czech Republic became the first country to enact national light pollution legislation. The Czech law requires the use of fully shielded light fixtures—fixtures that “emit no light above the horizontal direction.” Czech legislation was patterned after the “Lombardy Law,” enacted after some 25,000 citizens of Italy’s Lombardy region signed petitions demanding that action be taken against the glare caused by ineffective outdoor lighting.

Bibliography Mizon, Bob. (2002). Light Pollution–Responses and Remedies. London and New York: Springer-Verlag. Sky and Telescope. September 1998. Internet Resources Cinzano, P., Falchi, F., and Elvidge, C.D. The First World Atlas of the Artiﬁcial Night Sky Brightness. Available from http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0108052. International Dark Sky Association Web site. Available from http://www.darksky.org/ index.html. Urban Wildlands Group Web site. Available from http://www.urbanwildlands.org/ conference.html.

Peter Michaud

Limits to Growth, The The Limits to Growth, written in 1972 by a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), presented the results of a study in which a computer model attempted to predict the fate of society. The model studied the interrelationships between the world’s population, agricultural production, natural resources, industrial production, and pollution. The results of the modeling effort were generally pessimistic, indicating a depletion of natural resources accompanied by a rapid decline in human population. The team argued that technological innovation could not halt the pending collapse. Instead, imposed limits to population growth and limits to investment in industrialization were the only solutions.

computer model a program that simulates a real event or situation

31

Litigation

fatalistic of a person who believes that nothing one does can improve a situation

neo-Malthusians modern adherents to the ideas of Thomas Malthus

The Limits to Growth sold four million copies and brought notoriety to the research team. However, the study was criticized by other scholars and computer modelers who said that fatalistic assumptions had been programmed into the model, thus predetermining the pessimistic outcome. The team leaders stood behind their study, although they admitted a negative, Malthusian view of society’s future. The book’s ﬁndings were rejected by those who believed that technology would solve all problems, but they served to reinforce the views of neo-Malthusians. Its greater contribution was the innovative use of computers to model complex social, economic, and ecological systems for purposes of environmental policy analysis. S E E A L S O Ehrlich, Paul; Malthus, Thomas Robert; Population; Tragedy of the Commons. Bibliography Steingraber, Sandra. (1997). Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer. Boston: Addison-Wesley. Thomas, Janet. (2000). The Battle in Seattle: The Story Behind and Beyond the WTO Demonstrations. Golden, CO: Fulcrum.

Joseph E. de Steiguer

Litigation Litigation, a case, controversy, or lawsuit, is a contest authorized by law, in a court of justice, for the purpose of enforcing a claimed right. Participants (plaintiffs and defendants) in lawsuits are called litigants. Litigation is often highly adversarial and can take a great deal of time, energy, and money, even when the case does not go to court (90 percent of all lawsuits are settled without trial). Many states and governments have enacted, or are considering, reforms directed at avoiding litigation, shortening the time a case takes to go to trial and minimizing the expense traditionally associated with litigation. Among these reforms are requiring that certain types of cases be arbitrated or directed to alternative dispute resolution procedures such as mediation and regulatory negotiation. S E E A L S O Citizen Suits; Consensus Building; Enforcement; Laws and Regulations, International; Laws and Regulations, United States; Mediation; Public Policy Decision Making; Regulatory Negotiation. Internet Resource U.S. Institute for Environmental Conﬂict Resolution Web site. Available from http:// www.ecr.gov.

Susan L. Senecah

London Smog Thomas Robert Malthus. (Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission.)

M

See Smog

Los Angeles Smog

See Smog

Malthus, Thomas Robert ENGLISH CL ASSICAL ECONOMIST AND CLERGYMAN (1766–1834)

Thomas Robert Malthus is best remembered for his 1798 treatise titled An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society.

32

Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act

In that work, he argued that because food production increased arithmetically and human population increased in a more rapid geometric manner, society would ultimately face dire consequences because of decreasing per capita food availability. Because of this thesis, economics has been coined “the dismal science.” Detractors note that it is only a hypothesis and not a proven theory. Furthermore, they argue that human conditions since Malthus have improved in many ways due to technological innovation. The Malthusian hypothesis today remains inﬂuential in environmental thought because of its warning about unrestrained population growth. S E E A L S O Ehrlich, Paul; Limits to Growth; Population; Tragedy of the Commons.

arithmetic increase by addition, e.g.., 2, 4, 6, 8 . . . as opposed to geometric, in which increase is by multiplication, e.g.., 2, 4, 8, 16 . . . geometric by multiplication, e.g.., 2, 4, 8, 16 . . ., as opposed to arithmetic, in which increase is by addition, e.g.., 2, 4, 6, 8 . . . per capita per individual person in the population

Internet Resource The International Society of Malthus Web site, edited by Ronald Bleier. Available from http://www.igc.org/desip/malthus.

Joseph E. de Steiguer

Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act Although ofﬁcially named the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972, this statute is better known by its common name, the Ocean Dumping Act. An amendment known as the “Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988” signiﬁcantly superceded certain aspects of the original act. The Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act arose from international treaty commitments, speciﬁcally negotiations resulting in the London Convention of 1975. Signing states agreed to take measures to prevent marine pollution and particularly to ban the dumping of identiﬁed toxins that could not be rendered harmless by natural processes. The statute’s enactment also addressed the chronic and previously unfettered ocean dumping of municipal garbage, and industrial and commercial wastes, which by the 1970s was devastating marine ecosystems and fouling coastal beaches. The Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act regulates the disposal of any material in the U.S. territorial sea or contiguous zone, regardless of its point of origin; and the marine disposal anywhere of wastes and other material that originated in U.S. territory (expansively deﬁned) or was transported on American vessels or aircraft. Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the designated lead agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has statutory responsibilities, and enforcement often requires the services of the U.S. Coast Guard. Citizen plaintiffs may also sue to enforce the act. Unlike the case with many federal environmental statutes, states enjoy only a limited and generally advisory role. For marine disposals governed by the act, a permit is required. The disposal of high-level radioactive wastes, medical wastes, and radiological, chemical, or biological warfare agents is banned. Permits for various toxins, including mercury, cadmium, and halogens known to be carcinogens, mutagens, or teratogens, generally will be denied, unless present only in trace amounts or compounds known not to bioaccumulate.

teratogen something that causes birth defects, may be radiation, a chemical or a virus

For the most part, the act has been successful within U.S. waters, as evidenced by signiﬁcantly cleaner coastal areas and more robust marine ecosystems since the 1990s. A series of public scares arising from medical wastes that washed up along the eastern seaboard in the late 1980s prompted greater scrutiny of coastal dumping and more exacting tracking mechanisms for the

33

Mass Media

disposal of medical waste. The penalties for ocean dumping of medical wastes are much harsher than those for other violations. S E E A L S O Ocean Dumping; U.S. Coast Guard; Water Pollution: Marine. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. “Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/history.

Kevin Anthony Reilly

Mass Media Before the 1960s, the media reported sporadically on the environment— often then referred to as the ‘ecology’ issue. But Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, which raised deep concerns about the nation’s increasing reliance on synthetic pesticides, sparked the United States’ modern environmental movement and, in turn, increased media scrutiny of its issues. Before Silent Spring, some major pollution events, notably the “killer fog” of Donora, Pennsylvania, and the black afternoon smog of major industrial towns such as Pittsburgh and St. Louis, had largely been the limits of media coverage. “Throughout most of the Sixties, unless a river was on ﬁre or a major city was in the midst of a weeklong smog alert, pollution was commonly accepted by both the press and the general population as a fact of life,” wrote David B. Sachsman in the SEJournal, the quarterly publication of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). “Until the late Sixties, conservationists were thought of as eccentric woodsmen and environmentalists were considered unrealistic prophets of doom,” continued Sachsman, a communications and public affairs professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. With this new environmental interest, pioneers on the environmental beat began to distinguish themselves in the 1960s and 1970s. They included the New York Times’ Gladwin Hill and the Houston Post’s Harold Scarlett. More reporters quickly followed.

“The mission of the Society of Environmental Journalists is to advance public understanding of environmental issues by improving the quality, accuracy, and visibility of environmental reporting.” —http://www.sej.org/

34

“The year 1969 was pivotal for this growing media and public interest in the state of our environment,” Sachsman concluded. That year, the New York Times, soon followed by other major newspapers, created an environment beat. Time and Saturday Review developed regular environment sections, Look devoted an entire issue to the “ecology crisis.” National Geographic offered a nine-thousandword article on humankind’s environmental problems. As the 1970s dawned, Walter Cronkite presented the television feature “Can the World be Saved?” and Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb had also become a best-seller. About this time, television was coming into its own as a powerful new medium. Its coverage lent fuel to the growing environmental movement. Images of oil-soaked birds on the Santa Barbara beach, the result of the Channel-Union Oil spill in 1969; stories on the “death” of Lake Erie; giant ﬁsh kills in the Great Lakes; and the burning Cuyahoga River in Ohio cemented in the nation’s mind that an important new political, business, and social issue had awakened.

Mass Media

In turn, an estimated 20 million Americans gathered on April 22, 1970, for the ﬁrst Earth Day. As a single event related to the environment, it would not be matched for two decades. Such political action quickly prompted federal legislation, including the Clean Air Act in 1970 and the Clean Water Act in 1972. This legislative attention gave legitimacy to the issue, spawning more media coverage. During the mid-1970s, the hot environment story was the threat of chemical pollution from the nation’s industrial plants and the pollution such operations had left behind. The coverage of Love Canal, New York, in the late 1970s and, in 1983, the evacuation of tiny Times Beach, Missouri, put into headlines and daily conversation such insidious chemical names as “dioxin.”

“The enthusiasms of Earth Day 1970 have been institutionalized in legislation, regulation, litigation, political dynamics and new personal values, and woven into the fabric of national life.” —Gladwin Hill, New York Times, December 30, 1979

In 1989, the year of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, television images again riveted the nation, showing oil-drenched birds struggling to survive on pollution-fouled beaches. Global warming, concern over endangered species, and air and water quality combined to increase coverage in all media. That year, 774 minutes of environmental coverage on the three major broadcast networks’ nightly news set a new record, according to the Tyndall Report, an analysis of network news coverage. In 1991, former New York Times environment reporter Phil Shabecoff, founded the nation’s ﬁrst environmental news service, known then as Greenwire. “The environment isn’t a one-shot news story—it’s something that needs to covered in-depth, day after day,” Shabecoff later told the Columbia Journalism Review. During the late 1980s, a group of daily reporters covering environmental issues began the SEJ, an organization formed by journalists to help other journalists do a better job on the difﬁcult environment beat. Among the founders were some of the nation’s distinguished environment reporters, including Jim Detjen of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Rae Tyson of USA Today, Noel Grove of National Geographic, Shabecoff, and Teya Ryan of Turner Broadcasting. Eighteen reporters attended the group’s ﬁrst organizational meeting. “We doubt that we will ever become a slick operation,” Detjen wrote in 1990. Today, the SEJ boasts more than 1,200 members—journalists, academics, and students, an annual budget of nearly $800,000, and a host of programs for journalists and students, including an annual conference, a quarterly journal, and website updated daily with the latest environmental reports. In 1990, the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day marked the single largest global demonstration on the environment, winning coverage from Mt. Everest to Kansas. But a backlash against the issue and those who cover it soon developed. “It is becoming trendy to ask whether environmental laws, not polluters, are the real public enemy,” wrote Kevin Carmody, a founding SEJ board member, in the Columbia Journalism Review in 1995. “In newsrooms throughout the country, the hot story is the ‘high cost of environmental regulation,’ not the people or resources harmed when that regulation fails.” Indeed, journalists caught in the 1990 frenzy to celebrate Earth Day may have forgotten some basic journalistic principles—such as, question everything—opening the door for criticism. John Stossel, an ABC consumer and environment reporter, attracted sixteen million viewers in 1994 with a special report entitled “Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?” The Los Angeles Times

35

Mass Media

devoted seven full pages to a series by media critic David Shaw, called “Living Scared: Why Do the Media Make Life Seem So Risky?” By 1993, minutes on the television networks devoted to environmental coverage had dwindled by 60 percent. Even so, environmental stories would reap ten Pulitzer Prizes in the 1990s, compared to just nine in the three previous decades. When a new Republican president was elected to the White House in 2000—George W. Bush—environment coverage quickly picked up again. From January to May 2001, New York Times reporter Douglas Jehl wrote sixty stories on the environment, many of them displayed on page one. “I didn’t expect this,” Jehl told the Columbia Journalism Review. “No matter how you measure it, in terms of volume of copy or prominence of play, there is a lot of environmental coverage today.” The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times added environment reporters, anticipating major conﬂicts thanks to the new Bush Administration. The Tyndall Report found evening news coverage of the issue back up, to nearly six hundred minutes. “This renewed interest came at a time when the beat was in need of some new twists,” said Bud Ward, then executive director of the Environmental Health Center in Washington, D.C. “There was a feeling on the part of some editors that we’re talking about the same problems as twenty years earlier,” Ward said. “Environmental problems today are more subtle than smog over Pittsburgh.”

PULITZER PRIZES AWARDED FOR ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING • 1967—PUBLIC SERVICE

Milwaukee (WI) Journal: For its successful campaign to stiffen the law against water pollution in Wisconsin, a notable advance in the national effort for the conservation of natural resources. • 1971—PUBLIC SERVICE

Winston-Salem (NC) Journal and Sentinel: For coverage of environmental problems, as exemplified by a successful campaign to block strip mining operation that would have caused irreparable damage to the hill country of northwest North Carolina. • 1979—NATIONAL REPORTING James Risser of the Des Moines (IA) Register: For a series on farming damage to the environment. • 1992—PUBLIC SERVICE

Sacramento (CA) Bee: For “The Sierra in Peril,”

36

reporting by Tom Knudson that examined environmental threats and damage to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. • 1996—PUBLIC SERVICE

News & Observer, Raleigh, NC: For the work of Melanie Sill, Pat Stith and Joby Warrick on the environmental and health risks of wastedisposal systems used in North Carolina’s growing hog industry. • 1996—EDITORIAL WRITING Robert B. Semple, Jr. of the New York Times: For his editorials on environmental issues. • 1998—INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING Gary Cohn and Will Englund of the Baltimore Sun: For their compelling series on the international ship-breaking industry, that revealed the dangers posed to workers and the environment when discarded ships are dismantled.

Mediation

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a war in Iraq, and the nation’s sputtering economy (which might be used to rally support for decreased environmental protections) will present a new challenge to the coverage and interest in environmental issues. The environmental beat also faces an internal pressure. More newsroom staffs are being pared as the economy contracts and media competition increases. But the last forty years have shown that each time interest in the topic wanes, enterprising reporters rekindle it. Their future attention or lack of it may play a pivotal role in how much larger the issue becomes in national politics. “To report news about global warming in 10 inches of copy presents daunting challenges to even the most knowledgeable and skilled environmental reporter and editing team,” Ward wrote in a recent issue of Nieman Reports that explored coverage of environmental issues. Ward continued: “But the ways in which reporters and editors, correspondents and producers confront these challenges—the ones inside and outside the newsroom—will have a large effect in determining how Americans and their government anticipate and respond to continuing environmental pressures.” S E E A L S O Popular Culture. Bibliography Hill, Gladwin. (1973) Madman in a Lifeboat: Issues of the Environmental Crisis. New York: John Day Co. Keating, Michael. (1993). Covering the Environment: A Handbook on Environmental Journalism. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. Shabecoff, Philip. (2000). Earth Rising: American Environmentalism in the 21st Century. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Internet Resource Society of Environmental Journalists Web site. Available from http://www.sej.org.

Michael Mansur

Mediation Mediation is a facilitated negotiation in which a skilled, impartial third party seeks to improve relations between parties to resolve a conﬂict by improving communication, identifying interests, and exploring possibilities for a mutually agreeable resolution. The mediator has no power to impose any solution. Instead, the disputants remain responsible for negotiating a settlement. However, once signed, mediated agreements typically enter the regulatory process to become binding. The mediator’s role is to assist the process in ways acceptable to the parties. Mediation most often is a voluntary process, but in some jurisdictions may be mandated by court order or statute. Many believe that mediation is more cost effective and produces better resolutions than settling a dispute out in court. S E E A L S O Arbitration; Consensus Building; Enforcement; Litigation; Public Policy Decision Making; Regulatory Negotiation. Internet Resource U.S. Institute for Environmental Conﬂict Resolution Web site. Available from http://www.ecr.gov.

Susan L. Senecah

37

Medical Waste

Medical Waste Medical wastes are generated as a result of patient diagnosis and/or treatment or the immunization of human beings or animals. The subset of medical waste that potentially could transmit an infectious disease is termed infectious waste. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the World Health Organization (WHO) concur that the following wastes should be classiﬁed as infectious waste: sharps (needles, scalpels, etc.), laboratory cultures and stocks, blood and blood products, pathological wastes, and wastes generated from patients in isolation because they are known to have an infectious disease. Medical wastes can also include chemicals and other hazardous materials used in patient diagnosis and treatment. In some cases this subset of medical waste is classiﬁed as hazardous waste. Hospitals, clinics, research facilities, diagnostic labs, and other facilities produce medical waste. The bulk of the wastes generated by most health care facilities, however, is municipal solid waste (MSW), or trash. MSW includes large quantities of paper, cardboard and plastics, metals, glass, food waste, and wood. Medical waste, though a smaller portion of the total health care waste stream, is of special concern because of the potential hazards from pathogens that may be present, or from hazardous chemicals.

Risk and Health Care Waste In the late 1980s there were a series of syringe wash ups on beaches along the East Coast of the United States, which were mistakenly attributed to health care facilities. The federal Medical Waste Tracking Act (MWTA) was passed and the EPA attempted to set standards for managing the infectious waste component of medical waste that they renamed regulated medical waste. Few states adopted its stringent guidelines. The MWTA expired in the early 1990s, making each state responsible for establishing its own classiﬁcation and management guidelines for medical waste. There are very few documented cases of disease transmission from contact with medical waste. The notable exception is needle stick, or “sharps” injuries. Paralleling the concern over beach wash ups of medical waste, was a growing awareness of the increase in HIV-AIDS and other cases of infectious diseases being diagnosed and treated in health care settings. This, along with a series of events, led to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which established rules designed to protect health care workers (OSHA blood-borne pathogen standards and universal precautions) by stipulating the need for such personnel to wear protective clothing and equipment, and to take special precautions when handling or disposing of sharps. The interpretation of rules surrounding worker safety regulations led to some confusion over waste classiﬁcation, thus causing a greater amount of wastes to be considered as potentially infectious. (For example, under the OSHA universal precautions guidelines, a worker handling a bandage with a single drop of blood on it should wear gloves, but the waste itself would most likely not be classiﬁed as infectious.) Noting that there are multiple risks inherent in medical waste including toxic chemicals and radioactive materials, the WHO has chosen to use the term health care risk waste instead of medical waste.

38

Medical Waste

Regulation Many regulations govern the labeling, handling, treatment, transport, storage, and disposal of medical waste, including: Department of Transportation (DOT) rules for the packaging and transportation of wastes; OSHA guidelines for worker safety, waste labeling and handling; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which governs the management of hazardous materials and wastes, including hazardous pharmaceutical wastes; Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) radioactive waste management practices, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) regulations for handling and disposing of controlled substances such as narcotics; the Clean Air Act, which regulates emissions from incinerators; the Clean Water Act, which deﬁnes what may be disposed of down the drain; state environmental and health rules that deﬁne certain types of waste and determine the speciﬁcs of waste treatment, as well as requirements for storage, labeling, handling, and segregation. Most other countries have similar multitiered regulatory regimes, such as Australia, where a national standard deﬁnes clinical waste (what is termed medical waste in the United States). However, the particulars of regulation are left to the discretion of individual Australian states.

Three syringes found on a beach in New London, Connecticut. (©Todd Gipstein/ Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Proper Management, Treatment, and Disposal There is general consensus among professional health care organizations, the waste management industry, and regulators that proper management starts with the identiﬁcation of wastes requiring special handling and treatment

39

Medical Waste

MED IC AL W AST E

General Noninfectious Waste Potentially Infectious Waste Hazardous, Chemical, Radioactive Wastes

because of their hazardous nature (biological, chemical, or radioactive). Waste identiﬁcation is necessary for proper segregation, so that only those wastes needing special treatment and handling are treated. Proper management of all waste streams enhances worker safety, protects the environment, and can reduce costs. Wastes that are deemed potentially infectious may be treated prior to disposal by a number of different technologies that either disinfect or sterilize them. These technologies include incineration, steam sterilization, dry heat thermal treatment, chemical disinfection, irradiation, and enzymatic (biological) processes among others. In 2002 there were more than one hundred speciﬁc technologies in use. In order for treatment systems to work properly, distinctive protocols for the classiﬁcation and segregation of wastes must be in place. Most treatment technologies for infectious wastes cannot process chemical or radioactive waste. Misclassiﬁcation and inappropriate treatment of infectious wastes can result in signiﬁcant harm to the environment and human health; for example, residual chemotherapeutic agents are should not be treated in autoclaves, but rather should be set aside and treated by either incineration (hazardous waste incinerators) or chemically neutralized where feasible. The EPA has cited medical waste incinerators as among the top sources of mercury and dioxin pollution. New regulations governing the operation of, and emissions from, medical waste incinerators in the late 1990s have resulted in the closure of most such incinerators in the United States. Other countries such as the Philippines have completely banned incineration because of its adverse environmental impacts. The health care industry is rapidly changing in ways that continue to have signiﬁcant impact on the volume and characteristics of wastes produced. • New (e.g., laproscopic and laser) surgical techniques result in procedures that produce very little blood-contaminated waste. • Advances in cancer treatment have produced many drugs used in chemotherapy that are highly toxic in small quantities, producing more hazardous chemical wastes. • Patient residence time in hospitals has declined. Procedures that previously required an extended stay now commonly occur on an outpatient basis without necessitating an overnight stay.

PHARMACEUTICAL WASTE Pharmaceutical wastes are diverse and in some cases trace amounts can be discarded as medical waste. Certain pharmaceuticals are hazardous wastes when disposed, and some common ones are “acute” hazardous wastes under RCRA regulations (e.g., Epinephrine, Nitroglycerin, Warfarin (>0.3%)).

40

• Home care continues to grow, shifting the location of service delivery. Dialysis, chemotherapy, and hospice care are but a few examples of health care that often take place in a home setting, the result being that many wastes regulated as infectious or hazardous waste in a hospital are being disposed of as ordinary trash at curbside. (Household waste is exempt from many regulations.) • As hospitals close their incinerators, biohazardous and sometimes (inadvertently) hazardous wastes are being hauled signiﬁcant distances to centralized facilities for treatment and disposal. All of these changes represent new challenges in continuing efforts to properly deﬁne, classify, regulate and manage medical wastes. S E E A L S O Dioxin; Endocrine Disruption; Hazardous Waste; Incineration; Infectious Waste; Mercury; Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

Medical Waste

T HE HAZA RDOUS W ASTE STREAM Hazardous Material

Point of Generation

Point of Use and Disposal

Common Disposal

Chemomtherapy and antineoplastic chemicals

Prepared in central clinic or pharmacy

Patient care areas Pharmacy Special clinics

Incineration as RMW Disposal as HW

Formaldehyde

Pathology Autopsy Dialysis Nursing units

Pathology Autopsy Dialysis Nursing units

Diluted and flushed down sanitary sewer

Photographic chemicals

Radiology Satellite clinics offering radiology services

Radiology Clinics offering radiology services

Developer and fixer is often flushed down sanitary sewer X-ray film is disposed of as solid waste

Solvents

Pathology Histology Engineering Laboratories

Pathology Histology Engineering Laboratories

Evaporation Discharged to sanitary sewer

Mercury

Throughout all clinical areas in thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, cantor tubes, etc. Labs

Clinical areas Labs

Broken thermometers are often disposed in sharps containers If no spill kits are available, mercury is often disposed of as RMW or SW Often incinerated

Anesthetic gases

Operating theater

Operating theater

Waste gases are often direct vented by vacuum lines to the outside

Ethylene oxide

Central Sterile Reprocessing Respiratory Therapy

Central Sterile Reprocessing Respiratory Therapy

Vent exhaust gas to the outside

Radio nuclides

Radiation Oncology

Radiation Oncology

Storage in secure area–disposal by national Atomic Energy Commission

Disinfecting cleaning solutions

Hospital-wide environmental services Facilities management Operating theater

Diagnostic areas Operating theater Facilities management

Dilution, disposal in sewer

Maintenance: Waste oil Cleaning solvents Leftover paints Spent florescent lamps Degreasers Paint thinner Gasoline

Maintenance

Maintenance

Solid waste Sewer

Bibliography Bisson, Connie Leach; McRae, Glenn; and Gusky Shaner, Hollie. (1993). An Ounce of Prevention: Waste Reduction Strategies for Health Care Facilities. Chicago: American Hospital Association. Health Care without Harm. (2001). “Non-Incineration Medical Waste Treatment Technologies.” Washington, D.C. McRae, Glenn, and Gusky Shaner, Hollie. (1996). Guidebook for Hospital Waste Reduction Planning and Program Implementation. Chicago: American Hospital Association. Pruss, A.; Giroult, E.; and Rushbrook, P. (1999). Safe Management of Wastes from Health-care Activities. Geneva: World Health Organization. Rutala, William A., and Mayhall, C. Glen. (1992). “Medical Waste: The Society for Hospital Epidemiology of America Position Paper.” Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology 13:38–48.

41

Mercury

Internet Resources Centers for Disease Control Web site. Available from http://www.cdc.org. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov.

Hollie Shaner and Glenn McRae

Mercury Mercury is a metal with chemical similarities to zinc and cadmium. The metal is liquid at room temperature, with a freezing point at –31°C, and it is one of the most volatile metals. It occurs as the element Hg0 and as the mercuric ion Hg++, which has a great afﬁnity for reduced sulfur (sulﬁde, S=). Most mercury ore deposits consist of the very insoluble mineral cinnabar (HgS), with little droplets of elemental Hg. Mercury also occurs as impurities in many other ore minerals, creating mercury contamination when these minerals are mined or processed. Most common rocks have very low Hg contents, about ten to one hundred parts per billion (ppb) Hg . Elemental mercury is barely soluble in pure water, with only twenty-ﬁve ppb Hg dissolving at room temperature, but it is more soluble at higher temperatures. The mercuric ion is very soluble in most ambient waters, but very insoluble in the presence of sulﬁde. Natural enrichments of mercury occur in and around ore deposits and in geothermal hot spring areas and volcanoes. Bacteria in coastal waters convert inorganic Hg ions back into the elemental state, which then evaporate from the water back into the atmosphere. The physical transport of mercury from ore regions and the vapor transport from geothermal areas and the oceans provide the natural background contamination of mercury.

The most common exposure to mercury in the home comes when a mercury thermometer is dropped and broken. Children should be removed from the room immediately. DO NOT VACUUM SPILLED MERCURY. Vacuuming will disperse the mercury into the air; inhaling mercury poses high risk. Mercury naturally beads and if it is on a hard surface, it can be scooped up with index cards or a file folder. Seal in a ziplock bag and call the health department or a hospital to arrange safe disposal. Call the health department if mercury has spilled on a carpet or other fabric.

42

Mercury is a toxic element that damages the human nervous system and brain. Elemental mercury is less dangerous when it is ingested than when it is inhaled. The use of mercury in felt-making led to widespread elemental mercury poisoning of hatmakers (“mad as a hatter”), which was expressed by tremor, loss of hair and teeth, depression, and occasional death. The organic forms of mercury—methylmercury compounds, CH3Hg+ and (CH3)2Hg— are very bioavailable or are easily taken up by living organisms and rapidly enter cells, and are therefore the most hazardous. Minamata disease was an episode of mercury poisoning of a small coastal community in Japan (1954) through the direct industrial release of methylmercury in the bay. Another infamous episode of mercury contamination occurred in Iraq, where people ate wheat that was treated with a mercury-containing fungicide. The continuous ﬂux of mercury from the atmosphere results in the low level of mercury pollution nationwide. A small fraction of the Hg++ from atmospheric deposition is converted by bacteria into the very dangerous methylmercury form. The methylmercury is then taken up by the lowest life forms and makes its way up the food chain and bioaccumulates in the larger ﬁsh. As a result, large predator ﬁsh such as bass, tuna, shark, and swordﬁsh have the highest levels of Hg in the methylmercury form. Most states in the United States have advisories for eating only limited amounts of freshwater ﬁsh. Limiting intake of mercury-contaminated ﬁsh is especially important for pregnant women and young children. The current U.S. legal limit for Hg in ﬁsh for consumption is 1 ppm. Limits for Hg in soils vary from state to state but generally range from 10 to 20 ppm, whereas the Environmental Protection Agency’s limit for drinking water is 2 ppb Hg. The Occupational Safety and

Methane

Health Administration limits for Hg in the air in the workplace (for an eighthour average) are 0.01 mg organic Hg/m3 air. Modern sources of mercury contamination from human activities are subdivided into the following groups: 1. High-temperature combustion processes such as coal-ﬁred power plants, incineration of solid household waste, medical waste, sewage sludge, and ore smelting. 2. Industrial waste efﬂuents, such as from chlor-alkali plants that use liquid mercury as electrodes. 3. Efﬂuents of wastewater treatment plants. 4. Point sources of speciﬁc industries, many of them no longer active today (such as hat making, explosives, mercury lights, herbicides, and plastics). An overview of modern anthropogenic Hg ﬂuxes into the environment shows that more than 80 percent of mercury is injected into the atmosphere through such combustion processes as coal-ﬁred power plants. The combustion releases mercury as elemental vapor into the atmosphere, where it has an average residence time of about one year before it is oxidized to the mercuric form. The oxidized mercury attaches itself to small dust particles and is removed by wet and dry atmospheric deposition. As a result of this massive injection of Hg into the atmosphere—more than 100 tons of Hg per year in the United States in the late 1990s—the contaminant is distributed all over the globe. Even the polar ice caps show evidence of mercury contamination over the last 150 years, from atmospheric dispersal and deposition from anthropogenic sources. There are almost no places on earth that are not contaminated by anthropogenic mercury.

anthropogenic human-made; related to or produced by the influence of humans on nature

Mercury contamination is a matter of ongoing concern, and an extensive study was done for the U.S. Congress to summarize the sources, pathways, and sinks of mercury in the outdoor environment. There are several initiatives to limit the anthropogenic ﬂux of Hg from coal-ﬁred power plants, such as switching to mercury-poor coals and scrubbing the stack gases. Limiting or banning the production of mercury-containing materials, including switches, thermometers, thermostats, and manometers, both in the household as well as in the medical profession, would also reduce the mercury recycled back into the atmosphere from garbage incineration. S E E A L S O Bioaccumulation; Health, Human; Incineration; Ishimure, Michiko; Medical Waste; Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxic Chemicals (PBTs); Superfund. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Mercury Study Report to Congress.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/oar/mercury.html.

Johan C. Varekamp

Methane (CH4 ) Methane is an invisible, odorless, and combustible gas present in trace concentrations in the atmosphere. It is the major component of natural gas, a

43

Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources

H H

C

H

H Methane

Chemical structure of methane (CH4). greenhouse gas a gas, such as carbon dioxide or methane, which contributes to potential climate change anthropogenic human-made; related to or produced by the influence of humans on nature

fossil fuel commonly used for heating and cooking. The molecule consists of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms (CH4), making it the simplest member of a chemical family known as hydrocarbons. Other hydrocarbons include ethane (C2H6), propane (C3H8), and butane (C4H10). As a greenhouse gas, methane ranks second to carbon dioxide. Methane levels, based on ice core samples, have more than doubled since 1750 (from 0.7 to 1.7 parts per million), largely due to human activity. On a moleculefor-molecule basis, methane is twenty-three times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Both gases are targeted for emissions reduction in the Kyoto Protocol. Methane enters the atmosphere from both natural (30 percent) and anthropogenic (70 percent) sources. Methanogens (methane-producing bacteria in swamps and wetlands) are the largest natural source. Anthropogenic sources of methane include leaks during fossil fuel mining, rice agriculture, raising livestock (cattle and sheep), and municipal landﬁlls. Methanogens thrive in the oxygen-free (anaerobic) environment of landﬁlls, releasing the gas in signiﬁcant quantities. The gas is purposefully ignited to prevent explosion or captured for its commercial value as a fuel. Livestock such as sheep, goats, camel, cattle, and buffalo currently account for 15 percent of the annual anthropogenic methane emissions. These grass-eating animals have a unique, four-chambered stomach. In the chamber called the rumen, bacteria break down food and generate methane as a by-product. Better grazing management and dietary supplementation have been identiﬁed as the most effective ways to reduce livestock methane emissions because they improve animal nutrition and reproductive efﬁciency. This general approach has been demonstrated by the U.S. dairy industry over the past several decades as milk production increased and methane emissions decreased. S E E A L S O Fossil Fuels; Global Warming; Greenhouse Gases; Landﬁll; Petroleum. Bibliography DeLong, Eward F. (2000). “Resolving a Methane Mystery.” Nature 407:577–579. Simpson, Sarah. (2000). “Methane Fever.” Scientiﬁc American 282(2):24–27. Turco, Richard P. (1997). Earth under Siege: From Air Pollution to Global Change. New York: Oxford University Press. Internet Resource Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group I. “Atmospheric Chemistry and Greenhouse Gases.” Climate Change 2001: The Scientiﬁc Basis. Available from http://www.ipcc.ch.

Marin Sands Robinson

Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources The Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources (La Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales or SEMARNAT) is the government ofﬁce in Mexico responsible for creating sound national environmental policy, reversing existing damage to the environment, and establishing programs for sustainable development. SEMARNAT oversees the management of natural resources and coordinates development with other agencies. It works to

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restore ecosystems while taking into account the social and economic needs for natural resources. Environmental policy in Mexico began in the 1940s, but was often overshadowed by the push to industrialize the country. Little attention was given to protecting natural resources until the 1980s. At that point, the Mexican government created a series of agencies charged with protecting various natural resources. Finally, in November 2000, SEMARNAT was created to oversee the different agencies addressing environmental issues and establish national environmental policies. In 2002 SEMARNAT and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established a program called Border 2012. It is designed to strengthen the management of the environment and resources along the 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico. The program calls for the open exchange of information relating to natural resource issues and pollution prevention along the border. Border 2012 also involves regional workgroups so that ancillary programs may be tailored to individual needs and problems at a regional and local level. S E E A L S O Environment Canada; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Internet Resources “New U.S.-Mexico Border Environmental Program: Border 2012.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/usmexicoborder. SEMARNAT Web site. Available from http://www.semarnat.gob.mx./web_ingles.

Allan B. Cobb

Mining Modern mining is an industry that involves the exploration for and removal of minerals from the earth, economically and with minimum damage to the environment. Mining is important because minerals are major sources of energy as well as materials such as fertilizers and steel. Mining is necessary for nations to have adequate and dependable supplies of minerals and materials to meet their economic and defense needs at acceptable environmental, energy, and economic costs. Some of the nonfuel minerals mined, such as stone, which is a nonmetallic or industrial mineral, can be used directly from the earth. Metallic minerals, which are also nonfuel minerals, conversely, are usually combined in nature with other materials as ores. These ores must be treated, generally with chemicals or heat to produce the metal of interest. Most bauxite ore, for example, is converted to aluminum oxide, which is used to make aluminum metal via heat and additives. Fuel minerals, such as coal and uranium, must also be processed using chemicals and other treatments to produce the quality of fuel desired. There are signiﬁcant differences in the mining techniques and environmental effects of mining metallic, industrial, and fuel minerals. The discussion here will mostly concentrate on metallic minerals. Mining is a global industry, and not every country has high-grade, large, exceptionally proﬁtable mineral deposits, and the transportation infrastructure to get the mined products to market economically. Some of the factors affecting global mining are environmental regulations, fuel costs, labor costs, access to land believed to contain valuable ore, diminishing ore grades requiring the mining of more

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Aerial view of shoreline, showing a stream polluted with waste water runoff from strip mining flowing into the Ohio River. (© Charles E. Rotkin/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

raw materials to obtain the target mineral, technology, the length of time to obtain a permit to mine, and proximity to markets, among others. The U.S. mining industry is facing increasing challenges to compete with nations that have lower labor costs—for example, less stringent environmental regulations and lower fuel costs.

Mining Life Cycle Minerals are a nonrenewable resource, and because of this, the life of mines is ﬁnite, and mining represents a temporary use of the land. The mining life cycle during this temporary use of the land can be divided into the following stages: exploration, development, extraction and processing, and mine closure. Exploration is the work involved in determining the location, size, shape, position, and value of an ore body using prospecting methods, geologic mapping and ﬁeld investigations, remote sensing (aerial and satellite-borne sensor systems that detect ore-bearing rocks), drilling, and other methods. Building access roads to a drilling site is one example of an exploration activity that can cause environmental damage.

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The development of a mine consists of several principal activities: conducting a feasibility study, including a ﬁnancial analysis to decide whether to abandon or develop the property; designing the mine; acquiring mining rights; ﬁling an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS); and preparing the site for production. Preparation could cause environmental damage by excavation of the deposit to remove overburden (surface material above the ore deposit that is devoid of ore minerals) prior to mining. Extraction is the removal of ore from the ground on a large scale by one or more of three principal methods: surface mining, underground mining, and in situ mining (extraction of ore from a deposit using chemical solutions). After the ore is removed from the ground, it is crushed so that the valuable mineral in the ore can be separated from the waste material and concentrated by ﬂotation (a process that separates ﬁnely ground minerals from one another by causing some to ﬂoat in a froth and others to sink), gravity, magnetism, or other methods, usually at the mine site, to prepare it for further stages of processing. The production of large amounts of waste material (often very acidic) and particulate emission have led to major environmental and health concerns with ore extraction and concentration. Additional processing separates the desired metal from the mineral concentrate. The closure of a mine refers to cessation of mining at that site. It involves completing a reclamation plan and ensures the safety of areas affected by the operation, for instance, by sealing the entrance to an abandoned mine. Planning for closure is often required to be ongoing throughout the life cycle of the mine and not left to be addressed at the end of operations. The Surface Mining and Control Act of 1977 states that reclamation must “restore the land affected to a condition capable of supporting the uses which it was capable of supporting prior to any mining, or higher or better uses.” Abandoned mines can cause a variety of health-related hazards and threats to the environment, such as the accumulation of hazardous and explosive gases when air no longer circulates in deserted mines and the use of these mines for residential or industrial dumping, posing a danger from unsanitary conditions. Many closed or abandoned mines have been identiﬁed by federal and state governments and are being reclaimed by both industry and government.

Environmental Impacts The environmental responsibility of mining operations is protection of the air, land, and water. Mineral resources were developed in the United States for nearly two centuries with few environmental controls. This is largely attributed to the fact that environmental impact was not understood or appreciated as it is today. In addition, the technology available during this period was not always able to prevent or control environmental damage.

Air. All methods of mining affect air quality. Particulate matter is released in surface mining when overburden is stripped from the site and stored or returned to the pit. When the soil is removed, vegetation is also removed, exposing the soil to the weather, causing particulates to become airborne through wind erosion and road trafﬁc. Particulate matter can be composed of such noxious materials as arsenic, cadmium, and lead. In general, particulates affect human health adversely by contributing to illnesses relating to the respiratory tract, such as emphysema, but they also can be ingested or absorbed into the skin.

particulate fine liquid or solid particles such as dust, smoke, mist, fumes, or smog, found in air or emissions; they can also be very small solids suspended in water, gathered together by coagulation and flocculation

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Land. Mining can cause physical disturbances to the landscape, creating eyesores such as waste-rock piles and open pits. Such disturbances may contribute to the decline of wildlife and plant species in an area. In addition, it is possible that many of the premining surface features cannot be replaced after mining ceases. Mine subsidence (ground movements of the earth’s surface due to the collapse of overlying strata into voids created by underground mining) can cause damage to buildings and roads. Between 1980 and 1985, nearly ﬁve hundred subsidence collapse features attributed to abandoned underground metal mines were identiﬁed in the vicinity of Galena, Kansas, where the mining of lead ores took place from 1850 to 1970. The entire area was reclaimed in 1994 and 1995.

tailings residue of raw material or waste separated out during the processing of mineral ores

Water. Water-pollution problems caused by mining include acid mine drainage, metal contamination, and increased sediment levels in streams. Sources can include active or abandoned surface and underground mines, processing plants, waste-disposal areas, haulage roads, or tailings ponds. Sediments, typically from increased soil erosion, cause siltation or the smothering of streambeds. This siltation affects ﬁsheries, swimming, domestic water supply, irrigation, and other uses of streams. Acid mine drainage (AMD) is a potentially severe pollution hazard that can contaminate surrounding soil, groundwater, and surface water. The formation of acid mine drainage is a function of the geology, hydrology, and mining technology employed at a mine site. The primary sources for acid generation are sulﬁde minerals, such as pyrite (iron sulﬁde), which decompose in air and water. Many of these sulﬁde minerals originate from waste rock removed from the mine or from tailings. If water inﬁltrates pyrite-laden rock in the presence of air, it can become acidiﬁed, often at a pH level of two or three. This increased acidity in the water can destroy living organisms, and corrode culverts, piers, boat hulls, pumps, and other metal equipment in contact with the acid waters and render the water unacceptable for drinking or recreational use. A summary chemical reaction that represents the chemistry of pyrite weathering to form AMD is as follows: Pyrite + Oxygen + Water → “Yellowboy” + Sulfuric Acid “Yellowboy” is the name for iron and aluminum compounds that stain streambeds. AMD can enter the environment in a number of ways, such as free-draining piles of waste rock that are exposed to intense rainstorms, transporting large amounts of acid into nearby rivers; groundwaters that enter underground workings which become acidic and exit via surface openings or are pumped to the surface; and acidic tailings containment ponds that may leach into surrounding land.

Major U.S. Mining Laws and Regulations Some major federal laws and regulations affecting the mineral industry include the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), commonly known as Superfund, enacted in 1980. This law requires operations to report releases of hazardous substances to the environment and requires cleanup of sites where hazardous substances are found. The Superfund program was established to locate, investigate, and clean up the worst abandoned hazardous waste sites nationwide and is currently being used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

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to clean up mineral-related contamination at numerous locations. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act, commonly referred to as the Clean Water Act, came into effect in 1977. The act requires mining operations to meet standards for surface water quality and for controlling discharges to surface water. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), enacted in 1976, regulates the generation, storage, and disposal of solid waste and hazardous waste, using a “cradle-to-grave” system, meaning that these wastes are governed from the point of generation to disposal. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), enacted in 1970, requires federal agencies to prepare EIS for major federal actions that may signiﬁcantly affect the environment. These procedures exist to ensure that environmental information is available to public ofﬁcials and citizens before actions are taken. NEPA applies to mining operations requiring federal approval.

Comparison of U.S. and International Mining Laws and Regulations The European Union (EU) has developed a set of environmental directives that have had a signiﬁcant effect on the mining industries of member nations. Each country’s environmental laws derive from these directives. Among the key directives are the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive (similar to the EIS requirements of the United States), the Water Framework Directive (addresses concerns similar to those of the U.S. Clean Water Act), and the Waste Framework, Hazardous Waste, and Landﬁll Directives (all address concerns similar to those of the U.S. RCRA).

Examples of Mining Pollution and Reclamation The Bunker Hill Mine complex is located in northwest Idaho in the Coeur d’Alene River Valley, and has a legacy of nearly a hundred years of miningrelated contamination since 1889. Operations ceased in 1982, and the EPA declared much of the area a Superfund site in 1983. The complex produced lead, zinc, cadmium, silver, and gold, as well as arsenic and other minerals and materials. Much of the mining pollution was caused by the dispersal of mining wastes containing such contaminants as arsenic, cadmium, and lead into the ﬂoodplain of the Coeur d’Alene River, acid mine drainage, and a leaking tailings pond. The metals contaminated soils, surface water, groundwater, and air, leading to health and environmental effects. Lead, in particular, was noted for its health effects on children in the area. EPA reports concerning lead poisoning state that experts believe blood levels as low as 10 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dl) are associated with children’s learning and behavioral problems. High blood lead levels cause devastating health effects, such as seizures, coma, and death. Blood levels of children in areas near the complex ranged from about 35 to 65 µg/dl in the early 1970s to less than 5 percent in 1999, as remediation efforts progressed. EPA reports also state that children are at a greater risk from exposure to lead than adults because, among other reasons, children absorb and retain a larger percentage of ingested lead per unit of body weight than adults, which increases the toxic effects of the lead. Efforts by the federal government, the state of Idaho, and industry to remediate contaminated areas associated with the site are ongoing.

COAL-BED METHANE Methane, a potent greenhouse gas trapped inside coal, can be released into the atmosphere when coal is mined. The 1993 President’s Climate Change Action Plan encouraged the recovery of a possible 100 trillion cubic feet of this coal-bed methane for energy. This would reduce methane and carbon dioxide emissions overall, because burning methane produces less carbon dioxide than burning fossil fuels. Scientists from the United States Geological Survey are studying how to extract coal-bed methane without harming the environment. Current difficulties include how to dispose of the water that permeates coal beds and must be pumped off before methane can be released, and how to prevent methane migration. Methane, possibly from coal-bed methane mining, has been discovered in groundwater in residential neighborhoods.

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There are also many mines with successful reclamation plans. For example, the Ruby Hill Mine, which is an open pit gold mine in Eureka, Nevada, won a state award in 1999 for concurrent reclamation practices, such as using revegetation and employing mitigation measures to offset potential impacts to local wildlife. The mining of asbestos, either as the primary mineral or included as an unwanted material while mining for the “target” mineral, is one of the more controversial issues facing the mining industry in the United States. Asbestos is the name given to a group of six naturally occurring ﬁbrous minerals. Asbestos minerals have long, strong, ﬂexible ﬁbers that can be spun and woven and are heat-resistant. Because of these characteristics, asbestos materials became the most cost effective ones for use in such items as building materials (roof coatings and shingles, ceiling and ﬂoor tiles, paper products, and asbestos cement products) and friction products (automobile clutch, brake, and transmission parts). Unfortunately, it has been found that long-term, high-level exposure to asbestos can cause asbestosis and lung cancer. It was also determined that exposure to asbestos may cause mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer. Workers can be exposed to asbestos during mining, milling, and handling of ores containing asbestos or during the manufacture, installation, repair, and removal of commercial products that contain asbestos. One of the more recent controversies involving asbestos is the exposure of workers and the local residents to asbestos found in vermiculite ore mined in Libby, Montana. The vermiculite ore was shipped nationwide for processing and was used for insulation, as a lightweight aggregate, in potting soils, and for agricultural applications. Mining of the Libby deposit ended around 1991 but elevated levels of asbestos-related disease have been found in the miners, millers, and the local population. Another major area of concern is naturally occurring asbestos found in rock outcrops in parks and residential areas. S E E A L S O Clean Water Act; Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents; Mining Law of 1872; National Environmental Policy Act; Resource Conservation and Recovery Act; Smelting; Superfund. Bibliography Kesler, Stephen E. (1994). Mineral Resources, Economics and the Environment. New York: Macmillan. Marcus, Jerrold J. (1997). Mining Environmental Handbook: Effects of Mining on the Environment and American Environmental Controls on Mining. London: Imperial College Press. Ripley, Earle A.; Redman, Robert E.; and Crowder, Adele A. (1996). Environmental Effects of Mining. Delray Beach, FL: St. Lucie Press. Sengupta, Mritunjoy. (1993). Environmental Impacts of Mining: Monitoring, Restoration, and Control. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Internet Resources Brosius, Liz, and Swain, Robert S. (2001). “Lead and Zinc Mining in Kansas.” Public Information Circular 17, Kansas Geological Survey. Available from http:// www.kgs.ukans.edu. Bureau of Land Management. (2001). “Abandoned Mine Lands Cleanup Program.” Available from http://www.blm.gov/aml. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. (1995).“Report to Congress on Worker’s Home Contamination Study.” NIOSH Report No. 95-123. Available from http://www.cdc.gov/niosh.

Michael J. McKinley

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Mining Law of 1872 The General Mining Law of 1872 was enacted to promote the exploration and development of domestic mineral resources, primarily in the West. The law permits U.S. citizens to freely prospect for hard rock minerals, such as copper and gold, on federal lands not closed to or withdrawn from mining. Once a deposit is discovered, the prospector can stake a claim for ownership of the deposit, develop it, and obtain a patent for the land and mineral rights to the claim. Once the patent has been granted, the claim becomes private property for a small fee to the government. The law, and whether or not it should be reformed, is hotly debated in both the public and private sectors. The lack of environmental controls under the Mining Law is a major issue that has spurred a host of reform proposals. Supporters of the law make the point that existing federal and state antipollution requirements are sufﬁcient without creating new and possibly redundant laws. Also, much of the contention is centered on the patenting and claim system, and whether the government should assess a royalty for the extracted minerals. Because of the absence of royalties, critics view the existing system as a giveaway of federal lands. Proponents of maintaining the existing system argue that an incentive is still necessary for those who take the substantial ﬁnancial risk to develop a mineral deposit, because mining the entire process is lengthy and involves high costs. They cite that to ﬁnd and develop a new mineral deposit in the United States can take from four to eight years. The long duration is primarily owing to the lengthy permitting process that must be completed prior to establishing whether the site can be proﬁtably developed.

deposit concentration of a substance, i.e., mineral ore patent legal document guaranteeing the right to profit from an invention or discovery claim legal statement of intent

royalty money paid by a user to an owner

Law-reform efforts address such issues as the institution of royalty fees, reserving federal land for a speciﬁc use that may preclude mineral development, and forcing public lands miners to bear the entire cost for the cleanup of past practices. S E E A L S O Disasters, Mining; Laws and Regulations, United States; Mining. Internet Resource Humphries, Marc. “Mining on Federal Lands.” Congressional Research Service Issue Brief IB89130. Available from http://www.house.gov/price.

Michael J. McKinley

Mixing Zone A mixing zone is an area of a lake or river where pollutants from a point source discharge are mixed, usually by natural means, with cleaner water. In the mixing zone, the level of toxic pollutants is allowed to be higher than the acceptable concentration for the general water body. The mixing zone is an area where the higher concentration is diluted to legal limits for water quality. Outside the mixing zone, the pollutant levels must meet water quality standards. A typical mixing zone consists of two parts: the zone of initial dilution (ZID), near the outfall, and the chronic mixing zone from the ZID out to where water quality criteria are met. The discharge into the mixing zone may be efﬂuent from water treatment plants, chemicals, or hot water from cooling towers.

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking steps to ban the use of mixing zones for toxic chemicals. The Great Lakes Initiative (2000) also bans the discharge of twenty-two chemicals considered to be bioaccumulative. Bioaccumulative chemicals (BCCs) are those that become more concentrated as they move up through the food chain, for instance, from aquatic insects to ﬁsh to humans. As the release of BCCs into water bodies is phased out, industries will need to treat the discharge at the source. S E E A L S O : Bioaccumulation; Dilution; Point Source; Water Pollution. Bibliography “Identiﬁcation of Approved and Disapproved Elements of the Great Lakes Guidance Submissions From the States of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and Final Rule.” (2000). In Federal Register 65:151. Internet Resource Great Lakes Initiative Fact Sheet. Available from http://www.epa.gov/ost/GLI/mixingzones/ﬁnalfact.html.

Diana Strnisa

Mold Pollution Mold pollution is the growth of molds in a building resulting in damage to or the destruction of the structure itself (or its contents) and adverse health effects on the building’s occupants. It is estimated that about 10 percent of U.S. buildings may suffer from mold pollution. microorganism bacteria, archaea, and many protists; single-celled organisms too small to see with the naked eye ovoid shaped like an oval or egg

substrate surface on which an organism, i.e. mold, grows

sick building syndrome shared health and/or comfort effects apparently related to occupation of a particular building

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Molds, also known as fungi, are microorganisms that generally have threadlike bodies called mycelium and reproduce by producing spores. Spores are generally round or ovoid single cells (but in some cases are multicellular). Spores can be colorless or pigmented and vary in size. While a human hair is approximately one hundred microns in diameter, spore size ranges from one to ﬁve microns. There are about ﬁfty to one hundred different molds typically found growing indoors in water-damaged buildings. Water problems in buildings are generally the result of leaks from roofs or plumbing, condensation, and ﬂooding. When building materials or furnishings such as wood, drywall, ceiling tiles, or carpets become wet, causing molds to grow on them. The types of substrates and the amount of moisture will often determine the kinds of molds that grow. For example, some molds like Stachybotrys require a highly water-saturated substrate. For other molds such as Aspergillus, only small amounts of excess moisture are necessary for growth. Thus, moisture control is key to controlling mold growth and eliminating their effects on the building or its occupants. Mold growth can cause structural integrity problems in buildings constructed of wood. This generally goes under the misnomer of dry rot. The dry rot molds, like Merulis lacrymans, are the natural decomposers of leaves, stems, and trees in nature. If structural wood in buildings becomes wet, these molds may grow. The name dry rot comes from the powdery residue that is left after the wood is destroyed. Wood can be protected by the use of chemicals like creosote or by the use of sealants. Mold pollution in buildings may result in adverse health effects including infections, allergies, and asthma. Bleeding, memory loss, and a condition known as sick building syndrome

Mold Pollution

may also result from mold pollution, but such health effects remain controversial. Epidemiological studies have linked molds to these conditions; however, a direct causal relationship has not been established. When health effects from molds occur, it is generally as a result of inhaling mold spores. For example, aspergillosis is an infection of the lungs caused by some species of Aspergillus, which can result in difﬁculty breathing. If left untreated, it can spread through the bloodstream to other organs, resulting in death. It is probably the most common type of building-acquired infection. Individuals with impaired immune systems are most susceptible to this infection. Mold infections can be acquired in health care facilities (nosocomial infections). Careful attention to removing spores from the air and water may be the best method to protect the public from these kinds of infections. Occasionally, mold infections result from animals and birds inhabiting buildings. For example, bats or pigeons may deposit guano containing such molds as Histoplasma capsulatum and Cryptococcus neoformans. Disturbing this guano without respiratory protection can result in infection. The best defense against this kind of mold pollution is to keep these creatures out of the building.

Black mold at the bottom of a wall in a home on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.) epidemiological epidemiology: study of the incidence and spread of disease in a population

guano solid or semisolid waste from birds and bats, rich in nutrients

In addition to infections, allergic diseases are associated with mold pollution. Asthma is the most common chronic disease of childhood and is the leading causes of school absenteeism, accounting for over ten million missed

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allergen a substance that causes an allergic reaction in individuals sensitive to it

school days per year. For most elementary school children with asthma, allergens are the primary trigger for asthma, and their disease is thought to result from early exposure and sensitization to common allergens in their environment (e.g., dust mites, cockroaches, and molds). To prevent allergic disease, excessive mold growth must be controlled or eliminated. The elimination of molds from structures requires ﬁrst that water problems be corrected. Then, the mold-infested material must be removed using proper protection. In some cases, heavily mold-infested structures have had to be demolished or burned. In order to make the best decision on how to treat a mold-polluted structure, it is important to understand what molds are present and in what amount. A mycologist (scientist who studies molds) can often identify and count mold spores collected from indoor air, dust, or surfaces either by culturing them or by observing them under a microscope. However, these are slow and difﬁcult processes. In order for mycologists to improve their knowledge about molds in the indoor environment, mold DNA (i.e., moldgenomes) are being sequenced. Sequencing of DNA is the process of deciphering the spelling of the DNA alphabet that makes each organism unique. Like the sequencing of the human genome, this knowledge of mold genomes allows molecular biologists to develop easier and faster methods for the detection and quantiﬁcation of molds. This is important because all molds in the indoor environment cannot be eliminated. If molds can be monitored, experts can ﬁnd out when mold concentrations are at dangerous levels. Measures can then be taken to reduce the mold pollution in the environment. S E E A L S O Asthma; Indoor Air Pollution. Bibliography Heid, Christian A.; Stevens, Junko; Livak, Kenneth J.; and Williams, P. Mickey. (1996). “Real Time Quantitative PCR.” Genome Research 6:986–994. Persing, David H.; Smith, Thomas F.; Tenover, Fred C.; and White, Thomas J. (1993). Diagnostic Molecular Microbiology: Principles and Applications. Washington, D.C.: American Society for Microbiology. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2001). Mold Remediation in Schools and Large Buildings. Washington, D.C.: Author. Internet Resources U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Indoor Air Quality Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov/iaq.

Stephen J. Vesper and Richard A. Haugland

Montréal Protocol

protocol in government: agreement establishing rules or code of conduct; science: a series of formal steps for conducting a test

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Following the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in late 1985, various governments recognized the need for stronger measures to reduce the production and consumption of a number of chloroﬂuorocarbons (CFCs). CFCs, which are human-made chemicals widely used in manufacturing, have been found to deplete the ozone layer that shields the surface of Earth from harmful forms of solar radiation. During the mid-1980s negotiations began on the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer—a framework treaty focused on cooperation in research, information exchange, and scientiﬁc assessment of the atmospheric ozone (O3) problem—government representatives discussed drafting a protocol controlling the use of CFCs, human-made

Nader, Ralph

chemicals widely used in manufacturing that deplete the ozone layer. However, no consensus could be reached. The Executive Director of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) established a working group to begin drafting such a protocol. The ﬁnal agreement, which was concluded on September 16, 1987, reﬂects the contentious nature of the negotiations. For example, by Article V, developing countries with low consumption rates (e.g., Brazil, India, and Vietnam) that feared the protocol would hinder their economic development are allowed a ten-year delay in required compliance with targets and timetables for reducing ozone emissions.

compliance in law: meeting the terms of a law or regulation

However, countries have generally been aggressive and effective in implementing the protocol. By the time it came into effect on January 1, 1989, countries were already contemplating the protocol’s modiﬁcation and strengthening. Amendments and adjustments were agreed to in London (1990), Copenhagen (1992), Vienna (1995), Montréal (1997), and Beijing (1999). These modiﬁcations shortened the timetables for phasing out consumption of listed chemicals, added and funded the Montréal Protocol Fund, established the Implementation Committee, developed noncompliance procedures, and expanded the Technology and Economic Assessment Panels. These panels have addressed new issues as they have arisen, such as recycling and international smuggling of CFCs. S E E A L S O CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons); Ozone; Treaties and Conferences. Bibliography Benedick, Richard Elliott. (1998). Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weiss, Edith Brown. (2000). “The Five International Treaties: A Living History.” In Engaging Countries: Strengthening Compliance with International Environmental Accords, edited by Edith Brown Weiss and Harold K. Jacobson. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Internet Resource Ozone Secretariat of the United Nations Environment Programme. “The Montréal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer.” Available from http:// www.unep.ch/ozone.

Michael G. Schechter

Nader, Ralph AMERICAN CONSUMER ADVOCATE AND ENVIRONMENTALIST (1934–)

N

When a young Ralph Nader wrote a book about automobile safety, it made him a household name across America. The experience sparked a lifetime of service to numerous safety, political, and environmental causes. One of the consumer activist’s ﬁrst major accomplishments involved the formation of the Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) in the 1970s. These student-led groups, funded by college activity fees and supported by paid professional staffs, serve as law ofﬁces working in the public’s interest. PIRGs operate today in twenty-four U.S. states, tackling issues such as recycling, pollution, and public health and safety. Nader’s work also played a major role in the creation of the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act, both of

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which continue to save lives. His other early work focused on food safety, nursing homes, and water and air pollution. Arguably, the most effective group that Nader founded is Public Citizen. This organization, with the support of 150,000 members, serves as a lobbying group—working to present ideas and critical information to members of Congress, all in an effort to persuade them to vote in favor of public-interest issues and, many times, against the wishes of major U.S. corporations. Nader also led the ﬁght against nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s. He, Public Citizen, and other groups that he helped form played a major role in stopping the spread of nuclear power.

Ralph Nader. (Alex Wong/Getty Images. Reproduced by permission.)

In 1996 and 2000, Nader ran for president on the Green Party ticket and brought his views on environmental issues and social justice to a larger audience. Nader’s campaign played a role in the close 2000 election as he pushed a progressive agenda and brought plenty of new people—many of them young—into the political process. He continues his work today from an ofﬁce in Washington, D.C. S E E A L S O Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs). Bibliography Graham, Kevin. (2000). Ralph Nader: Battling for Democracy. Denver: Windom Publishing. Internet Resource Essential Information. Available from http://www.essential.org.

Kevin Graham

NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)

ratification formal approval labor market the area or pool of workers from which an employer draws employees

On December 17, 1992, Canada, Mexico, and the United States entered into a historical trade pact called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It aims to increase trade by expanding market access and reducing investment barriers across North American borders. Of the many aspects of the debate in the United States over the ratification of NAFTA, none received as much attention as the potential impact of the agreement on the environment. A number of issues including labor market disruptions fueled intense debate over NAFTA, especially in the United States. But no issue received as much attention as the impact of NAFTA on the environment. Debate focused on (1) possible threats posed to previously signed U.S. domestic environmental laws and international environmental agreements; (2) concern that harmonization of environmental standards would result in acceptance of the least common denominator; and (3) fear that U.S. industries would establish pollution havens in Mexico, where labor is cheaper and enforcement of regulations is weaker than in the United States. In order to allay such concerns, several provisions were added to the NAFTA text. For example, the preamble commits governments to undertake increased trade in “a manner consistent with environmental protection and conservation,” and the agreement’s dispute-settlement provisions can place the burden on the country challenging an environmental regulation. In addition, prior to NAFTA entering into force on January 1, 1994, the

56

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)

participating governments agreed to the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), which obliges each country to “ensure that its laws and regulations provide for high levels of environmental protection and to strive to continue to improve those laws and regulations.” It also ensures access by private persons to fair and equitable administrative and judicial proceedings on matters pertaining to the environment. The NAAEC established the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), which has three institutional components: a Council, a Secretariat, and a Joint Public Advisory Committee. The Council, assisted by the Secretariat, is charged with monitoring NAFTA’s environmental impacts. When they uncover adverse environmental impacts, they publicize them in various ways, including posting notices on their web site. The aim of the council is that, by means of this public shaming, countries will take action to remedy these situations. S E E A L S O Economics; Laws and Regulations, International; Treaties and Conferences. Bibliography Audley, John N. (1997). Green Politics and Global Trade: NAFTA and the Future of Environmental Politics. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Magraw, Daniel. (1995). NAFTA and the Environment: Substance and Process. Washington, D.C.: American Bar Association. Internet Resource NAFTA Secretariat Web site. Available from http//:www.nafta-sec-alena.org.

Michael G. Schechter

NAPLs

See Nonaqueous Phase Liquids

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) When signed into law in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was a visionary and wide-reaching statute that required U.S. agencies to fully identify, analyze, and weigh the environmental impacts of their decisions. Insofar as most modern land-use planning requires agency approvals, and industrial and commercial activity that results in pollution typically requires agency-issued permits, the NEPA-mandated environmental review process has dramatically affected modern lifestyles, the American economy and, obviously, the environment. NEPA is essentially procedural, in that it simply requires agencies to proceed through certain steps of environmental review. It does not create substantive legal rights. Although NEPA is a federal statute, many states and even municipalities have enacted their own environmental review statutes. While statutes may differ from state to state (New York’s, for instance, provides for substantive obligations and enforcement mechanisms), they incorporate many of NEPA’s basic elements. NEPA, in fact, is the model for numerous similar laws in other countries. The core of NEPA is the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), a document that has signiﬁcantly affected modern American business, and even political, practices. NEPA requires that an EIS be prepared and disseminated before any “major federal action signiﬁcantly affecting the quality of the human environment” may proceed. “Major federal actions” often include the granting of a permit.

57

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

mitigation measures taken to reduce adverse impacts

Mitigation measures, if feasible, are also identiﬁed, although NEPA does not mandate that any particular form of mitigation be employed. This information is intended not only to aid the agency in its decision making, but also to put the public on notice as to the environmental consequences of various potential government responses. NEPA has been dramatically effective as an informational device, especially to the extent that the public is included in the process and thereby given the tools necessary to shape political action. However, NEPA has been criticized in many quarters because it lacks signiﬁcant enforcement capability. Nevertheless, the information-driven process it generates has proven to be an indispensable resource for not only the public, but also agencies presented with proposals that invariably have social, economic, and also environmental importance. S E E A L S O Activism; Citizen Suits; Environmental Impact Statement; Environmental Movement; Public Participation; Laws and Regulations, United States. Bibliography Weinberg, Philip, and Reilly, Kevin A. (1998). Understanding Environmental Law. New York: Matthew Bender & Co. Internet Resource “Recent NEPA Cases.” Available from http://www.naep.org/NEPAWG.

Kevin Anthony Reilly

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Established in 1970 under the Department of Commerce, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) guides the United States’ use and protection of its air and water resources. With respect to air resources, the agency conducts research and gathers data about the earth’s air, and engages in subsequent technical analyses. Speciﬁc agency concerns are air pollution, acid rain, and global warming, all greatly inﬂuenced by human activity. With respect to water resources, the agency conducts research and gathers data about marine environments, and provides technical analyses of the human activities affecting such environments. Speciﬁc agency concerns are ocean dredging and dumping, which can have an adverse effect on marine environments. For both air and water issues, the agency has adopted policies to address the adverse effects of human activities and provide recommendations to limit or eliminate them. For example, the agency’s policy of requiring trawl ﬁshermen to use turtle excluder devices has served to protect sea turtles. Aside from its policy initiatives, the agency enforces a number of laws and treaties (e.g., Coastal Zone Management Act, Endangered Species Act, Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and Ocean Dumping Act), all of which promote the environmental protection of both the atmosphere and the earth’s marine environments. S E E A L S O Acid Rain; Air Pollution; Global Warming; Ocean Dumping; Water Pollution.

58

National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES)

Bibliography Natural Research Council, Committee on Global Change Research. (1999). Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Internet Resource National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Website. Available from http: www.noaa.gov/ﬁsheries.html.

Robert F. Gruenig

National Park Service Established in 1916 under the National Park Service Organic Act, the National Park Service (NPS) manages over 83.6 millions acres of federal parks, including battleﬁelds, cemeteries, historical sites, lakeshores, memorials, monuments, parkways, preserves, recreation areas, rivers, seashores, and trails. The NPS is supervised by both a director and the assistant secretary for ﬁsh and wildlife and parks, and serves as a Department of the Interior bureau funded by Congress. As its primary mission, the NPS is charged with the preservation of park lands for the enjoyment and education of current and future generations, incorporating measures such as pollution control to foster this preservation. The NPS advances its mission by serving as an environmental advocate of park lands, funding state and local governmental bodies in their efforts to develop park areas, and sponsoring educational activities to increase public awareness about parks. In addition, the NPS works in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce laws (e.g., Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and Wilderness Act) intended to protect and preserve park lands. Comparable agencies in Argentina, Australia, and Germany have adopted some of the same strategies as the NPS. S E E A L S O Environmental Protection Agency. Bibliography Freemuth, John C. (1991). Islands under Siege: National Parks and the Politics of External Threats. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Internet Resource National Park Service Web site. Available from http://www.nps.gov.

Robert F. Gruenig

National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Under the Clean Water Act, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) helps control the discharge of pollutants into water bodies by regulating point sources. By deﬁnition, point sources are discrete conveyances such as man-made ditches, tunnels, channels, or pipes that directly discharge into surface waters. By regulating these forms of discharge, the NPDES hopes to protect the public health and assure the treatment of wastewater.

59

National Toxics Campaign

The main pollutants regulated by the NPDES include conventional pollutants (sanitary wastewater, which consists of domestic wastewater—what people ﬂush down their kitchen sink, for example) and wastewater from commercial and industrial facilities, fecal coliform, oil and grease, toxic pollutants (organic and metals), and nonconventional pollutants (such as nitrogen and phosphorous). Industrial, municipal, or agricultural facilities discharging directly into surface water require NPDES permits. A household connected to a municipal or septic sewer system does not. NPDES permits can be obtained at a state environmental protection ofﬁce, or at an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regional ofﬁce (in states without EPA approval to issue permits). The permits limit what can be discharged into the environment and provide established monitoring and reporting requirements. The EPA monitors NPDES compliance with onsite inspections and data review. Failure to comply with a permit’s provisions can result in civil and criminal action against the violator. By maintaining vigilant control of pollutants discharged into surface water, the NPDES helps to prevent harmful contamination of the public’s water supply. S E E A L S O Clean Water Act; Point Source; Wastewater Treatment. Internet Resources Environmental Health & Safety Online. “NPDE—National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System.” Available from http://www.ehso.com/npdes.htm. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES).” Available from http://www.cfpub.gov/npdes.

Lee Ann Paradise

National Toxics Campaign The National Toxics Campaign (NTC) was once a leading environmental organization, dedicated to helping local communities seek environmental justice. From its inception in the 1980s until it ended in 1993, this grassroots organization helped many citizen groups develop strategies to hold industry and government accountable for damages to human health and the environment. The NTC’s basic philosophy was that people have the right to a clean and healthy environment regardless of their race or economic standing. Unlike many of the larger environmental organizations that worked on national legislation and international issues, the NTC focused its efforts on empowering local groups and organizations to work together to solve local problems. The NTC succeeded in encouraging leaders of different ethnic groups to organize their own campaigns against polluters that affected residential areas. The NTC’s leaders worked with many not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) groups—groups of citizens trying to keep toxic-waste dumps out of residential areas. In the beginning, the NTC’s founder, John O’Connor, concentrated on local battles against chemical dumps and incinerators. Soon the organization started the only toxics analysis lab in the country that was run by the

60

Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA)

grassroots movement. As the organization grew, members were able to address more and more toxic-waste problems. During its lifetime, the NTC was responsible for helping citizen groups bring many polluters to court and for strengthening environmental protection legislation. The NTC was instrumental in the expansion and reauthorization of the Superfund and in the passage of right-to-know legislation the Toxics Release Inventory, which required a limited set of industries to report a release of a limited set of chemicals. The organization played a central role in bringing environmental violations by U.S. military facilities to the attention of the public. Equally important, the NTC developed a network of leaders (including a signiﬁcant number of organizations of people of color) to develop strategies for environmental justice. Many people were surprised when the National Toxics Campaign ended in 1993. However, there are several other national organization that have been able to carry on similar grassroots campaigns. Groups such as the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (formerly called the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste), Highlander Center’s STP Schools, Greenpeace, and People Against a Chemically Contaminated Environment (PACCE) support grassroots campaigns against toxic-chemical dumping. S E E A L S O Activism; Citizen Involvement; Citizen Science; Ethics; Gibbs, Lois; Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs); Public Participation. Bibliography Cohen, Gary, and O’Connor, John, eds. (1990). Fighting Toxins: A Manual for Protecting Your Family, Community and Workplace. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Corliss Karasov

Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) Natural Resource Damage Assessment is the legal and technical process to pursue restoration for damages to natural resources caused by discharges of oil and releases of hazardous materials into the environment. Federal and state agencies, and Native American tribal governments are designated as NRDA trustees. They act on behalf of the public to restore injured natural resources under a number of laws such as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA), and Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA). Typically, monetary damages are assessed against the polluter. Damages are compensatory, not punitive, and must be used for ecological restoration. The NRDA process is overseen by the Department of the Interior. S E E A L S O Arbitration; Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA); Consensus Process; Enforcement; Litigation; Mediation. Internet Resource U.S. Department of Interior. “Training Module for NRDA.” Available from http://www.doi.gov/oepc.

Susan L. Senecah

61

Nelson, Gaylord

Nelson, Gaylord U.S. SENATOR (D-WISCONSIN) AND FOUNDER OF EARTH DAY (1916–)

One of the ﬁrst and most effective environmentalists elected to the U.S. Senate, Gaylord Nelson is considered the father of Earth Day and sponsored many of the important environmental laws passed by Congress in the 1960s and 1970s. conservation easement legal agreement restricting a landowner’s development rights to preserve long-term conservation and environmental values

teach-in educational forum springing from a protest movement (derived from sit-in protests)

As governor of Wisconsin (1958 to 1962), he convinced the legislature to purchase conservation easements on private property of high natural and scenic value. Nelson brought his environmental concerns to Washington when he was elected Wisconsin’s Democratic U.S. Senator in 1962. He organized a nationwide conservation tour for President Kennedy in 1963 and, in 1965, introduced the ﬁrst legislation to ban DDT, a chemical used to kill insects that proved harmful to many other species. In 1969, inspired by the effective student anti-Vietnam War teach-ins, Nelson hired Harvard law student Denis Hayes to organize a series of environmental teach-ins on college campuses nationwide. These teach-ins helped inspire a growing awareness of pollution and environmental degradation. This awareness eventually led an estimated twenty million Americans to participate in thousands of events organized across the United States to mark the ﬁrst Earth Day on April 22, 1970. The mobilized public awareness of environmental problems resulting from Earth Day gave Nelson and other environmentalist members of Congress the support they needed to pass the many environmental acts of the 1970s. Nelson is best known for his work on the Environmental Protection Act (1969), the Clean Air Act (1970), the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974), and the Clean Water Act (1977). Nelson received two awards from the United Nations: the Environmental Leadership Award in 1982 and the Only One Earth Award in 1992. In 1995, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. S E E A L S O Activism; Earth Day; Hayes, Denis; Laws and Regulations; United States; Politics. Bibliography Mowrey, Mark, and Redmond, Tim. (1993). Not in Our Backyard: The People and Events that Shaped America’s Modern Environmental Movement. New York: Morrow. Internet Resource Earth Day Network. Available from http://www.earthday.net.

Anne Becher and Joseph Richey

NEPA

See National Environmental Policy Act

New Left In the 1930s and through the 1950s, a political movement known later as the “Old Left” emerged in American politics. A liberal group of predominantly northern intellectuals, the Old Left shared a fascination with labor problems and frequently maintained an interest in communism as a solution to

62

Nitrogen Oxides

America’s economic troubles. The New Left, the successor to the Old Left, emerged in the 1960s and was heavily inﬂuenced by the early accomplishments of the civil rights movement. The New Left included many different groups, and was often dominated by middle-class college students disillusioned with life in America. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) emerged as the best known of these groups, and pressed for a more democratic government, nuclear arms reduction, an end to the war in Vietnam, and better living conditions for the urban poor. The New Left, in its widespread critique of American society, also included environmental and pollution reform in its agenda. Many New Left activists focused on the dangers of increased industrial production and increased consumption, leading to waste and pollution. One inﬂuence of the New Left was the development of the ﬁrst Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Earth Day was originally planned by New Left activists as a teach-in and sitin at university campuses, similar to earlier civil rights and antiwar activities to protest environmental degradation. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson developed and changed the idea for the event, hoping to organize a peaceful mass demonstration without the negative lawless image that public protest had acquired over the course of the turbulent 1960s. Approximately ten million people across the country participated in the original Earth Day, with even local and national polluters professing their support. Overall, though, the concept of Earth Day initiated by the New Left as a protest to industrial production bore little resemblance to the actual event, which was supported by the very polluters the New Left stood against. New Left protest inﬂuenced the overall awareness of environmental issues, and helped lead to legislation, including the Clean Air Act in 1970. By the early 1970s, however, the New Left counterculture had become increasingly interested in the use of violence and associated with drug use and “free sex.” This use of violence appeared in a small group of New Lefters called the Weathermen, or the Weather Underground, who advocated armed revolution against “American Imperialism,” usually in the form of random bomb explosions. Other acts of New Left violence included the “liberation” of areas for public park space.

counterculture a culture with social ideas that stand in opposition to the mainstream culture

By the late 1970s, New Right conservatism had catapulted Ronald Reagan to the presidency, and before long a powerful backlash against many of the accomplishments of the New Left, the civil rights movement, and the 1960s in general took hold throughout the United States. S E E A L S O Activism; Earth Day; Environmental Movement; Politics; Public Participation; Public Policy Decision Making. Bibliography Gottlieb, Robert. (1993). Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. O’Neill, William L. (2001). The New Left: A History. The American History Series. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson.

Elizabeth D. Blum

NGOs

See Nongovernmental Organizations

Nitrogen Oxides

See NOx

63

NOx (Nitrogen Oxides)

NOx (Nitrogen Oxides)

nitrification the process whereby ammonia, typically in wastewater, is oxidized to nitrite and then to nitrate by bacterial or chemical reactions denitrification the biological reduction of nitrate or nitrite to nitrogen gas, typically by bacteria in soil

stratosphere the portion of the atmosphere ten to twentyfive miles above the earth’s surface

NOx is a common term for the more reactive nitrogen oxides and includes nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), but excludes, for example, nitrous oxide (N2O). NO2 is a reddish brown, highly reactive gas that is formed in the air by the oxidation of NO. Anthropogenic emissions from the high-temperature combustion of coal, oil, gas, and gasoline can oxidize atmospheric nitrogen (N2) to yield the majority of NO found in the environment. Natural sources of NO2 are soil microbial processes. In the soil the nitrification and denitrification processes pass through compounds that can break down and release NO and N2O into the atmosphere. This is a natural process that is enhanced when nitrogen fertilizers are used to improve crop yields. Short-term exposure to NO2 at concentrations found in the United States can increase respiratory illness in children. There is evidence that long-term exposure to NO2 may lead to increased susceptibility to respiratory infection. The least reactive nitrogen oxide is N2O, but it can affect both the ozone layer and global warming. Once in the atmosphere, it slowly diffuses into the stratosphere where it is destroyed by the shorter-wavelength UV radiation. The NO produced by this photodissociation is critical in establishing the amount of ozone in the stratosphere, so any increase in N2O would decrease the ozone layer. The lifetime of N2O is more than sixty years. Because it can absorb infrared radiation, the excess production of N2O can contribute to global warming. NO and NO2 react with sunlight and unburned gasoline in a matter of hours to days to produce ozone that is critical in the development of photochemical smog. Atmospheric NOx also reacts to produce nitric acid. While it is stable in dry air, nitric acid is very soluble and, along with sulphuric acid, signiﬁcantly contributes to acid rain. Because acid rain and smog involve the reactions of NOx, restrictions on their emissions are a common approach to air quality management even though only NO2 is classed as a criteria pollutant. In most countries, smog control focuses on reducing ozone concentrations to the air-quality standard by controlling emissions of the precursors, including NOx. In the United States the national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for NO2 is 0.053 parts per million (ppm), and from 1988 to 1997, the average NO2 concentration dropped 14 percent to 0.018 ppm. Each state prepares a state implementation plan (SIP) that describes how it will reduce pollutant levels, and presents that plan to the EPA for approval. The EPA, in turn, then supports state plans. The NOx SIP rule of 1998 is aimed at reducing summertime NOx emissions in order to cut down on the transport of ozone from power plants in the Midwest to eastern states. Other countries use similar approaches but rely on government and public pressure rather than statutory requirements to meet standards. S E E A L S O Acid Rain; Coal; Electric Power; Global Warming; Ozone; Petroleum; Smog; Vehicular Pollution. Bibliography Brimblecombe, Peter. (1996). Air Composition and Chemistry, 2nd edition. New York: Cambridge University Press. Finlayson-Pitts, Barbara J., and Pitts, James N. (2000). Chemistry of the Upper and Lower Atmosphere. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

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Noise Control Act of 1972

Graedel, Thomas E., and Crutzen, Paul J. (1995). Atmosphere Climate and Change. New York: Scientiﬁc American Library (distributed by W.H. Freeman). Turco, Richard. (1997). Earth under Siege. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Donald R. Hastie

NOAA

See National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Noise Control Act of 1972 In passing the Noise Control Act (NCA) of 1972, Congress hoped to “promote an environment for all Americans free from noise that jeopardizes health or welfare.” The Ofﬁce of Noise Abatement and Control (ONAC) of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was charged with overseeing noiseabatement activities and coordinating its programs with those of other federal agencies that play an important role in noise control. The Noise Control Act was amended by the Quiet Communities Act of 1978 to promote the development of effective state and local noise control programs, to provide funds for noise research, and to produce and disseminate educational materials to the public on the harmful effects of noise and ways to effectively control it. Throughout the 1970s ONAC issued reports identifying the products that are major sources of noise pollution and providing information on ways to control the noise they generate, for example, the regulation of noise emissions from aircraft. EPA publications included a public education and information manual for noise for schools and pamphlets on sound, sound measurement, and noise as a health problem. The EPA assisted communities in noise surveying, in designing local noise ordinances, and in the training of noise enforcement ofﬁcers. Faced with strong industry opposition, ONAC lost its funding in 1981 and the EPA’s programs to control noise were halted. The Noise Control Act has never been rescinded, but it has also yet to be refunded. As of 2002, agencies such as the Department of Transportation, Department of Labor, and Federal Railroad Administration have developed their own noise control programs, with each agency setting its own criteria. In addition, states and cities have enacted noise ordinances, with some localities limiting noise more effectively than others. Across the United States, antinoise groups are pressing local authorities to curb noise intrusions that have grown considerably over the past twenty years and are urging legislators to refund ONAC. Comprehensive federal oversight is needed to address transportation and product noises. With Europe and Japan working toward implementing modern noise-control policies (such as noise labeling of products), American manufacturers may ﬁnd it difﬁcult to meet foreign noise-emission standards. The European Noise Directive requires member nations to assess environmental noise exposure levels for their populations and to develop action plans to limit noise. S E E A L S O Laws and Regulations, United States; Noise Pollution. Bibliography Bronzaft, Arline L. (1998). “A Voice to End the Government’s Silence on Noise.” Hearing Rehabilitation Quarterly 23, no. 1:6–12, 29. Dallas, J.E. (1998). “The Quiet Communities Act of 1997: More than Meets the Ear.” Hearing Rehabilitation Quarterly:16–22.

65

Noise Pollution

Shapiro, Sidney A. (1991). The Dormant Noise Control Act and Options to Abate Noise Pollution. Washington, D.C.: Report for the Administrative Conference of the United States. Internet Resource Noise Pollution Clearinghouse. Available from http://www.nonoise.org.

Arline L. Bronzaft

Noise Pollution

ambient surrounding or unconfined; air: usually but not always referring to outdoor air

Noise pollution is the intrusion of unwanted, uncontrollable, and unpredictable sounds, not necessarily loud, into the lives of individuals of reasonable sensitivities. Using the “reasonable person” standard removes the notion that the judgment of sounds as unwanted is subjective. Unwanted sounds or noises can be traced back to Old Testament stories of very loud music and barking dogs as well as to ancient Rome where city residents complained about noisy delivery wagons on their cobblestone streets. The Industrial Revolution, the growth of cities, and the demand for transportation made the world even noisier. With the modern world so dependent on and enchanted with noise-producing and noise-related technology—automobiles, aircraft, helicopters, motorcycles, snowmobiles, jet skis, leaf blowers, ampliﬁed music, bass-driven car stereo systems—the ambient noise level is rapidly accelerating. This growth in noise has led to research examining the impact of noise on the lives and activities of reasonable people. The result has been a body of evidence that strongly suggests noise is hazardous to good mental and physical health. To understand noise, one must know something about sound and how loudness is measured. Sound that travels through the air in waves has two major properties: the frequency or speed at which the waves vibrate and the intensity of each vibration. It is the intensity, or how many molecules are packed together with each vibration, that for the most part produces the sense of loudness, although frequency also contributes to the determination of loudness, with higher-pitched sounds sounding louder. Loudness is measured by a decibel scale (expressed as dB), but to reﬂect human hearing more accurately a modiﬁed version of this scale, known as the A scale, has been developed. On the A scale, loudness is measured in dBAs. The scale increases logarithmically so that an increase of 10 dB indicates a doubling of loudness, and an increase of 20 dB represents a sound that is four times louder. Whispers measure 20 dBA, normal conversation 50 to 60 dBA, shouting 85 dBA, and loud music over 120 dBA. Continuous exposure to sounds over 85 dBA may cause permanent hearing loss. Exposure to very loud sounds that are enjoyable, and not technically noise to the listener, can lead to hearing impairment. Because many people, especially young children and teenagers, are not aware of the dangers of very loud sounds to their hearing, they should be warned that playing computer games with loud audio attachments, setting headsets at consistently high volume, or regularly playing ball in a loud gymnasium may affect their hearing over time. A survey of hearing threshold shifts among youngsters between the ages of six and nineteen found that one out of eight of them suffered a noise-related hearing problem. Children attending loud movies and sporting events, or visiting video arcades may be unwittingly exposing themselves to

66

Noise Pollution

8

7

6

Hours

5

Safe Sound Level 4

90 92 95 97 100 102 105 110 115

3

2

dBA dBA dBA dBA dBA dBA dBA dBA dBA

Times Allowed per Day 8 6 4 3 2 1½ 1 ½ ¼

hours hours hours hours hours hours hour hour hour

1

0 90

92

95

97 100 102 105 110 115 dBA

dangerously loud sounds. Teenagers are especially vulnerable as they are more likely to equip their cars with high-powered “boom boxes,” attend loud dance clubs, and work in noisy fast-food restaurants. Sounds need not be very loud to be deemed intrusive—for example, the drip of a faucet, an overhead jet, or a neighbor’s stereo late at night. Noises are especially bothersome at night when one is trying to sleep, and a good night’s sleep is vital to good health. Exposure to bothersome noises over time can be stressful, resulting in adverse health effects, such as hypertension. Although more research is needed to solidify a noise and health link, there is agreement that noise lessens the quality of life. Noises can be especially harmful to children. Scientiﬁc research indicates that noisy homes slow down cognitive and language development in young children. In addition, children living and attending schools near noisy highways, railroads, and airports have lower reading scores, and some children living or attending a school near a major airport have experienced elevated blood pressure. In 1972 the U.S. government passed legislation recognizing the growing danger of noise pollution. It empowered the Ofﬁce of Noise Abatement and Control (ONAC) within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to curtail noise levels, but by 1982, during the Reagan administration, the ofﬁce lost most of its funding. States and cities were no longer supported in their efforts to abate noise, and ONAC no longer published materials educating people on the dangers of noise. Recently, the federal government has passed legislation to lessen noise in national parks, for example, banning snowmobiles, but states and cities are on their own in controlling noise, with some cities more

67

Noise Pollution

Rocket launch

200 190 180 170

150

Over 85 dBA, over time, can cause permanent damage

80

60 50

30 20 10 0

Whisper at 5 feet

40

Average conversations

70

Disco

Factory machinery

90

Blender

100

Alarm clock, Heavy traffic, Noisy restaurant

dBA

110

Power drill

120

Rock concert, NYC subway

130

Symphony orchestra percussion

140

Jet takeoff

160

successful than others. Trafﬁc noise, especially aircraft noise, is the major source of annoyance calling for better federal regulation within the United States. In contrast, the European Union is ﬁnalizing a noise directive that will require member states to produce noise maps and develop action plans to reduce noise levels. Noise from snowmobiles, jet skis, and supersonic jets has also intruded on the environment, affecting animals’ abilities to communicate, protect their young, and mate. Worldwide, antinoise groups believe their governments are doing too little to lessen the surrounding din, and groups from the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, Africa, and Asia have joined together to educate both the public and governments about the long-term dangers of noise pollution, urging them to lower the decibel level. A quieter, healthier environment is within our grasp. Bibliography Bronzaft, A.L. (1998). “A Voice to End the Government’s Silence on Noise.” Hearing Rehabilitation Quarterly 23:6–12, 29. Bronzaft, A.L., and Dobrow, S.B. (1988). “Noise and Health: A Warning to Adolescents.” Children’s Environments Quarterly 5:40–45. Chen, A.C., and Charuk, K. (2001). “Speech Interference Levels at Airport Noise Impacted Schools.” Sound & Vibration 35(7):26–31.

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Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs)

Evans, G.W., and Lapore, S.J. (1993). “Nonauditory Effects of Noise on Children. A Critical Review.” Children’s Environments 10:31–51. Federal Interagency Committee on Aviation Noise (FICAN). (2000). FICAN Position on Research into Effects of Aircraft Noise on Classroom Learning. Washington, D.C. Niskar, A.S.; Kiezak, S.M.; Holmes, A.; Esteban, E.; Rubin, C.; and Brody, D.J. (2001). “Estimated Prevalence of Noise Induced Hearing Threshold Shifts among Children 6 to 19 Years of Age. The Third Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. 1988–1994.” Pediatrics 108:40–43. Stansfeld, S.; Haines, M.; and Brown, B. (2000). “Noise and Health in the Urban Environment.” Reviews of Environmental Health 15:43–82. Internet Resources League for the Hard of Hearing Web site. Available from http://www.lhh.org/noise. Noise Pollution Clearinghouse Web site. Available from http://www.nonoise.org.

Arline L. Bronzaft

Nonaqueous Phase Liquids (NAPLs) Nonaqueous Phase Liquids (NAPLs) are hazardous organic liquids such as dry cleaning ﬂuids, fuel oil, and gasoline that do not dissolve in water. A signiﬁcant portion of contaminated soil and groundwater sites contain NAPLs, and they are particularly hard to remove from the water supply. NAPLs are always associated with human activity, and cause severe environmental and health hazards. Dense NAPLs (DNAPLs) such as the chlorinated hydrocarbons used in dry cleaning and industrial degreasing are heavier than water and sink through the water column. They can penetrate deep below the water table and are difﬁcult to ﬁnd when investigating sites for contamination. Hydrocarbon fuels and aromatic solvents are described as light NAPLs (LNAPLs), which are less dense than water and ﬂoat. These include lubricants and gasoline, pollutants often associated with leaking gasoline or oil storage tanks. It is difﬁcult or impossible to remove all of the NAPLs once they are released into the ground. Although many NAPL removal technologies are currently being tested, there have been few ﬁeld demonstrations capable of restoring an NAPL-contaminated aquifer to drinking-water quality. NAPL contamination can affect aquifers for tens or hundreds of years. Internet Resource Newell, Charles J.; Bowers, Richard L.; and Rifai, Hanadi S. “Impact of Non-Aqueous Phase Liquids on Groundwater Remediation.” In Environmental Expert.com Web site. Available from http://www.environmental-center.com/articles/article1079/ article1079.htm.

Richard M. Stapleton

Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) Collaborative efforts among the public have played an important role in shaping the political and social values and hence public policy of the United States. Organizing with others who share a similar vision enhances the potential for change. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) accomplish just that. Established outside of political parties, NGOs are aimed at advocating the public’s

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ORGANIZATION

FOUNDING

Conservation International

1987

$50,000,000

BUDGET

FOCUS

Izzak Walton League of America

1922

$3,000,000

National Audubon Society

1905

$44,000,000

National Wildlife Federation

1936

$96,000,000

Natural Resources Defense Council

1970

$30,632,992

Nature Conservancy

1951

$245,000,000

Wilderness Society

1935

$14,700,000

Wildlife Conservation Society

1895

$95,000,000

World Wildlife Fund

1961

$60,000,000

Sierra Club

1892

$43,000,000

Environmental Defense Fund

1967

$39,000,000

Greenpeace USA

1971

$19,266,530

Friends of the Earth

1969

$3,000,000

To preserve and promote awareness about the world’s endangered biodiversity. To protect and promote sustainable resource use. To restore and protect the natural habitat of birds and other wildlife for the benefit of human interest and biodiversity. The largest membersupported conservation group working to protect wildlife and ecosystems. Using science and law to protect the planet’s wildlife and wild places. To protect aquatic and terrestrial habitats for the survival of biodiversity. Protect the remaining wilderness in the United States by keeping roads, loggers, and oil drilling efforts out of wilderness areas. Support international survival strategies as well as habitat conservation projects. Protect and preserve endangered species. To educate and enlist people to protect the environment through lawful means, and address key issues including commercial logging, urban sprawl, and water quality. Create solutions to environmental problems including policies to reduce fossil fuels. Nonviolent direct action to expose environmental threats. To protect Earth from environmental disaster through toxic waste cleanup and groundwater protection.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS Working with the Cambodian government to create a one-million-acre protected area. Sponsored scientific research of coral reefs off Indonesia. Helped create the world’s largest national rain forest. Helped create the Land and Water Fund. Were instrumental in the protection of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Everglades National Park, and Isle Royale National Park. Involved the public in bird counts across the United States to track populations. Has opened nature centers to promote understanding of birds.

Function in forty-six states to promote the protection of species and their environments. Worked in the western United States to prevent urban sprawl and sustainable forestry. Worked with the EPA to restrict pesticide use, prevented the development of a large airport near the Florida Everglades, and have helped design a plan to restore Yosemite. Own over a thousand preserves and have protected more than fourteen million acres of land in the United States. Helped block oil exploration near Arches National Park, created the Wilderness Act, which was passed in 1964, and the Conservation Act which was passed in 1980.

Formed Jackson Hole Wildlife Park in 1956, led the national campaign to reintroduce bison to the Kansas grasslands, and created the Bronx Zoo. Launched Wildlands and Human Needs projects to address the needs of people living in fragile ecosystems. Assisted in preserving the North Grove Calaveras Big Trees, fought to return Yosemite to federal management, and worked to create the National Park Service.

Won a ban on DDT use, prevented the development of a resort on former state park land that would endanger native species.

Drew attention to ocean incineration of toxic waste, resulting in a ban of the practice; also, won an end to sperm whale hunting, halted the testing of nuclear arms off Florida. Conducted lab tests proving that genetically altered food not approved for human consumption was being sold, won a federal court case that prevented Army Corps of Engineers from illegally issuing permits for developers to fill in wetlands.

concerns and pressuring governments to do a better job. These organizations may range from a handful of local citizens enacting recycling in their community to a million-member-strong organization with a budget of $20 million.

Agents of Information and Action NGOs are often nonproﬁt groups that employ a variety of tactics for achieving awareness among the public and the government. The very nature and structure of NGOs has been advantageous in dealing with pollution issues for several reasons. First, membership within NGOs consists of people with a strong personal commitment to their cause. Second, the focused efforts of NGOs allow their leaders to become specialized. Third, the loose structure of NGOs enables them to respond with greater speed and ﬂexibility than the government.

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Throughout the forty years of the modern environmental movement, NGOs have been crucial in bringing visibility to pollution problems affecting both the local and international communities. According to Peter Willets, “Information is the currency of politics, and the ability to move accurate up-to-date information around the globe has been a key factor in the growing strength of environmental groups” (Willets, p. 114). The communication of information has been accelerated through the use of the Internet. In addition, NGOs also rely heavily on publications, media coverage, and conferences to collaborate with one another and to educate the public. Although reformers of the Settlement House era of the late 1800s and early 1900s organized efforts for change within city neighborhoods, the formation of prominent mainstream organizations such as the Wilderness Society and Sierra Club are widely considered to be the ﬁrst major environmental NGOs. Rooted in early-twentieth-century debates over the exploitation of land, these early NGOs lobbied the government by talking with local ofﬁcials and publishing works on the importance of wilderness. One of the most notable efforts to drum up public support was a series of full-page advertisements taken out by the Sierra Club from 1965 to 1968 in the New York Times vilifying the prospects of building hydroelectric dams in and ﬂooding the Grand Canyon. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace are two NGOs with international status that have fought to keep the public informed about pesticides and toxics pollution through direct action techniques. Their practices of physically obstructing or protesting industry has made them popular in the media since the groups’ inception in the 1970s. In one particular instance, Friends of the Earth amassed a collection of Schweppes bottles and subsequently dumped them on the company’s front steps. Their efforts to send a clear message to the beverage company about waste pollution attracted media coverage and brought about a rise in membership. Similarly, Greenpeace employed confrontational tactics by sailing the vessel Phyllis McCormack towards a French nuclear testing site to halt testing. In another campaign, Greenpeace members put themselves in small boats between whalers and whales.

The Rise of International Networks By the mid-1980s there were thousands of NGOs. Their success across the globe was encouraging to environmentalists and it was encouraging to a public—both national and international—that had begun to see the importance of NGOs in environmental issues. Danish NGOs won a complete ban on throwaway beverage packaging while Australian NGOs won concessions on mining in their national parks. The use of phosphates in detergents was banned in Switzerland with the help of NGOs. But as pollution became a major factor in the global debate of acid rain, global warming, and ozone depletion, NGOs saw a great need to collaborate internationally. The discovery of a hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica provoked furious action among American NGOs. Apparent disinterest shown toward the issue by European NGOs prompted several U.S. NGOs to send representatives to Europe to discuss the consequences of chloroﬂuorocarbons (CFCs) on the atmosphere. As a result of their meeting, the U.K. branch of Friends of the Earth drew up a campaign to publish its own guide to pollutants. In 1986 Aerosol Connection was a resounding success in communicating to the public

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how to support non-CFC products. Thousands of people were eager to get their hands on a copy. Raising public awareness weakened the position of the chemical companies in the United Kingdom, because they had controlled most public information about CFCs. The scientiﬁc information that NGOs supplied for the debate over CFCs helped speed negotiations on the Montréal Protocol, which called for a ban on CFC use. The experience clearly illustrated the power of NGOs to successfully lobby internationally. NGOs experienced greater inclusion in the political arena throughout the 1990s. NGO pressure on World Bank policy set a precedent for collaboration by the World Bank with NGOs in the international realm. By challenging the World Bank to support environmentally viable water projects, NGOs exposed an array of existing problems to the media, to the U.S. government, and to congressional staff. Just a week after collaboration with the World Bank, NGOs from across the world gathered in Rio de Janeiro for the 1992 Earth Summit. Twenty years earlier, the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm was a major turning point for NGOs. Because only government ofﬁcials were invited to the conference, NGOs gathered around the conference site to debate their own positions. To help clarify confusion surrounding conference issues, NGOs published a newspaper which they delivered to the media, embassy, and hotels where attendees were staying.

The 1992 Earth Summit Having learned from the 1972 UN Conference, the planners of the 1992 Earth Summit coordinated a parallel conference for NGOs. Known as the Global Forum, this satellite conference enabled NGOs across the world to network, share research, and evaluate their collective role in protecting the environment. Together, NGOs drafted an extensive collection of treaties including the Earth Charter, a document meant to parallel the Summit’s Rio Declaration, an agreement deﬁning the rights and responsibilities of countries. Five years after the 1992 Earth Summit, ﬁve hundred NGOs met in New York to judge their progress and push for a redrafting of the Earth Charter. By 2000 a new draft was ﬁnalized to express the renewed vision NGOs hoped to fulﬁll. By the mid-1990s NGOs had secured an important position in the environmental movement’s crusade against pollution. Organizations large and small, striving to eradicate pollution, raised the public’s level of awareness. Because pollution is at the same time a local and international problem, NGOs have been essential on all levels. Their dedication to issues and their multifaceted approaches to disseminating information makes them an important asset to the cause they represent and to the legislation they are hoping to inﬂuence. International NGO networks only serve to improve the environmental movement as receptivity to NGO work continues to expand worldwide. Bibliography Fox, Jonathan, and Brown, L. David. (1998). The Struggle for Accountability: The World Bank, NGOs, and Grassroots Movements. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gottlieb, Robert. (1993). Forcing the Spring. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Hays, Samuel P. (2000). A History of Environmental Politics Since 1945. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Hedblad, Alan, ed. (2003). Encyclopedia of Associations, 39th edition. Detroit: Gale Group.

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Markham, Adam. (1994). A Brief History of Pollution. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Willets, Peter. (1982). Pressure Groups in the Global System. London: St. Martin’s Press. Internet Resources CIESIN. “A Summary of the Major Documents Signed at the Earth Summit and Global Forum.” Available from http://www.ciesin.org. Citizens Campaign for the Environment. “Coalitions and Afﬁliations.” Available from http://www.citizenscampaign.org. Global Policy. “NGOs.” Available from http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos. Environmental Defense Fund. “Notable Victories.” Available from http://www.environmentaldefense.org. Natural Resources Defense Council. “Environmental Legislation.” Available from http://www.nrdc.org. Transformational Movement. “Earth Charter.” Available from http://www.transformworld.org. United Nations. “UN Conference on Environment and Development (1992).” Available from http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html. Worldwatch Institute. “WTO Confrontation Shows Growing Power of Activist Groups.” Available from http://www.worldwatch.org.

Christine M. Whitney

Nonpoint Source Pollution Nonpoint source pollution occurs when rainfall or snowmelt runs over land or through the ground, picks up pollutants, and deposits them into rivers, lakes, wetlands, and coastal waters or introduces them into groundwater. Some of the primary activities that generate nonpoint source pollution include farming and grazing activities, timber harvesting, new development, construction, and recreational boating. Manure, pesticides, fertilizers, dirt, oil, and gas produced by these activities are examples of nonpoint source pollutants. Even individual households contribute to nonpoint source pollution through improper chemical and pesticide use, landscaping, and other household practices. After Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, the water-quality community within the United States placed a primary emphasis on addressing and controlling point source pollution (pollution coming from discrete conveyances or locations, such as industrial and municipal waste discharge pipes). Not only were these sources the primary contributors to the degradation of U.S. waters at the time, but the extent and signiﬁcance of nonpoint source pollution were also poorly understood and overshadowed by efforts to control pollution from point sources. At the beginning of the twenty-ﬁrst century, nonpoint source pollution stands as the primary cause of water-quality problems within the United States. According to the National Water Quality Inventory (published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), it is the main reason that approximately 40 percent of surveyed rivers, lakes, and estuaries are not clean enough to meet basic uses such as ﬁshing or swimming.

Leading Contributors to Nonpoint Source Pollution States and other jurisdictions reported in the National Water Quality Inventory that agriculture and urban runoff are among the leading contributors to

73

Nonpoint Source Pollution

A cow drinking in a dried-up riverbed. (U.S. EPA)

deteriorating water quality nationwide. The most common nonpoint source pollutants causing water-quality problems include nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), siltation (soil particles), metals, and pathogens (bacteria and viruses). Agriculture is identiﬁed as the leading source of degradation of polluted rivers, streams, and lakes surveyed by states, territories, and tribes in the National Water Quality Inventory. Agricultural activities that result in nonpoint source pollution include concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), grazing, plowing, pesticide spraying, irrigation, fertilizing, planting, and harvesting. A major nonpoint source pollutant from these activities is an excess of nutrients, which can occur through applications of crop fertilizers and manure from animal production facilities. Excessive nutrients may overstimulate the growth of aquatic weeds and algae, depleting the oxygen available for a healthy aquatic community.

hydromodification any process that alters the hydrologic characteristics of a body of water

Hydromodification that alters the ﬂow of water is the second leading source of damage to U.S. rivers, streams, and lakes, according to the same National Water Quality Inventory report. Examples of hydromodiﬁcation projects include channelization, dredging, and construction of dams. Excess sediment due to erosion caused by projects such as building dams can severely alter aquatic communities by clogging ﬁsh gills or suffocating eggs. Sediment may also carry other pollutants into water bodies (e.g., PCBs or mercury) which can accumulate in aquatic species, leading to ﬁsh consumption advisories. Habitat modiﬁcation is identiﬁed as the third-largest source of water pollution in surveyed rivers and streams in the National Water Quality Inventory.

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Nonpoint Source Pollution

Habitat modiﬁcation occurs when the vegetation along stream banks is removed, diminishing buffers that help ﬁlter runoff and provide shade for the adjacent water body. These modiﬁcations can result in an increase in the water temperature (because of less shade) and an increase in quantity and velocity of runoff, making the river or stream less suitable for the organisms inhabiting it. Runoff from urban areas is the fourth-largest source of water pollution in rivers and streams and the third-largest source of water pollution in lakes, according to the National Water Quality Inventory. Increased urban development brings additional roads, bridges, buildings, and parking lots, which can result in large amounts of runoff that quickly and easily drain into rivers and lakes. In contrast, the porous and varied terrain of natural landscapes like forests, wetlands, and grasslands traps rainwater and snowmelt and allows it to ﬁlter slowly into the ground. Urban runoff transports a variety of pollutants, including sediment from new development; oil, grease, and toxic chemicals from vehicles; and nutrients and pesticides from turf management and gardening. It can also carry pathogenic bacteria and viruses released from failing septic systems and inadequately treated sewage, which can result in closed beaches and shellﬁsh beds, contaminated drinking water sources, and even severe human illness.

Programs for Nonpoint Source Control The United States has made signiﬁcant progress in addressing nonpoint source pollution since Congress amended the Clean Water Act in 1987 to establish a national program for controlling nonpoint source pollution. Under section 319 of the Clean Water Act, states adopted management programs to control nonpoint source pollution, and since 1990 the EPA has awarded grants to states to assist them in implementing those management programs. Other federal agencies also provide technical and ﬁnancial support through grants and loans to states, local communities, and farmers and other landowners, to implement nonpoint source pollution controls. In addition, many state and local entities are dedicating increasing amounts of funding to control nonpoint source pollution.

GOLF AND THE ENVIRONMENT The well-manicured deep green turfs of America’s golf courses are often situated in pristine, water-rich environments. However, often the process of maintaining these golf courses involves heavy fertilization, pesticide treatments, and perpetual mowing and watering, which can lead to polluted groundwater and drinking water and damage to aquatic habitat and wildlife. Proper management of golf courses can reduce or prevent many of these problems, and a large coalition of public and private partners (including the EPA and a conglomeration of state and national golf associations) has developed and adopted voluntary guidelines that apply to the

siting, development, and operation of golf courses. Through better site analysis and selection, better management and timing of pesticides applications, the use of slow-release fertilizers, employment of buffers to filter turf runoff, and other such practices, the golf industry is making considerable headway in managing the effects of nonpoint source pollution. —Source: “Environmental Principles for Golf Courses in the United States,” Second Conference on Golf and the Environment, Pinehurst, NC, Center for Resource Management. 1996.

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BUZZARDS BAY WATERSHED Seventeen municipalities make up the Buzzards Bay watershed in the southeastern region of Massachusetts. Nonpoint source pollution from failing septic systems, farm animal wastes, and stormwater runoff were contributing to a decline in water quality in the bay, forcing the closing of many shellfish beds. Watershed partners, including various federal (e.g., U.S. Department of Agriculture), state (e.g., Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection), local partners (e.g., Town of Marion), and area residents cooperated to support the construction of a wetland system to help filter the stormwater discharge into the bay. The success of this effort depended on a coordinated approach including all partners on a watershed basis. —Source: Watershed Success Stories (2000). Interagency Watershed Coordinating Committee. Washington, D.C.

watershed the land area that drains into a stream; the watershed for a major river may encompass a number of smaller watersheds

State nonpoint source programs provide for the control of nonpoint source pollution primarily through best management practices (BMPs), which are on-the-ground technical controls used to prevent or reduce nonpoint source pollution. Common practices used to control nutrients from agriculture include altering fertilizer and pesticide application methods and storing and properly managing manure from conﬁned animal facilities. Developing a buffer of vegetation between the land and the stream bank can help ﬁlter all types of nonpoint source pollutants from entering a receiving water body, including sediment transported by overland ﬂow. Stream-bank protection and channel stabilization practices are also very effective in preventing sediment deposition in the water by limiting the bank erosion processes and streambed degradation. Urban runoff can be controlled by establishing trenches, basins, and detention ponds at construction sites to hold, settle, and retain suspended solids and associated pollutants. Basic pollution-prevention measures introduced around the home can also prevent nonpoint source pollutants from entering storm water. Practices include the proper storage, use, and disposal of household hazardous chemicals; proper operation and maintenance of onsite disposal systems; and even proper disposal of pet waste so that it does not wash into storm drains.

Watershed Approach to Managing Nonpoint Source Pollution Nonpoint source pollution derives from many different sources over large geographic areas so regulating and controlling it are challenging. The watershed approach to managing nonpoint source pollution, however, is proving to be an effective technique. Everyone lives in a watershed, or an area of land in which all water drains. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the nation can be divided into approximately 2,149 medium-sized watersheds, averaging about 1,700 square miles in each area. The watershed approach relies on coordinating all relevant federal, state, and local government agencies, and the stakeholders who live in a particular watershed, to help solve priority problems in that watershed. Historically, many water-quality problems were addressed piecemeal in individual water bodies by individual entities, usually limited by political, social, and economic boundaries. The watershed approach, however, relies on the coordination of all entities and stakeholders to help solve the watershed’s most serious environmental problems, which in many instances are caused by nonpoint source pollution.

International Implications Managing nonpoint source pollution is an international challenge. Like the United States, many developed countries initially directed resources toward controlling point source pollution. However, signiﬁcant nonpoint source problems remain, especially resulting from an excess of nutrients and sediment in water bodies. The United Nations Environment Programme has identiﬁed increased nitrogen loadings, resulting mainly from agricultural runoff and wastewater, as one of the most serious water-quality issues affecting all countries. Sedimentation is a signiﬁcant concern for other countries, frequently resulting from deforestation or clear cutting for fuelwood, or agricultural practices. One of the largest threats in developing countries relates to problems with sewage control, either through poor maintenance of sewage collection systems or a lack of it, leading to severe waterborne diseases.

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Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)

The increasing world population promises even more challenges for managing nonpoint source pollution. Some international communities are embracing integrated solutions (like the watershed approach) to reduce it. Agenda 21 adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 is but one example. S E E A L S O Agriculture; Cryptosporidiosis; Education; Hypoxia; Phosphates; Sedimentation; Water Pollution; Water Pollution: Freshwater; Water Treatment. Bibliography United Nations Environment Programme. (1999). Global Environment Outlook. London: United Nations Environmental Program. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2000). National Water Quality Inventory: 2000 Report. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Internet Resources Center for Watershed Protection Web site. Available from http://www.cwp.org. Nonpoint Education for Municipal Ofﬁcials (NEMO) Web site. Available from http://nemo.uconn.edu. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service Web site. Available from http://www.nrcs.usda.gov. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ofﬁce of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov/owow/nps.

Stacie Craddock

North American Free Trade Agreement NPDES NRC

See NAFTA

PERVIOUS (PERMEABLE) CONCRETE An increasing number of parking lots in California are being paved with pervious concrete to reduce runoff and allow water to drain through to underlying soil or groundwater. The concrete is made from Portland cement, gravel, and water and consists of up to one-quarter empty spaces that allow rainfall to penetrate at a rate of about three to five gallons per square foot, per minute. Beneficial soil microorganisms break down pollutants, such as oil and gasoline, trapped in the voids. In 2002 a Santa Barbara couple made the news as possibly the first homeowners in California to pave their driveway with pervious concrete.

See National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System

See Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) primary mission is to protect public health and safety and to protect the environment from the effects of radiation from nuclear reactors, materials, and waste facilities. The NRC is empowered by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and its amendments to regulate source material (primarily uranium ore and processed uranium), special nuclear material, including material enriched in plutonium or the isotope uranium-235 above certain levels, and by-product material, and to regulate the uses of these materials. Primarily, this means it regulates nuclear power plants and civilian research reactors, the materials used to make fuel for these plants, the wastes produced, and other materials and uses of radioactive material that are derived from these sources. The NRC is headed by a ﬁve-member commission that is appointed by the president (subject to Senate conﬁrmation). The NRC does not regulate naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) that do not fall into one of these categories. Such naturally occurring materials include radioactive waste from oil and gas production. The NRC also does not regulate radiation-producing machines, such as x-ray machines, or radioactive materials produced in accelerators. S E E A L S O Antinuclear Movement; Laws and Regulations; United States. Matthew Arno

77

Nuclear Waste, Disposal of

Nuclear Waste, Disposal of

O

See Radioactive Waste

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the federal agency charged with protecting workers’ health and safety, was created by Congress in 1971 to administer the Occupational Health and Safety Act of 1970. With few exceptions, including some state plans and speciﬁc industries, OSHA oversees all U.S. workers and their employers. OSHA’s duty is to ensure that workplaces are free from hazards that are likely to cause serious harm or death to workers. As part of that duty, OSHA establishes standards for workplace activities and exposures to hazardous materials. Working in conjunction with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), OSHA uses scientiﬁc data to determine acceptable levels of risk for regulated materials and creates corresponding material safety data sheets (MSDS) for each. Levels are set forth in the Federal Code of Regulations (CFR), and employers must prevent workers from being exposed above the CFR’s permissible exposure limits. Although employers must oversee their own programs, OSHA requires that records be kept for all workplace exposures, illnesses, injuries, and fatalities. The agency may only regulate the employer-employee relationship, but when individuals bring lawsuits against their employers, courts will generally ﬁnd the employer negligent if there has been a failure to comply with OSHA standards. S E E A L S O Hazardous Waste. Bibliography Michaud, Patrick A. (1995). Accident Prevention and OSHA Compliance. Lewis Publishers. 2000 OSHA Handbook. (1999). PA: Chamber Educational Foundation. Internet Resources National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Web site. Available from http://www.cdc.gov/niosh. Occupational Health and Safety Administration Web site. Available from http:// www.osha.gov.

Mary Elliott Rollé

Ocean Dumping Ocean disposal of society’s waste got its start indirectly long before the Agricultural Age when nearby streams, lakes, and estuaries were useful as waste repositories. As civilization moved to the coastal zone and navigation began in earnest, the oceans were viewed as even a larger waste repository. Early civilizations were located adjacent to bodies of water for sources of food, irrigation, drinking water, transportation, and a place to dispose of unnecessary items. Historically, the disposal of wastes into water by humans was universally practiced. It was a cheap and convenient way to rid society of food wastes (e.g., cleaned carcasses, shells, etc.), trash, mining wastes, and human wastes (or sewage). The advent of the Industrial Age brought with it the new problem of chemical wastes and by-products: These were also commonly disposed of in the water.

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Ocean Dumping

Early dumping started in rivers, lakes, and estuaries, whereas ocean dumping was simply not used because of the distance and difﬁculty in transporting waste materials. The wastes from ships, however, were simply dumped directly into the ocean. As civilization developed at river deltas and in estuaries adjacent to the ocean, and these areas soon began to display the effects of dumping, disposal in the ocean became a popular alternative. Over the past 150 years, all types of wastes have been ocean dumped. These include sewage (treated and untreated), industrial waste, military wastes (munitions and chemicals), entire ships, trash, garbage, dredged material, construction debris, and radioactive wastes (both high- and low-level). It is important to note that signiﬁcant amount of wastes enter the ocean through river, atmospheric, and pipeline discharge; construction; offshore mining; oil and gas exploration; and shipboard waste disposal. Unfortunately, the ocean has become the ultimate dumping ground for civilization.

A trash-strewn beach. (©Claude Charlier/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

estuary region of interaction between rivers and near-shore ocean waters, where tidal action and river flow mix fresh and salt water (i.e., bays, mouths of rivers, salt marshes, and lagoons). These ecosystems shelter and feed marine life, birds, and wildlife

It has been recognized over the past ﬁfty years that the earth’s oceans are under serious threat from these wastes and their “witches’ brew” of chemicals and nonbiodegradable components. Society has also come to understand that its oceans are under serious threat from overﬁshing, mineral exploration, and coastal construction activities. The detrimental effects of ocean dumping are physically visible at trashed beaches, where dead ﬁsh and mammals entangled in plastic products may sometimes be observed. They are additionally reﬂected in the signiﬁcant toxic chemical concentrations in ﬁsh and other sea life. The accumulations of some toxins, especially mercury, in the bodies of sea life have resulted in some harvestable seafood unﬁt for human consumption.

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Ocean Dumping

Seriously affected areas include commercial and recreational ﬁshing, beaches, resorts, human health, and other pleasurable uses of the sea. During the 1960s numerous groups (global, regional, governmental, and environmental) began to report on the detrimental impact of waste disposal on the ocean. Prior to this time, few regulatory (or legal) actions occurred to control or prevent these dumping activities.

Early U.S. Legislation Late in the nineteenth century, the U.S. Congress enacted Section 10 of the River and Harbor Act of 1890, prohibiting any obstruction to the navigation of U.S. waters. The authority to implement the act through a regulatory permit program was given to the secretary of the army acting through the chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In the late 1960s the corps enlarged the scope of its review of permit applications to include ﬁsh and wildlife, conservation, pollution, esthetics, ecology, and matters of general public interest. In addition, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) required the review of policy issues pertinent to the public interest and an environmental impact statement on activities that might signiﬁcantly affect the quality of the environment. In 1972 the U.S. Congress passed the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act (Ocean Dumping Act or ODA) and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act amendments (Clean Water Act or CWA) that set a global standard for managing environmental restoration and protection, for maintaining the environment within acceptable standards, for prohibiting the disposal of waste materials into the ocean, and for regulating the discharge of wastes through pipelines into the ocean. With the enactment of these laws, the corps’s regulatory program became quite complex. The goal of the CWA is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters, with the corps responsible for regulating the discharge of dredged material into inland and coastal waters. The ODA regards oceans in a somewhat similar manner, requiring the review of all proposed operations involving the transportation or disposal of waste materials and their potential environmental impact. The corps also manages the ocean dumping permit program. Like the CWA, the ODA is concerned with the unregulated dumping of materials into ocean waters that endanger human health and welfare, the marine environment, and the earth’s ecological systems, and that may have dire economic consequences. The corps implements these programs in full partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and is subject to their oversight. International recognition of the need to regulate ocean disposal from land-based sources on a global basis was the result of the UN Conference on the Human Environment in June 1972 and the Inter-Governmental Conference on the Convention of the Dumping of Wastes at Sea in November 1972. These conferences resulted in a treaty entitled Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter— London Convention 1972 (LC-72). The LC-72 came into effect in 1975 and currently has approximately eighty member nations. Another treaty addressing the issue of wastes disposed of from vessels, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973 (MARPOL), was adopted

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MA J OR G L OBA L AGREEMENTS A ND D O M E STI C L E G I SL A TI O N G O VE R N I N G P R O TE C TI O N OF T HE M A RINE ENVIRONMENT Key Global Agreements to Protect the Marine Environment from Dumping Title

Description

1982 UN Convention on The Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 1982) (entry into force: November 1994);

Provides a framework for the determination of the rights and obligations of states relating to the oceans. Part XII contains provisions with regard to protection and preservation of the marine environment.

International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973, as modified by the protocol of 1978 relating thereto (MARPOL 73/78)

Provides measures for ships and national administrations to prevent pollution by oil (Annex I), noxious liquid substances in bulk (Annex II), harmful substances in packaged form (Annex III), sewage (Annex IV), garbage (Annex V), and air pollution from ships (Annex VI).

Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and other Matter (London Convention 1972) (entry into force: August 1975)

Provides measures to limit the use of the oceans as disposal area for wastes generated on land.

Key Domestic Legislation to Protect the Marine and Coastal Environment Title

Description

Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (CWA)

To restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters.

Marine, Protection Research, and Santuaries Act of 1972 (ODA)

To regulate the dumping of all types of materials into ocean waters and to prevent or strictly limit the dumping into ocean waters of any material which would adversely affect human health, welfare or amenities, or the marine environment, ecological systems, or economic potentialities.

National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA)

To declare a national policy that will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between people and the environment; to promote efforts that will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate human health and welfare.

in 1973. Countries signing MARPOL agree to enforce bans on dumping oil and noxious liquids into the ocean from ships, but the disposal of hazardous substances, sewage, and plastics remains optional. There are dozens of other international agreements dealing with ocean pollution, but the LC-72 and MARPOL are the most signiﬁcant as far as dumping is concerned. The United States is an active member of both of these treaties. The LC-72 and domestic ODA are similar in structure and requirements, with the U.S. regulation being more stringent. The dumping of industrial wastes, radioactive wastes, munitions (chemical or biological), sewage, and incineration at sea are directly prohibited. Moreover, the ocean disposal of other waste materials containing greater than trace amounts of certain chemicals (i.e., mercury, cadmium, petroleum hydrocarbons, chlorinated chemicals, and nondegradable plastics) is strictly prohibited. Allowed under strictly regulated conditions are the ocean disposal of dredged material (harbor sediments), geologic material, and some ﬁsh waste; burial at sea; and ship disposal. The corps and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implement the LC-72 and ODA in the United States. The Corps issues its permits after careful assessment using environmental criteria developed by the EPA. About 350 million tons of sediments are dredged annually in U.S. waters for the purpose of navigation for trade and national defense; approximately 20 percent of this total is disposed of in formally designated sites in ocean

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Ocean Dumping

bioassay a test to determine the relative strength of a substance by comparing its effect on a test organism with that of a standard preparation

waters. A small portion of sediments from major harbor areas (about seven to ten percent of the national total) is sufﬁciently contaminated that ocean placement is not allowed, and the sediment must be contained at regulated land sites. Proposed ocean disposal is assessed through the use of an effectsbased approach, which evaluates the dredged material as a complex substance that may contain a wide variety of contaminants. The assessment will identify those sediments that may be detrimental to ocean biota and human health. The effects-based approach uses bioassay test organisms to integrate the potential effects of all the contaminants present in a combined impact assessment. This is done through the use of bioassays for acute toxicity and an estimate of contaminants’ bioaccumulation potential. An assessment is also made on the potential of sediment contamination to impact water quality. A decision is then based on the suitability of a material for unrestricted or restricted ocean disposal, or not. For example, a dredged sediment from a contaminated portion of a harbor can be prohibited from ocean disposal and must be placed in a land containment facility. In highly industrialized harbors such as those in New York or New Jersey, dredging and the disposal of dredged material are often controversial. Ocean placement is not allowed except in the case of the cleanest sediments and adding to the controversy, land disposal locations are very limited and very expensive. In contrast, world trade and shipping, which depend on navigation dredging for deep channels, are a vital component of regional and national economies. The long-term solution to contaminated sediments will depend on waste control from land sources and the cleanup of highly contaminated sediments that continue to impact the navigation channel. The ocean placement of suitable dredged material or sediments at carefully selected ocean sites may be environmentally safe in relation to other alternatives. It might even be beneﬁcial to the ocean through proper management. Eroding beaches, for instance, often receive clean dredged sand as a routine part of environmental improvement programs. Dredged material comprises 95 percent or more of all ocean disposal on a global basis. As navigable waterways and their role in world trade and defense continue to be important components of the economic growth and stability of coastal nations, the environmentally sound disposal of suitable dredged materials into the ocean will remain a necessary alternative. Moreover, the beneﬁcial uses of these dredged sediments (when they are not contaminated with pollutants) for beach replenishment, wetlands, construction, aquatic and upland habitat improvement, and as construction materials will remain the highest priority in sediment and ocean disposal management. S E E A L S O Bioaccumulation; Clean Water Act; Dredging; Ocean Dumping Ban Act; Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act; Water Pollution; Water Pollution: Marine. Bibliography Committee on Public Works, U.S. House of Representatives. (1973). Laws of the United States Relating to Water Pollution Control and Environmental Quality, 93-1. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce. Engler, R.M. (1980). “Prediction of Pollution Potential through Geochemical and Biological Procedures: Development of Guidelines and Criteria for the Discharge of Dredged and Fill Material.” In Contaminants and Sediments, edited by R.A. Baker. Ann Arbor, MI: Ann Arbor Science Publications. Engler, R.M. (1990). “Managing Dredged Materials.” Oceanus 33(2):63–69.

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Oil Spills

Engler, R.M.; Saunders, L.; and Wright, Thomas. (1991). “Environmental Effects of Aquatic Disposal of Dredged Material.” Environmental Professional 13:317–325. Engler, R.M.; Saunders, L.; and Wright, T. (1991). “The Nature of Dredged Material.” Environmental Professional 13:313–316. Huber, M.E., et al. (1999). “Oceans at Risk.” Marine Pollution Bulletin 38(6):435–438. International Maritime Organization. (1991). The London Dumping Convention: The First Decade and Beyond. London. Nauke, M. (1985). “Disposal at Sea of Dredged Material under the London Convention.” Dredging and Port Construction May:9–16. Internet Resources Greenpeace. Available from http://www.greenpeace.org/~odumping. London Convention of 1972. Available from http://www.londonconvention.org/ London_Convention.htm.

Robert M. Engler

Ocean Dumping Ban Act The Ocean Dumping Ban Act, enacted in 1988, signiﬁcantly amended portions of the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 and banned ocean dumping of municipal sewage sludge and industrial waste (with limited exceptions) by phased target dates. The disposal of sewage sludge in waters off New York City was a major motivation for its enactment. Eligible municipalities previously had been allowed to dispose of sewage sludge beyond the so-called 106-mile ocean waste dumpsite, but are now precluded from doing so. Ocean disposal of sewage sludge and industrial waste was totally banned after 1991. Narrow exceptions were created for certain Army Corps of Engineers dredge materials that are occasionally deposited offshore. During the interim period from 1989, after the amendments were enacted, to 1991, when the total ban took effect, limited sewage and industrial waste dumping was allowed for businesses dumping under already existing permits. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was directed to report to Congress on an annual basis regarding the effectiveness of compliance agreements, and the progress made by permitted parties toward developing alternative systems for managing sewage sludge and industrial waste. EPA also had to report on its own efforts in identifying and implementing alternative disposal systems and general progress toward the congressional goal of terminating the ocean dumping of sewage sludge and industrial waste. EPA has interpreted these 1988 amendments to include the ocean incineration of wastes so that they must be regulated in the same manner as ocean disposal. S E E A L S O Biosolids; Laws and Regulations, International; Medical Waste; Ocean Dumping. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/history.

Kevin Anthony Reilly

Ocean Pollution Oil Spills

See Water Pollution: Marine

See Disasters: Oil Spills; Petroleum

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Organic Farming

Organic Farming OSHA

See Agriculture

See Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Oxygen Demand, Biochemical breakdown degradation into component parts

Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) is a measure of how much organic pollution is in water. The BOD test measures the amount of dissolved oxygen in water that is used up due to the breakdown of organic pollutants, such as sewage, in a certain number of days. Raw sewage has a BOD of forty to 150 milligrams per liter, whereas drinking water has a BOD of less than 0.5 milligrams per liter. Engineers and scientists measure the BOD of a lake or river to see how healthy the water is. The lower the BOD, the healthier the water. Water needs to have oxygen in it to support aquatic life such as ﬁsh and plants. Oxygen in the water is replenished from the atmosphere through aeration, but if it is used up faster than it is replenished, the water becomes anaerobic (or hypoxic)— existing in the deﬁciency or absence of free oxygen. Anaerobic water cannot support life. S E E A L S O Fresh Kills; Hypoxia; Water Treatment. Bibliography Peavey, Howard S.; Rowe, Donald R.; and Tchobanoglous, George. (1985). Environmental Engineering. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Julie Hutchins Cairn

Ozone Ozone is a gas found in the atmosphere in very trace amounts. Depending on where it is located, ozone can be beneﬁcial (“good ozone”) or detrimental (“bad ozone”). On average, every ten million air molecules contains only about three molecules of ozone. Indeed, if all the ozone in the atmosphere were collected in a layer at Earth’s surface, that layer would only have the thickness of three dimes. But despite its scarcity, ozone plays very signiﬁcant roles in the atmosphere. In fact, ozone frequently “makes headlines” in the newspapers because its roles are of importance to humans and other life on Earth.

What Is Ozone? Chemically, the ozone molecule consists of three atoms of oxygen arranged in the shape of a wide V. Its formula is O3 (the more familiar form of oxygen that one breathes has only two atoms of oxygen and a chemical formula of O2). Gaseous ozone is bluish in color and has a pungent, distinctive smell. In fact, the name ozone is derived from the Greek word ozein, meaning “to smell or reek.” The smell of ozone can often be noticed near electrical transformers or nearby lightning strikes. It is formed in these instances when an electrical discharge breaks an oxygen molecule (O2) into free oxygen atoms (O), which then combine with O2 in the air to make O3. In addition to its roles in the atmosphere, ozone is a chemically reactive oxidizing agent that is used as an air puriﬁer, a water sterilizer, and a bleaching agent.

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Ozone

Where Is Ozone Found in the Atmosphere? Ozone is mainly found in the two regions of the atmosphere that are closest to the earth’s surface. About 10 percent of the atmosphere’s ozone is in the lowest-lying atmospheric region, the troposphere. This ozone is formed in a series of chemical reactions that involve the interaction of nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and sunlight. Most ozone (about 90%) resides in the next atmospheric layer, the stratosphere. The stratosphere begins between 8 and 18 kilometers (5 and 11 miles) above the earth’s surface and extends up to about 50 kilometers (30 miles). The ozone in this region is commonly known as the ozone layer. Stratospheric ozone is formed when the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation breaks apart molecular oxygen (O2) to form O atoms, which then combine with O2 to make ozone. Note that this formation mechanism differs from the one mentioned above for ozone in the lower atmosphere.

ultraviolet radiation highenergy, short-wavelength light beyond human vision

What Roles Does Ozone Play in the Atmosphere and How Are Humans Affected? The ozone molecules in the stratosphere and the troposphere are chemically identical. However, they have very different roles in the atmosphere and very different effects on humans and other living beings, depending on their location. A useful statement summarizing ozone’s different effects is that it is “good up high, bad nearby.” In the upper atmosphere, stratospheric ozone plays a beneﬁcial role by absorbing most of the sun’s biologically damaging ultraviolet sunlight (called UV-B), allowing only a small amount to reach the earth’s surface. The absorption of ultraviolet radiation by ozone creates a source of heat, which actually deﬁnes the stratosphere (a region in which the temperature rises as one goes to higher altitudes). Ozone thus plays a key role in the temperature structure of the earth’s atmosphere. Without the ﬁltering action of the ozone layer, more of the sun’s UV-B radiation would penetrate the atmosphere and reach the earth’s surface. Many experimental studies of plants and animals and clinical studies of humans have shown that excessive exposure to UV-B radiation has harmful effects. Serious long-term effects can include skin cancers and eye damage. The UV-absorbing role of stratospheric ozone is what lies behind the expression that ozone is “good up high.” In the troposphere, ozone comes into direct contact with life-forms. Although some amount of ozone is naturally present in the lower atmosphere, excessive amounts of this lower-atmospheric ozone are undesirable (or bad ozone). This is because ozone reacts strongly with other molecules, including molecules that make up the tissues of plants and animals. Several studies have documented the harmful effects of excessive ozone on crop production, forest growth, and human health. For example, people with asthma are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of ozone. Thus, ozone is “bad nearby.”

What Are the Environmental Issues Associated with Ozone? The dual role of ozone links it to two separate environmental issues often seen in the newspaper headlines. One issue relates to increases in ozone in

Earth, showing depletion of the ozone layer, over Antarctica. This graphic depicts the largest hole ever recorded, taken on September 6, 2000. (Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration.)

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Ozone

D IST R IB U T I O N O F O Z O N E I N T H E A TMOS P HE RE

35

30 Stratoshperic Ozone (The Ozone Layer)

Altitude (kilometers)

25

• Contains 90% of Atmospheric Ozone • Beneficial Role: Acts as Primary UV Radiation Shield • Current Issues: Long-Term Global Downward Trends Springtime Antarctic Ozone Hole Each Year Springtime Arctic Ozone Losses in Several Recent Years

20

15

10 Tropospheric Ozone "Smog" Ozone

5

0

5

10

15

20

• Contains 10% of Atmospheric Ozone • Harmful Impact: Toxic Effects on Humans and Vegetation • Current Issues: Episodes of High Surface Ozone in Urban and Rural Areas

25

Ozone Amount (pressure, milliPascals) SOURCE: Adapted from the Introduction to World Meteorological Organization/United Nations Environment Programme report, Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 1998 (WMO Global Ozone Research and Monitoring Project-Report No. 44, Geneva, 1999).

photochemical light-induced chemical effects

the troposphere (the bad ozone mentioned above). Human activities that add nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds to that atmosphere, such as the fossil fuel burning associated with power-generating plants and vehicular exhaust, are contributing to the formation of larger amounts of ozone near the earth’s surface. This ozone is a key component of photochemical smog, a familiar problem in the atmosphere of many cities around the world. Higher amounts of surface-level ozone are increasingly being observed in rural areas as well. Thus, the environmental issue is that human activities can lead to more of the bad ozone. The second environmental issue relates to the loss of ozone in the stratosphere. Ground-based and satellite instruments have measured decreases in the amount of stratospheric ozone in our atmosphere, which is called ozonelayer depletion. The most extreme case occurs over some parts of Antarctica, where up to 60 percent of the total overhead amount of ozone (known as the column ozone) disappears during some periods of the Antarctic spring (September through November). This phenomenon, which has been occurring only since the early 1980s, is known as the Antarctic ozone hole. In the arctic polar regions, similar processes occur that have also led to signiﬁcant chemical depletion of the column ozone during late winter and spring in many recent years. Arctic ozone loss from January through late March has been typically 20 to 25 percent, and shorter-period losses have been higher, depending on the meteorological conditions encountered in the Arctic stratosphere. Smaller, but nevertheless signiﬁcant, stratospheric ozone decreases have been seen at other, more populated latitudes of the earth, away from the polar regions. Instruments on satellites and on the ground have detected

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higher amounts of UV-B radiation at the earth’s surface below areas of depleted ozone.

What Human Activities Affect the Stratospheric Ozone Layer? Initially, theories about the cause of ozone-layer depletion abounded. Many factors were suggested, from the sun to air motions to human activity. In the 1970s and 1980s, the scientiﬁc evidence showed conclusively that humanproduced chemicals are responsible for the observed depletions of the ozone layer. The ozone-depleting compounds contain various combinations of carbon with the chemical elements chlorine, ﬂuorine, bromine, and hydrogen (the halogen family in the periodic table of the elements). These are often described by the general term halocarbons. The compounds include chloroﬂuorocarbons (CFCs which are used as refrigerants, foam-blowing agents, electronics cleaners, and industrial solvents) as well as halons (which are used in ﬁre extinguishers). The compounds are useful and benign in the troposphere, but when they eventually reach the stratosphere, they are broken apart by the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. The chlorine and bromine atoms released from these compounds are responsible for the breakdown of stratospheric ozone. The ozone destruction cycles are catalytic, meaning that the chlorine or bromine atom enters the cycle, destroys ozone, and exits the cycle unscathed and therefore able to destroy another ozone molecule. In fact, an individual chlorine atom can destroy as many as 10,000 different ozone molecules before the chlorine atom is removed from the stratosphere by other reactions.

What Actions Have Been Taken to Protect the Ozone Layer? Research on ozone depletion advanced very rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s, leading to the identiﬁcation of CFCs and other halocarbons as the cause. Governments and industry acted quickly on the scientiﬁc information. Through a 1987 international agreement known as the Montréal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, governments decided to eventually discontinue production of CFCs (known in the United States by the industry trade name “Freons”), halons, and other halocarbons (except for a few special uses). Concurrently, industry developed more ozone-friendly substitutes for the CFCs and other ozone-depleting halocarbons. If nations adhere to international agreements, the ozone layer is expected to recover by the year 2050. The interaction of science in identifying the problem, technology in developing alternatives, and governments in devising new policies is thus an environmental “success story in the making.” Indeed, the Montréal Protocol serves as a model for other environmental issues now facing the global community.

What Actions Have Been Taken to Reduce the Amount of Ozone at Ground Level? Ozone pollution at the earth’s surface is formed within the atmosphere by the interaction of sunlight with chemical precursor compounds (or starting ingredients): the nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). In the United States, the efforts of the Environmental Protection

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combustion burning, or rapid oxidation, accompanied by release of energy in the form of heat and light

Agency (EPA) to reduce ozone pollution are therefore focused on reducing the emissions of the precursor compounds. VOCs, a primary focus of many regulations, arise from the combustion of fossil fuel and from natural sources (emissions from forests). Increasingly, attention is turning to reducing the emissions of NOx compounds, which also arise from the combustion of fossil fuels. The use of cleaner fuels and more efﬁcient vehicles has caused a reduction in the emission of ozone precursors in urban areas. This has led to a steady decline in the number and severity of episodes and violations of the one-hour ozone standard established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (which is 120 parts per billion or ppb, meaning that out of a billion air molecules, 120 are ozone). In 1999 there were thirty-two areas of the country that were in violation of the ozone standard, down from 101 just nine years earlier. Despite these improvements, ground-level ozone continues to be one of the most difﬁcult pollutants to manage. An additional, more stringent ozone standard proposed by the EPA to protect public health, eighty ppb averaged over eight hours, was cleared in early 2001 for implementation in the United States. For comparison, Canada’s standard is sixtyﬁve ppb averaged over eight hours. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Asthma; CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons); Electric Power; Halon; Montréal Protocol; NOx (Nitrogen Oxides); Smog; Vehicular Pollution; Ultraviolet Radiation; VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds). Bibliography World Meteorological Organization. (2003). Scientiﬁc Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2002. Global Ozone Research and Monitoring Project, Report No. 47. Geneva: World Meteorological Organization. Internet Resources University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. “Cycles of the Earth and Atmosphere—Module Review.” Available from http://www.ucar.edu/learn/1.htm. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Automobiles and Ozone.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/otaq/04-ozone.htm. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Ozone Depletion.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/docs/ozone.

Christine A. Ennis

P

Packaging

See Waste Reduction

Particulates Particulates, or particulate matter (PM), refer to any mixture of solid particles or liquid droplets that remain suspended in the atmosphere for appreciable time periods. Examples of particulates are dust and salt particles, and water and sulphuric acid droplets. The length of time a particle survives in the atmosphere depends on the balance between two processes. Gravity forces the particles to settle to the earth’s surface, but atmospheric turbulence can carry the particles in the opposite direction. Under normal conditions, only particles with diameters less than 10 micrometers (µm) remain in the atmosphere long enough to be considered atmospheric particulates. In quantifying particulate matter, it is typical to give the mass of particles less than a particular size per cubic meter of air. For example, 10 µg/m3 PM2.5 means that in 1 cubic meter (m3) of air the mass of all particles with diameters less than 2.5 µm is 10 µg.

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DIST R IB U T IO N O F PA R TI C U L A T E M A T T E R FROM A LL CO N T IN E N T AL S O U R C E S ( E X C L U D I N G S EA S A LT EMI S S I ONS ), 1 998 Other Industrial Processes On-Road and NonRoad Engines and Vehicles

Fuel Combustion– Industrial 9% 19%

6%

Fuel Combustion– Electrical Utility 8%

Fuel Combustion– Other

14% 32% 12% Area Source Combustion

All Other SOURCE:

Adapted from U.S. EPA, "Air Quality Criteria for Particulate Matter." Available from http://www.epa.gov/ncea.

Most atmospheric particulate comes from natural sources and is mainly dust or sea salt from mechanical processes such as wind erosion or wave breaking. Although most of this material is of large size and so is lost from the atmosphere by gravitational settling, many of the smaller particles can travel very long distances. For example, dust from Saharan dust storms is carried across the Atlantic Ocean and can be detected in Florida. Similarly, dust from Asia is regularly detected in Hawaii and sometimes even continental North America. Adding to the naturally produced dust is a small but often locally important contribution from the photochemical oxidation of naturally occurring gas-phase hydrocarbons, such as alpha and beta pinene, emitted by trees. These particles frequently give forested areas a hazy atmosphere. Although natural processes produce most of the atmospheric particulate on a global scale, anthropogenic processes are the source of most particulate in urban or industrial areas. The major anthropogenic sources are those that increase natural loading, such as extra dust due to agriculture or construction. However, a signiﬁcant amount of particles are present in factory, power plant, and motor vehicle emissions, and produced from the reactions of anthropogenic gases present in those emissions.

photochemical light-induced chemical effects

anthropogenic human-made; related to or produced by the influence of humans on nature

Primary emissions are those that are produced before being released into the atmosphere or immediately afterward. They result from condensation that follows the rapid cooling of high-temperature gases. An example is the soot that comes from diesel engines. Secondary particles are produced over a longer time period and derive from gas-phase chemical reactions that

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produce low-vapor-pressure (condensable) products. This process is especially important, as it produces the ultraﬁne particles (0.01 µm) that have been shown to be closely related to human health effects. An example is the atmospheric oxidation of sulphur dioxide to sulphuric acid, in which sulphur dioxide is a gas but sulphuric acid exists in the form of droplets. Particles are an environmental concern because they lower visibility, contribute to acid rain, and adversely affect human health. Particulate suspended in the atmosphere has diameters similar to the wavelengths of visible light, which makes it very good at scattering this light. In the presence of particulate, scattering reduces the light coming from distant objects, making it more difﬁcult to see them. This loss of visibility is particularly important in areas that rely on clear vistas to attract tourists. Sulphur dioxide emitted from fossil fuel combustion is oxidized to particulate sulphuric acid or sulphate, which is a major component of acid rain.

PAHs polyaromatic hydrocarbons; compounds of hydrogen and carbon containing multiple ring structures 24-hour standard in regulations: the allowable average concentration over twenty-four hours

Particles can be a major irritant to the human bronchial and pulmonary systems. The body has natural mechanisms to limit the penetration of these particles into its sensitive areas. The nose is an effective ﬁlter for particles of greater than about three µm, and blowing the nose expels these. Smaller particles can penetrate deeper into the bronchial passages where mucous layers and small hairs called cilia catch the particles, which can then be expelled by coughing. The smallest particles, however, may penetrate all the way into the lungs. Irritation of the lung and bronchial tissue by particles prompts the body to produce mucous in self-defense, which can exacerbate existing respiratory problems such as bronchitis and asthma. There is also concern that harmful pollutants in, or attached to, the particles may be absorbed into the body. Heavy metals and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from combustion can be introduced into the body in this way. Most jurisdictions have, and are continually updating, air-quality standards for particulate matter. In 1997 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) added a new annual PM2.5 standard of 15 µg/m3 and a new 24hour standard margin of 65 µg/m3, while retaining the annual PM10 standard of 50 µg/m3 and making minor technical changes to the 24-hour standard of 150 µg/m3. Approximately 29 million U.S. citizens live in areas that do not meet the PM10 standards, but because of the need for three years of monitoring and the requirements of the clean air act, nonattainment areas for PM2.5 have not yet been determined. The standards in most industrialized countries are similar to those in the United States. Many countries have large areas that exceed the local air-quality standards, and thus they have instituted control programs to reduce particulate levels. Fortunately, many of the strategies in place to combat smog, acidic deposition, and smoke releases are also effective in reducing particle levels. Most countries now have integrated strategies to reduce common emissions (e.g., nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons) that contribute to particulate matter, acid deposition, and smog. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Asthma; Diesel; Scrubbers; Smog; Vehicular Pollution. Bibliography Finlayson-Pitts, Barbara J., and Pitts, James N. (2000). Chemistry of the Upper and Lower Atmosphere. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

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PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls)

Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Air Quality Criteria for Particulate Matter.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/ncea.

Donald R. Hastie

PBTs

See Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic Chemicals

PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls) PCBs, known to cause cancer in animals and believed to cause cancer in humans, are among the most widespread and hazardous synthetic pollutants. They comprise a group of 209 structurally similar compounds, so-called congeners. The individual congeners differ in the degree of chlorination and the positions of the chlorine atoms in the molecule. They are numbered from one to 209 according to a scheme proposed by Ballschmiter and Zell (hence, the term BZ numbers). PCBs are obtained by the controlled reaction of biphenyl with elemental chlorine under the catalytic inﬂuence of iron or iron chloride. The commercial formulations were mixtures of various congeners. They were marketed under trade names such as Aroclor, Pyranol, and Clophen and were characterized by their average chlorine content, ranging from 21 to 68 percent. The pattern of congener composition is characteristic for each product and may serve to identify the source of a local contamination. PCBs are stable to heat, chemical, and biological decomposition. The mixtures are clear to yellow nonﬂammable thick liquids (i.e., of medium to high viscosity) or waxy solids. With an increasing degree of chlorination the low water solubility and volatility further decrease, while persistence, lipid solubility, and thus the capacity for bioaccumulation increase. Boiling limits are between 270 and 420°C (515 and 788°F) and water solubility ranges from 0.1 µg/L to 6 mg/L. The electrical conductivity is extremely low. Because of their excellent technical properties, PCBs were used extensively as insulating oils in electrical components such as transformers and capacitors. Additionally, they were used in hydraulic ﬂuids, lubricating oils, plasticizers, paints, adhesive resins, inks, ﬁre retardants, and various other products. The industrial production of PCBs started in 1929. From that point, PCBs were produced in many countries, including the United States, China, France, Germany, Japan, the former Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom. When their bioaccumulation and adverse health effects became recognized, open uses were terminated in the early 1970s. During the late 1970s most countries completely stopped PCB production, for example, the United States outlawed its manufacture in 1977. Until production ceased, an estimated one million metric tons had been manufactured. A large proportion of this amount is still in use in closed applications, although some countries have set deadlines for the replacement of all PCB-containing transformers and capacitors. From production, open uses, leaks from closed systems, and improper disposal, large amounts of PCBs have entered the environment. As Dobson and van Esch note, a large part of these PCBs is believed to be located in aquatic sediments. Despite the termination of production, further emissions into the environment are expected from PCBs still in use, from dump sites, and by remobilization from contaminated soils and sediments.

congener a member of a class of chemicals having a of similar structure

catalytic of a substance that promotes reaction without being consumed

solubility the amount of mass of a compound that will dissolve in a unit volume of solution; aqueous solubility is the maximum concentration of a chemical that will dissolve in pure water at a reference temperature volatility relating to any substance that evaporates readily bioaccumulation build-up of a chemical within a food chain when a predator consumes prey containing that chemical

CHE MI CA L S TRUCTURE OF P CB 1 2 6 (3,3',4,4',5–pentachlorobiphenyl)

Cl

Cl

Cl

Cl Cl

Chemical structure of PCB 126 (3,3’,4,4’,5pentachlorobiphenyl).

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PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls)

deposit concentration of a substance, i.e., mineral ore reevaporate return to the gaseous state affinity physical attraction

neurology medical science relating to the nervous system

remediation cleanup or other methods used to remove or contain a toxic spill or hazardous materials from a Superfund site or for the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response program

Sign warning people not to eat fish contaminated with PCB. (Courtesy of Richard Stapleton. Reproduced by permission.)

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Once released into the environment, PCBs may continue to exist for years since they are very resistant to chemical and biological degradation. A constant process of deposition and reevaporation favors combined atmospheric and ocean-borne long-range transport to areas far from known PCB sources. In 2002 PCBs are found virtually everywhere on the planet: in deep-sea sediments as well as in arctic and antarctic environments. Their high affinity for organic material causes adsorption on particles and sediments, and accumulation in food webs. For the top members of the food chain, enrichment factors of twenty million and greater have been calculated. PCBs are stored in fatty tissue. They are transferred to offspring via eggs or mother’s milk. Although the acute toxicity of PCBs is rather low, their chronic effects are severe. They include chloracne, hepatocellular carcinoma, adenoﬁbrosis, and damage to the nervous system. During the 1990s evidence was presented by Colborn, Dumanoski, and Myers that PCBs reduce reproductive capacity, and the numbers and viability of sperms and eggs. Maternal exposure to PCBs has been linked to neurological and cognitive problems in young children. Furthermore, there are indications that PCBs suppress normal immune responses. The toxicity of individual congeners varies signiﬁcantly. The most toxic congeners are coplanar (i.e., ﬂat) PCBs, which show a structural similarity to dioxin. This is taken into account by the system of toxicity equivalency factors (TEF), relating the toxicity of a compound to that of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo[1,4]dioxin. A certain percentage of the toxicity of PCB formulations can be attributed to a compound class closely related to dioxins known as furans, which are contained as impurities. Although UV and biological processes are known to decompose PCBs to some extent, the most commonly chosen method is thermal deconstruction. Temperatures above 1,200°C (2,192°F) and an excess of oxygen are necessary to ultimately destroy PCBs. Temperatures of 600 to 900°C (1,112 to 1,652°F), as typically found in communal waste incinerators, favor the formation of the more toxic chlorinated furans. The remediation of PCBcontaminated sites usually consists of removing soil by excavation or sediments by dredging, and disposing of the contaminated material in hazardous waste landﬁlls or incinerating them in approved facilities. In the case of the upper Hudson River in New York State that is heavily contaminated with PCBs from former General Electric production sites, there has been much controversy over the beneﬁts of dredging. Although opponents fear an elevated remobilization of PCBs from dredged sediments, supporters argue that modern dredging equipment minimizes resuspension and that PCBs would be slowly released from sediments over the course of the next several decades if not removed from the river system. Fishing has been banned in some parts of the Hudson River, and in 2002 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drew up a $500 million plan to dredge its sediments. Because of their high persistence, the large amounts deposited in the environment, and their bioaccumulative and toxic potential, PCBs will remain among the priority pollutants for decades. S E E A L S O Bioaccumulation; Dredging; Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs); Pesticides; Superfund; Water Pollution.

Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic (PBT) Chemicals

Bibliography Colborn, Theo; Dumanoski, Dianne; and Myers, John Peterson. (1996). Our Stolen Future. New York: Dutton. Dobson, Stuart, and van Esch, G.J. (1993). Polycholorinated Biphenyls and Terphenyls, 2nd edition. Geneva: World Health Organization. Erickson, Mitchel D. (1997). Analytical Chemistry of PCBs, 2nd edition. Boca Raton, FL: Lewis Publishers. Hutzinger, Otto; Safe, Stephen; and Zitko, V. (1983). The Chemistry of PCBs. Melbourne, FL: Krieger. Robertson, Larry W., and Hansen, Larry G., eds. (2001). PCBs: Recent Advances in Environmental Toxicology and Health Effects. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Safe, Stephen, and Hutzinger, Otto, eds. (1987). Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs): Mammalian and Environmental Toxicology. New York: Springer-Verlag. Waid, John. (1987). PCBs and the Environment. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “The PCB Home Page at EPA.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/pcb.

Stefan Weigel

Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic (PBT) Chemicals Persistent bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) chemicals represent a group of substances that are not easily degraded, accumulate in organisms, and exhibit an acute or chronic toxicity. They may therefore pose serious concerns for human and environmental health. The effects of PBTs range from cancer, endocrine disruption, reproductive dysfunction, behavioral abnormalities, birth defects, disturbance of the immune system, damage to the liver and nervous system, to the extinction of whole populations. The category PBT was deﬁned by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are an integral part of the PBT group, which additionally includes trace metals and organometal compounds. A large proportion of PBTs are organohalogens—namely, organochlorine pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polychlorinated naphthalenes (PCN), chloroparafﬁns, and brominated ﬂame retardants. Further PBTs are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), metals and their compounds (e.g., the antifouling tributyltin TBT), and phthalates (plasticizers). In 1999 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) listed fourteen priority PBTs, most of which belong to the so-called dirty dozen identiﬁed by the UNEP: six pesticides, PCBs, hexachlorobenzene, octachlorostyrene, dioxins and furans, benzo(a)pyrene, alkyllead, and mercury and its compounds. The UNEP Stockholm Convention, signed in 2001, established control and phase-out measures for that initial set of twelve POPs. In response, some nations devised action plans to prevent the introduction of new PBTs into the marketplace, to identify further priority PBTs, and to phase out or reduce the emissions of priority PBTs. S E E A L S O Bioaccumulation; Dioxin; Mercury; PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls); Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs); Pesticides.

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Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)

Bibliography Bernes, Claes, Naylor, Martin. (1999). Persistent Organic Pollutants: A Swedish View of an International Problem. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell Internation. Lipnick, Robert L., ed. (2001). Persistent, Bioaccumulative, and Toxic Chemicals. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society. Lipnick, Robert L., ed. (2001). Persistent, Bioaccumulative, and Toxic Chemicals II: Assessment and New Chemicals. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Persistent, Bioaccumulative and Toxic (PBT) Chemicals Program.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/pbt.

Stefan Weigel

Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)

half-life the time required for a pollutant to lose one-half of its original concentration; for example, the biochemical halflife of DDT in the environment is 15 years

lipophilicity solubility in or attraction to waxy, fatty, or oily substances

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are a subset of the more comprehensive term persistent bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals (PBTs). POPs commonly stands for organic (carbon-based) chemical compounds and mixtures that share four characteristics. They are semivolatile, stable under environmental conditions (half-lives of years to decades), fat-soluble, and possess the potential for adverse effects in organisms. Many POPs are organochlorine compounds. Among the twelve priority POPs deﬁned by the United Nations Environmental Programme (and referred to as the “dirty dozen”) are the pesticides aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, mirex, and toxaphene (chlorobornanes); the industrial chemicals polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and hexachlorobenzene; and the unintentional by-products dioxins and furans. POPs’ resistance to chemical and biological degradation and their propensity to evaporate led to their global distribution. By a constant process of deposition and reevaporation, POPs are transported by air and water currents to regions far from their sources until they ultimately gather in colder climates. Because of their lipophilicity, many POPs concentrate in organisms and accumulate to high levels in the top members of the food web such as predatory ﬁsh and birds, mammals and humans. Certain chemicals possess the ability to cross the placenta, while others are retained. Several contaminants present in the mother’s body are thus handed down to the developing embryo in the womb—they are transferred to offspring across the placenta and through mother’s milk. Adverse effects include cancer, endocrine disruption, reproductive dysfunction, behavioral abnormalities, birth defects, and interference with the immune and nervous systems. S E E A L S O Bioaccumulation; Dioxin; PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls); Pesticides. Bibliography Harrad, Stuart, ed. (2001). Persistent Organic Pollutants: Environmental Behaviour and Pathways of Human Exposure. Boston, MA: Kluwer. Internet Resource United Nations Environmental Programme. “Persistent Organic Pollutants.” Available from http://irptc.unep.ch/pops.

Stefan Weigel

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Pesticides

Fumigators walking down a street in the Sultan Mosque area of Singapore and spraying a pesticide to rid the area of mosquitoes. (©Steve Raymer/ Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Pesticides Pesticides are substances or a mixture of substances, of chemical or biological origin, used by human society to mitigate or repel pests such as bacteria, nematodes, insects, mites, mollusks, birds, rodents, and other organisms that affect food production or human health. They usually act by disrupting some component of the pest’s life processes to kill or inactivate it. In a legal context, pesticides also include substances such as insect attractants, herbicides, plant defoliants, desiccants, and plant growth regulators.

History of Pesticides The concept of pesticides is not new. Around 1000 B.C.E. Homer referred to the use of sulfur to fumigate homes and by 900 C.E. the Chinese were using arsenic to control garden pests. Although major pest outbreaks have occurred, such as potato blight (Phytopthora infestans), which destroyed most potato crops in Ireland during the mid-nineteenth century, not until later that century were pesticides such as arsenic, pyrethrum, lime sulfur, and mercuric

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A bird that died as a result of pesticide use. (U.S. EPA. Reproduced by permission.)

inorganic compounds not containing carbon

chloride used. Between this period and World War II, inorganic and biological substances, such as Paris green, lead arsenate, calcium arsenate, selenium compounds, lime–sulfur, pyrethrum, thiram, mercury, copper sulfate, derris, and nicotine were used, but the amounts and frequency of use were limited, and most pest control employed cultural methods such as rotations, tillage, and manipulation of sowing dates. After World War II the use of pesticides mushroomed, and there are currently more than 1,600 pesticides available and about 4.4 million tons used annually, at a cost of more than $20 billion. The United States accounts for more than 25 percent of this market.

Older Insecticides organochlorine chemical containing carbon and chlorine vector an organism, often an insect or rodent, that carries disease; plasmids, viruses, or bacteria used to transport genes into a host cell: a gene is placed in the vector; the vector then “infects” the bacterium bioconcentrate chemical buildup in an organism, i.e., fish tissue, to levels higher than in the surrounding environment trophic related to feeding

systemic throughout the body

Organophosphate insecticides originated from compounds developed as nerve gases by Germany during World War II. Thus, those developed as insecticides, such as tetraethyl pyrophosphate (TEPP) and parathion, had high mammalian toxicities. Scores of other organophosphates including demeton, methyl schradan, phorate, diazinon, disulfoton, dimethoate, trichlorophon, and mevinphos have been registered. In insects, as in mammals, they act by inhibiting the enzyme cholinesterase (ChE) that breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) at the nerve synapse, blocking impulses and causing hyperactivity and tetanic paralysis of the insect, then death. Some are systemic in plants and animals, but most are not persistent and do not bioaccumulate in animals or have signiﬁcant environmental impacts.

carbamate class of chemicals widely used as pesticides

Carbaryl, the ﬁrst carbamate insecticide, acts on nervous transmissions in insects also through effects on cholinesterase by blocking acetylcholine

organophosphate pesticide that contains phosphorus; short-lived, but some can be toxic when first applied

acetylcholine a chemical that transmits nerve signals to muscles and other nerves

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The ﬁrst synthetic organochlorine insecticide, DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), discovered in Switzerland in 1939, was very effective and used extensively to control head and body lice, human disease vectors and agricultural pests, in the decades leading up to the 1970s. Benzene hexachloride (BHC) and chlordane were discovered during World War II and toxaphene (and heptachlor) slightly later. Shortly thereafter, two cyclodiene organochlorines, aldrin and dieldrin, were introduced, followed by endrin, endosulfan, and isobenzan. All these insecticides acted by blocking an insect’s nervous system, causing malfunction, tremors, and death. All organochlorines are relatively insoluble, persist in soils and aquatic sediments, can bioconcentrate in the tissues of invertebrates and vertebrates from their food, move up trophic chains, and affect top predators. These properties of persistence and bioaccumulation led eventually to the withdrawal of registration and use of organochlorine insectides, from 1973 to the late 1990s, in industrialized nations, although they continued to be used in developing countries.

Pesticides

receptors. Other carbamate insecticides include aldicarb, methiocarb, methomyl, carbofuran, bendiocarb, and oxamyl. In general, although they are broad-spectrum insecticides, of moderate toxicity and persistence, they rarely bioaccumulate or cause major environmental impacts. Botanical insecticides include nicotine from tobacco, pyrethrum from chrysanthemums, derris from cabbage, rotenone from beans, sabadilla from lilies, ryania from the ryania shrub, limonene from citrus peel, and neem from the tropical neem tree. Most, other than nicotine, have low levels of toxicity in mammals and birds and create few adverse environmental effects.

botanical derived from or relating to plants

Newer Insecticides Synthetic pyrethroid insecticides, with structures based on the natural compound pyrethrum, were introduced in the 1960s and include tetramethrin, resmethrin, fenvalerate, permethrin, lambda-cyalothrin, and deltamethrin, all used extensively in agriculture. They have very low mammalian toxicities and potent insecticidal action, are photostable with low volatilities and persistence. They are broad-spectrum insecticides and may kill some natural enemies of pests. They do not bioaccumulate and have few effects on mammals, but are very toxic to aquatic invertebrates and ﬁsh. In recent years, new classes of insecticides have been marketed, none of which are persistent or bioaccumulate. They include juvenile hormone mimics, synthetic versions of insect juvenile hormones that act by preventing immature stages of the insects from molting into an adult, and avermectins, natural products produced by soil microorganisms, insecticidal at very low concentrations. Bacillus thuringiensis toxins are proteins produced by a bacterium that is pathogenic to insects. When activated in the insect gut, they destroy the selective permeability of the gut wall. The ﬁrst strains were toxic only to Lepidoptera, but strains toxic to ﬂies and beetles have since been developed. B. thuringiensis has been incorporated into plants genetically.

pyrethroid chemicals derived from chrysanthemums and related plants

pathogenic causing illness

Nematicides Soil nematocides, such as dichlopropene, methyl isocyanate, chloropicrin, and methyl bromide, are broad-spectrum soil fumigants. Others, aldicarb, dazomet, and metham sodium, act mainly through contact. All have very high mammalian toxicities and can kill a wide range of organisms from both the plant and animal kingdoms. Although transient in soil, they may have drastic ecological effects on soil systems.

nematocide a chemical agent which is destructive to nematodes

transient present for a short time

Molluscicides Two molluscicides, metaldehyde and methiocarb, are used as baits against slugs and snails. Although of high mammalian toxicity, they cause few problems other than the occasional accidental death of wild mammals. Several molluscicides, used to control aquatic snails, N-trityl morpholine, copper sulfate, niclosamine, and sodium pentachlorophenate, are toxic to ﬁsh.

molluscicide chemical that kills mollusks

Herbicides Hormone-type herbicides such as 2,4,5-T; 2,4-D; and MCPA; were discovered during the 1940s. They do not persist in soil, are selective in their toxicity to plants, are of low mammalian toxicity, cause few direct environmental problems, but are relatively soluble and reach waterways and groundwater.

herbicide a chemical pesticide designed to control or destroy plants, weeds, or grasses

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Contact herbicides, which kill weeds through foliage applications, include dintrophenols, cyanophenols, pentachlorophenol, and paraquat. Most are nonpersistent, but triazines can persist in the soil for several years, are slightly toxic to soil organisms and moderately so to aquatic organisms. Herbicides cause few direct environmental problems other than their indirect effects, in leaving bare soil, which is free of plant cover and susceptible to erosion.

Fungicides fungicide pesticide used to control, deter, or destroy fungi

Many different types of fungicides are used, of widely differing chemical structures. Most have relatively low mammalian toxicities, and except for carbamates such as benomyl, a relatively narrow spectrum of toxicity to soilinhabiting and aquatic organisms. Their greatest environmental impact is toxicity to soil microorganisms, but these effects are short term.

Effects on the Terrestrial Environment Pesticides are biocides designed to be toxic to particular groups of organisms. They can have considerable adverse environmental effects, which may be extremely diverse: sometimes relatively obvious but often extremely subtle and complex. Some pesticides are highly speciﬁc and others broad spectrum; both types can affect terrestrial wildlife, soil, water systems, and humans. Pesticides have had some of their most striking effects on birds, particularly those in the higher trophic levels of food chains, such as bald eagles, hawks, and owls. These birds are often rare, endangered, and susceptible to pesticide residues such as those occurring from the bioconcentration of organochlorine insecticides through terrestrial food chains. Pesticides may kill grain- and plant-feeding birds, and the elimination of many rare species of ducks and geese has been reported. Populations of insect-eating birds such as partridges, grouse, and pheasants have decreased due to the loss of their insect food in agricultural ﬁelds through the use of insecticides. Bees are extremely important in the pollination of crops and wild plants, and although pesticides are screened for toxicity to bees, and the use of pesticides toxic to bees is permitted only under stringent conditions, many bees are killed by pesticides, resulting in the considerably reduced yield of crops dependent on bee pollination. The literature on pest control lists many examples of new pest species that have developed when their natural enemies are killed by pesticides. This has created a further dependence on pesticides not dissimilar to drug dependence. Finally, the effects of pesticides on the biodiversity of plants and animals in agricultural landscapes, whether caused directly or indirectly by pesticides, constitute a major adverse environmental impact of pesticides.

Effects on the Aquatic Environment The movement of pesticides into surface and groundwater is well documented. Wildlife is affected, and human drinking water is sometimes contaminated beyond acceptable safety levels. Sediments dredged from U.S. waterways are often so heavily contaminated with persistent and other pesticide residues that it becomes problematic to safely dispose of them on land. A major environmental impact has been the widespread mortality of ﬁsh and marine invertebrates due to the contamination of aquatic systems by

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pesticides. This has resulted from the agricultural contamination of waterways through fallout, drainage, or runoff erosion, and from the discharge of industrial efﬂuents containing pesticides into waterways. Historically, most of the ﬁsh in Europe’s Rhine River were killed by the discharge of pesticides, and at one time ﬁsh populations in the Great Lakes became very low due to pesticide contamination. Additionally, many of the organisms that provide food for ﬁsh are extremely susceptible to pesticides, so the indirect effects of pesticides on the ﬁsh food supply may have an even greater effect on ﬁsh populations. Some pesticides, such as pyrethroid insecticides, are extremely toxic to most aquatic organisms. It is evident that pesticides cause major losses in global ﬁsh production.

Effects on Humans The most important aspect of pesticides is how they affect humans. There is increasing anxiety about the importance of small residues of pesticides, often suspected of being carcinogens or disrupting endocrine activities, in drinking water and food. In spite of stringent regulations by international and national regulatory agencies, reports of pesticide residues in human foods, both imported and home-produced, are numerous. Over the last ﬁfty years many human illnesses and deaths have occurred as a result of exposure to pesticides, with up to 20,000 deaths reported annually. Some of these are suicides, but most involve some form of accidental exposure to pesticides, particularly among farmers and spray operators in developing countries, who are careless in handling pesticides or wear insufﬁcient protective clothing and equipment. Moreover, there have been major accidents involving pesticides that have led to the death or illness of many thousands. One instance occurred in Bhopal, India, where more than 5,000 deaths resulted from exposure to accidental emissions of methyl isocyanate from a pesticide factory.

carcinogen any substances that can cause or aggravate cancer endocrine the system of glands, hormones, and receptors that help control animal function

Testing and Reclassification New pesticides require extensive laboratory and ﬁeld testing and may take about ﬁve years to reach market. A pesticide company has to identify uses, test effectiveness, and provide data on chemical structure, production, formulation, fate, persistence, and environmental impacts. The product is tested in the laboratory, greenhouse, and ﬁeld under different environmental conditions. After several years of testing, the company submits a registration data package to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Data include studies on acute, chronic, reproductive, and developmental toxicity to mammals, birds, and ﬁsh, the pesticide’s environmental fate, rates of degradation, translocations to other sites, and ecological studies on its harmful effects to, and on, nontarget plants and animals. After its review by government and other scientists, the EPA grants registration of the product for certain uses, with agreed label data and directions for use. About 1 in 35,000 chemicals survives from initial laboratory testing to the market, a process that generally takes several years, and involves more than 140 tests. The continued use of a pesticide is supervised by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), enacted in 1947 and modiﬁed many times since. A review may be called for when new evidence indicates possible unreasonable risks to human health or the environment, including toxicity or

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ill health to humans or animals, hazards to nontarget organisms, and risks to endangered species and suggests that the risks may outweigh the beneﬁts of continued registration. After review, the EPA may take no action, alter the pesticide label to minimize risk, reclassify the approved uses or eliminate speciﬁc uses, or cancel or suspend the pesticide’s registration entirely.

Pesticides and Food Safety Pesticides are used on food crops and meat produced from domestic animals. The residues contained within domestically produced food are monitored closely by the EPA, whereas those for imported food are tracked by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Scientists determine the highest dose of a pesticide that might be ingested by animals (birds and mammals, including humans) to cause adverse health effects but not death; this is called the maximum tolerated dose (MTD). They also determine the no-observable-effect level (NOEL) and identify the amount of pesticides that may be safely consumed by humans, in terms of milligrams per kilogram of body weight, over a seventy-year lifetime. In calculating an acceptable exposure for a pesticide, scientists usually include a safety factor of one hundred below the NOEL, assuming a lifetime of exposure to the pesticide. Such calculations take for granted that a pesticide is applied to all labeled crops, at recommended rates, and that the treated food will be consumed daily for a lifetime. Pesticides that have been demonstrated to cause cancer in laboratory animals are not granted tolerance, or approved for application to food crops, based on legislation from Section 409, the socalled Delaney clause, of the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and USDA, in addition to many states, have monitoring programs for pesticide residues in food. They sample approximately 1 percent of the national food supply. For every pesticide, the FDA conducts a total diet study (a market-based survey) to more accurately assess the exposure of the human population to pesticides. Similar calculations are made for exposure to pesticides that may reach drinking water through percolation into groundwater or runoff into waterways. These adverse effects of pesticides on humans and wildlife have resulted in research into ways of reducing pesticide use. The most important of these is the concept of integrated pest management (IPM), ﬁrst introduced in 1959. This combines minimal use of the least harmful pesticides, integrated with biological and cultural methods of minimizing pest losses. It is linked with using pesticides only when threshold levels of pest attacks have been identiﬁed. There is also a move toward sustainable agriculture which aims to minimize use of pesticides and fertilizers based on a systems approach. S E E A L S O Agriculture; Bioaccumulation; Carson, Rachel; DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane); Endocrine Disruption; Integrated Pest Management; Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic Chemicals (PBTs); Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs); Water Pollution. Bibliography Bohmart, B.L. (1997). The Standard Pesticide Users Guide, 4th edition. London: Prentice-Hall International. Carson, Rachel. (1963). Silent Spring. London: Hamish Hamilton. Ekstrom, C., ed. (1994). World Directory of Pesticide Control Organizations. Farnham, U.K.: British Crop Protection Council.

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Leng, M.L.; Leovey, E.M.K.; and Zubkoff, P.L., eds. (1995). Agrochemical Environmental Fate: State of the Art. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Pimentel, D., Lehman, H., eds. (1993). The Pesticide Question: Environment, Economics, and Ethics. New York: Chapman and Hall. Rand, G.M., ed. (1995). Fundamentals of Aquatic Toxicology: Effects, Environmental Fate and Risk Assessment. Washington, D.C.: Taylor and Francis. Smith, R.P. (1992). A Primer of Environmental Toxicology. Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger. Ware, G.W. (1994). The Pesticide Book, 4th edition. Fresno, CA: Thomson Publications. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. “Pesticides.” Available from http:// www.epa.gov/pesticides.

Clive A. Edwards

Petroleum Petroleum is a naturally occurring liquid oil normally found in deposits beneath the surface of the earth. It is a type of oil composed of rock minerals, making it different from other kinds of oils that come from plants and animals (such as vegetable oil, animal fat, or essential oils). The word petroleum comes from the Latin words petra (rock) and oleum (oil), and so literally means rock oil. Despite this, petroleum is an organic compound, formed from the remains of microorganisms living millions of years ago. It is one of the three main fossil fuels, along with coal and natural gas.

Petroleum Economy Petroleum, like all fossil fuels, primarily consists of a complex mixture of molecules called hydrocarbons (molecules containing both hydrogen and carbon). When it comes out of the ground, it is known as crude oil, and it may have various gases, solids, and trace minerals mixed in with it. Through reﬁnement processes, a variety of consumer products can be made from petroleum. Most of these are fuels: gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, kerosene, and propane are common examples. It is also used to make asphalt and lubricant grease, and it is a raw material for synthetic chemicals. Chemicals and materials derived from petroleum products include plastics, pesticides, fertilizers, paints, solvents, refrigerants, cleaning ﬂuids, detergents, antifreeze, and synthetic ﬁbers. The modern petroleum industry began in 1859 in Pennsylvania, when a man named Edwin L. Drake constructed the ﬁrst oil well, a facility for extracting petroleum from natural deposits. Since then, petroleum has become a valuable commodity in industrialized parts of the world, and oil companies actively search for petroleum deposits and build large oilextraction facilities. Several deposits exist in the United States. However, around 1960 oil production in the country began to decline as oil in the deposits was being used up and fewer new deposits were being discovered. Demand for petroleum products continued to increase, and as a result the United States came to rely more and more on oil imported from other countries. In 2001 the amount of petroleum extracted from deposits in the United States was estimated to be only one-third of the amount demanded by U.S. consumers. A similar pattern exists in other industrialized countries, and some, like Japan and Germany, import almost all of the oil they use.

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TEN LARGEST OIL SPILLS IN HISTORY (BY VOLUME) Date

Location 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Sea Island Installations, Persian Gulf, Kuwait Ixtoc I exploratory well, Bahia del Campeche, Mexico Production well, Fergana Valley, Uzbekistan Nowruz No. 3 well, Persian Gulf, Nowruz Field, Iran Tanker Castillo de Bellver, Table Bay, South Africa Tanker Amoco Cadiz, off Portsall, Brittany, France Tanker Odyssey, North Atlantic Ocean, off St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada 8. Tanker Atlantic Empress, Caribbean Sea, Trinidad and Tobago 9. Tanker Haven, Genoa, Italy 10. Production well D-103, 800 km southeast of Tripoli, Libya

January 26, 1991 June 3, 1979 March 2, 1992 February 4, 1983 August 6, 1983 March 16, 1978 November 10, 1988

Amount Spilled 240,000,000 140,000,000 88,000,000 80,000,000 78,500,000 68,668,000 43,100,000

gallons gallons gallons gallons gallons gallons gallons

(816,327 (476,190 (299,320 (272,109 (267,007 (233,565 (146,600

tons) tons) tons) tons) tons) tons) tons)

July 19, 1979

42,704,000 gallons (145,252 tons)

April 11, 1991 August 1, 1980

42,000,000 gallons (142,857 tons) 42,000,000 gallons (142,857 tons)

SOURCE: Oil Spill Intelligence Report (1999). International Oil Spill Statistics: 1998. New York: Aspen Publishers. Available from www.aspenpublishers.com/

environment.asp

However, on a per capita basis, the consumption in these countries is nowhere near the consumption in the United States. The United States and Canada are unique in that, on average, an individual in these countries consumes about twice as much petroleum product as do individuals in most other industrialized nations. People in the United States and Canada rely more on personal vehicles for their transportation and tend to drive greater distances, making petroleum their major source of energy. In the United States, about two-thirds of the petroleum consumed is transportation fuel, and two-thirds of that (45% of the total) is gasoline for cars and trucks. About 40 percent of the energy used in the United States every year comes from petroleum.

Foreign Oil Dependence Political leaders in the United States have long been gravely concerned about the country’s growing dependence on foreign oil, which in many ways puts the country at the mercy of foreign governments, some of them hostile to the United States. The greatest production of crude oil in the world is in the Persian Gulf region of the Middle East, where about 65 percent of the world’s known petroleum deposits are located. About half of U.S. imports come from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a group of countries encompassing the Persian Gulf and certain parts of Africa and South America. Events in these often volatile regions can have a huge impact on oil prices in the United States and worldwide, and because of the crucial role oil plays in U.S. society any change in the price can precipitate uncontrollable shifts in the country’s economy (see chart “World Oil Price 1970-2000”). The most famous example of this is the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 to 1974, when U.S. support for Israel in a conﬂict in the Middle East led to a decision by OPEC to impose steep price increases on the sale of oil to the United States. One response by the U.S. government has been the establishment of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an emergency stockpile designed to sustain the country’s oil needs for approximately three months in the event of a complete cutoff of imports. There is little doubt, however, that dependence on foreign oil is both a political liability for the United States as well as a risk to national security.

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Petroleum

Workers using water hoses to clean oil from a beach following a spill. (United States Environmental Protection Agency. Reproduced by permission.)

Environmental Pollution Petroleum-derived contaminants constitute one of the most prevalent sources of environmental degradation in the industrialized world. In large concentrations, the hydrocarbon molecules that make up crude oil and petroleum products are highly toxic to many organisms, including humans. Petroleum also contains trace amounts of sulfur and nitrogen compounds, which are dangerous by themselves and can react with the environment to produce secondary poisonous chemicals. The dominance of petroleum products in the United States and the world economy creates the conditions for distributing large amounts of these toxins into populated areas and ecosystems around the globe.

103

Petroleum

Smoke is pouring from a refinery burnoff vent. (© Royalty-Free/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Oil Spills Perhaps the most visible source of petroleum pollution are the catastrophic oil-tanker spills—like the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska—that make news headlines and provide disheartening pictures of oilcoated shorelines and dead or oiled birds and sea animals. These spills occur during the transportation of crude oil from exporting to importing nations. Crude oil travels for long distances by either ocean tanker or land pipeline, and both methods are prone to accidents. Oil may also spill at the site where it is extracted, as in the case of a blowout like the Ixtoc I exploratory well in 1979 (see table “Ten Largest Oil Spills in History”). A blowout is one of the major risks of drilling for oil. It occurs when gas trapped inside the deposit is at such a high pressure that oil suddenly erupts out of the drill shaft in a geyser. Accidents with tankers, pipelines, and oil wells release massive quantities of petroleum into land and marine ecosystems in a concentrated form. The ecological impacts of large spills like these have only been studied for a very

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Petroleum

W O R L D O IL P RI C E 1 9 7 0 – 2 0 0 0

45 40

Nominal Dollars per Barrel

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Over the last three decades, the world has experienced seesaw swings in the price of oil. SOURCE: World Oil Market and Price Chronologies DOE Energy Information Administration; originally published by the Department of Energy's Office of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Analysis Division

few cases, and it is not possible to say which have been the most environmentally damaging accidents in history. A large oil spill in the open ocean may do less harm to marine organisms than a small spill near the shore. The Exxon Valdez disaster created a huge ecological disaster not because of the volume of oil spilled (eleven million gallons) but because of the amount of shoreline affected, the sensitivity and abundance of organisms in the area, and the physical characteristics of the Prince William Sound, which helped to amplify the damage. The Exxon Valdez spill sparked the most comprehensive and costly cleanup effort ever attempted, and called more public attention to oil accidents than ever before. Scientiﬁc studies of the effects of oil in Prince William Sound are ongoing, and the number of tanker accidents worldwide has decreased signiﬁcantly since the time of the Valdez spill, due to stricter regulations and such required improvements in vessel design as double-hull construction.

Nonpoint Sources Spills from tankers, pipelines, and oil wells are examples of point sources of pollution, where the origin of the contaminants is a single identiﬁable point. They also represent catastrophic releases of a large volume of pollutants in a short period of time. But the majority of pollution from oil is from nonpoint sources, where small amounts coming from many different places over a long period of time add up to large-scale effects. Seventy percent of the oil released by human activity into oceans worldwide is a result of small spills during petroleum consumption. These minor unreported spills can include routine discharges of fuel from commercial vessels or leakage from recreational boats.

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Petroleum

OIL SEEPS Almost half (45%) of the petroleum entering the marine environment is from natural seeps rather than anthropogenic sources. At seeps, oil and gas bubble out of cracks in the seabed creating special environments in which new organisms grow. These organisms survive through chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis. They live in total darkness, more than four hundred meters below sea level, but survive by feeding directly off the hydrocarbons present in seeps or by eating carbon compounds resulting from chemosynthetic bacterial degradation of seep oil. Since 1984 oceanographers have discovered chemosynthetic communities of clams, mussels, tubeworms, bacterial mats, and other organisms on the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico. United States Department of the Interior regulations protect these chemosynthetic communities from damage due to oil and gas drilling activities.

However, in North America, the majority of the release originates on land. Oil tends to collect in hazardous concentrations in the stream of wastewater coming out of cities and other populated areas. Runoff from asphalt-covered roads and parking lots enters storm drains, streams, and lakes and eventually travels to the ocean, affecting all of the ecosystems through which it passes. As cities grow, more and more people use petroleum products—lubricants, solvents, oil-based paint, and, above all, gasoline—and these are often improperly disposed of down drains and sewage pipes. Industrial plants also produce small, chronic spills that aren’t noticed individually, but add up over time and enter waterways. Taken together, land-based river and urban runoff sources constitute over half of the petroleum pollution introduced to North American coastal waters due to human activity, and 20 percent of the petroleum pollution introduced to ocean waters worldwide. When wastewater from these sources enters the marine environment it is usually by means of an estuary, an area where freshwater from land mixes with seawater. Estuaries are especially critical habitats for a variety of plants and animals, and are among the ecosystems most sensitive to pollutants.

Petroleum-Contaminated Soil Not all oil released from land sources is quickly washed away to sea, however. Pipeline and oil-well accidents, unregulated industrial waste, and leaking underground storage tanks can all permanently contaminate large areas of soil, making them economically useless as well as dangerous to the health of organisms living in and around them. Removing or treating soil contaminated by petroleum is especially urgent because the hydrocarbons can leach into the underlying groundwater and move into human residential areas. The engineering ﬁeld of bioremediation has emerged in recent decades as a response to this threat. In bioremediation, bacteria that feed on hydrocarbons and transform them into carbon dioxide can be applied to an affected area. Bioremediation has in many cases made cleaning up petroleumcontaminated sites a proﬁtable real-estate investment for land developers.

Air Pollution The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designates six criteria pollutants for determining air quality. These are: carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NO and/or NO2, usually referred to as NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), ground-level ozone (O3), particulate matter (including things like soot, dust, asbestos ﬁbers, pesticides, and metals), and lead (Pb). Petroleum-fueled vehicles, engines, and industrial processes directly produce the vast majority of CO and NOx in the atmosphere. They are also the principal source of gaseous hydrocarbons (also called volatile organic compounds, or VOCs), which combine with NOx in sunlight to create O3. Ozone, while important for blocking ultraviolet rays in the upper atmosphere, is also a key component of urban smog and creates human health problems when present in the lower atmosphere. Sulfur dioxide is a trace component of crude oil, and can cause acid rain when released into the air at oil reﬁneries or petroleum power plants. Particulate matter is directly emitted in vehicle exhaust and can also form from the reaction of exhaust gases with water vapor and sunlight. Finally, leaded gasoline is a huge contributor of lead to the atmosphere, and

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Petroleum

the use of unleaded gasoline has decreased lead concentrations dramatically. The EPA and the World Bank are working to encourage the phaseout of leaded gasoline worldwide. Petroleum-fueled transportation and coal-burning power plants are considered the chief causes of global warming. Excess amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, and NOx, among other gases, trap heat in the atmosphere and create the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a main constituent of petroleum fuel exhaust, even though it is not toxic and therefore not classiﬁed as a pollutant. About one-third of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere every year comes from vehicle exhaust. Methane (NH3), although usually associated with natural gas, is also emitted whenever crude oil is extracted, transported, reﬁned, or stored.

The Future of Petroleum The world’s reliance on petroleum is expected to grow, despite widespread environmental, economic, and political consequences. The U.S. oil extraction industry continues to aggressively search for new oil deposits and lobby the federal government to open up restricted areas to drilling. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska has been on the oil industry agenda for several decades, creating a long-standing environmental controversy. Advances in oil well technology have allowed extraction in the deep ocean beyond the continental shelf, but these have not been enough to reverse the trend of declining production in the United States. There are many compelling reasons to decrease society’s dependence on petroleum for energy, and the most obvious place to begin is in the transportation sector. Energy-efﬁcient engines and hybrid gas/electric cars can help to reduce some of the need for oil, providing higher gas mileage and less demand. A variety of alternative fuels have also been developed, such as ethanol, biodiesel (made from vegetable oil), and hydrogen. Each of these would produce little or no exhaust pollutants or greenhouse gases, and each derives from plentiful renewable resources. The United States is now in fact actively researching hydrogen as a viable alternative to gasoline, and the hydrogen fuel cell as a substitute for the internal combustion engine. Petroleum is a useful chemical substance for many important purposes. But it is also a nonrenewable resource with a highly toxic composition, and it poses signiﬁcant problems when used in huge volumes throughout the industrialized world. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; Coal; Disasters: Oil Spills; Economics; Electric Power; Energy; Fossil Fuels; Global Warming; Ozone; NOx; Renewable Energy; Sulfur Dioxide; Underground Storage Tanks; Vehicular Pollution. Bibliography Oil Spill Intelligence Report. (1997). Oil Spills from Vessels (1960–1995): An International Historical Perspective. New York: Aspen Publishers. Internet Resources Committee on Oil in the Sea, National Research Council. (2003). Oil in the Sea III: Inputs, Fates, and Effects. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. Available from http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10388.html. Energy Information Administration. “Ofﬁcial Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government.” Available from http://www.eia.doe.gov.

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Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council. “Restoring the Resources Injured by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and Understanding Environmental Change in the Northern Gulf of Alaska.” Available from http://www.oilspill.state.ak.us. National Biodiesel Board. “Need a Fill Up?” Available from http://www.biodiesel.org. National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition. “National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition and E85.” Available from http://www.e85fuel.com. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Ofﬁce of Response and Restoration, National Ocean Service.” Available from http://response.restoration.noaa.gov. Schlumberger Excellence in Educational Development (SEED) Science Center. “Science Lab: Oil Well Blowout Simulator.” Available from http://www.slb.com/seed/ en/lab/blowout. Trench, Cheryl J. (2001). “Oil Market Basics.” Washington, D.C.: Energy Information Administration. Available from http://www.eia.doe.gov. U.S. Department of Energy. “Energy Efﬁciency and Renewable Energy.” Available from http://www.eere.energy.gov. U.S. Department of Energy. “Fossil.energy.gov: A U.S. Department of Energy Web Site.” Available from http://www.fossil.energy.gov. U.S. Department of Energy. “Fossil Fuels: An Energy Education Website.” Available from http://www.fossil.energy.gov/education. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1995). Proﬁle of the Petroleum Reﬁning Industry. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce. Available from http:// www.epa.gov. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1999). Proﬁle of the Oil and Gas Extraction Industry. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce. Available from http://www.epa.gov. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Air Quality Where You Live.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/air/urbanair/index.html. U.S. Geological Survey. Available from http://www.usgs.gov. U.S. Geological Survey. (1997). “Bioremediation: Nature’s Way to a Cleaner Environment.” Available from http://water.usgs.gov/wid/html/bioremed.html.

Adrian MacDonald

Pharmaceutical Waste

See Medical Waste; Resource Conservation

and Recovery Act

Phosphates Pure phosphorus is rare in nature. It usually combines with oxygen to form phosphate ions or groups (PO43-). Phosphates are considered organic when phosphate groups attach to carbon atoms or inorganic when phosphate ions associate with minerals such as calcium. Organic phosphates provide the energy for most chemical reactions in living cells. The weathering of rocks releases inorganic phosphorus into the soil, and plants take this up and convert it to organic phosphate in their tissue. Humans and animals eat the plants, and when they die, phosphorus is returned to the soil by the action of bacteria and then again taken up by plants. This is the so-called phosphorus cycle. Phosphates are normally a limiting factor for aquatic plant growth. When large amounts of phosphorus enter water, for instance, from farm runoff containing fertilizer, plants can grow out of control. Concentrations as low as 0.01 milligrams per liter (mg/L) can greatly impact a stream. This overfeeding is called eutrophication and may cause an algae bloom. The algae eventually die and sink to the bottom. Bacteria feeding on the algae remove

108

Plastic

oxygen from the water for respiration. As oxygen levels become lower, animals that need high oxygen levels such as ﬁsh will die. This is especially a problem at night when no photosynthesis occurs to replenish the oxygen. If organic oxygen levels drop sufﬁciently, aerobic organisms can no longer survive and anaerobic bacteria take over. The end products of anaerobic respiration may smell like rotten eggs, ﬁshy, or wormy. S E E A L S O Agriculture; Fish Kills; Health, Environmental; Wastewater Treatment; Water Pollution. Internet Resource University of Maryland. “Impact of Phosphorus on Aquatic Life.” Available from http://www.agnr.umd.edu/users.

Diana Strnisa

Photochemical Smog Phytoremediation PIRGs

See Smog

See Bioremediation

See Public Interest Research Groups

Plastic Plastics are a subspecies of a class of materials known as polymers. These are composed of large molecules, formed by joining many, often thousands, of smaller molecules (monomers) together. Other kinds of polymers are ﬁbers, ﬁlms, elastomers (rubbers), and biopolymers (i.e., cellulose, proteins, and nucleic acids). Plastics are made from low-molecular-weight monomer precursors, organic materials, which are mostly derived from petroleum, that are joined together by a process called “polymerization.” Plastics owe their name to their most important property, the ability to be shaped to almost any form to produce articles of practical value. Plastics can be stiff and hard or ﬂexible and soft. Because of their light weight, low cost, and desirable properties, their use has rapidly increased and they have replaced other materials such as metals and glass. They are used in millions of items, including cars, bulletproof vests, toys, hospital equipment, and food containers. More than a hundred billion pounds of plastic were produced in 2000. Their increased use has resulted in concern with (1) the consumption of natural resources such as oil, (2) the toxicity associated with their manufacture and use, and (3) the environmental impact arising from discarded plastics.

molecule the smallest division of a compound that still retains or exhibits all the properties of the substance

Pollution Problems Industrial practices in plastic manufacture can lead to polluting efﬂuents and the use of toxic intermediates, the exposure to which can be hazardous. Better industrial practices have led to minimizing exposure of plant workers to harmful fumes; for example, there have been problems in the past resulting from workers being exposed to toxic vinyl chloride vapor during the production of polyvinyl chloride. Much progress has been made in developing “green processes” that avoid the use of detrimental substances. For example, phosgene, a toxic “war gas,” was formerly used in the manufacture of polycarbonates. New processes, now almost universally employed, eliminate its

109

Plastic

Cape fur seal lying on rock, dead of suffocation from a plastic wire wound around its neck, South Africa. (©Martin Harvey; Gallo Images/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

endocrine disruption disruption of hormone control systems in the body

110

use. Also, the “just in time” approach to manufacture has been made possible by computer-controlled processes, whereby no signiﬁcant amounts of intermediates are stored, but just generated as needed. In addition, efforts are ongoing to employ “friendly” processes involving enzyme-catalyzed lowtemperature methods akin to biological reactions to replace more polluting high-temperature processes involving operations like distillation. Spillage of plastic pellets that ﬁnd their way into sewage systems, and eventually to the sea, has hurt wildlife that may mistake the pellets for food. Better “housekeeping” of plastic molding facilities is being enforced in an attempt to address this problem. Most plastics are relatively inert biologically, and they have been employed in medical devices such as prosthetics, artery replacements, and “soft” and interocular lenses. Problems with their use largely result from the presence of trace amounts of nonplastic components such as monomers and plasticizers. This has led to restrictions on the use of some plastics for food applications, but improved technology has led to a reduction in the content of such undesirable components. For example, the use of polyacrylonitrile for beverage bottles was banned at one time because the traces of its monomer, acrylonitrile, were a possible carcinogen. However, current practices render it acceptable today. There has been concern about endocrine disruption from phthalate-containing plasticizers used for plastics such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The subject of this possible side effect is controver-

Plastic

P O ST - C O N SU M E R PL A S T I C W A S T E , 2 0 0 0

Polyurethane Foam

Packaging

Total Thermoplastics

Furniture

4

Adhesives and Other

Electrical and Electronics

8

Other Transportation

12

Building and Construction

16

Industrial Machinery

Total Thermosets Consumer and Institutional

20

Automobile

Postconsumer Waste (billions of pounds)

24

0 Sector SOURCE:

Adapted from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

sial, but caution in use is warranted pending further study. Plastics may also result in problems resulting from their improper use, and there is need of better education concerning limitations of use, for example, precautions that should be taken with items such as frying pan coatings and microwavable containers. When exposed to high temperatures, some plastics decompose or oxidize and produce low molecular weight products that may be toxic.

Reduced Use and Recycling There is growing concern about the excess use of plastics, particularly in packaging. This has been done, in part, to avoid the theft of small objects. The use of plastics can be reduced through a better choice of container sizes and through the distribution of liquid products in more concentrated form. A concern is the proper disposal of waste plastics. Litter results from careless disposal, and decomposition rates in landﬁlls can be extremely long. Consumers should be persuaded or required to divert these for recycling or other environmentally acceptable procedures. Marine pollution arising from disposal of plastics from ships or ﬂow from storm sewers must be avoided. Disposal at sea is prohibited by federal regulation. Recycling of plastics is desirable because it avoids their accumulation in landﬁlls. While plastics constitute only about 8 percent by weight or 20 percent by volume of municipal solid waste, their low density and slowness to decompose makes them a visible pollutant of public concern. It is evident that the success of recycling is limited by the development of successful strategies for collection and separation. Recycling of scrap plastics by manufacturers has been highly successful and has proven economical, but recovering discarded plastics from consumers is more difﬁcult. It is well recognized that separated plastics can be recycled to yield more superior products than possible for mixed ones.

111

Plastic

Labeling plastic items with symbols has been employed, which enables consumers to identify them easily for placement in separate containers for curbside pickup. However, success depends on how conscientious consumers are in employing such standards and the ability of collectors to keep various types of plastic separate. Even a small amount of a foreign plastic in recycling feedstock can lead to the appreciable deterioration of properties, and it is difﬁcult to achieve a high degree of purity. Manual sorting at recycling centers helps, but even trained sorters have difﬁculty identifying recyclables. Furthermore, manual sorting is an unattractive task and retaining labor willing to be trained for this is problematic. Automatic sorting techniques have been developed that depend on various physical, optical, or electronic properties of plastics for identiﬁcation. Such methods prove difﬁcult because of the variety of sizes, shapes, and colors of plastic objects that are encountered. Although in principle it is possible to create devices that can separate plastics with varying degrees of success, the equipment generally becomes more expensive with increasing efﬁciency. Technology for this continues to improve, and it is becoming possible to successfully separate mixed plastics derived from curbside pickup using such equipment. To separate plastics, it is ﬁrst necessary to identify the different types as indicated in the table. One must also distinguish between thermoplastics and thermosets. The latter, as found in tires and melamine dishes, has molecules that are interconnected by “crosslinks” and cannot be readily melted for recycling unless they are chemically reduced to low-molecular-weight species. For tires, recycling has not proved economical so disposal has involved grinding them up as asphalt additives for roads or burning in cement kilns. Over 1.5 million pounds of plastic bottles were recycled in 2000, representing a four-fold increase in the amount of plastic recycled the previous decade. Nonetheless, the capacity to recycle bottles appreciably exceeds their supply by about 40 percent, so local governments and environmental groups need to encourage greater participation in this practice among consumers. Proﬁtable operations are currently in place for recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET) from bottle sources and converting it into products such as ﬁbers. One persistent problem, though, is obtaining clean enough feedstock to avoid the clogging of oriﬁces in spinnerets by foreign particles. This has limited the ability to produce ﬁne denier ﬁbers from such sources. PET recycling is also constrained by regulations limiting its use to produce items in contact with food because there had been concern about contamination in consideration of improved recycling techniques. A leading candidate for recycle feedstock is carpets because replacement carpets are usually installed by professionals able to identify recyclables and who serve as a ready source for recycling operations. They face the problem, however, of separating the recyclable carpet components from other parts such as jute backing and dirt. Such recycling operations have been only marginally proﬁtable. Polystyrene (PS) is another potentially recyclable polymer, but identifying a readily collectable source is problematic. One had been the Styrofoam “clamshells” fast-food chains use to package hamburgers. Recyclers were able to proﬁtably collect polystyrene from such sources and produce salable products. However, largely because of public pressure, this use of polystyrene has

112

Plastic

MAJOR TYPES OF PLASTICS BY S.P.I. CODES SPI Code

Type of Resin

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

PET - Polyethylene terephthalate HDPE - High-density polyethylene PVC - Polyvinyl chloride LDPE - Low-density polyethylene PP - Polypropylene PS - Polystyrene Other

Example Products

% of Plastic 0.5% 21% 6.5% 27% 16% 16% 8.5%

Soft drink bottles, medicine containers Milk and water bottles, detergent bottles, toys Pipe, meat wrap, cooking oil bottles Wrapping films, grocery bags Syrup bottles, yogurt tubs, diapers Coffee cups, "clamshells"

TYPES OF PLASTIC PACKAGING

Other 3.4

Coatings 7.5% Films & bags 37%

PVC 4.6

LDPE 32.5% Closures 5%

Containers 50%

By Type of Use

PETE 9.1%

HDPE 29.4%

PP 10.3 PS 10.7%

By Type of Resin

• • • • •

A one gallon plastic milk container that weighed 120 grams in 1960 now weighs just 65 grams. The average 1992 American car contains 300 pounds of plastic made from about 60 different resins. Every year, we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of Texas. 10% of the average grocery bill pays for packaging (mostly paper and plastics)—that's more than goes to the farmers. In 1993, plastics accounted for 11.5% of the U.S. municipal waste stream by weight (23.9% by volume). In 1994, plastics comprised 9.5% (by weight) of the waste stream. • The rate of plastic soda bottle recycling rose from 33% in 1990 to 50% in 1994. • 0.9 million tons of plastics (4.7%) were recycled in the U.S. in 1994. • Products made from recovered plastic bottles include drainage pipes, toys, carpet, filler for pillows and sleeping bags, and cassette casings. SOURCE: Modern Plastics, January, 1992

declined, so related recycling practices have largely disappeared too. Cafeteria items from school lunchrooms are another potential, but the collection of such objects involves the development of an infrastructure, often not in place. In these cases, it is necessary to separate the polystyrene from paper and food waste, but washing and ﬂotation techniques have been developed for this purpose. Increasing amounts of plastic components appear in automobiles, and their recovery from junked cars is a possibility. Its success depends on the ability of a prospective “junker” to identify and separate the plastic items. Three efforts may aid in this accomplishment: 1. The establishment of databases to enable junkers to learn what kinds of plastic are used in what parts of what model cars. 2. A reduction in the number of different plastics used for car construction. 3. The design of cars such that plastic parts may be removed easily (this would require special types of fasteners).

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This illustrates a general need—the design of plastic-containing products with the ability to recycle in mind. As a consequence of public concern about the environmental problems arising from plastic use, industry is responding to these needs. The effort continues to use fewer different kinds of plastics and to adopt designs that allow for easier recycling but still retain desirable properties. There are, however, some worthwhile products that can be produced from mixed plastic, such as “plastic lumber” used for picnic benches and marine applications such as docks and bulkheads that successfully replace wooden lumber which often contains toxic preservatives and arsenic. But, the market for such a product is limited, so efforts to obtain separated plastics are preferred.

Degradable Plastics Discarded plastics are hard to eliminate from the environment because they do not degrade and have been designed to last a long time. It is possible to design polymers containing monomer species that may be attacked by chemical, biological, or photochemical action so that degradation by such means will occur over a predetermined period of time. Such polymers can be made by chemical synthesis (as with polylactic acid) or through bacterial or agricultural processes (as with the polyalkonates). Although such processes are often more expensive than conventional ones, cost would undoubtedly drop with increased production volume. One success story was the introduction of carbonyl groups into polyethylene by mixing carbon monoxide with ethylene during synthesis. These carbonyl groups are chomophores that lead to chain breaking upon the absorption of ultraviolet light. The polymer is then broken down into small enough units that are subject to bacterial attack. This approach has been successful, for example, in promoting the disappearance of rings from beverage cans, which are potentially harmful to wildlife. A problem with the degradation of plastics is that it is probably undesirable in landﬁlls because of the leachants produced that may contaminate water supplies. It is better in these instances to ship the plastics to composting facilities. This requires the separation of degradable plastics from other materials and the availability of such facilities. In most cases, the infrastructure needed for such an approach is not in place. This has discouraged its use for disposable diapers that are said to constitute 1 to 2 percent of landﬁll volume. Degradable polymers may have limited use in the reduction of litter and production of ﬂushable plastics, for example, feminine hygiene products, but it seems unlikely that the use of such materials will be a viable means of disposal for large amounts of plastic products. Degradation leads to the loss of most of the potential energy content of plastics that might be recovered by trash-to-energy procedures.

Trash to Energy A method of plastic disposal with more positive environmental implications is burning and recovering the energy for power generation or heating. Plastics contain much of the energy potential of the petroleum from which they are made, and they, in a sense, are just borrowing this energy that may be recovered when the plastic is burned. Environmentalists and the public have

114

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objected to this procedure, leading to legislative restrictions. This has arisen, in part, because of the image of “old-fashioned” incinerators polluting the air with toxic fumes and ash. However, it is possible to construct a “high-tech” incinerator designed to operate at appropriate temperatures and with sufﬁcient air supply that these problems are minimized. Remaining toxic substances in fumes may be removed by scrubbing, and studies have shown that no signiﬁcant air pollution results. Toxic ash, for the most part, does not arise from the polymer components of the feedstock, but rather from other materials mixed with the polymers as well as from ﬁllers, catalyst content, and pigments associated with the polymers. Proper design of the polymers and crude separation of the incinerator feedstock can reduce this problem. Furthermore, if the feedstock was not incinerated but placed in landﬁlls, contaminants would ultimately enter the environment in an uncontrolled way. Incineration reduces the volume, so that the ash, which may contain them, can be disposed of under more controlled conditions. Also, it is possible to insolublize the ash by converting it into a cementlike material that will not readily dissolve. Facilities for converting trash to energy in an environmentally acceptable way are expensive and at present not cost-effective when considering shortrange funding. However, in the long run, they are environmentally desirable and reduce the need for alternative means for plastic waste disposal. It is imperative that legislators and taxpayers soon adopt this long-range perspective. S E E A L S O Endocrine Disruption; Recycling; Solid Waste; Waste. Bibliography American Plastics Council. (2001). “2000 National Post Consumer Plastics Recycling Report.” Arlington, VA: Author. Gerngross, T.U., and Slater, S.C. (2000). “How Green Are Green Plastics.” Scientiﬁc American August. Hocking, M.B. (1991). “Paper vs. Polystyrene, a Complex Choice.” Science 251. Limbach, B.M. (1990). Plastics and the Environment, Progress and Commitment. Washington, D.C.: Society of the Plastics Industry. Piaecki, B.; Rainry, D.; and Fletcher, K. (1998). “Is Combustion of Plastics Desirable?” American Scientist 86: 364. Stein, R.S. (1992). “Polymer Recycling: Opportunities and Limitations.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 89: 835. Stein, R.S. (2002). “Plastics Can Be Good for the Environment.” NEACT Journal 21: 10–12. Vesilind, P.A. (1997). Introduction to Environmental Engineering. Boston, MA: PWS Publishing.

Richard S. Stein

Point Source Point source pollution is contamination that enters the environment through any discernible, conﬁned, and discrete conveyance, such as a smokestack, pipe, ditch, tunnel, or conduit. Point source pollution remains a major cause of pollution to both air and water. Point sources are differentiated from nonpoint sources, which are those that spread out over a large area and have no speciﬁc outlet or discharge point. Point source pollution in the United States is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

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Point Sources of Water Pollution Point sources of water pollution include municipal sewage treatment plant discharges and industrial plant discharges. Municipal sewage treatment plant point sources can contribute pollution in the form of oxygen-depleting nutrients and in the form of pathogens that cause serious health hazards in drinking water and swimming areas. Industrial point sources can contribute pollution in the form of toxic chemicals and heavy metals. Examples of nonpoint source water pollution include agricultural and urban runoff, and runoff from mining, and construction sites. The Clean Water Act (CWA), passed by Congress in 1972, provides the basic structure for regulating the discharge of pollutants from point sources to waters of the United States. The CWA gives the EPA the authority to establish efﬂuent limits. Efﬂuent is the outﬂow from a municipal or industrial treatment plant. The CWA also requires the acquisition of a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit prior to the discharge of pollutants. States may be authorized to implement CWA programs, but the EPA retains oversight responsibilities. The EPA manages efﬂuent limits for point sources in two ways: through technology-based controls and through water quality-based controls. Industrywide efﬂuent limits are established on a technology basis. These are minimum standards based on available treatment technology and pollution prevention measures. Efﬂuent limits are also established on a water-quality basis. Water quality-based criteria are scientiﬁcally defensible standards that ensure protection of designated uses of a receiving water. Either standard may be superceded by the more stringent standard, as determined by the control authority.

dissolved oxygen (DO) the oxygen freely available in water, vital to fish and other aquatic life and for the prevention of odors; DO levels are considered a most important indicator of a water body’s ability to support desirable aquatic life; secondary and advanced waste treatment are generally designed to ensure adequate DO in waste-receiving waters

Municipal point sources are the result of community sewage treatment systems. At the sewage treatment plant, wastewater is treated to remove solid and organic matter, disinfected to kill bacteria and viruses, and then often discharged to a surface water. Not all solids and organic matter are removed during treatment, resulting in degraded receiving water quality, due to a reduction in dissolved oxygen. Nutrients such as phosphorus that are not removed during treatment can cause overgrowth of algae and other organisms, also leading to lower dissolved oxygen. Many toxic substances can pass through conventional municipal treatment systems. Improperly treated sewage can be released as a result of upsets to the treatment process or as a result of operator error. During heavy rain, discharges from sewage treatment systems can be a serious problem. In many municipalities, storm-water runoff is combined with municipal sewage in a common system. The increased water volume leads to reduced treatment. Combined sewer overﬂows occur when water ﬂow exceeds treatment plant capacity, resulting in untreated sewage being discharged directly to rivers, lakes, or the ocean. Industrial point sources are the result of industries using water in their production processes, and then treating the water prior to discharge. Some of the industries requiring process waters include pulp and paper mills, food processors, electronic equipment manufacturers, rare metal manufacturers, textile manufacturers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, forest product producers, leather tanners, and chemical manufacturers.

priority pollutant a designated set of common water pollutants

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The National Pretreatment Program is charged with controlling the 126 priority pollutants from industries that discharge into sewer systems. These

Point Source

pollutants fall into two categories: metals and toxic organics. The metals include lead, mercury, chromium, and cadmium. The toxic organics include solvents, pesticides, dioxins, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Unlike municipal treatment methods, which are similar across the country, industrial treatment methods are industry-speciﬁc. For example, electroplating wastewater may require cyanide removal through oxidization. In general, physical processes may be used to remove solids and biological processes to remove organics. Chemical treatment, such as precipitation and neutralization, is also widely used. The National Water Quality Inventory: 2000 Report is compiled based on the water quality reports required to be submitted to the EPA by states every two years. The report identiﬁes “impaired” waters: water that cannot support its designated use, such as ﬁshing or swimming, due to contamination. According to the report, municipal point sources contributed to 37 percent and industrial discharges contributed to 26 percent of reported water-quality problems in the impaired portion of estuaries. Municipal point sources were the leading cause of contamination in 21 percent of the impaired ocean shorelines, and industrial discharges were the leading cause in 17 percent. Municipal point sources were a leading source of contamination in 10 percent of the impaired river miles and 12 percent of the impaired lake acres. These ﬁgures are improved over the percentages recorded in the 1992 Report when municipal point sources were a leading contamination source in 15 percent of the impaired river miles and 21 percent of the impaired lake acres. The NPDES permit program can be credited with achieving signiﬁcant improvements to the water quality of the United States. Immediately following passage of the CWA, efforts focused mainly on regulating traditional point sources, such as municipal sewage plants and industrial facilities. In the late 1980s, efforts to address “wet weather point sources,” such as urban storm sewer systems, began. Currently, there is a greater focus on nonpoint source pollution. The EPA is moving away from a source-by-source and pollutantby-pollutant approach to a watershed-based approach. A watershed, or “placebased,” approach is a process that emphasizes addressing all stressors within a hydrologically deﬁned boundary or drainage basin. Equal emphasis is placed on protecting healthy waters and restoring impaired waters.

river mile one mile, as measured along a river’s centerline lake acre an acre of lake surface

Point Sources of Air Pollution Point sources of air pollution include stationary sources such as power plants, smelters, industrial and commercial boilers, wood and pulp processors, paper mills, industrial surface coating facilities, reﬁnery and chemical processing operations, and petroleum storage tanks. Examples of nonpoint sources of air pollution include: on-road mobile sources such as cars and trucks; nonroad mobile sources such as construction and recreation equipment engines; and natural sources such as windstorms and ﬁres. Exposure to air pollution is associated with adverse effects on human health including respiratory problems and lung diseases. Air pollution can also signiﬁcantly affect ecosystems. The Clean Air Act (CAA) was passed by Congress in 1970 and amended in 1990. Under the CAA, EPA sets limits on how much of a pollutant is allowed in the air anywhere in the United States. Each state is required to develop a state implementation plan (SIP) to explain how it will do its job

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Smoke is pouring from the smokestack of an incinerator. (U.S. EPA. Reproduced by permission.)

under the CAA. A permit must be obtained for large sources that release pollutants into the air. The permits require information on which pollutants are being released, how much pollutant is released, what steps are being taking to reduce pollution, and plans for monitoring. The EPA has set national air quality standards for six principal air pollutants (also known as criteria pollutants): carbon monoxide (CO), lead (Pb), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3), particulate matter (PM), and sulfur dioxide (SO2). CO, Pb, NO2, and SO2 result from direct emissions from a variety of sources, including point sources. PM can result from direct emissions or can form when emissions and other gases react in the atmosphere. Ozone is not emitted directly, but forms when nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) react in the presence of sunlight. The EPA refers to chemicals that cause serious health and environmental impacts as hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) or air toxics. Currently, 189 air toxics have been identiﬁed, including chemicals such as benzene, chloroform, and mercury. The EPA tracks air pollution in two ways: (1) emissions form all sources going back thirty years and (2) air quality measured from monitoring stations around the country going back twenty years. The EPA summarizes its most recent evaluations in the report Latest Findings on National Air Quality: 2000 Status and Trends. Since 1970, the total emissions for the six criteria pollutants have been reduced 29 percent. National air quality levels measured at monitoring stations across the country have also shown improvements over the past twenty years for all six criteria pollutants. Over 160 million tons of pollution (from both point sources and non-point sources) are emitted into the air each year in the United States.

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In 2000 Status and Trends, the EPA reports an increasing focus on tracking and controlling ground-level ozone and ﬁne particles, key components of smog and haze. Progress has been slowest for ground-level ozone. In some regions of the United States, ozone levels have actually increased in the past ten years. The ozone increase correlates to the increase in NOx emissions from power plants and other sources. NOx emissions also contribute to acid rain, haze and particulate matter. Sulfates, formed mainly from coal-ﬁred power plant emissions, are the main source of particles in the eastern United States. The emissions also contribute to the formation of acid rain. The EPA’s emissions trading program successfully reduced these air pollutants, resulting in improved visibility in the eastern United States. While point source pollution is declining in the United States, it remains a global environmental concern. According to the UN report Global Environment Outlook 2000, rapid urbanization and industrialization in many developing countries is creating high levels of air and water pollution. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; CWA; CAA; Cuyahoga River; Disasters; Donora, Pennsylvania; National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES); Nonpoint Source Pollution; Thermal Pollution; Toxic Release Inventory; Wastewater Treatment; Water Pollution. Bibliography U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2000). National Water Quality Inventory: 2000 Report. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ofﬁce of Wastewater Management. (1999). Introduction to the National Pretreatment Program. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce. Vigil, Kenneth M. (1996). Clean Water: The Citizen’s Complete Guide to Water Quality and Water Pollution Control. Portland, OR: Columbia Cascade Publishing Company. Internet Resources U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. Available from http://www.epa.gov/npdes. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ofﬁce of Science and Technology. Available from http://www.epa.gov/OST. United Nations Environment Programme. Global Environment Outlook 2000. Available from http://www.unep.org/geo2000.

Denise M. Leduc

Politics Beginning in 1970, the “environmental decade,” a swift and sweeping transformation in American law radically reshaped U.S. pollution control policies. This regulatory revolution was mounted on three political foundations: skillful pressure-group politics, effective legislative advocacy, and aroused public concern about environmental degradation. These traditional American political techniques promoted, and continue to shape, contemporary pollution control through U.S. political governmental institutions.

The Political Foundations: Pressure-Group Politics Americans and their public ofﬁcials paid scant attention to growing evidence of environmental degradation across the nation until the late 1960s. Air and water pollution control was considered the responsibility of state and local

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Antoine Waechter (at center), French Green Party member, participating in a demonstration against the building of the Serre de la Fare dam, along the Loire headwaters. (© Bernard Bisson/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

governments. Most states did little more than set drinking water standards to protect public health from a few contaminants like bacterial diseases, fearing that more aggressive control of air and water pollutants would inhibit economic growth and drive resident business and industry to other states. Such mounting environmental degradation as the Cuyahoga River ﬁre and Love Canal focused national attention on the need for environmental restoration. This was translated into bold new governmental policies largely by environmental pressure groups during the 1960s and 1970s. The strength of the new environmental movement lay in organized political activism, coalition building, and legislative advocacy—the fundamentals of effective group politics. The focus of this political pressure was primarily the federal government with its vast authority and resources for creating nationwide pollution control. No single event dramatized the environmental movement’s rise to national importance more than the ﬁrst Earth Day in April 1970—a nationally televised Washington rally witnessed by 35 million Americans—that swiftly elevated public awareness of environmental degradation while advertising, especially for public ofﬁcials, environmentalism’s newly acquired political clout.

Pressure-Group Politics Old and New Environmentalism’s political strength depends on its leadership’s skill in creating a broad and diverse alliance of interests to support environmental advocacy. The environmental movement embraces a great diversity of inﬂuential

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organizations, including traditional conservation groups like the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation, established public health advocates like the American Cancer Society, newly formed environmental pressure groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and Friends of the Earth, major labor unions, public interest science organizations, and countless local organizations. Additionally, environmentalists are proﬁcient recruiters. After the ﬁrst Earth Day, environmentalist organizations multiplied and enriched their political resources, often creating innovative new organizational forms and strategies. Prior to 1970, fewer than twenty-ﬁve signiﬁcant national environmental groups existed with a combined membership approaching 500,000—of these, perhaps a half-dozen organizations were important participants in national policymaking. Several hundred inﬂuential national environmentalist groups are politically active; ﬁve of the most important—the Audubon Society, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation, and Wilderness Society—alone have a combined membership exceeding seven million. Although all the major organizations use the sophisticated resources of pressure-group politics—mass-mailing technology, skilled media specialists, and full-time legislative lobbyists—the environmental movement has also beneﬁted by developing specialized legal advocacy groups, like the National Resources Defense Council, staffed primarily with lawyers and scientiﬁc experts committed exclusively to litigation that establishes important legal precedents and enforces pollution-control regulations for environmental protection.

Creating and Mobilizing Public Opinion The radical transformation of U.S. pollution-control laws would have been impossible without strong, consistent public pressure on federal and state governments, especially on the Congress and state legislators. Current public opinion polls suggest that more than 80 percent of Americans agree with the goals of the environmental movement. The strength of this support is suggested by other polls consistently reporting since 1980 that more than two-thirds of the public believe environmental protection should be a major government priority, even at the risk of reducing economic growth. The breadth and depth of this ecological consciousness are remarkable, considering that few Americans understood the implications of ecology or the nature of domestic environmental pollution only a few decades ago. The most important political impact of this vigorous public environmentalism is on the electoral system: Candidates for major federal and state ofﬁce are now customarily expected to support strong pollution controls and other ecologically protective policies, at least in principle. While Americans often disagree vigorously over pollution control methods, air and water pollution regulation itself is now an enduring component of the “American political consensus”— those policies Americans overwhelmingly view as the essential responsibility of their government.

A Regulatory Revolution: The Environmental Decade The design of U.S. air and water pollution control was crafted in federal law during the “environmental decade” between 1970 and 1980. Responding to dramatic media revelations of ecological deterioration, growing environmental group pressure, and voter concerns, Congress laid the legislative foundation for all contemporary regulation through six statutes: The Clean Air Act Amendments (1970), the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments

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(1972), the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974), the Toxic Substances Control Act (1976), and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (Superfund) in 1980. Altogether, the Congress wrote or amended nineteen major environmental laws in this remarkable decade. And by changing the law, Congress also reordered its political underpinning.

Federal Leadership The laws listed above radically recast the U.S. approach to pollution management. Most important, the federal government assumed the primary responsibility for air and water pollution regulation; Washington set national pollution standards and supervised their implementation, thus deﬁning pollution control priorities and prescribing acceptable control methods. The Clean Air Act, for example, now requires all states to control at least six dangerous pollutants (sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, lead, particulates, and volatile organic compounds) and a rapidly growing list of other substances currently believed to be “air toxins.” The act additionally mandates that car manufacturers install pollution-control devices on all new automobiles. The new pollution laws also extended federal protection to the natural environment instead of exclusively to human health and safety. The Toxic Substances Control Act, for example, authorizes the federal government to regulate the manufacture, sale, or use of any chemical presenting “an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.”

Regulatory Federalism Regulatory federalism has become a fundamental regulatory principle. This means that Washington prescribes national pollution standards and control procedures, but allocates the appropriate resources to states so they assume the primary responsibility for implementing and enforcing these requirements. States are then said to exercise “delegated authority.” Using delegated authority, for instance, thirty-eight states as of 2002 issue permits for water pollution discharges required by the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments and forty-nine states certify pesticides for local use as required by the Federal Environmental Pesticides Control Act (1972). Thus, the states assume an essential and highly inﬂuential role in national pollution regulation; pollution policymaking continually requires negotiation, conﬂict, and cooperation between the states and Washington.

New Regulatory Agencies New federal agencies were created, and others reorganized, to implement these new control programs. The most important federal pollution control entity is now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), created in 1972. The EPA is the nation’s largest regulatory agency with 18,000 employees, a 2002 budget exceeding $7.5 billion, and responsibility to fully or partially implement all the nation’s important pollution control laws. In 1970 the President’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), a much smaller agency, was created within the White House to advise the President on environmental affairs. At the same time, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was created within the U.S. Department of Commerce to conduct research on and monitoring of ocean and atmospheric pollution. The authority and staff of many other federal agencies concerned

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with environmental quality, such as the Department of the Interior, were also vastly expanded to implement new pollution control programs. These agencies also provide research support and grants to the states to facilitate the enforcement of pollution control laws. The EPA, for instance, has distributed more than $150 billion in grants to state and local governments to upgrade their sewage treatment systems.

New Policymaking Procedures Federal pollution laws created new, often controversial, regulatory procedures. The most contentious of these is risk assessment—the process used by regulatory agencies to determine if a substance constitutes a sufﬁcient threat to human health and safety, or to the environment, to require control. Federal pollution laws, including the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and Superfund, require the EPA or other responsible agencies to conduct such risk assessments—usually focused on the risk of cancer—on thousands of chemicals never previously evaluated according to the rigorous new standards. Risk assessments proceed slowly due to the huge number of substances involved, a lack of basic information about their distribution and impact, and intense controversy about the appropriate procedures for the assessments. Federal pollution legislation has also vastly increased opportunities for the public, and particularly environmental advocacy groups, to become informed and involved in federal environmental decision making. Major federal pollution laws such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts removed a major legal impediment to public involvement in pollution control by granting individuals and organizations standing to sue federal and state agencies for failure to enforce pollution control laws. Almost all federal environmental laws also require the responsible federal and state agencies to actively inform the public and to provide numerous opportunities for public comment and review of contemplated regulations.

standing the legal right to pursue a claim in court

At the beginning of the twenty-ﬁrst century, it is apparent that the environmental movement permanently and comprehensively altered the law and politics of U.S. pollution regulation. Pressure-group politics, public opinion, and congressional legislation were the powerful driving forces in this change. The result was unprecedented, aggressive federal leadership in an active national program of pollution control based on federally mandated pollution standards and pollution controls. By promoting new national pollution control laws and agencies, expanded opportunities for public involvement in pollution regulation, and vigorous public concern for environmental degradation, the environmental movement has created a continuing “environmental era.” S E E A L S O Activism; Brower, David; Carson, Rachel; Citizen Suits; Earth Day; Environmental Impact Statement; Government; Industry; Laws and Regulations, United States; Legislative Process; National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); New Left; Progressive Movement; Public Participation; Public Policy Decision Making; Risk. Bibliography Buck, Susan J. (1996). Understanding Environmental Administration and Law, 2nd edition. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Cohen, Richard E. (1995). Washington at Work: Back Rooms and Clean Air, 2nd edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

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Graham, Mary. (1999). The Morning after Earth Day: Practical Environmental Politics. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. Marzotto, Toni; Moshier Burnor, Vicky; and Bonham, Gorden Scott Bonham. (2000). The Evolution of Public Policy: Cars and the Environment. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Rosenbaum, Walter A. (2002). Environmental Politics and Policy, 5th edition. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. Internet Resource Project on Teaching Global Environmental Politics Web site. Available from http:// webpub.alleg.edu/employee.

Walter A. Rosenbaum

Pollution Prevention One key to achieving a sustainable society and tackling the complex environmental challenges of the twenty-ﬁrst century is pollution prevention (P2), reducing or eliminating pollution before it is created. The idea has been discussed since 1976, but has only lately gained widespread support from both the private and public sectors. It is an environmentally sound and costeffective practice. In 1990 Congress passed a federal statute, the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990. The act deﬁned pollution prevention (i.e., source reduction) as a practice that 1. Reduces the amount of any hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant entering any waste stream or otherwise released into the environment (including fugitive emissions) prior to recycling, treatment, or disposal; and 2. Reduces the hazards to public health and the environment associated with the release of such substances, pollutants or contaminants. The term includes equipment or technology modiﬁcations, process or procedure modiﬁcations, reformulation or redesign of products, substitution of raw materials, and improvements in housekeeping, maintenance, training or inventory control. Since the Industrial Revolution, U.S. environmental policy has focused on end-of-pipe environmental remediation, control, and disposal. The endof-pipe approach involves combatting pollution, regardless of what form (solid or hazardous waste, air emissions, or water discharge), only after it has been created. To control end-of-pipe pollution, society issues permits. These permits set threshold limits for how much pollution a facility is allowed to create, taking into consideration the ecosystem in which the company operates. The more fragile the environment, the more consideration, presumably, is given to the allowable level of pollutant discharge. The result is that a company may obtain a permit to emit a certain amount of carcinogenic chemicals into the air or water as a by-product of its operations. The same system also holds true for communities. A community, for instance, acquires a permit to operate a landﬁll. The permit will stipulate certain types of waste for disposal, as well as place limits on the quantity that may be dumped on a daily basis.

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DECADE OF P2 RESULTS, FROM 1990 TO 2000 (QUANTITATIVE PRELIMINARY DATA FROM SELECTED STATES)* State

Pollution prevented (lb unless otherwise noted)

Illinois Maine

$27 million 3.73 × 109 overall pollutant reduction. 220 toxic-use companies reduced 105 million lb. toxic chemicals/5.6 million lb of waste reduced at Hazardous waste reduction overall 167 hazardous waste generators—63 toxic-release companies have reduced releases by 12.7 million lb. has generated $50 million in cost savings to Maine businesses. 50% reduction in toxic/waste/nonproduct output for TRI chemicals. $8 million Reduction in toxic chemical waste generation by 60 million lb or 57%, reduction in total chemical use by 317 million lb or 41%, reduction in toxic releases to the environment by 18 million lb or 87%. P2 assistance provided to 43 companies resulted in cost savings of $2.8 million per year for a total of $19,600,000. Reduction in 38% in the total amount of hazardous waste generated through the end of 1998. RI DEM performed more than 250 site assessments that resulted in elimination of more than $40 million tons of industrial waste. Since 1993 air pollutants reduced by 122,000 lb, water pollutants reduced by 11,836,500 lb, waste $55,318,400 estimated reduced by approx. 64 million lb. In 1999 energy conserved: 344,000 kW; water conserved: approx. total cost savings from 77,296,000 gallons. P2 efforts. Iowa Waste Reduction Center at the Univ. of Northern Iowa has conducted more than 2,100 on-site reviews at Iowa small businesses since its inception in 1988. Approx. 87 million lb of hazardous and solid waste have been reduced as a result. Since 1994 the Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation’s Compliance Assistance Office has Cost savings are estimated helped businesses reduce waste by 201,500 lb. at $1,752,000. From 1998–2001 Virginia Department of Environmental Quality reports that more than 1.5 million lb of air pollutants, 488 million lb of water pollutants, and 710 million lb of waste have been reduced as a result of P2 efforts in the state. Has achieved a 50% reduction in hazardous waste generation/releases based on TRI and hazardous Estimated cost savings of waste data using the state’s voluntary 1989 goals. $500,000 annually since 1991. Maryland Dept. of Environment reported a reduction of 17,780,109 million lb of waste for the period Cost savings during same of 1997–2000. period estimated to be $125,863,000.

New Jersey Massachusetts

New Hampshire (7 years) Vermont Rhode Island North Carolina

Iowa

Alaska Virginia

Kentucky

Maryland

Total cost savings

*As of 2002, the information listed above is being compiled into a comprehensive study and evaluation of P2 efforts over the past decade. The data listed here were reported by individual state agencies and are only intended to present baseline data, by which future P2 efforts can be measured. These numbers were the result of a survey conducted by NPPR from 1990 through 2000. Some programs submitted surveys, others reports. In no way should these numbers be used to compare programs. Unless otherwise noted, results date from the period when the state commenced its P2 program. Some states have had assistance programs much longer than others, and some may have smaller operating budgets for their programs.

Even recycling efforts, important as they are, focus attention on the back end of the pollution process, after waste has been produced. Recycling is an end-of-pipe solution. Another outdated aspect of U.S. environmental policy is the singlemedium approach to environmental problems. Single-medium approaches focus on one speciﬁc environmental medium (i.e., land, water, or air) at a time, generally to the exclusion of other media. Air pollution experts, for example, do not typically investigate other facets of a facility, such as its overall operation, waste generation, or water discharges. They view their one medium in isolation and may recommend new procedures or remedies that can adversely impact other media. It is not uncommon to see an inspector recommend measures to improve air quality that affect water quality or waste generation—thus simply transferring pollution from one medium to another. The United States takes the single-medium approach because major environmental statutes are single-medium in scope. The Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) each focus on individual media. They contain strong requirements that focus on end-of-pipe approaches to meet them. These statutes are at the core of

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persistent bioaccumulative toxics a group of substances that are not easily degraded, accumulate in organisms, and exhibit an acute or chronic toxicity

U.S. environmental protection strategy. They have produced admirable results over the years, but are now facing the law of diminishing returns in the face of new complex environmental challenges such as global climate change, energy and water shortages, and persistent bioaccumulative toxics that pass easily from one medium to the next. Today’s challenges demand the more innovative and vigorous approach of pollution prevention.

Low-Hanging Fruit There are many ways pollution can be prevented. Some of the simplest, the “low-hanging fruit” involve basic housekeeping and maintenance modiﬁcations that do not include major capital investments, but may produce significant dividends in terms of cost savings for compliance and operations.

green choice a product that is not harmful for the environment organic referring to or derived from living organisms; in chemistry, any compound containing carbon

In an industrial setting, low-cost options can involve simply changing the ﬁlters on equipment more frequently, improving the maintenance of machinery, or replacing a solvent with a water-based alternative that performs just as well. In an ofﬁce setting, it may involve requiring that all documents are printed on both sides of paper and that mugs are used instead of disposable cups. Less toxic alternatives, whether they be cleaners or ofﬁce paper produced without chlorine, are green choices. A farming operation can reduce its use of toxic pesticides or explore the economic feasibility of becoming an organic operation. Energy efﬁciency is a major component of pollution prevention and an increasingly important issue as we face shortages throughout the United States and global climate change. Again, low-hanging fruit opportunities abound. Options exist for more energy-efﬁcient lighting and computer equipment. Simple business practices like turning equipment off at night can have a positive net environmental and cost outcome. Even choosing an ofﬁce building or a plant location can have dramatic environmental implications. Is the facility located near mass transit? If it is, it gives employees the option of using public transportation and reduces the emissions of greenhouse gases from automobiles. Every state offers some type of pollution prevention assistance to aid companies and communities in identifying P2 opportunities. Because P2 is often not intuitive, government programs help provide a menu of available options to develop comprehensive programs. Many state agencies have engineers and planners on staff who have a wealth of expertise in working with a wide variety of industries. They provide training to company and community ofﬁcials and disseminate technology, the sharing of information on technical issues and equipment. See the table for the results of P2 efforts in selected states over the past decade.

Identifying Systemic Pollution Prevention Opportunities The next phase of pollution prevention is to focus on more systemic changes. These may involve more capital investment and a major cultural change on the part of an organization—none of which can happen without the support of senior management. This is one reason why many companies are making sure that their innovative programs are integrated into their core business decisions. The lone environmental ofﬁcer who focuses a company on complying with regulations

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still exists, but he or she is in many cases more actively involved in the daily business decisions being made by that company. This is crucial if serious process and operational changes are going to be adopted to help reduce pollution. Companies are investigating the use of pollution prevention equipment and comprehensive process changes that are less toxic and generate less waste. Utilizing equipment that is more efﬁcient in its use of materials is a common pollution prevention practice. As stated, effective prevention will not occur without the backing of senior management, whether it be in the public or private sector. Many organizations create an ofﬁcial policy document, or expand their mission statement to incorporate innovative and cleaner production initiatives. Some organizations go as far as making a senior budget ofﬁcer responsible for their company’s P2 efforts. That way, there is a commitment from top management, particularly those who control the company’s purse strings.

Regulatory and Public Information Right-to-Know Programs TRI and other types of right-to-know programs publicly highlight chemical releases that industrial facilities release to the environment. These public disclosure programs force a company to evaluate its production process and the pollution it generates. The public component of the program helps put the spotlight on these ﬁrms, making it more likely that they will try to reduce future releases. Some environmentalists have also advocated reforming environmental report and permit programs so that reporting facilities essentially perform a pollution prevention audit—identifying waste streams and exploring opportunities to reduce them—in the process of complying with regulatory requirements.

P2 Partners The public and private sectors play different, but equally important, roles in the effort to promote P2. Government regulatory drivers (statutes and regulations) provide incentives for companies to minimize pollution and thus avoid requirements in the ﬁrst place. An example of an excellent regulatory measure is the use of P2 and a Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP). A SEP essentially means that an agency can require a company to implement a P2 program as part of their settlement. A state agency can also stipulate that a P2 program be part of an operating permit. There are a number of states conducting this kind of green permit program. State and local governments also offer critical technical assistance to companies and communities in identifying P2 options tailored to their needs. There are numerous tools available, including public information clearinghouses, on-site assessments, and a score of publications featuring case studies and guidebooks. Government can also offer market-based incentives, including low-interest loans for P2 equipment, reduction in reporting requirements, and public recognition programs that promote a company’s environmental performance. The private sector plays the unique role of being the laboratory. Companies are able to experiment with different P2 practices and

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techniques within their facility. Given the proper ﬂexibility and support, they can provide some of the major technical and cost data necessary for P2 to expand. Nongovernmental organizations such as community councils and environmental groups play an important advocacy role in the world of prevention. In the past, they have frequentlyprovided visionary leardership, helping, for instance, to shepherd the Pollution Prevention Act into reality in 1990.

Future Legislative Action As stated earlier, the single-medium approach to environmental protection is an impediment to progress. Many attempts have been made to change laws or regulations on the federal, state, and local levels to leverage more opportunities for prevention and cleaner production without dismantling the current regulatory framework. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has overseen several initiatives designed to allow more ﬂexibility within the current system, in the hope of attaining more creativity and innovation. The Common Sense Initiative, 1994 to 1998, was an industry-based approach involving the automobile manufacturing, computers and electronics, iron and steel, metal ﬁnishing, petroleum reﬁning, and printing industries. The program initiated more than forty-ﬁve projects, half of which, according to the EPA, are still ongoing. Similarly, the no-longer-funded Project XL allowed communities or businesses to test alternate ways of reducing environmental pollution. The National Environmental Performance Track is the current (2003) EPA program that encourages environmental solutions. This program recognizes and gives incentives to more than three hundred business members that go beyond regulatory environmental compliance and develop economically sound initiatives that further increase environmental protection. At the state level, environmental agencies can apply to the Performance Partnership Grants Program, authorized by Congress in 1996. It allows states to combine funds from up to sixteen environmental program grants into a single grant, for example, to address issues such as sprawl. In addition, state voluntary programs have proliferated and included recognition and environmental management system programs. The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 provided a good foundation for pollution prevention in the United States. It established much-needed deﬁnitions, contained provisions to set up an information clearinghouse and awards programs, and most important, provided start-up funds for states and the EPA to work on dedicated P2 programs. Unfortunately, many provisions of the act were never fully implemented and appropriations were insufﬁcient to orchestrate a comprehensive program. For example, less than one percent of federal grant monies to states for other media programs such as air, waste, and water goes to P2. Real change will come only by modifying key single-medium statutes. One idea, long proposed, is a uniﬁed organic statute. The existing statutes would be woven into a more holistic law, which is multimedia in scope, with prevention as the foundation. Others advocate the consolidation of only speciﬁc aspects of existing legislation. As of 2002, the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR) is undertaking a major study to help quantify the results of pollution prevention efforts over the past ten years. Although the study is not complete, its raw

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data indicating signiﬁcantly reduced or eliminated pollution and cost savings are impressive, considering the minimal resources that are available nationwide for prevention efforts. The table highlights some of the data provided by state programs. S E E A L S O Abatement; Energy, Alternative; Pollution Shifting; Recycling; Reuse; Technology, Pollution Prevention; Waste Reduction. Bibliography Hirschhhorn, Joel S.; and Oldenburg, Kirsten U. (1997). Prosperity without Pollution: The Prevention Strategy for Industry and Consumers. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Theodore, Louis; Dupont, Ryan; and Ganesan, Kumar. (1999). Pollution Prevention: The Waste Management Approach to the 21st Century. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Marcus, Alfred A.; Sexton, Ken; and Geffen, Donald A. (2002). Reinventing Environmental Regulation: Lessons from Project XL. Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future. Internet Resources Canadian Center for Pollution Prevention. Available from http://www.c2p2online.com. National Pollution Prevention Roundtable. Available from http://www.p2.org. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. National Environmental Performance Track. Available from http://www.epa.gov/performancetrack. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Pollution Prevention Home Page. Available from http://www.epa.gov/p2.

Natalie Roy

Pollution Shifting Pollution shifting is deﬁned as the transfer of pollution from one medium (air, water, or soil) to another. Early legal efforts to control pollution focused on single media. For example, in the United States, the Clean Air Act covers air and the Clean Water Act covers water. However, pollution is not constrained by statute; it can shift between media by both natural and human action. Pollution management is improved when all media are considered. Intentional pollution shifting may occur to destroy a pollutant, convert it to a safer form, or reduce its quantity or concentration. Examples of intentional pollution shifting include combustion, air stripping, air scrubbers, and adsorption. Intentional pollution shifting is accomplished by chemical reaction and/or mass transfer. Chemical reactions can convert reactants in one media into products in a different media. In mass transfer shifting, differences in concentration are used to transfer pollutants from one media to another. For example, volatile compounds will transfer from relatively contaminated water to relatively clean air.

Combustion, Air Stripping, and Adsoprtion Combustion is the process of burning, a chemical reaction. It involves combining combustible material with oxygen under conditions that produce light and heat in addition to by-products. The combustion of wastes, such as municipal solid waste, sludge, or hazardous waste, results in gaseous emissions and a solid ash residue. It signiﬁcantly reduces the volume and mass of waste requiring disposal, by shifting some wastes to gaseous form. Although carbon dioxide has been implicated in global warming, many of the gaseous emissions have no negative health impact, such as nitrogen gas, carbon dioxide, and

air stripping a treatment system that removes volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from contaminated groundwater or surface water by forcing an airstream through the water and causing the compounds to evaporate air scrubbers pollution-control devices that remove pollutants from waste gases before release to the atmosphere adsorption removal of a pollutant from air or water by collecting the pollutant on the surface of a solid material; e.g., an advanced method of treating waste in which activated carbon removes organic matter from wastewater

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water vapor. However, pollutants can also be present, including nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, metals, acid gases, dioxins, and furans. Contaminants in exhaust gases are minimized by optimization of the combustion process, for example, maintaining proper temperature and oxygen levels. They can also be captured with pollution-control equipment, such as air scrubbers and ﬁlters. In addition, the ash may contain hazardous compounds, such as heavy metals. In air stripping, contaminates dissolved in water are transferred to gaseous form by contact with relatively clean air, an example of mass transfer. Air stripping works best with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and dissolved gases. VOCs are compounds with high vapor pressures, that is, compounds that tend to evaporate quickly. A common application of air stripping is the cleanup of groundwater contaminated by leaking fuel storage tanks. Air stripping is optimized by maximizing the surface area between the contaminated water and clean air, accomplished by creating ﬁne water droplets in air or small air bubbles in water. Systems can be located away from the contamination (e.g., a system cleaning groundwater that is located on the earth’s surface), or located within the contaminated zone (e.g., a system located in wells installed in contaminated groundwater). In some cases, the contaminated air from air stripping is released to the atmosphere, where the pollutants are destroyed by sunlight or reaction with other chemicals, adsorbed into soil or water, or diluted. Preferably, the organics in the exhaust from air stripping are destroyed by incineration or oxidation, or captured by adsorption. The air stripping process may also be reversed. In air scrubbing, pollutants are transferred from contaminated air to clean water. However, a chemical reaction is often incorporated into air scrubbing, converting pollutants to a safer form. For example, sulfur dioxide produced during coal combustion can be removed from exhaust gas by mass transfer to water containing sodium hydroxide or carbonate, which converts the sulfur dioxide to calcium carbonate. Natural air stripping and air scrubbing also occur. Surface waters, such as lakes and oceans, serve as sinks for pollutants released to the atmosphere. Contaminated water left exposed to the atmosphere will release VOCs.

off-gas control control of gases released into the air

The ﬁnal pollution shift considered here is adsorption, in which a contaminant in water or air is adsorbed onto a solid material. Adsorption is used for off-gas control, groundwater remediation, landﬁll leachate treatment, industrial wastewater treatment, and water treatment for drinking or industrial purposes. The most commonly used adsorbent is granular activated carbon (GAC). GAC has a tremendous amount of surface area per mass, on the order of one thousand square meters per gram. Its surface attracts many organic compounds; thus, a small amount of GAC can adsorb a signiﬁcant amount of organic material. GAC may be regenerated, during which contaminants are destroyed.

Multimedia Approach The multimedia approach to environmental management considers all media. It can be applied to single facilities, entire companies, and regions. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Multimedia Enforcement Division, it can result in:

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• Improved detection and resolution of environmental compliance problems • achievement of optimal enforcement results • more effective enforcement • more efﬁcient use of resources • fundamental changes in the regulated community’s perceptions and behavior regarding environmental compliance Such beneﬁts are realized by considering an entire pollution system, that is, all media. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Technology, Pollution Prevention; Waste; Water Pollution. Bibliography LaGrega, M.; Buckingham, P.; and Evans J. (1994). Hazardous Waste Management, New York: McGraw-Hill. Tchobanoglous, G.; Theisen, H.; and Vigil, S. (1993). Integrated Solid Waste Management. New York: McGraw-Hill. Internet Resources Canadian Centre for Pollution Prevention Web site. Available from http:// www.C2P2online.com. Reshkin, K. (2002). EPA Student Center Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov/ students.

Jess Everett

Polychlorinated Biphenyls POPs

See PCBs

See Persistent Organic Pollutants

Popular Culture Popular culture can be thought of as a composite of all the values, ideas, symbols, material goods, processes, and understandings that arise from mass media, such as the advertising and entertainment industries, as well as from other avenues, such as games, food, music, shopping, and other daily activities and processes.

Understanding Circumstances For many people, popular culture may be the primary way of understanding, reinforcing, and modifying the circumstances of their lives. Most of the everyday knowledge and experiences that are shared by people (in the form of reading, watching, wearing, using, playing, working, talking, and so forth) make up the concept of popular culture. Popular culture, however, is distinguished from such traditional institutions as education, politics, and religion, although the distinction often becomes hazy. Over time, and with repeated exposure to societal norms (through, for instance, mass media), people form conscious and unconscious impressions of various aspects of life, including attitudes about pollution.

Chronicling the Good Life Popular culture in the United States and much of the Western world has concentrated on the reoccurring major theme of the search for “the good life.”

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Since the establishment of the United States, there have been two opposing themes of popular culture. The ﬁrst theme, a materialistic one, emphasized a belief in happiness and success through technology, material wealth, and upward social mobility, while the second theme, a simpler one, sought happiness and success in a life of simplicity, one with few possessions, and a spiritual connection. Over the 230-plus years that these two themes permeated American society, they have alternated between being the majority and minority views. During years of prosperity, the materialistic theme dominated, whereas during more modest times the simpler theme was emphasized.

Social Values, Awareness, and Preferences The recycle symbol.

As the world’s population continues to increase dramatically, and as issues such as global warming, ozone depletion, and the extinction of species garner worldwide attention, popular culture becomes more intertwined with people’s environmental beliefs and values. The social values, awareness, and preferences of people are enmeshed in the fundamental moral and religious views between nature and humanity: Is it right to manipulate nature? What is the responsibility of society to future generations? Are the rights of other species more or less important than human rights, or are they equally important? These and many other questions are fundamental to the cultural beliefs and values that guide how people live.

Attitudes about Pollution Popular culture helps to shape people’s general understanding about pollution and the environment. Poll results released in the 1990s have consistently shown that from 50 to 75 percent of all Americans consider themselves to be “environmentalists.” Moreover, from extensive survey results analyzed by Riley Dunlap and Rik Scarce, three major conclusions have been made about Americans: (1) they have become much more proenvironment since the 1960s; (2) since the 1980s, their environmentalism extends beyond opinions into their basic values and fundamental beliefs; and (3) their attitude about the environment affects the way they interact, consume, and vote.

Images of Pollution in Popular Culture Images of the natural environment have been prominent in American popular culture since the ecology movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Music and art focusing on human interaction with the environment became popular beginning in the 1960s. Some popular early images of pollution that are now rooted into popular culture: • A public service TV advertisement, which features a Native American with a tear running down his cheek (sometimes called “the crying Indian”). After paddling his canoe up a polluted river with dirty smokestacks crowding the shores, he comes ashore to a littered riverbank only to have more trash tossed carelessly out of a car and land at his feet. The narrator for the Keep America Beautiful television public service advertisement then declared, “People start pollution, people can stop it.” (It premiered on the second Earth Day in 1971.) • The song “Calypso,” by John Denver, which was about French explorer and environmentalist Jacques Cousteau’s ship, the Calypso. It

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included the lines “To light up the darkness and show us the way / For though we are strangers in your silent world / To live on the land we must learn from the sea.” • The song “Mercy Mercy Me,” by Marvin Gaye, which laments: “Oh mercy mercy me / Oh, things ain’t what they used to be no, no / Where did all the blue sky go? / Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east.” • The song “Big Yellow Taxi,” by Joni Mitchell, released on her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon. The song’s lyrics include, “Don’t it always seem to go / That you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone / They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” • The Smokey the Bear advertisement campaign by the U.S. Forest Service. Over the years (starting in the 1940s), the campaign reminded people: “Remember—Only YOU can prevent forest ﬁres.” • The recycling symbol, with the familiar three colored arrows that represent three recycling-related actions: (1) The red arrow stands for separating recyclables from garbage and recycle them, (2) the blue arrow stands for manufacturing new products from the recyclables, and (3) the green one represents purchasing products made from recycled materials (“green products”). The relationship between popular culture and popular opinion is circular. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the movie business. Hollywood needs good stories and bad guys. Awareness of environmental issues provided it with a wealth of both.

Iron Eyes Cody, the teary-eyed Native American man that was for many years a part of the Keep America Beautiful campaign. (Keep America Beautiful, Inc.)

In what was arguably Hollywood’s ﬁrst environmental thriller, life mimicked theater. In The China Syndrome (1979), a TV reporter (played by Jane Fonda) and her cameraman (Michael Douglas) collaborate with a whistleblower (Jack Lemmon) to expose the risk of a meltdown at a California nuclear power plant. Within weeks of its release, reactor number two at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant suffered a partial meltdown. It did not take long for Hollywood to ﬁnd drama involving real-life whistle-blowers. Silkwood (1983), starring Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, and Cher, told the story of Karen Silkwood, a chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee plutonium fuels production plant in Crescent, Oklahoma, and a member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. Silkwood was an activist critical of plant safety who was inexplicably exposed to plutonium. She was gathering evidence to support her claim that Kerr-McGee was negligent in maintaining plant safety when she was killed in a suspicious one-car crash. The movie was a box-ofﬁce success; Kerr-McGee settled out of court with Silkwood’s family for $1.3 million. Two later blockbuster movies focused on legal ﬁghts against corporate bad guys: • A Civil Action (1999) (based on the book of the same name), starring John Travolta and Robert Duvall, portrayed the true story of a dedicated—some would say obsessed—lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, who took on a case involving drinking water contaminated by industrial pollution from two highly regarded corporations, which caused the deaths of innocent children in Woburn, Massachusetts.

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• Erin Brockovich (2000), starring Julia Roberts and Albert Finney, tells the story of an unlikely real-life heroine, Erin Brockovich, who built a powerful case based on suspicious connections between a powerful electric utility, its abuse of toxic chromium, and the poisoned water supply of Hinkley, California, whose residents had suffered a legacy of death and disease.

Language The increase in environmental awareness is reﬂected in the common vernacular: What were once called swamps are now called wetlands; what were once called jungles are now called rain forests; and what was once called a round globe is now called Mother Earth. A shift of perception from insigniﬁcant pieces of land to valuable components of an overall ecosystem has shown a fundamental change in cultural awareness. Language, though, is only one example of how a rising awareness of the effects of pollution and a greater understanding of ecosystems has been reﬂected in U.S. society. An average day contains many small examples of how the environment crisscrosses American lives.

A Typical Day of Enviro-Culture A day in the life of an average American is ﬁlled with popular culture’s representations of pollution and the environment. A person makes breakfast with cereal from a company that touts itself as environmentally conscious. Flipping channels while eating breakfast, an individual learns from CNN that an oil spill has occurred overnight near a sensitive coastline, while the Weather Channel reports that beach erosion caused by a hurricane off the coast of North Carolina is harming the natural resources of the sensitive Outer Banks. This average American drives to work in a sport utility vehicle (SUV), which was bought on its ability to drive up rugged mountain roads, but declined to buy a compact car that was advertised to help save the environment because of its fuel economy. This individual arrives in a crowded, concrete parking lot that surrounds a multiple-story ofﬁce building, as do the other thousands of employees who also drive up singly and sometimes in pairs. The person stops by the grocery store on the way home from work in order to pick up prepared food that has been processed in a factory, but that is heralded as the right way to feed oneself in a wholesome and nutritious manner. And so it goes. The American individual is exposed daily to images and ideas from popular culture (oftentimes unknowingly) in prepackaged advertisements on television, in newspapers and magazines, on the side of food products, on the Internet, and from hundreds of other sources. Certainly, most people’s understanding of pollution issues and policies is formed from such brief tidbits—news reports, literature, and entertainment they encounter throughout their busy day.

American Lore: The Ecology of Images The use of environmental images in popular culture has ﬁgured distinctly in American lore. Included in a paper titled “Ecology of Images,” cultural theorist Andrew Ross calls the use of environmental images in popular culture the “ecology of images.” The negative images of the natural environment

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included within the popular culture since the ecology movement emerged in the 1970s have included burning rivers, oil-slick waterfowl, and dirty smokestacks. The positive images include a green planet, rushing, clear waters, and white-peaked mountains. The negative images are often used by activists, who often direct blame onto the industrial sector of the community. The positive images are often shown by the business sector, in an effort to demonstrate how well they get along with nature and the environment. Nature and the environment are used as the means to produce the material goods that are needed and desired in society, but they are often abused as a result of in this materialistic way of living.

Commercialism Popular culture is a world in which everything is for sale one way or another—a world of commercialism. The environment is often thought of as a product to be consumed, and, as a result, pollution becomes one facet of an ever-growing concern of the American popular culture. Companies involved in the capitalization and industrialization of the United States increasingly promote their products, and themselves, as being in tune with nature.

Greenwashing. D.C. Kinlaw states in Competitive and Green: Sustainable Performance in the Environmental Age, published in 1993, that businesses increasingly associate themselves with nature (sometimes called the “greenwashing” of the environment). Kinlaw continues by saying that only “by making the environment an explicit part of every aspect of the organization’s total operation, can the leaders of an organization expect to maintain its competitive position and ensure its survival.” By associating themselves with a good environmental policy (even though they may have a poor environmental record), companies can incorporate these advertised ideals into the popular culture for economic gain and for a supposed improvement in the quality of life. Major department stores and name brands promise the “good life” when they advertise a seemingly endless array of clothes, electronics, home furnishings, kitchen appliances, or whatever other material goods they offer. Similarly, Arkansas ofﬁcials advertise that their state is “the Natural State,” Texans can say “Don’t Mess with Texas,” and Midwesterners can say their states are “America’s Breadbasket,” but in reality these lands must be used (and often they are environmentally abused) to produce the lumber, oil, wheat, corn, cattle, and pigs necessary to support the economy and economic standards of the United States. Two Sides of Nature. Nature must be used to fulﬁll the needs of people, as they endlessly demand new and better products with which to live the good life. Sometimes called “eco-pornography,” the pollution that results from manufacturing is not always evident in everyday life, in the blue skies and clear waters of the images seen in popular culture in the form of television commercials, greeting cards, corporate promotions, and in books, magazines, calendars, travelogues, and videos. The perspective of the environment as a commodity is found throughout the domain of popular culture. The cultural realm shapes and reﬂects the values, awareness, and preferences concerning pollution. Whether the vehicle is advertising, music, slogans, symbols, or mascots, the power of popular culture to shape society’s behaviors and thoughts with respect to pollution is signiﬁcant.

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Bibliography Anderson, Alison. (1997). Media, Culture, and the Environment. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Dunlap, Riley E.; and Scarce, Rik. (1991). “The Polls—Poll Trends: Environmental Problems and Protection.” Public Opinion Quarterly 55:713–734. Grossberg, Lawrence; Wartella, Ellen; and Whitney, D. Charles. (1998). Media Making: Mass Media in a Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Kempton, Willett; Boster, James S.; and Hartley, Jennifer A. (1995). Environmental Values in American Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kinlaw, D.C. (1993). Competitive and Green: Sustainable Performance in the Environmental Age. San Diego, CA: Pfeiffer & Company. Rushkoff, Douglas. (1994). Media Virus! Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture. New York: Ballantine Books. Ross, Andrew. (1994). The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life: Nature’s Debt to Society. New York: Verso. Internet Resources America Remembers. “Iron Eyes Cody: The ‘Crying Indian.’” Available from http:// www.americaremembers.com/FI09100-2.htm. Dyer, Judith C. “The History of the Recycling Symbol: Gary Anderson, Recycling Dude Extraordinaire.” Available from http://home.att.net/~DyerConsequences/ recycling_symbol.html. Earth Odyssey. “Recycling Symbols.” Available from http://www.earthodyssey.com/ symbols.html. Federal Trade Commission. “Part 260: Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims.” Available from http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/grnrule/guides980427.htm. FOX.com “The Simpson’s: Ofﬁcial Web Site.” Available from http://www.thesimpsons.com. Keep America Beautiful. “Public Service Announcements.” Available from http://www.kab.org/psa1.cfm. Snopes.com. “Urban Legends Reference Pages: Movies (Iron Eyes Cody).” Urban Legends Reference Pages. Available from http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/ ironeyes.htm. STLyrics. “Friends—Soundtrack Lyrics (Mitchell, Joni—Big Yellow Taxi [Trafﬁc Jam Mix]).”Available from http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/friends/bigyellowtaxitrafﬁcjammix.htm. U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, the National Association of State Foresters, and the Advertising Council. “Smokey’s Vault: History of Campaign.” Available from http://www.smokeybear.com/vault/history.asp. Wood, Harold. “Earth Songs.” Available from http://www.planetaryexploration.net/ patriot/earth_songs.html. Yamhill County Building and Planning Department, McMinnville, OR. “Yamhill County Solid Waste.” Available from http://www.ycsw.org/index.asp.

William Arthur Atkins

Population Throughout most of human history, the world’s population has grown gradually. It took thousands of years for the global population to reach one billion people (around 1800). Then, in a little more than a century, the population jumped to two billion (by 1960), and to three billion by 1980. In just twenty years—between 1980 and 2000—the world’s human population doubled from three billion to six billion people.

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The human population explosion during the past century was the result of several factors. Fertility rates remained high, while medical and agricultural advances such as antibiotics, immunizations, clean water, and improved food availability reduced mortality rates—especially among infants and children.

Billboard promoting birth control, China, 1984. (UPI/Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission.)

It is difﬁcult to predict how rapidly the human population will continue to increase, due to the many factors that affect population growth. Another important question that scholars ask is “How many people can the earth support?” While the human population grows, the earth’s size and resources remain the same. Technology can increase the amount of food that can be produced on a piece of land, but it cannot increase the amount of land and water on the planet. Many people regard population growth as the single most serious global issue, because population size is closely linked to environmental and human health conditions. Environmental problems are aggravated by population explosions. More people means more resources and energy are consumed and more pollution is created and more waste is sent to landﬁlls. More land is needed to grow crops and build houses. More trees are cut down for new homes. More cars are built, more fossil fuels are used, and more gases are released into the environment. More natural wilderness areas or beautiful landscapes are destroyed to provide resources and cropland. In short, population growth makes other environmental problems harder to solve.

Projecting Population Change Scholars have spent centuries trying to ﬁnd reliable ways to predict population change. One of the most famous population researchers was Thomas Malthus, a British clergyman who studied population growth in the 1770s. In

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his famous 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus argued that human populations tend to grow exponentially, while food production is limited by land available for agriculture. In short, human populations tend to increase faster than food supply, leading to an imbalance. Malthus projected that population increases in England would quickly outstrip the available food supplies, leading to famine and misery. Malthus’s predictions for England never occurred in his lifetime. England’s population did increase, but advances in science and technology enhanced food production. Malthus’s theory also failed to take into account colonial growth as a result of other factors. Still, scholars use Malthus’s concepts of geometric population growth today, though new models of population change are far more complex. Researchers who study population change consider many factors for each country. Population change for any group of people is determined by fertility, mortality, and migration rates. What is the average number of children per family? What is the life expectancy? Are people migrating into or out of a country? Each of these is, in turn, affected by other factors. It is important to remember that population projections are just estimates based on past information; they do not account for unknowns such as future wars, epidemics, or the effects of climate change. However, the scholars who make the projections attempt to improve their accuracy by revising projections as new information is collected. The United Nations Population Division is one of the organizations responsible for making population projections. After considering the potential impact of the current AIDS epidemic, the United Nations recently lowered its population projection for 2050 by more than one billion people.

United Nations Projections WO R L D P O P U L AT IO N (billions)

9

?

8 7 6 5 4 3 2

00 20

50 19

00 19

50 18

18

00

1

At the beginning of the twenty-ﬁrst century, the world population is still growing at a rate of 1.2 percent annually. This is the same as adding 77 million people (roughly the population of France) to the world each year. A world population projection published by the United Nations in 2002 estimates that the world’s human population will reach 8.9 billion by 2050. This population increase is not expected to occur evenly across the globe. The populations of some nations are shrinking while those of other nations are swelling. During the past few decades, reproduction rates have decreased in countries where the standard of living has improved; these improved living standards are generally associated with higher education levels across a population and access to birth control. Today, as many as thirty-three countries are witnessing population declines due to lower birthrates. Japan, Bulgaria, Italy, Bulgaria, Estonia, and the Russian Federation are among the countries that have achieved negative population growth. Population explosions tend to occur in regions already struggling with hunger. Africa is expected to undergo the most rapid growth, increasing from 784 million people in 2000 to nearly 1.8 billion in 2050. Eight countries— India, Pakistan, Nigeria, the United States, China, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo—are expected to account for half of the world’s population increase during the next ﬁfty years. India may overtake China as the most populous country, rising from just over one billion to more than 1.5 billion between 2000 and 2050. Birthrates are not the only reason

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for the anticipated rises. The United States has a low birthrate, but a high immigration rate.

How Many People Can the Earth Support? Is there a limit to the number of people the world can support? Some people contend that new technologies will make it possible for the earth to support ever-larger human populations. They describe the earth’s resources as virtually inexhaustible, due to the potential of technology. They point to the scientiﬁc advances that helped increase crop yields across India and China as an example of the human ability to adapt through technology. Other scholars believe that there are limits to how much technology can accomplish. They argue that the earth’s capacity to support human population growth is ﬁnite—because natural resources can be damaged or depleted. For example, India’s increased crop production has not keep pace with its growing population. India’s per-person food production is actually dropping as the food supply is shared among more and more people.

“Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.” —Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, (1798)

Water shortages may be the most insurmountable obstacles for human survival, as populations continue to grow. On every continent (including North America), rising demands for water are already causing water tables to drop to dangerously low levels, depleting future water supplies. Several of the world’s major rivers are being drained dry before running their courses. Most of this water is used for irrigation (to grow food); less is used for industry and domestic use. Water scarcity is already a serious survival problem for people living in the more populous and arid regions of the world. Scholars predict that most of the world will face water scarcity as human demands on the earth’s resources continue to rise. Despite hope for technologies such as desalinization to solve the world’s water shortages, the prospects to solve global problems are unlikely. So far, desalinization is too expensive for most nations. A second challenge the world faces is food production. There is hope that breakthroughs in plant genetics and other sciences will continue to improve food production. Yet many scholars argue that even the most remarkable advances in agricultural technology, aquaculture, and ranching could not raise food production enough to meet the world’s growing needs. Food production is also limited by the availability of fresh water and land that can be farmed—two ﬁnite resources. Malnutrition is already a growing problem in many regions that depend on grains. Likewise, countries that depend on ﬁsh as a primary protein source are also faced with shrinking food supplies as the world’s ﬁsh populations are further depleted.

Impact on Human Health and the Environment Population growth affects almost every element of human health and the environment by exacerbating preexisting problems. For example, if a nation is already struggling to provide food, education, and healthcare to its people, the needs of an even larger population may exhaust the nation’s ability to provide for anyone. As a result, the rate of poverty, homelessness, and disease are likely to rise. In most cases, rapid population growth results in a decline in human living standards.

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The impact of human population on the environment is complex. A popular theory is that the degree of human impact on the environment is determined by three factors: population size, how much each person consumes, and how much waste each person produces. India may have a much larger population than the United States, but people in United States tend to consume and waste far more goods than people in any other part of the world. According to this theory, a rise in the U.S. population would have a greater impact on the environment than would a similar increase in India’s population.

What Is Being Done? There are many views on what to do about global population growth. Several advocacy groups, such as Negative Population Growth, Zero Population Growth, Planned Parenthood, and the Carrying Capacity Network, focus on raising public awareness about birth control and the need to lower fertility rates. At least one group (Negative Population Growth) advocates that the U.S. government should provide incentives for smaller families and should limit immigration in the United States. The world’s most populous country, China, has been exploring a variety of laws and incentives to limit urban families to one child per family, with the goal of reversing the country’s unsustainable population growth. However, due to the government’s inability to restrict family size in rural areas, where the overwhelming majority of China’s population lives, and other factors, China’s population growth is not expected to turn around until at least 2020. Slowing population growth is also a priority for many environmental organizations, including the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Environmental Defense Fund. Most of these groups have policy statements and/or education programs that deal with population issues. S E E A L S O Earth Summit; Ehrlich, Paul; History; Lifestyle; Malthus, Thomas; Popular Culture; Poverty; Zero Population Growth. Bibliography Brown, Lester R.; Gardner, Gary; and Halweil, Brian. (1999). Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge. New York: Norton. Cohen, Joel E. (1995). How Many People Can the Earth Support? New York: Norton. Internet Resources United Nations Population Division. World Population Prospects: The 2002 Revision Population Database. Available from http://esa.un.org/unpp/sources.html.

Corliss Karasov

Poverty Continuing industrialization and technological advances beneﬁt many (though not all) of the people in the developed countries, but the gap between the rich and poor countries is signiﬁcant and increasing. In general, poverty deprives people of adequate education, health care, and of life’s most basic necessities—safe living conditions (including clean air and clean drinking water) and an adequate food supply. The developed (industrialized) countries today account for roughly 20 percent of the world’s population but control about 80 percent of the world’s wealth. Poverty and pollution seem to

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operate in a vicious cycle that, so far, has been hard to break. Even in the developed nations, the gap between the rich and the poor is evident in their respective social and environmental conditions.

Poverty, the Environment, and Pollution Regardless of the reason or the area of the world in which a poor population lives, certain reciprocal elements will act on the population and its environment. Lack of education, oppression, lack of appropriate infrastructure—from water-treatment facilities to better roads and communication—all exacerbate the twin problems of poverty and environmental degradation. One cannot ask people to heal the environment, or even just mind it, if they can barely sustain themselves. For example, tropical ﬁsh are considered to be either delicacies or exotic pets by people who can pay for them and people in tropical regions can earn good money for catching these ﬁsh. But to catch the ﬁsh more easily they use cyanide or dynamite to stun the ﬁsh. The former pollutes (and moves up the food chain) and the latter destroys the reef environment. Agricultural practices that tax the soil lead to soil erosion, which lowers crop yields and pollutes rivers and streams with silt. The accumulation of the silt—from the loose eroded soil—kills the ﬁsh in the river and streams. Another cause of soil erosion is the cutting down of trees, in massive numbers, either for use as ﬁrewood (because the winters are harsh and there is no other way to stay warm) or to sell for much needed cash. Eventually, not only will the soil erode to a point where it can no longer sustain agriculture, but the trees would be gone too. The above examples show that practices that fail to consider environmental health perpetuate the poverty cycle, thereby further destroying the environment. The environment as a whole tends to be jeopardized more in the poorer areas. In the United States, Louisiana is a poor state in which there is an area known as “Cancer Alley.” It is a stretch on the lower Mississippi River that is home to 125 companies, many of which manufacture products that result in highly hazardous waste. Cancer rates in the area are higher than the national average, and respiratory illnesses, as well as incidents of liver and kidney toxicity, are rampant. In one typical area, Ascension Parish, environmental justice activist Robert Bullard points out, “eighteen petrochemical plants are crammed into a nine and a half square mile area” (Bullard, p. 106). Poor people tend to be less well educated (because they do not have the time and resources to obtain an education), and less politically powerful. Many people in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley were never aware of the dangers of hazardous waste as industries started moving in. Many of them, after years of discrimination, are distrustful of politicians and public ofﬁcials. Their land is cheap, and Louisiana provides the big industries with tax breaks, which appeal to companies looking at the bottom line. Globally, the large industries ﬁnd the same advantage in poor nations. Pollution controls and hazardous-waste-disposal regulations are stricter, and more expensive, in the developed nations. Many companies ﬁnd it cheaper to export their waste to the developing countries, which are starving for cash. The hazardous waste disposal in those countries is unsafe and dangerously polluting. The people handling the waste are poorly educated, and therefore may suffer severe health consequences as a result of their work. However, if they are paid a salary they are better off than many others. In addition, the developing countries themselves, eager to grow economically, may develop

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heavy industry but not the controls or infrastructure necessary to contain the pollution. It is easy to see, therefore, that there is a huge divide, economically and ideologically, between the developed and developing countries.

The North–South Divide Economists talk about the North–South divide when referring to the economic growth and development of nations. The developed, or industrialized, countries, most of which are in the northern hemisphere, are referred to as the North. The developing countries, which are economically underdeveloped to varying degrees, are referred to as the South. When it comes to pollution and environmental preservation, the North and South have different priorities that seem to put them at odds with each other. The concept of sustainable development is crucial to understanding the conﬂict between the North and South. The United Nations, in a 1987 report of its World Commission on Environment and Development, deﬁnes sustainable development as the ability to grow economically and improve quality of life in such a way that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (Nebel, p. 16) As mentioned above, the most pressing priority for the southern hemisphere nations is economic growth: the poverty rate in the developing countries can reach 90 percent (by comparison, the North has a poverty rate, on average, of 15 percent). Environmental conservation and pollution control are far less a priority in the South. The priority in the North is sustainable development—the ability to continue on the course of consumption and energy use while ensuring a healthy environment. The developing countries feel this attitude is elitist, even racist (most poor nations or groups are not white). They contend that the developed countries’ demands for environmental regulations place an undue burden on the developing nations. Worse yet, the largest polluters are the developed countries, which also consume the most global resources. Many of the problems of environmental destruction in the poor countries are a direct result of consumption levels in the developed countries (poaching for ivory in Africa is but one example, albeit extreme). Historically, European colonization disrupted those societies that normally lived in balance with their environment. Mostly hunting, agricultural, or ﬁshing in nature, the people grew or consumed enough to sustain themselves, never taking more than they needed. The European settlers diverted the native agriculture to grow certain target crops (sugarcane and tobacco, for example) that were valuable in Europe. Not rotating the crops depleted the soil and reduced crop yields. It also made the colonized countries’ economies wholly dependent on the ﬂuctuations in cash-crop prices. The settlers also mined and deforested the environment, causing heavy damage. To this day, developing nations are in the ironic position of exporting a big percentage of their agricultural yield, while having to import food. Even after gaining their independence, many of these countries were unable to build an economy independent of European and U.S. consumption patterns. The developing nations are heavily in debt to the developed countries, and their cash crops and other commodities (such as diamonds in Africa) are controlled by international corporations. The entire set of circumstances creates severe tension between the North and the South and is getting renewed attention with the emphasis now being given to environmental justice.

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Environmental Equity In 1997 a study by the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies found that life expectancy for people living in poor communities in the United States was markedly lower than life expectancy for people living in wealthier communities, sometimes by as much as ﬁfteen years. While many factors contribute to this alarming discrepancy, it has become clearer since the 1980s that poor communities, which are also predominantly nonwhite, bear the brunt of adverse pollution affects. In 1983, for example, a U.S. General Accounting Ofﬁce report found that in eight southeastern states that were studied, “Blacks make up the majority of the population in three out of four communities where landﬁlls are located.” (U.S. GAO, p. 1) Worldwide, the trend is similar. Big corporations ﬁnd it easier and cheaper to export trash and to build polluting factories in poor developing nations. Environmental justice is, to use the U.S. Department of Energy’s deﬁnition, “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies” (http://www.epa.gov/compliance/environmentaljustice/index.html). In the United States, the 1980s saw the beginning of an environmental justice movement that started focusing attention on the undue burdens placed on poor communities when it comes to living in a polluted environment. Fighting what some refer to as environmental racism, the grassroots environmental justice movements at times clashed with older environmental groups, who formed around the idea of conservation, and whose concern for the natural environment seemed elitist. There was a perception that organizations such as the Sierra Club concerned themselves with the conservation of the natural environment but did not care about pollution in inner cities and poor rural communities. Much more research is being done on the connection between hazardous living conditions and poverty— not only on the effects, but also on the causes. Among the environmental justice group’s many victories was Executive Order 12898, signed by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1994, directing federal agencies to correct the “disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects” that their operations have on the minorities and low-income populations.

A study prepared for the California state Waste Management Board, known as the Cerrell Report, concluded that trash incinerators should not be built within five miles of “middle and higher socioeconomic strata neighborhoods.” The report, “Political Difficulties Facing Waste-to-Energy Conversion Plant Siting,” says that plans to build such plants will face less opposition if placed in poor neighborhoods instead of wealthy ones. The report provides personality profiles of people most likely and least likely to fight an incineration plant.

Earth Summit and Agenda 21 Environmental justice and the connection between poverty and pollution have been gaining increased attention globally, both from governmental and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In 1992 the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in what came to be known as the Earth Summit (June 3 to 14). Unprecedented in size, the meeting focused on sustainable development, and its main result was a document of goals and plan of action known as Agenda 21. The document was adopted by over 170 governments represented at the conference. One of the principles on which Agenda 21 is based is recognizing that “[a]ll States and all people shall cooperate in the essential task of eradicating poverty as an indispensable requirement for sustainable development” (Rio Declaration, Principle 5). Chapter 3 of Agenda 21 is dedicated to the issue of poverty. In it, the document acknowledges that sustainable development is not possible

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without a sweeping, global effort to eradicate poverty, and certain recommendations are made as to how to achieve this goal. Following the Earth Summit, the United Nations noted that poverty was in fact increasing. In a follow-up meeting to the Earth Summit, the UN General Assembly in its 1997 Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21 called for refocusing sustainable development efforts on the eradication of poverty as an overriding priority. In 1995 the United Nations also declared 1997 to 2006 to be “the First United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty” (http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/poverty/poverty.htm). The disappointing decade that followed the Earth Summit, especially with the increase in poverty, led to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, a meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, that took place between August 26 and September 4, 2002. While the document resulting from the meeting was only ﬁfty pages long, it contained concrete goals, and as such has more practical value than Agenda 21, in the opinion of many participants. In addition to the goals, over three hundred international partnerships were formed to launch an initiative that would improve access to safe drinking water, improve sanitation, address toxic-waste management, and address many other sustainable development issues. According to the World Bank, at the start of the twenty-ﬁrst century 1.2 billion people lived in absolute poverty, a condition deﬁned by the United Nations as “characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs” (UN Report of the World Summit for Social Development, p. 44), including access to safe water, sanitation, food, and appropriate health care. Economically, the World Bank deﬁnes absolute poverty as living on less than one dollar per day. An additional 2.8 billion people lived on less than two dollars per day. Eight out of one hundred children didn’t live to see their ﬁfth birthday. While strides have been made in the ﬁght against poverty, these advances were not uniformly distributed around the globe. It is well understood that the ecological crisis our planet is facing—one that includes pollution, scarcity of resources, environmental degradation, and loss of biodiversity—cannot be addressed without addressing, and alleviating, the problem of poverty. To do that, an integrated approach, one that addresses the entire poverty cycle, is needed. Such an approach would have to include the eradication of gender bias in community participation and access to education; equal representation to all citizens, regardless of economic status; access to safe drinking water, proper sanitation, and proper health care (including family-planning resources); universal access to education; and improved employment opportunities. It is obvious from this partial list that only committed international cooperation can bring about these changes. In maintaining the status quo, we pay a tremendous price in human suffering and in an environmental crisis that will affect generations to come. The good news is that more people are refusing to pay the price these days, and are taking steps to form partnerships that will bring about a positive change. S E E A L S O Agenda 21; Cancer; Cancer Alley, Louisiana; Chávez, César E.; Disasters: Chemical Accidents and Spills; Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents; Disasters: Natural; Disasters: Nuclear Accidents; Disasters: Oil Spills; Earth Summit; Environmental Racism; Health, Human. Bibliography Bullard, Robert D. (2000). Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. Boulder, CO: Westview.

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Ehrlich, Paul R.; Ehrlich, Anne H.; and Daily, Gretchen C. (1995). The Stork and the Plow. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Nebel, Bernard J.; and Wright, Richard T. (2000). Environmental Science: The Way the World Works, 7th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Ponting, Clive. (1992). A Green History of the World. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Olden, Kenneth. (1998). “The Complex Interaction of Poverty, Pollution, Health Status.” The Scientist 12(4):7. United Nations Report of the World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, March 6-12, 1995). U.S. General Accounting Ofﬁce. (1983). “Citing of Hazardous Waste Landﬁlls and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities.” RCED-83-168, June 1, 1983. Internet Resources Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science at Case Western Reserve University. Ethics and Values in Pre-College Science Instruction. “Case #6: Love Canal.” Available from http://onlineethics.org/edu/precol/classroom/cs6.html. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Ofﬁce of Environmental Justice. Available from http://www.epa.gov/compliance/environmentaljustice/index.html United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “Economic and Social Development.” Available from http://www.un.org/esa. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Social Policy and Development. “First United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty 1997-2006.” Available from: http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/poverty/poverty.htm. United Nations Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. Available from http://www.unep.org/documents/default.asp?documentid=78&articleid=1163. World Bank Group. “World Bank Poverty Net.” Available from http://www. worldbank.org/poverty/index.htm.

Adi R. Ferrara

Precautionary Principle The precautionary principle, also referred to as the precautionary approach, justiﬁes the use of cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation even in the absence of full scientiﬁc certainty. This principle has obvious applications to various forms of environmental pollution. The principle can be traced to German national law in 1976, which states, “[e]nvironmental policy is not fully accomplished by warding off imminent hazards and the elimination of damage which has occurred. Precautionary environmental policy requires furthermore that natural resources are protected and demands on them are made with care.” The principle’s ﬁrst applications beyond national boundaries came in 1987. It was quickly adopted into numerous multilateral treaties and international declarations, including the 1987 Montréal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the 1990 Bergen Declaration on Sustainable Development, the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, and the 1999 Treaty of Amsterdam, which has broadened and redeﬁned the goals and institutions of the European Union. The principle’s scope varies dramatically in these documents as well as in national legislation that contains it. In some, it is limited to toxic substances that are persistent and can bioaccumulate. In others, like the Bergen Declaration, it covers all government policies with the potential to degrade the environment, even when some causal relationships have not been fully

multilateral treaty treaty between more than two governments

bioaccumulation buildup of a chemical within a food chain when a predator consumes prey containing that chemical

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hormone a molecule released by one cell to regulate development of another phthalate particular class of complex carbon compounds polyvinyl chloride (PVC) class of complex carbon compounds containing chlorine

established scientiﬁcally. Some critics contend that the Principle restricts technology. It has been a focus of U.S.–European Union (EU) trade disputes, as Europeans have argued for its application to genetically modiﬁed foods, animal-growth-promoting hormones, and phthalates (softeners) in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) children’s toys. The U.S. government also contends that the principle is a nontariff barrier, that is a policy that interferes with exports or imports other than a simple tariff such as quota. S E E A L S O Laws and Regulations, International; Laws and Regulations, United States; Treaties and Conferences. Bibliography Goklany, Indur M. (2001). Precautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Analysis. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute.

Michael G. Schechter

President’s Council on Environmental Quality

advise and consent the formal responsibility of a government body to provide counsel and approval for the actions of another body, especially the Senate to the President

codify put into law

The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) was created by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1969 during the ﬁrst term of President Richard Nixon. The primary role of the council is to advise the President on environmental policy. Because it is limited to an advisory role, CEQ does not have a highly visible public proﬁle. It is composed of three members, including a chairperson, who are appointed by the president with the advise and consent of the Senate. CEQ’s importance in environmental policy has ﬂuctuated signiﬁcantly over the years of its existence. The NEPA is the federal law that requires federal agencies to prepare environmental impact statements (EISs) prior to undertaking or approving any action that might have a signiﬁcant effect on the quality of the environment. In adopting NEPA, Congress realized that a wide range of federal activity had an impact on environmental quality. In practice, one of the most important functions of CEQ is to oversee the implementation of the EIS process by other federal agencies. Initially, the oversight took the form of guidelines for implementing the EIS process; the guidelines were advisory and not mandatory. In 1979, at the request of President Jimmy Carter, the CEQ issued mandatory regulations that had to be followed by all agencies. Since there had been many court cases interpreting the language of NEPA, the CEQ regulations essentially codified the case law created by the courts. Generally, government regulations interpret and explain confusing statutory language, but unfortunately they themselves are often very confusing. CEQ’s regulations under NEPA are an exception to this rule; they are written in clear and concise language. The extensive and clearly written regulations are most likely a factor in the reduced number of court cases ﬁled under NEPA since 1979. The CEQ was required by law to provide the president with an annual report on the state of the nation’s environment. The report would establish the status and condition of the natural environment, the current and foreseeable environmental trends, the adequacy of natural resources for fulﬁlling the nation’s needs, a review of other relevant programs and activities of government and nongovernment organizations, and a program for remedying

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existing environmental deﬁciencies. Throughout the 1970s, CEQ’s annual report to the president was a treasure trove of information for citizens interested in environmental issues. Since then, CEQ has generally been underfunded, and as a consequence, its annual reports have shrunk in size and are not issued in a timely fashion. Finally, CEQ acts as a referee in disputes between federal agencies implementing various aspects of NEPA. Although the statute assigns other general, environmentally related tasks to CEQ, the three noted above are the most important and most visible. CEQ has had a checkered existence. Though active and visible through 1980, President Ronald Regan saw little need for it and sought to eliminate the CEQ. Failing in this endeavor, the President cut CEQ’s funding by over 80 percent and failed to appoint any members to the council until the latter years of his presidency. President Bill Clinton prepared legislation that would eliminate CEQ, and transfer its functions to a new cabinet-level Department of the Environment. That legislation failed too. In 1995 the president rejuvenated the CEQ. Its greatest visibility in the Clinton years evolved when its chair, Kathleen McGinty, became the Executive Director of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD). The PCSD developed, and even began the implementation of, a broad plan for leading the country toward a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle. Though no activity on the part of CEQ may be currently apparent, President George W. Bush appointed a CEQ chairperson in 2001. S E E A L S O Environmental Impact Statement; National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

cabinet in government: collective name for the heads of federal departments that report directly to the president

Internet Resource Executive Ofﬁce of the President, Council on Environmental Quality. Available from http://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq.

James P. Karp

Progressive Movement The Progressive Era, a term used to describe the period between approximately 1890 and 1920, witnessed an explosion of reform efforts in America. A great number of people, for a variety of reasons, participated in a vast number of diverse reforms, including women’s suffrage, political reform, and prohibition. Progressive reformers initiated these changes in reaction to the increased level of, and problems associated with, urbanization and industrialization in late-nineteenth-century America. Taking advantage of new technological developments in transportation, communication, and organization, industry grew tremendously and immigrants ﬂooded into unprepared cities for new jobs. With no government oversight or regulations, numerous problems erupted: Housing became overcrowded, dilapidated, and diseaseridden; industries failed to protect their employees ﬁnancially, physically, or health-wise; and pollution became rampant. Environmental activities formed part of progressive reformers’ efforts. These environmental reformers generally viewed the environmental problems of the city in two different ways. The conservation and preservation activists, led by Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, respectively, pressed for the improvement and protection of “nature” outside the city.

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They worked to set aside land either as undeveloped wilderness for its aesthetic values, or to maintain resources like forests for future use by humans. Others interested in environmental problems, however, pressed for solutions within urban areas rather than outside of them. Jacob Riis, a muckraking journalist, published photographs of slum housing and their immigrant residents. His work outraged many and produced some reforms in living conditions. Upton Sinclair, perhaps one of the most famous muckrakers of the Progressive Era, published The Jungle in 1906, a startling, thinly ﬁctionalized exposé of the meat-packing industry. Filled with stories of vile, unsanitary, and dangerous conditions for workers, the book led to legislative action in the form of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. In addition, reformers strived to improve working conditions in factories, resulting in factory inspection laws and child-labor laws. Women also played a pivotal role in the antipollution movement of the Progressive Era. Alice Hamilton increased public awareness of toxic chemicals and their health effects. The Settlement House movement, led by women like Jane Addams, worked to better city services and conditions within immigrant neighborhoods. Smoke pollution also greatly concerned women at this time. Reacting to their increased laundry load in ﬁlthy conditions, as well as concerns about their husbands’ and children’s health, women dramatically altered the general public’s conceptions of smoke. Up to this time, many had conceived of smoke as either a disinfectant or the necessary cost of progress. Women educated their fellow citizens on the health dangers of smoke, and their activism led to smoke-pollution-control laws in every major city in the United States by 1912. Men took control of this issue within legislative circles, stressing technology as a way to reduce smoke or burn the coal more efﬁciently. Although progressive reformers generally raised awareness of environmental problems and changed public perceptions of pollution, their activism, in fact, remained quite limited. Reformers of this time generally accepted the beliefs of capitalism and industry. This caused them to limit their search for solutions to technological means, such as ﬁnding cleaner methods of burning coal, rather than examining consumption patterns of energy or other products. S E E A L S O Activism; Addams, Jane; Environmental Movement; Hamilton, Alice; Industry; Lead; Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); Point Source; Politics; Settlement House Movement; Solid Waste; Water Pollution; Workers Health Bureau. Bibliography Hoy, Suellen. (1995). Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness. New York: Oxford University Press. Melosi, Martin, ed. (1980). Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870–1930. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Stradling, David. (1999). Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers, and Air Quality in America, 1881–1951. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Internet Resource Library of Congress, Memory Gallery C. “The Progressive Era.” Available from http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/tr11c.html#prog.

Elizabeth D. Blum

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Property Rights Movement The property rights movement has had a signiﬁcant impact on the nation’s environmental policies since 1980. The groups identiﬁed with the movement commonly oppose federal regulation or intrusion on land that is privately held, especially in cases where federal involvement is in the form of environmental laws that limit the owner’s full or partial use of the land. The movement began with the Sagebrush Rebellion of the mid-1970s, when legislators from states in western United States sought the transfer of federal public lands to state control. Researchers have identiﬁed numerous groups and organizations that fall under the general classiﬁcation of the environmental opposition, one of which is the property rights movement. These groups commonly oppose federal regulation or intrusion related to land that is privately held, especially environmental laws that limit the owner’s full or partial use of the land. This segment of activists is distinct from the wise use movement, which grew out of the Sagebrush Rebellion of the mid-1970s. Wise use advocates support an antigovernment regulatory agenda related to the use of public land and resources, where the property rights movement is based on the use of privately held land. The property rights movement ﬁrst surfaced in the early 1990s with local grassroots organizations made up of individuals seeking to develop their own property, usually by building a home, clearing out trees or brush, or draining a wetland. Many of the landowners had been unaware of federal regulations and permits that could thwart their efforts, such as provisions of the Clean Water Act or the Endangered Species Act. After being prohibited from developing their properties by the federal government, they often joined other frustrated property owners, usually in their area or neighborhood, who were similarly prohibited from doing what they wanted with their land. The “members” of the movement rarely joined a speciﬁc, formal organization; more commonly, they shared grievances against the government based on their individual disputes. They would, however, rely upon an organization for legal advice and updates on land regulations that would affect them. The property rights movement has been most active in regions in the eastern and southern United States, where title to land is often in a family’s name for many generations. Historically, there has been an assumption that the right to control the land belongs to the titleholder, regardless of changes in the law or public policy. Many activists are farmers, ranchers, or rural or beachfront property owners who are unaware of the ecological value of their land until they decide to develop it. This has led to a national debate over competing land-related interests—the rights of the property owner to use the land versus the government’s interest in controlling pollution, protecting wildlife and their habitat, and managing ecosystems or even other landowner’s property. Property rights stem from English common law and the Magna Carta, although there has been an evolution in legal interpretation of those rights since the 1920s. Most of the recent litigation has dealt with the concept of federalism, and more speciﬁcally, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. One of the clauses in the amendment refers to “takings”—a requirement that the government cannot take privately owned land for public use without compensating the owner for the value of the land. University of

wetland an area that is saturated by surface or ground water with vegetation adapted for life under those soil conditions, as swamps, bogs, fens, marshes, and estuaries

titleholder the person or entity holding the legal title or deed to a property

Magna Carta English charter giving landowners rights under the king’s authority

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Chicago law professor Richard Epstein created an intellectual basis for the property rights movement in 1985 in Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain. This book placed the takings clause in the context of wilderness designations, endangered species, and wetlands protection.

takings impact analysis analysis of the impacts due to government restriction on land use

The takings issue has often resulted in a private property owner seeking compensation from the government by ﬁling a suit before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims or the U.S. Supreme Court. Since 1987, the courts have frequently ruled that federal regulations like the Clean Water Act that deny the owner the economically viable use of the land must pay the owner for the loss of the use of the land. The government further expanded the rights of property owners with an executive order by President Ronald Reagan and with regulations that called for government agencies to evaluate the risk of unanticipated takings. The 1988 policy calls for the federal government to budget funds for a takings impact analysis that property owners feel protects their constitutional rights, although the law continues to evolve over these issues as movement activists continue to press for what they believe are their constitutional right to compensation. S E E A L S O Activism; Economics; Politics; Wise Use Movement Bibliography Epstein, Richard. (1985). Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wise, Charles R. (1992). “The Changing Doctrine of Regulatory Taking and the Executive Branch.” Administrative Law Review 44 (Spring):404. Yandle, Bruce, ed. (1995). Land Rights: The 1990s’ Property Rights Rebellion. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleﬁeld. Internet Resource Meltz, Robert. (1995). “The Property Rights Issue.” CRS Reports for Congress. Available from http://cnie.org/NLE.

Jacqueline Vaughn Switzer

Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) Early in his career as a consumer advocate, Ralph Nader struck on an idea for a new type of organization. “How about a law ofﬁce that worked for the public’s interest—not that of corporations or just individuals?” he thought. Out of this concept evolved the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). It began its genesis with a staff of twelve lawyers and a physician, each bringing his or her expertise in a different ﬁeld to the effort. “It was like a law ofﬁce, but for public interest,” Nader said in Ralph Nader: Battling for Democracy, an authorized biography written by Kevin Graham. “We broke open a lot of new areas for several years. For instance, we were the ﬁrst to bring action to create nonsmoking sections on public transportation. We presented the idea that nonsmokers had prior rights to those of smokers, which was unheard of back then.” In PIRG’s early days, Donald Ross and Jim Welch—two of its original members—focused on organizing students on college campuses across the nation. With Nader’s help, they created a student-led movement that still exists today. In its efforts, PIRG spread the notion that young people could make a difference in government and corporate America.

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Nader’s appearance at the University of Oregon in the fall of 1970 helped launch the idea of student activism and provided a successful example for other campuses to follow. Soon, all seven schools in the state college system approved the establishment of the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group, known as OSPIRG. Students in other states then followed Oregon’s lead. Each student PIRG was ﬁnanced and run by students, but guided by a small professional staff of attorneys, scientists, organizers, and other workers. The PIRGs distinguished themselves from many other movements at the time by actually participating in government processes, not by simply protesting against them. They became important players within the framework of the existing system and quickly discovered they could affect the outcome of government decisions. For example, in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Student Public Interest Research Group (MASSPIRG) placed an initiative on the state’s ballot in 1986 aimed at reducing the use of toxic chemicals. Voters approved the measure by the largest margin of any initiative in the state’s history. In 2002 a national set of laws and system of regulations are in place to deal with this same issue. Other PIRGs tackled issues such as recycling, pollution, and public health and safety. The groups also provided training for thousands of students—training that continues today, producing wave after wave of students working to solve numerous environmental and other societal problems. PIRGs currently exist in twenty-four states, and seventeen more operate in Canada. Each is independent in operation, yet all share similar agendas and goals. S E E A L S O Nader, Ralph. Bibliography Isaac, Katherine, and Nader, Ralph. (1995). Ralph Nadar Presents Practicing Democracy: A Guide to Student Action. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Internet Resource State PIRGs. Available from www.pirg.org.

Kevin Graham

Public Participation Public participation is the general term for diverse formal processes by which public concerns, needs, and values are incorporated in governmental decisions. Public participation involves the use of techniques such as public meetings and hearings, advisory committees, interactive workshops, interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, and other methods to identify public concerns and preferences and address them during decision making. It does not include nonformal means of public involvement ranging from lobbying to letter campaigns and protests. Most recent federal laws authorizing or establishing federal programs, including the latest environmental laws, contain requirements that agencies consult with the public during the design and implementation of the program. If money is given to the states, then these public participation requirements are also passed on to the states.

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Who Is the “Public” in Public Participation? Public participation does not mean taking a vote. The agencies offer the opportunity to participate, and people choose whether or not to participate. Because participation is self-selecting, most people who participate are those who have a “stake” in the issue (hence the term stakeholders). They may be affected economically, they may already use or want to use a resource (i.e., land or water), they may live in close proximity to a proposed project (and could be impacted by dust, noise, or trafﬁc), or they may have a legal mandate that would be inﬂuenced by a project (i.e., a local government or regulatory agency). Often, the stake that people have in a decision primarily involves political philosophies or values. Because public participation typically involves only those who have a stake in the decision, some agencies have begun to use the term stakeholder involvement instead of the term public participation. The public that is involved in public participation processes changes from issue to issue. People who are deeply concerned about environmental issues may not be involved in education issues, or decisions about welfare programs. People who live near a project may be very concerned about that project, but have little interest in similar issues elsewhere. Despite these limitations, if some level of agreement (or at least acceptance) of a decision can be reached among the people who care most deeply, the agency has a stronger political mandate to act. Implementation of the decision is far less likely to be delayed by lawsuits or continued political opposition. One of the problems with public participation is that it is sometimes easier to inspire the participation of a small group of people who would be affected negatively, whereas it is difﬁcult to motivate the participation of a much larger group who might beneﬁt from a project, but not so greatly that it inspires them to participate.

What Does “Participation” Mean? Some people use the term public participation when what they really mean is providing information to the public. Every good public participation program involves disseminating complete and objective information to the public, so people can participate on an informed basis. But public information alone is one-way communication. Public participation requires two-way communication. Sometimes, the term public participation is used to describe a process whereby the public has a formal opportunity to comment on a proposed action, just before an agency announces its decision. The agency may or may not change any part of its decision in response to public input. Another form of public participation occurs when an agency decides to fulﬁll only its minimum legal requirements. A number of agencies follow such an approach. For example, if an agency is making a decision that requires the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), it must meet three basic requirements: 1. It must conduct a “scoping process,” typically a public meeting, to discuss the scope of the study. 2. Hold a public hearing after a draft version of the EIS has been distributed to the public.

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3. Announce a public comment period (usually thirty days) with the agency providing a response to each comment in a ﬁnal environmental report. But if an issue is controversial, procedural public participation alone rarely resolves the issue. It is true that people may have been “heard,” but when an agency goes ahead with a decision, that decision may still remain sufﬁciently controversial that it will never be implemented. That is why, beginning in the 1980s, some agencies began to move beyond minimal procedural requirements to public participation that is characterized by genuine consultation or collaboration between the agency and the public, in an effort to address as many of the public’s concerns as possible. The agency still makes the decision, but typically it does so by endorsing a solution that addresses as many of the public’s concerns as the agency can, within the conﬁnes of its legal authorities, regulations, and budget. If there is still a minority who oppose the action, there has been enough interaction that the minority understands the decision-making process was fair and open, and why the decision was reached. There are reasons why it is important that agencies retain this ﬁnal decision-making authority. First, “the public” that participates on a particular issue consists of those people who choose to participate, not the entire public. A project that may have many undesirable impacts on a local community may beneﬁt the country as a whole, and government agencies have to consider the broader state or national interest as well. Agencies operate within legal mandates, that is, authorities and budgets that constrain their options. Sometimes, this means they cannot implement options promoted by an advocacy group that fall outside their legal authority and would require the agency to violate legal requirements or far exceed their budget. Finally, the issue may be controversial not because of what the agency wants, but because the public itself is bitterly divided over the issue. Sometimes, even this consultative approach to public participation will not result in sufﬁcient agreement that an agency is able to make a decision which will ever be implemented. Opponents may throw up legal or political barriers that block any action. In recent years, agencies have experimented with a number of techniques, including mediation, arbitration, negotiated rule making, and interest-based negotiation to resolve such issues. These techniques are sometimes referred to as dispute resolution or alternative dispute resolution techniques, because they are frequently used as an alternative to litigation. Each of these techniques has proven to have value in special circumstances.

Why Should the Public Be Involved in “Technical” Decisions? Many decisions that agencies think are “technical” involve choices between more than one thing society thinks is good. For example, when a regulatory agency sets a standard, such as air pollution standards, these standards can only be achieved by installing very expensive equipment, and sometimes only by shutting down existing factories, putting people out of work. The agency ﬁnds itself having to decide which is more important: clean air or jobs. If an agency creates a regulation prohibiting smoking in public buildings, it is

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making a choice about the relative importance of public health compared with freedom of choice. Both health and freedom of choice are good; the question is what weight or importance should be given to one over the other in a particular circumstance. Many government agencies must make these kinds of value choices, and legislation alone does not provide sufﬁcient guidance to determine what choice should be made in a particular decision. Although these decisions need to be informed with technical information, there is nothing about technical training that makes experts more qualiﬁed than the public in deciding which values are most important for society. Agencies need to consult with the public on these important value choices.

The Evolution of Public Participation From the 1930s onward, the size of the U.S. federal government grew very rapidly, and government became involved in making many decisions that affected people’s lives. As government grew, decisions previously made in a political process were increasingly delegated to technical experts. Over time, many people began to feel that impersonal bureaucrats were making decisions which controlled their lives. After the Depression and World War II, there was broad general agreement in the United States that economic development should be the primary objective of domestic national policy. Leaving decisions to the experts worked well so long as this broad social consensus existed. But in the 1960s, that consensus began to dissipate. The civil rights movement challenged the existing system of segregation, and when the public saw nightly images on television of African-Americans being brutalized by the police during nonviolent marches or demonstrations, and the aftermath of church bombings and other racially motivated violence, the social consensus began to change. Riots in Watts, a low-income area in Los Angeles, and the riots that spread throughout major cities following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., caused many government ofﬁcials to believe that the country was in serious trouble and the old ways needed to be reconsidered. It was during this same time of turmoil and reﬂection that the environmental movement also began to grow. Many environmentalists questioned the belief that economic development should always be the primary goal. The environmental movement learned much from the civil rights movement and adopted a form of grassroots activism that challenged the existing political system. Natural resource agencies always seen as “the good guys” found themselves under increasing attack. The controversy over the Vietnam War also challenged basic beliefs about America and its role in the world. The ensuing Watergate scandal during President Richard M. Nixon’s ﬁrst term, and other revelations concerning political corruption and dishonesty, further engendered public mistrust of government. The “leave it to the experts” mentality was effectively challenged on all fronts. In response, Congress passed a series of laws designed to provide greater openness in governmental decision making, and a dialogue with the public before decisions are made. The key laws are shown in the table. In addition,

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KE Y L AW S PE R TA I N I N G T O PU B L I C P A RTI CI P A TI ON Year

Law

Significance

1946

Administrative Procedures Act

Established minimum standards for participation in agency rule making, including public notice, opportunity for group representation during trial-like hearings (adjudications), maintenance of a public record during such hearings, and holding public hearings (at the agency's discretion) on other matters.

1964

Economic Opportunity Act ("War on Poverty")

Required "maximum feasible participation" of the poor in decisions about community action programs. Agencies were obligated to encourage involvement of "target" populations.

1966

Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act ("Model Cities")

Required widespread participation among those affected by its program grants.

1966

Freedom of Information Act

Provided public access to most documents of government agencies.

1969

National Environmental Policy Act

Established the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), required intergovernmental consultation, and provided funding for citizen groups. CEQ implementing regulations (10 CFR 1500 through 1508 and 10 CFR 1021) established many of the public participation procedures that are the minimum standards for public participation in environmental decision-making.

1972

Federal Advisory Committee Act

Established procedures that must be followed by federal agencies when creating and working with citizen advisory groups.

1972

Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972

Stated that public participation was also required by states implementing programs under the law. Similar language was used in many subsequent laws affect environment, transportation, and social services.

1977

Government in the Sunshine Act

Required many government agencies, particularly regulatory agencies and advisory committees, to open most of their meetings to the public.

1986

Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act

Ensured that the public was informed about pollutant emissions from factories, energy facilities, and industrial operations (including privately owned enterprises) in their community.

1996

Administrative Dispute Resolution Act

Encouraged the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques, and required agencies to designate an ADR officer and provide training in ADR.

1996

Executive Order 12988 – Civil Justice Reform

Encouraged and authorized the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques in resolution of civil claims against federal agencies.

1998

Environmental Policy and Conflict Resolution Act

Created the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, a new federal agency to support conflict prevention and resolution when a federal agency is involved.

SOURCE:

James L. Creighton.

many agencies have issued policies and regulations concerning public participation that have created additional requirements. Public participation has now developed sufﬁciently that many agencies require their planners and decision makers to attend public participation training. Public participation has also become a professional specialty. The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) was established in 1992 and as of 2002 has approximately one thousand members. Some of these members deﬁne themselves as public participation practitioners, and provide these services on a full-time basis within agencies, or as consultants. Many of IAP2’s members, however, are planners, engineers, or program managers who see public participation as an important tool for being effective in those professions. In 1998 Congress created a new federal agency to promote and support processes to prevent and resolve conﬂict when a federal agency is involved. The U.S. Institute for Environmental Conﬂict Resolution is housed within the Udall Foundation in Tucson, Arizona.

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Issues Facing the Field of Public Participation Like any new ﬁeld, the public participation ﬁeld faces many challenges. Environmental activists and business leaders tend to be both white and middle class. Racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in many public participation processes. Language and cultural differences may account for some of the underrepresentation. But other barriers include a general fear of government agencies (who were sometimes sources of outright oppression in immigrants’ countries of origin) and the belief that participation will not necessarily change the outcome. The Internet provides a powerful new tool for participation, although all its potential uses are still being discovered. In the near future, agencies will not only use the Internet to provide information to the public, but almost all information repositories (places where copies of government documents are stored and made available to the public) are likely to become “virtual.” Increasingly, the Internet is being explored as a tool for gathering public input and information. There is considerable concern, however, about a “digital divide,” as the number of people with access to the Internet in the African-American, Latin, and Native American communities, and the poor in general, is considerably lower than in the public at large. People fear that the heavy use of the Internet by agencies will mean that minorities and the poor will not have the same access to the decision-making process as those people who are connected digitally. Activist groups, on the other hand, have embraced the Internet enthusiastically, and use it extensively for organizing and communication with other groups across the country. Some developers and business have ﬁled so-called strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP) suits against citizen activists whose involvement in the decision-making processes may have caused delays or blocked issuance of building or environmental permits. Often, SLAPP suits have little basis in the law, but activists must hire lawyers to defend themselves in such actions, frequently at great personal expense. Many private individuals are unable to afford this, even if they would win ultimately, whereas large companies usually have the resources to hire attorneys and keep the process going as a threat against future participation. Several state courts have rejected SLAPP suits summarily, and this may begin to curtail their use. S E E A L S O Activism; Agencies, Regulatory; Arbitration; Citizen Suits; Consensus Building; Environmental Impact Statement; Environmental Justice; Government; Mediation; National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); Nongovernmental Organizations; Politics; Public Policy Decision Making; Regulatory Negotiation; Right to Know; Warren County, North Carolina. Bibliography Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. (1979). Citizen Participation in the American Federal System. Washington, D.C.. Carpenter, Susan L., and Kennedy, W.J.D. (2001). Managing Public Disputes. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Creighton, James L. (1981). Involving Citizens in Community Decision Making. Washington, D.C.: National Civic League. Gray, Barbara. (1989). Collaborating. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Herrman, Margaret S., ed. (1994). Resolving Conﬂict. Washington, D.C.: International City/County Management Association.

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Langton, Stuart, ed. (1978). Citizen Participation in America. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Susskind, Lawrence; McKearnan, Sarah; and Thomas-Larmer, Jennifer, eds. (1999). The Consensus Building Handbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Thomas, John Clayton. (1995). Public Participation in Public Decisions. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Internet Resources Creighton, James L. (1999). How to Design a Public Participation Program. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Energy. Available from http://www.e.doe/ftlink/public. Creighton, James L.; Delli Priscoli, Jerome; and Dunning, C. Mark, et al., eds. (1998). Public Involvement and Dispute Resolution, Vols. 1 and 2. Alexandria, VA: Institute for Water Resources. Available from http://www.iwr.usace.army.mil/iwr/products. International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Web site. Available from http://www.iap2.org. U.S. Institute for Environmental Conﬂict Resolution Web site. Available from http:// www.ecr.gov.

James L. Creighton

Public Policy Decision Making Public policy decision making refers to actions taken within governmental settings to formulate, adopt, implement, evaluate, or change environmental policies. These decisions may occur at any level of government.

The Scope of Environmental Policy At the most general level, environmental policies reﬂect society’s collective decision to pursue certain environmental goals and objectives and to use particular means to achieve them. Public sector decision making incorporates a diversity of perspectives on environmental problems, from those of industry to the views of activist environmental organizations. Ultimately, policies reﬂect the inevitable compromises over which environmental goals to pursue and how best to achieve them. Private decision making by corporations and individuals also affects society’s ability to respond to environmental challenges. Indeed, critics of governmental performance look to the private sector for initiatives. Yet, as a nation, the United States relies heavily on public decision making because only governments possess the necessary ﬁnancial resources or have the requisite legal authority or political legitimacy. Environmental policy is complex. Beyond the laws, regulations, and court rulings on the subject, it is strongly affected by agency ofﬁcials who are charged with implementing and enforcing environmental law. Their decisions, in turn, are inﬂuenced by a range of political and economic forces, including the policy beliefs of elected ofﬁcials, the health of the economy, anticipated costs and beneﬁts of laws and regulations, federal–state relations, public opinion, media coverage of environmental issues, and efforts by corporations, environmental groups, and scientists to inﬂuence public policy. The environmental quality standards that are set in laws and regulations reﬂect the uncertain and changing base of environmental science, as well as policy judgments concerning the extent of risk from air or water pollution or toxic chemicals that is acceptable to society. How clean is clean enough? A

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signiﬁcantly safer or cleaner environment may be harder to achieve with existing technologies. Moreover, the effort may be both more costly and more controversial. Confronting tradeoffs among competing social values lies at the heart of environmental policy decision making.

sustainable able to be practiced for many generations without loss of productivity or degradation of the environment sustainable development economic development that does not rely on degrading the environment

Environmental policy covers a wide range of issues and has had a pervasive and growing impact on modern human affairs. It also goes well beyond federal and state actions on air and water pollution or control of hazardous waste and toxic chemicals. Increasingly, these actions are linked to decision making in many related areas that also affect environmental quality and human health. These include such disparate concerns as energy use, transportation, population growth, and agriculture and food production. Scientists and scholars use the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development to link these varied human inﬂuences on the natural environment. Reports from the 1992 Earth Summit and the President’s Council on Sustainable Development ﬁrmly endorsed this more comprehensive and integrated view of environmental challenges. At an even more fundamental level, environmental policy concerns the protection of vital global ecological, chemical, and geophysical systems that scientists increasingly believe to be put at risk through certain human activities. Climate change and loss of biological diversity are examples of such threats. Thus, environmental policy decision making addresses both longterm and global as well as short-term and local risks to health and the environment. For all these reasons, it has become one of the most important functions of government in both industrialized and developing nations.

Evolution of U.S. Environmental Policies The fundamental framework for U.S. environmental policies, especially those dealing with pollution control, was established during the 1970s with the adoption of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (the major hazardous waste law), and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (Superfund), among others. With later amendments, these statutes mandated a public policy system in which the federal government, usually the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), set national environmental quality standards. Together with states, the EPA enforced those standards through direct regulation, or what critics call a “command-and-control” system. These same critics fault the pollution control system for its high costs and inefﬁciencies, a focus on remedial rather than preventive actions, and its complex, cumbersome, and adversarial rule-making and enforcement processes. Those who defend the prevailing approach cite evidence of its effectiveness and maintain that the decision-making processes on which it depends are essential to ensure fair treatment of all stakeholders. Public opinion has generally supported strong environmental protection activities, and environmental organizations have been reluctant to endorse many of the policy changes favored by industry and political conservatives. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s and into the twenty-ﬁrst century, new approaches to pollution control have been proposed, debated, and in some cases adopted. For instance, the federal government and states have experimented with market-based incentives such as the use of “green taxes” and marketable pollution allowances or permits, most notably in the acid rain

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control program established by the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990. In addition, industry often has advanced the idea of voluntary pollution prevention initiatives, including the use of new environmental management systems and disclosure of pollution information to the public. These are seen as supplements or alternatives to regulation. The federal government has also encouraged such changes. For example, during the Clinton administration, the EPA attempted to improve pollution control through the use of more ﬂexible and collaborative decision-making arrangements under the banner of “reinventing” regulation to make it “cleaner, cheaper, and smarter.” These efforts continued under President George W. Bush, with some in his administration describing them as representing a “new era” in environmental protection. In both cases, emphasis was placed on improving federal–state relations. The ﬁfty states handled most routine implementations of major federal pollution control statutes, although there was wide variation in the ability and commitment of individual states to assume these duties.

The Challenge of Environmental Policy Reform Despite criticism of existing environmental policies and doubts about the capacity of the EPA and states to achieve the objectives outlined in these policies, reform has proved to be difﬁcult. Studies continue to ﬁnd fault with conventional pollution control policies and urge the adoption of new approaches (e.g., reports issued by the National Academy of Public Administration). However, conﬂicting political pressures on members of Congress have led more often to political stalemate than to constructive reform of existing statutes. These policies continue to result in substantial improvements in the nation’s air and water quality, and thus in public and environmental health. Nonetheless, environmentalists and the business community usually are in substantial disagreement over most reform proposals, from greater reliance on beneﬁt-cost analysis to increased dependence on the states for environmental enforcement. The general verdict among both scholars and practitioners is that reform of U.S. environmental policy remains a much desired yet elusive goal. Environmentalists fear that such reform will come at the price of weakened existing laws and regulations. Industry representatives are equally adamant about the imperative to reduce what they believe to be excessively high costs for compliance. Compromise typically is difﬁcult, particularly because few studies can point clearly to the absolute consequences of adopting proposed reforms—that is, whether reforms will improve the regulatory system as anticipated. Thus, policy change is seen as something of a gamble that many defenders of strong environmental protection are unwilling to take. Despite these important constraints, one encouraging development in efforts to improve U.S. environmental policies can be found in the hundreds of initiatives taken at the state and local levels to reconcile environmental protection and economic development under the rubric of sustainability. Removed from the intense ideological battles in Congress, environmentalists, industry representatives, state and local ofﬁcials, and concerned citizens have pioneered new collaborative arrangements that offer much promise for the future. These range from actions to promote “smart growth” land use practices, to efforts to improve air quality through better urban design and

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transportation initiatives, to collaborative efforts to clean up local rivers and bays and restore damaged habitat. S E E A L S O Activism; Government; National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs); Public Participation. Bibliography Davies, J. Clarence, and Mazurek, Jan. (1998). Pollution Control in the United States: Evaluating the System. Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future. Kraft, Michael E. (2001). Environmental Policy and Politics, 2nd edition. New York: Addison Wesley Longman. Mazmanian, Daniel A., and Kraft, Michael E., eds. (1999). Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Portney, Paul R., and Stavins, Robert N., eds. (2000). Public Policies for Environmental Protection, 2nd edition. Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future. Rosenbaum, Walter A. (2002). Environmental Politics and Policy, 5th edition. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. Sexton, Ken; Marcus, Alfred A.; Easter, K. William; and Burkhardt, Timothy D., eds. (1999). Better Environmental Decisions: Strategies for Governments, Businesses, and Communities. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Sitarz, Daniel, ed. (1998). Sustainable America: America’s Environment, Economy and Society in the 21st Century. Carbondale, IL: Earth Press. United Nations. (1993). Agenda 21: The United Nations Programme of Action from Rio. New York: United Nations. Vig, Norman J., and Kraft, Michael E., eds. (2000). Environmental Policy, 4th edition. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. Internet Resources Center for American Politics and Public Policy Web site. Available from http://depts.washington.edu/ampol. National Academy of Public Administration. (2000). Environmental Government: Transforming Environmental Protection for the 21st Century. Washington, D.C. Available from http://www.napawash.org.

Michael E. Kraft

R

radionuclide radioactive particles, human-made or natural, with a distinct atomic weight number; can have a long life as soil or water pollution

Racism, Environmental

See Environmental Racism

Radioactive Fallout The term radioactive fallout, or just fallout, refers to the debris and radioactive materials that settle out of the air after the detonation of a nuclear weapon or after a nuclear accident that produces a cloud of airborne material, or plume. Detonation of a nuclear weapon results in the immediate propagation of a shock wave and intense heat. As the superheated ﬁreball rises, a vacuum is formed that draws in scorched building material, soil, and other materials from the epicenter of the blast. In addition, radionuclides produced in the nuclear chain reaction leading to the explosion and any weapon material not consumed in that reaction will also be a part of the subsequent plume. Any similar thermal process, such as the intense ﬁre during the Chernobyl I reactor accident in 1986, will introduce radioactive and other materials into the atmosphere, as well. The direction and distance the fallout travels depends largely on weather conditions. Wind speed, wind direction, atmospheric stability, and the amount of rain all factor into the extent and timing of the fallout and subsequent

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contamination. The amount of radioactive contamination depends on the initial amount of radioactive material contained, for instance, in a nuclear weapon. In the case of a reactor ﬁre or steam explosion, the damage to the reactor, the amount of material at risk, and the length of time until the event is under control are all factors. Exposure to radioactive materials, either while still in the plume, or after the fact as contamination, is the basis for potential health concerns. While alpha-emitting fallout material is not the external hazard that beta-, gammaand x-ray-emitting materials can be, all of these materials are a potential internal hazard concern when the contamination spreads to sources of groundwater and surface water, livestock, crops, and other foodstuffs. Fallout effects can be long lasting, contaminating an area for hundreds or even thousands of years. Fallout also enters the food chain. Cows eating contaminated grass produce contaminated milk, which can pose a widespread health risk. As with anything to do with radiation, it is the amount of absorbed energy, or the radiation absorbed dose, that matters. Remaining indoors, with doors and windows shut and air conditioning systems turned off until the plume has passed, can reduce exposure to fallout. Traveling out of the path of an incoming plume, if this can be predicted accurately, may also help avoid or reduce exposure to the fallout. Certain foodstuffs, especially water and milk, may have to be brought in from unaffected areas. Time will be one of the best countermeasures should such an event occur. The “seven–ten” rule for nuclear detonations states that for every seven-fold increase in time after a weapon detonation, there will be a concomitant tenfold decrease in the amount of dose afforded by the fallout. S E E A L S O Cancer; Disasters: Nuclear Accidents; Nuclear Energy; Terrorism; War. Ian Scott Hamilton

Radioactive Waste Radioactive waste (or nuclear waste) is a material deemed no longer useful that has been contaminated by or contains radionuclides. Radionuclides are unstable atoms of an element that decay, or disintegrate spontaneously, emitting energy in the form of radiation. Radioactive waste has been created by humans as a by-product of various endeavors since the discovery of radioactivity in 1896 by Antoine Henri Becquerel. Since World War II, radioactive waste has been created by military weapons production and testing; mining; electrical power generation; medical diagnosis and treatment; consumer product development, manufacturing, and treatment; biological and chemical research; and other industrial uses. There are approximately ﬁve thousand natural and artiﬁcial radionuclides that have been identiﬁed, each with a different half-life. A half-life is a measure of time required for an amount of radioactive material to decrease by one-half of its initial amount. Half-life values for each known radionuclide are unique. The half-life of a radionuclide can vary from fractions of a second to millions of years. Some examples of radionuclides with a range of different half-lives include sodium-26 (half-life of 1.07 seconds), hydrogen-3 (halflife of 12.3 years), carbon-14 (half-life of 5,730 years), and uranium-238 (half-life of 4.47 billion years). The decay process of a radionuclide is the

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Workers at a nuclear power plant standing near a storage pond filled with spent fuel. (©Tim Wright/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

mechanism by which it spontaneously releases its excess energy. Typical mechanisms for radioactive decay are alpha, beta, and gamma emission. Alpha decay is a process that is usually associated with heavy atoms, such as uranium-238 and thorium-234, where excess energy is given off with the ejection of two neutrons and two protons from the nucleus. Beta decay involves the ejection of a beta particle, which is the same as an electron, from the nucleus of an excited atom. A common example of a beta-emitter found in radioactive waste is strontium-90. After an alpha or beta decay, the nucleus of an atom is often in an excited state and still has excess energy. Rather than releasing this energy by alpha or beta decay, energy is lost by gamma emission—a pulse of electromagnetic radiation from the nucleus of an atom. Everything on Earth is exposed to radiation. However, exposure to radiation at levels greater than natural background radiation can be hazardous.

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Exposure to certain high levels of radiation, such as that from high-level radioactive waste, can even cause death. Radiation exposure can also cause cancer, birth defects, and other abnormalities, depending on the time of exposure, amount of radiation, and the decay mechanism. High-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors can be hazardous for thousands of years. Radioactive waste can be categorized by its source or point of origin. Because of this, the governments of many nations have developed waste classiﬁcation systems to regulate the management of radioactive waste within their borders. The proper treatment, storage, and disposal of radioactive waste are prescribed based on the waste classiﬁcation system deﬁned in a nation’s laws, rules, and regulations. The table outlines common categories of radioactive waste.

Radioactive Waste Description Radioactive waste can vary greatly in its physical and chemical form. It can be a solid, liquid, gas, or even something in between, such as sludge. Any given radioactive waste can be primarily water, soil, paper, plastic, metal, ash, glass, ceramic, or a mixture of many different physical forms. The chemical form of radioactive waste can vary as well. Radioactive waste can contain radionuclides of very light elements, such as radioactive hydrogen (tritium), or of very heavy elements, such as uranium. Radioactive waste is classiﬁed as high, intermediate, or low level. Depending on the radionuclides contained in it, a waste can remain radioactive from seconds to minutes, or even for millions of years.

Radioactive Waste Management Radioactive waste management includes the possession, transportation, handling, storage, and ultimate disposal of waste. The safe management of radioactive waste is necessary to protect public health. If handled improperly, potential exposures of humans to high-level radioactive waste can be dangerous, even deadly. Some radioactive wastes such as certain types of transuranic waste can cause biological effects in humans only if the radionuclides contained in the waste are directly inhaled or ingested. Most low-level radioactive wastes can be handled by humans without any measurable biological effects. Nevertheless, good handling practices of all radioactive materials and waste should be the goal to provide optimum protection to humans and the environment. There have been historic practices associated with the use of radioactive material where workers were unaware of potential risks. The radium watch dial painters of the 1920s illustrate the health effects that can be associated with improper handling practices. The painters experienced high occurrences of cancer of the larynx and tongue due to ingestion of radium.

transuranic waste waste containing one or more radioactive elements heavier than uranium, created in nuclear power plants or processing facilities

The transportation of radioactive waste can occur via roadway, aircraft, ship/barge, and rail. The classiﬁcation and physical size of radioactive waste dictate the method of transport, the packaging required, and the labeling necessary to allow for the shipment of a speciﬁc waste. There are international transportation requirements for radioactive waste, as well as more speciﬁc regulations in individual countries.

Radioactive Waste Disposal Various methods to manage and dispose of radioactive waste have been considered. Proposed management and disposal methods have included the

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CO MMO N C AT E G OR I E S O F R A D I O A C TI V E W A S TE Common Radionuclides in Waste and Their Half-Life (y=years)

Waste Category

Description of Waste Category

Common Sources of Waste

High-Level Radioactive Waste

Highly radioactive material that is deemed a waste that requires special precautions by humans, including remote handling and use of shielding; also includes spent fuel and waste resulting from the reprocessing of used fuel

Partially used fuel from nuclear power reactors; liquid waste from the reprocessing of spent fuel taking place outside the United States

strontium-90 half-life: 29.78 y

Material that is deemed a waste that contains radionuclides with an atomic number greater than that of uranium (92)

Weapons-production waste included mixed transuranic waste

plutonium-238 half-life: 87.7 y

Transuranic Waste

cesium-137 half-life: 30.07 y

americium-241 half-life: 432.7 y Mixed Waste

Material that is deemed a waste that contains both radionuclides and a characteristic or listed hazardous waste

Weapons-production waste and some research wastes

plutonium-239 half-life: 24,100 y plutonium-241 half-life: 14.4 y

Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) Waste

Material that is deemed a waste that contains radionuclides that are present on Earth without any human interaction

Scale buildup on pipe walls that carry petroleum products

radium-226 half-life: 1,599 y radium-228 half-life: 5.76 y

Uranium or Thorium Mill Tailings Waste

The tailings material created as a by-product by the extraction of uranium or thorium from natural ore formations

Production exclusively at the site of milling for rare earth extraction

radium-226 half-life: 1,599 y thorium-230 half-life: 75,400 y

Low-Level Radioactive Waste (LLRW)(and Intermediate Waste outside U.S.)

Class A: Class B: Class C:

Greater than Class C:

Exempt Material or Very Low Activity Waste

Material that is deemed a waste that generally has been contaminated by or contains short-lived radionuclides or longer-lived radionuclides in relatively low concentrations. Low-level radioactive waste is further segregated into classes (see below)

Industrial trash from nuclear power plants; medical, research, and academic trash such as paper, plastic, and glass

hydrogen-3 half-life:12.32 y

Various medical procedures

iodine-131 half-life: 8.027 days

cobalt-60 half-life: 5.27 y

Lowest level of LLRW, generally decays in 100 y Moderate level of LLRW, generally decay in 300 y Special controls required for this high level of LLRW, including shielding/barriers that must isolate for 500 y Exceed the Class C limits and cannot be disposed in LLRW facilities; must be disposed with high-level radioactive waste Material that is deemed a waste that contains trace concentrations of short half-life radionuclides that are considered below regulatory concern

following scenarios: shallow land burial; engineered disposal vaults; vertical shafts drilled into granite, salt, basalt, or volcanic rock; disposal cavities mined into speciﬁc rock formations such as salt; deeper-earth disposal into the submantle layer; above-ground isolation in engineered, concrete structures; recycling and reuse of waste material; radionuclide transmutation into nonradioactive material; ocean and seabed disposal; ice-sheet disposal; isolation disposal on a remote island; and even disposal in space. Most of the civilian high-level radioactive waste throughout the world is currently being stored at nuclear power reactor sites. The spent nuclear fuel generated from the 103 operating civilian power reactors in the United

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States is currently being stored on-site at the point of generation. In Europe, prior to on-site storage, spent fuel is ﬁrst sent to either the Sellaﬁeld site in the United Kingdom or the La Hague site in France to be reprocessed in order to recover usable fuel. No reprocessing of commercial spent fuel is being conducted in the United States. In the United States, spent fuel and other high-level radioactive waste awaits the construction of a central, permanent repository. It is currently stored in spent fuel pools or, in some cases, in dry casks. Spent fuel pools are water-ﬁlled, lead-lined chambers that are adjacent to reactors on civilian power reactor sites. Dry-cask storage has become necessary in some cases where the on-site spent fuel pools have reached capacity. The Ofﬁce of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is charged with developing this federal repository. Amid local opposition, Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is presently under study to evaluate its suitability as a central repository for all U.S. highlevel radioactive waste. The Yucca Mountain site has been ofﬁcially designated by President George W. Bush and Congress for full-scale studies. There has been further emphasis placed on the security of spent fuel, and in general on nuclear reactor sites following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Nuclear reactor sites that store spent fuel have been identiﬁed as possible terrorist targets and, therefore, have been subject to heightened security and debate over potential vulnerabilities. France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan also have plans to develop centralized repositories for highlevel radioactive waste at various times in the future. Transuranic waste generated by the DOE has an operational ﬁnal repository. The Waste Isolation Pilot Project located near Carlsbad, New Mexico, accepts transuranic waste and mixed transuranic waste (i.e., transuranic waste that also has a hazardous waste component) from federal facilities throughout the United States. This facility is comprised of disposal cavities mined into a salt formation some 2,150 feet underground. The disposal method used in the 1960s and 1970s for low-level radioactive waste was shallow land burial in earthen trenches. The inﬁltration of water into these trenches resulted in the migration or movement of certain radionuclides into surrounding soil and groundwater. To respond to such problems, engineered disposal units have been developed to replace shallow land burial, utilizing enhanced cover systems to reduce the potential for water inﬁltration. The trial-and-error nature of early radioactive waste disposal sites has rendered new facility development a slow and cautious process.

Historical Perspective The ﬁrst commercial site for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste was opened in Beatty, Nevada, in 1962. Within the next ten years, ﬁve more sites opened in the United States: in Washington, Illinois, South Carolina, New York, and Kentucky. Private companies operated these sites on land leased from state governments. Prior to 1979, the DOE routinely used commercial sites for the disposal of federal waste. Migration problems at commercial disposal sites in the United States were ﬁrst discovered in the late 1960s. Four of the six commercial low-level radioactive waste disposal sites in the United States closed. Three of the four sites that closed developed leaks due to erosion by surface water, subsidence on tops of trenches, or buried waste immersed in water. Several of these

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Radon

Superfund the fund established to pay for the cleanup of contaminated sites whose owners are bankrupt or cannot be identified

locations became federal Superfund sites due to radionuclides migrating beyond the disposal trenches, complicated by the presence of hazardous waste within the same facilities. The historical problems experienced with commercial radioactive waste disposal in the United States resulted in the development of new regulatory requirements for site selection, construction parameters, operating practices, and waste-acceptance criteria at future disposal sites. A new U.S. disposal regulation, Title 10, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 61, “Licensing Requirements for Land Disposal of Radioactive Wastes” was introduced in 1982. This regulation outlines the requirements necessary to ensure public health, safety, and the long-term protection of the environment. Since the development of this new regulation in the United States, only one site, in Clive, Utah, has been licensed and opened for disposal of low-level radioactive waste.

Summary Radioactive waste is being generated in the United States and throughout the world as a result of research, mining, electricity production, nuclear weapons production, and medical uses. There are many possible beneﬁcial activities due to the use of radioactive material. Laws, rules, and regulations are made on a global scale to help ensure the safe handling of radioactive waste to protect human and environmental health. However, the question of the safe ﬁnal deposition of all radioactive waste generated worldwide is still problematic. S E E A L S O Cleanup; Energy, Nuclear; Superfund; Waste, Transportation of; Yucca Mountain. Bibliography League of Women Voters Education Fund. (1993). The Nuclear Waste Primer. New York: Lyons & Burford, Publishers. Murray, Raymond L. (1994). Understanding Radioactive Waste, 4th edition. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press. Parrington, Josef R.; Knox, Harold D.; Breneman, Susan L.; Baum, Edward M.; and Feiner, Frank. (1996). Nuclides and Isotopes, 15th edition. San Jose, CA: General Electric Company. Internet Resources International Atomic Energy Agency. “World Atom.” Available from http:// www.iaea.or.at/worldatom. U.S. Department of Energy, Ofﬁce of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. “The Yucca Mountain Project.” Available from http://www.ymp.gov. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Radioactive Waste.” Available from http:// www.nrc.gov/waste.html. Waste Link Directory. “Guide to Radioactive Waste.” Available from http://www .radwaste.org/general.htm.

Susan M. Jablonski

isotope a variation of an element that has the same atomic number of protons but a different weight because of the number of neutrons; various isotopes of the same element may have different radioactive behaviors, some are highly unstable

166

Radon Radon is an odorless, colorless, radioactive, though chemically unreactive gas. It has an atomic number of eighty-six, which corresponds to the number of protons found in the nucleus of any isotope of radon. There are more than thirty known isotopes of radon, and each one emits some combination

Radon

PA TH W A Y F O R R A D O N E NTERI NG THE HOME

J K

J

H

A

B

I C

A G

D

D

F

E A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K.

Cracks in concrete slabs Spaces behind brick veneer walls that rest on uncapped hollow block foundation Pores and cracks in concrete blocks Floor–wall joints Exposed soil, as in a sump Weeping (drain) tile, if drained to open sump Mortar joints Loose fitting pipe penatrations Open tops of block walls Building materials such as some rocks Water (from some wells)

SOURCE:

Adapted from Texas A & M University.

of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation when undergoing radioactive transformation, commonly referred to as “decay.” Radon gas is ubiquitous in the natural environment. This is because the precursors to radon, such as the aforementioned radium isotopes, and others such as radium, thorium, and uranium isotopes, are present in some rock formations. Radon is also found in the man-made environment because many of the materials, consumer products, and foodstuffs of everyday life come from the naturally radioactive environment. Radon is one of the few examples in nature of a gaseous element that results from the decay of a solid element and then decays into another solid element. This increases its potentially harmful effect in humans. For example,

alpha radiation fast-moving particle composed of two protons and two neutrons (a helium nucleus), emitted by radioactive decay beta radiation high-energy electron, emitted by radioactive decay gamma radiation very highenergy light with a wavelength shorter than x rays

167

Radon

radon-222, the most common isotope of radon, is a product of the alpha decay of radium-226 atoms, found in rocks. Radon-222 atoms subsequently produce polonium-218 in a similar alpha-decay process, and it is this solid substance that can lodge in human tissue. Solid-state radionuclides remain where created by decay processes unless they are redistributed by dissolving in groundwater or by becoming airborne. Given the chemically inert nature of radon, there are no known compounds that include this element. Thus isotopes of radon may diffuse away from their place of origin and usually end up dissolved in ground water or mixed with air above the soil and rocks that bear their solid precursors.

half-life the time required for a pollutant to lose one-half of its original concentration; for example, the biochemical halflife of DDT in the environment is fifteen years

People’s exposure to radon primarily occurs when radon seeps out of air spaces above soil or rocks and into surrounding indoor or outdoor air, such as the basements of houses built over radium-bearing rocks. It is not exposure to radon gas that actually may lead to harm, but exposure to the decay products of radon, speciﬁcally the ones with short half-lives that emit alpha radiation. Radon-222 offspring, like polonium-218 and polonium-214, become attached to dust particles that may be breathed in by people exposed to the gas and become lodged in the respiratory tract. Decay of the radon progeny while in the lungs is the means by which the radiation dose is delivered to the lungs. This dose, which is the energy of alpha particles absorbed by cells that line the lungs, is what gives rise to the potential for lung cancer associated with exposure to radon. Radon has been labeled by the Environmental Protection Agency as the second-leading cause of lung cancer in humans (after tobacco smoke), based on mathematical risk estimates derived from many published studies of exposure of subsurface uranium miners to highly elevated levels of the gas, primarily radon-222. Many radiation health scientists have challenged such ﬁndings because of the vast difference in exposure levels between homes and buildings on the one hand, and subsurface mines on the other. However, a variety of action levels and exposure limits for radon gas exposure have been recommended or set into law for the protection of the public. The Surgeon General and the EPA recommend that radon levels of four picocuries or more inside homes be reduced. The EPA states that radon levels less than four picocuries still pose a risk, especially for smokers.

mitigation measures taken to reduce adverse impacts

Methods to both detect and mitigate indoor radon exposure have been devised as well. Detection and measurement methods usually make use of a device to collect radon gas atoms or the offspring particles. The simplest real-time method would be a “grab sample,” in which air is drawn into an evacuated ﬂask that is then taken back to a laboratory for analysis. The most popular short-term measurement device is the activated charcoal canister, a small container of steam-treated charcoal that is opened and left at the sampling location for a prescribed time. Radon is adsorbed by the charcoal, and the decay products of the radon are analyzed after the canister has been resealed and retrieved. The simplest mitigation methods include sealing cracks and penetrations through foundations, as well as diverting the radon away from the slab or out of the ground, with vacuum or ventilation systems. S E E A L S O Cancer; Health, Human; Risk. Bibliography National Research Council. (1999). Health Effects of Exposure to Radon—BEIR VI. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

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National Research Council. (1999). Risk Assessment of Radon in Drinking Water. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Other Resources U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Indoor Air Quality: Radon.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/radon.

Ian Scott Hamilton

Recycling Recycling is any process that involves the recovery and reuse of materials that were once considered trash. Recycling can be as simple as reusing something—such as a coat or computer—by passing it on for someone else to use. Or, it can be as involved as reprocessing materials in metals, plastics, paper, or glass to make new products.

An Old Idea Is Rediscovered There is nothing new about recycling. People have found ways to reuse pottery, gold, silver, and bronze for thousands of years. Old swords were melted and reshaped to use as plows. Gold and silver jewelry were melted down and reshaped into other forms. As recently as one hundred years ago, traveling peddlers in the United States and Europe collected rags, bones, and scrap metal waste from household garbage and sold them to manufacturers to make into new products. During the early twentieth century, Americans relied less and less on recycling. By the 1950s the United States was labeled a “throw-away economy” because Americans were consuming increasing amounts of goods that ended up in garbage landﬁlls. Recycling was revived in many Western countries back in the 1960s and 1970s as the public became interested in conservation and looked for ways to reduce damage to the environment. In the United States, the ﬁrst Earth Day in 1970 is often viewed as the ofﬁcial beginning of the modern recycling movement. On that day, hundreds of new recycling centers opened across the country. The recycling movement caught on in many other Western countries during the next thirty years. Today, Germany recycles 30 percent of all of its trash. Japan recycles over 50 percent of its trash, half of all wastepaper and glass bottles, and more than 60 percent of its drink and food cans. At the start of the twenty-ﬁrst century, the United States recycling efforts are behind many European nations. Americans generate twice the amount of trash as Germans, but recycle less. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States recycled 28 percent of its waste in 2002. States vary widely in their recycling programs. Minnesota is the nation’s leader in recycling with a rate of recycling 45 percent of all domestic waste. Montana and Wyoming are at the bottom of the list, recycling less than 5 percent.

Why Recycle? Recycling is one of the easiest steps anyone can take to reduce the impact of humans on the environment. On average, each American produces

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approximately 3.5 pounds of garbage per day. That is 1,500 pounds per person each year—or 90,000 pounds in a lifetime. Without recycling, all this trash ends up in landﬁlls. In the 1970s many people believed that recycling’s greatest beneﬁt was the reduction of the number of landﬁlls because this would reduce the pollution associated with landﬁlls and preserve the land. More recently, researchers have found multiple beneﬁts to recycling. 1. Recycling saves natural resources. Recycling reduces the demand for new materials from the environment. For example, by recycling paper, fewer trees are needed to produce new paper. 2. Recycling saves habitats such as rain forests. By reducing the demand for new materials (such as metals that must be mined and reﬁned) from the environment, more land and habitats can be preserved and/or conserved.

Aluminum cans in recycling bin at Portsmouth Recycling Center. (©Ian Harwood; Ecoscene/CORBIS. Reproduced by permission.)

3. Recycling saves energy and reduces emissions. In most cases, it takes less energy to make new products from recycled materials than from virgin raw materials. For example, it takes 95 percent less energy to produce aluminum products from recycled aluminum than from the raw materials of bauxite ore. In general, recycling of materials also produces less pollution than processing raw materials. 4. Recycling can be economical. Recycling is often less expensive than the combined cost of processing new materials and managing waste disposal. 5. Recycling reduces the need for new landfills and incinerators. Landﬁlls and incinerators can emit hazards to the environment. When landﬁlls leak, hazardous solvents can contaminate underlying groundwater—water that may be used for agriculture or as drinking water. Landﬁlls and incinerators also emit pollution into the air. 6. Recycling reduces the improper disposal of trash, such as littering.

Internal and External Recycling Most people associate recycling with items such as newspapers, magazines, plastics, aluminum, and glass. The recovery, reprocessing, and reuse of materials from used items is called external recycling and requires public participation. A second type of recycling, internal recycling, is the reuse of waste materials from manufacturing and does not involve the general public. For example, the manufacture/production of copper items results in wasted copper pieces; with internal recycling, these pieces are melted down and recast. Although internal recovery is possible in many industries, it is most common in the metal industry. Because industrial waste accounts for 98 percent of all waste in the United States, many critics of recycling advocate that more attention should be paid to internal recycling than external recycling.

How External Recycling Works External recycling involves three basic steps: 1. Recovery. Recovery is the collection of used items that can be recycled. Many cities have drop-off centers or special curbside pickup programs

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to collect recyclables. Recovery may include sorting and separation of collected materials. 2. Reprocessing. Reprocessing is the conversion of used items into reusable products. For example, glass is melted down and molded into new bottles or paper is reprocessed into new paper. There are three kinds of reprocessing: primary, secondary, and tertiary: • Primary recycling is the reprocessing of materials into the same type of product, such the recycling of used glass bottles into new glass bottles. • Secondary recycling is the reprocessing of materials into different but similar products, such as processing corrugated cardboard boxes into cereal boxes. • Tertiary recycling is the reprocessing of a material into a product that cannot be recycled again—for example, when mixed ofﬁce paper is reprocessed into bathroom tissue. 3. Marketing and sale of new items. One of the most challenging parts of recycling is creating markets for recycled items. Recycling programs depend on their ability to advertise and sell recycled items at competitive prices. Recycling does not accomplish its goals if recycled items are not used.

What Things Are Recycled? There are four groups of materials that are commonly recycled today. 1. Standard recyclables. The most commonly recycled materials are aluminum, glass, paper products, steel, and plastics. 2. Hazardous wastes. Hazardous wastes include items such as antifreeze, motor oil, paint, and batteries. Many cities have special centers to recycle hazardous wastes. 3. Newer products. Some recycling centers have systems to reprocess newer products such as compact and ﬂoppy disks. 4. Used automobiles and parts.

Aluminum. Aluminum cans are the most widely recycled metal. In 1999 roughly two-thirds of all aluminum cans produced in the United States were recycled. However, not all forms of aluminum are recycled. For example, aluminum foil can be recycled, but not all recycling centers are set up to process it. Paper. Paper recycling is one of this country’s most successful recycling programs. By weight, more paper is recycled each year than all other materials combined. The success of this program is in part due to the successful marketing and sale of recycled paper. Recycled paper is widely used today. Unfortunately, paper can only be recycled a limited number of times, because the paper ﬁbers become too short to continue reprocessing after awhile. Newspaper. Every part of a newspaper can be recycled—including the newspaper and inserts. Newspaper recycling has been proﬁtable for decades. Steel. Steel cans can be recycled many times. Recycled steel is used for many products such as tin cans.

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R ECYC L IN G R AT E S O F S E L E C TE D M A T E R I A LS , 1 9 9 4

100% 93.7%

80%

60%

55.0% 53.1%

40%

35.3%

25.8% 22.9% 19.3% 20%

15.1%

0% Auto batteries SOURCE:

Aluminum packaging

Steel cans

Paper and paperboard

Glass containers

Yard waste

Plastic containers

Tires

EPA Waste Characterization Report, Franklin Assoc., 1995

Plastics. Plastics are not biodegradable, so the best choice is to recycle them. But plastics are a challenge for recycling centers. There are so many different kinds of plastics that they are difﬁcult for recycling centers to reprocess; in fact, many plastics cannot be recycled. Those plastics that can be recycled can only be recycled a few times. Today, most plastic containers are marked on the bottom with a number in a triangle. Each number indicates a different kind of plastic. This information allows recycling center staff to identify plastic containers that can or cannot be recycled. Containers marked one or two are the most commonly accepted plastics for recycling. Hazardous wastes. Hazardous wastes include toxic materials such as paints, solvents, motor oil, antifreeze, herbicides, and batteries. If these materials end up in landﬁlls, the risk exists that they may leak into underlying groundwater which people use for drinking. If incinerated, these materials end up in the air. Many recycling centers have special programs for handling hazardous wastes. Batteries. Batteries contain many toxic ingredients, such as lead and cadmium, which can cause serious environmental damage if they are buried in landﬁlls. Many recycling centers direct customers to special dealers who accept used batteries. Computers. Used computers are a challenge for recycling, because they need to be completely disassembled. Recently, a number of companies have

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R E C YC L I N G R A T E S O F K E Y H O U S EHOLD I TEMS (Post-consumer)

64%

68% 66%

1990

1994

1992

60% 53%

50%

47% 45% 41%

40%

38%

40%

33% 23% 20%

27% 27%

23%

30%

17% 12%

0% Aluminum Bev. Cans SOURCE:

Yard Waste

Old Newsprint

Steel Cans

Plastic Soda Bottles

Glass Bev. Containers

Characterization of MSW Report, Franklin Assoc., 1995

started exploring ways to do this efﬁciently and cost effectively. Recycling of computers is becoming increasingly important as the number of used computers continues to grow. One computer manufacturer, Dell, is now offering to take back old computers for reuse or recycling.

Automobile Recycling. For years, the economic incentives of recycling parts from cars, trucks and other motor vehicles has made automobile recycling a big business. In the United States, each year, more than eleven million vehicles are sent to the junkyard because they have been damaged in accidents or have reached the end of their life. About three-quarters of the scrapped vehicles are recycled or their parts are resold. Every part from the doors and windows to engines and transmissions are sold; other recyclable metal parts are magnetically separated from other materials. The rest are shredded and buried in landﬁlls. In the future, a smaller percentage of automobile parts will be recyclable as cars are built with more nonmetal, nonrecyclable materials, unless the automobile makers give serious attention to designing new cars that can be recycled. New cars are being built with more and more high-tech gear and hundreds of different materials that cannot be recovered. Countries in the European Union have been exploring ways to encourage automobile manufacturers to take greater responsibility for the recycling of “end of life” automobiles. Several countries have already implemented “end of product responsibility” programs. For example, in the Netherlands, car manufacturers are liable to pay a recycling fee when they market a vehicle. The fee is then used to cover possible recycling costs.

Composting—Recycling Organic Materials Composting is a method of recycling organic materials, such as certain food waste and yard clippings, directly into the soil. Although there are many ways to make composts, the basic idea is to mix yard clippings and food waste into a pile with soil and let it decompose; worms, insects, and other organisms

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RECYCLING The Netherlands recycled more than three quarters (77%)of the approximately 65 million tons of garbage it generated in 2000. Public pressure to reduce dioxin emissions from incineration plants and pollution from landfills led to landfill taxes beginning in 1995 and a landfill ban on combustible waste in 1997. In addition, government-owned incineration plants were operated below full capacity at the same time as incentives to expand the recyclables market and encourage end-of-life producer responsibility were initiated. Mandatory separation of different types of industrial wastes, with recycling of construction and demolition waste within a government financed infrastructure, and municipal curbside pickups of organic waste for composting, along with separated household recyclables, has decreased landfilling from 35 percent in 1985 to 9 percent in 2000.

help break it down. Once the material in a compost has broken down, the degraded material can be tilled into the soil and applied as nutrient-rich mulch or material for plants. Composting offers an opportunity to provide a rich source of nutrients for gardens and to reduce the amount of waste taking up space in landﬁlls. Food and yard wastes currently make up about 30 percent of all wastes going into landﬁlls. The airtight design of landﬁlls slows down the decomposition of organic materials because they need oxygen to decompose. One community that has taken composting seriously is Halifax, Nova Scotia. Roughly 30 to 50 percent of their waste is organic matter. In 1997 the Nova Scotia Department of Environment passed a law banning the disposal of food, leaf and yard waste from landﬁlls. Through heightened use of composting and other programs, between 1989 and 2000, Nova Scotia’s per capita waste production dropped from 720 kg to 356 kg. S E E A L S O Composting; Plastics; Pollution Prevention; Reuse; Solid Waste; Waste Reduction. Bibliography Ackerman, Frank. (1997). Why Do We Recycle? Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Cothran, Helen, ed. (2003). Garbage and Recycling: Opposing Viewpoints. Chicago: Greenhaven Press. The Earthworks Group. (1989). 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth. Berkeley, CA: The Earthworks Press. The Earthworks Group. (1990). The Recyclers Handbook: Simple Things You Can Do. Berkeley, CA: The Earthworks Press. League of Women’s Voters. (1993). The Garbage Primer: A Handbook for Citizens. New York: Lyons and Burford Publishers. Mc Donough, William, and Braungart, Michael. (2002). Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York: Northpoint Press. Nova Scotia Department of the Environment. (2001). Status Report 2001 of Solid Waste-Resource Management in Nova Scotia. Halifax, NS: Nova Scotia Department of the Environment. Thompson, Claudia G. (1992). Recycled Papers: The Essential Guide. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Internet Resources U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Municipal Solid Waste.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/recycle.htm. Global Recycling Network Web site. Available from http://grn.com. Recycling Today Web site. Available from http://www.recyclingtoday.com.

Corliss Karasov

Regulatory Negotiation Regulatory negotiation (also called negotiated rule making, policy dialogue, shared decision making, or “reg-neg”) is a consensus-building process in which representatives of affected parties and sectors of the public (termed “stakeholders”) work together with government ofﬁcials to develop policies or regulations. Issues subjected to regulatory negotiation include car-emission levels, risk from lead exposure, and contamination cleanup levels. These complex interest-based processes utilize impartial process facilitators—often people who are experienced mediators. Those interests participating in the process are expected to abide by any resulting agreement and implement its

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terms. This agreement-seeking process usually occurs only after a thorough conﬂict assessment has been conducted, and is generally undertaken with the assistance of a skilled neutral mediator or facilitator. S E E A L S O Arbitration; Consensus Building; Enforcement; Litigation; Mediation; Public Policy Decision Making. Bibliography Cormick, Gerald; Dale, Norman; Emond, Paul; Sigurdson, Glenn; and Stuart, B. (1996). Building Consensus for a Sustainable Future: Putting Principles into Practice. Ottawa, ON: National Round Table on the Environment and Economy. Susskind, L., and Cruikshank, J. (1987). Breaking the Impasse: Consensual Approaches to Resolving Public Disputes. New York: Basic Books. Internet Resource U.S. Institute for Environmental Conﬂict Resolution Web site. Available from http://www.ecr.gov.

Susan L. Senecah

Remediation

See Abatement; Cleanup

Renewable Energy Renewable energy is energy that is regenerative or, for all practical purposes, virtually inexhaustible. It includes solar energy, wind energy, hydropower, biomass (derived from plants), geothermal energy (heat from the earth), and ocean energy. Renewable energy resources can supply energy for heating and cooling buildings, electricity generation, heat for industrial processes, and fuels for transportation. The increased use of renewable energy could reduce the burning of fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, and natural gas), eliminating associated air-pollution and carbon dioxide emissions, and contributing to national energy independence and economic and political security.

regenerative able to be regenerated or created anew

Historical and Current Use Before the 1900s, the world as a whole used wood (including wood converted to charcoal) for heat in homes and industry, vegetation for feeding draft animals, water mills for grinding grain and milling lumber, and wind for marine transportation and grain milling and water pumping. By the 1920s, however, coal and petroleum had largely replaced these energy sources in industrialized countries, although wood for home heating and hydroelectric power generation remained in wide use. At the end of the twentieth century, nearly 90 percent of commercial energy supply was from fossil fuels. Renewable energy, however, makes important contributions to world energy supplies. Hydroelectric power is a major source of electrical energy in many countries, including Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Norway, and Russia. In developing countries many people do not have access to or cannot afford electricity or petroleum fuels and use biomass for their primary energy needs. For example, most rural people in Africa use wood, scrub, grass, and even animal dung for cooking fuel. Small-scale renewable energy technologies are often the only practical means of supplying electricity in rural areas of these countries. The table indicates the relative consumption of energy sources in the United States.

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Renewable Energy

Eric Hassett, general manager of Palo Alto Hardware, standing next to solar panels on top of his store in California. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.)

anaerobic a life or process that occurs in, or is not destroyed by, the absence of oxygen

Major Types of Renewable Energy Sources Biomass. Biomass includes wood, agricultural crops and residues, municipal refuse, wood and paper products, manufacturing process waste, and human and livestock manure. It can be used to heat homes and buildings, produce electricity, and as a source of vehicle fuel. Wood and paper manufacturers and sugar mills use biomass residues for process heat and electricity production. There are power plants that burn wood, agricultural residues, and household trash to produce electricity. Biogas (composed of methane, carbon dioxide, and other gases) produced by decomposing biomass in anaerobic conditions is captured from landﬁlls, municipal sewage treatment plants, and livestock waste management operations. This gas can be used for heat or to generate electricity. Ethanol is used as a transportation fuel in the United States, Brazil, and a few other countries. Nearly all the fuel ethanol in the United States is made from corn, although it can also be produced from other sources, including wastepaper. There is a small but growing consumption of “biodiesel” made from grain oils and animal fats.

Geothermal systems. Geothermal energy (heat from the earth) created deep beneath the earth’s surface is tapped to produce electricity in twentytwo countries, some of which include the United States, Iceland, Italy, Kenya, and the Philippines. Geothermal hot springs can also heat buildings, greenhouses, ﬁsh farms, and bathing pools.

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Renewable Energy

Hydropower. Hydropower, produced from ﬂowing water passing through hydroelectric turbines, is the leading renewable energy source, contributing to approximately 9 percent of the electricity generated in the United States. Most hydropower is produced at large dams, although there are many small systems operating around the world, such as the small hydropower plant in Namche Bazar, Nepal, which provides power for the tourist and market town near Mt. Everest. The production of hydroelectricity from year to year varies with precipitation.

An acid rain monitor, monitoring in a high elevation in forest. (U.S. EPA.) turbine machine that uses a moving fluid (liquid or gas) to gas to turn a rotor, creating mechanical energy

Ocean energy. The world’s oceans are a vast and practically untapped source of energy. There are a few operating wave and tidal power plants around the world, and several experimental ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plants have also been built. A small wave power plant in Norway captures water from waves in a dam and lets the water out through a turbine. A 240-megawatt tidal power facility on the Rance River in France produces electricity as tidal ﬂows move back and forth through turbines located at the mouth of the river. In Hawaii, a small OTEC plan was built which uses the temperature of warm surface water to evaporate cold seawater in a vacuum to produce steam that turns a turbine and generator. Solar energy systems. The simplest uses of solar energy are for drying crops, and heating buildings and water. Solar-heated homes and solar water heaters can be found in nearly every country around the world. Crops can be simply laid in the sun to dry, or more sophisticated collectors can be used to heat air to dry food stored on drying racks. Solar water heaters use collectors

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to heat water that is stored in a tank for later use. Homes can be heated by using a masonry ﬂoor to absorb sunshine coming through windows, or by using solar collectors to heat a large tank of water than can be distributed for heating at night. Concentrated sunlight can be used to produce high-temperature heat and electricity. Nine concentrating solar parabolic trough power plants, with a combined generation capacity of 354 megawatts, are located in the Mojave Desert in California. (A megawatt is 1 million watts, or 1,000 kilowatts.) The U.S. Department of Energy built and tested a ten-megawatt solar thermal central receiver power plant near Barstow, California, which operated successfully for about seven years. Another type of concentrating solar thermal power system is a parabolic dish. Systems with a capacity of up to twenty-ﬁve kilowatts have been developed. Photovoltaic (PV) systems are based on solar electric cells, which convert sunlight directly to electricity. They can be used to power hand calculators or in large systems on buildings. Many PV systems are installed in remote areas where power lines are expensive or unfeasible, although the number of systems connected to electricity transmission systems is increasing, and range in size from 1 to several kilowatts on houses, to systems over one hundred kilowatts on large buildings. PV systems are very suitable for use in developing countries where people have no electricity from electric power lines.

Wind energy systems. Water-pumping and grain-milling windmills have evolved into electric power turbines. There are now tens of thousands of wind turbines operating around the world. They range in size from tiny turbines on the back of sailboats to very large units that can produce as much as

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U.S. ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND ELECTRICITY GENERATION, 1999 Energy Source Total Coal/Coal Coke Petroleum Natural Gas Nuclear Renewables (Total) Hydro Biomass/Biofuels Geothermal Solar Wind

(Quads*) 96 22 38 22 8 7.2 3.5 3.2 0.4 0.07 0.05

(%Total) 85 23 39 23 8 7.5 3.6 3.3 0.4 0.07 0.05

(Bill. kWh**) 3,641 1,891 116 546 674 419 339 58 17 0.85 4.5

(%Total)

52 3 15 19 12 9.4 1.6 0.46 0.02 0.12

*A quad is quadrillion British Thermal Units (BTUs), and is the equivalent of about 180 million barrels of crude oil. **Bill. kWh = a billion kilowatt-hours; One kilowatt-hour (kWh) is the equivalent of running a 100-watt lightbulb for 10 hours. Note: values are rounded. SOURCE: Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy.

2 to 3 megawatts of electricity, with 100-foot (30-meter) blades. They can be installed on land and in shallow water in coastal areas.

The Future for Renewable Energy Renewable energy has many advantages that will help to maintain and expand its place in world energy supply: • Renewable energy resources are enormous—hundreds of times beyond the needs of world energy consumption in 2000. • Advances in technologies are reducing manufacturing costs and increasing system efﬁciencies, thereby reducing the cost of energy from renewable resources. • Negative environmental and health impacts of renewable energy use are much fewer than those of fossil fuels and nuclear power. • Many renewable energy technologies can produce energy at the point of use, allowing homeowners, businesses, and industry to produce their own power. • There is strong support for renewable energy from people around the world. • Many governments have programs that support renewable energy use to limit the emission of greenhouse gases and thereby reduce the threat of global warming. As fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas become scarce, they will become more expensive. Some experts believe that demand for oil will exceed production capability within the next twenty years. Using energy conservatively and efﬁciently, no matter how it is produced or where it comes from, is the most economical way to consume energy. Simply turning off lights and computers when they are not in use can save an individual household or business money and reduce the environmental impact associated with producing electricity.

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Bibliography U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2001). Annual Energy Review 2000. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Energy. U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2001). International Energy Annual 1999. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Energy. U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2001). Renewable Energy Annual 2000, with Data for 1999. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Energy. Internet Resource Renewable Energy World. London: James & James Science Publishers. Available from http://www.jxj.com. U.S. Department of Energy, Ofﬁce of Energy Efﬁciency and Renewable Energy. Available from http://www.eren.doe.gov.

Paul Philip Hesse

Resource Conservation and Recovery Act The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976 is a federal law aimed at protecting human health and the environment by safely managing and reducing hazardous and solid nonhazardous waste. It gives the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the task of controlling hazardous waste, through safety regulations, permits, and inspections, from its creation to disposal or from “cradle to grave.” RCRA also aims to conserve energy and natural resources by giving states or regions the job of developing programs for nonhazardous waste, such as recycling and waste reduction programs. RCRA is an amendment to the 1965 Solid Waste Disposal Act. It became effective in 1980 but does not apply to sites abandoned before this date, which are addressed by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). The 1984 Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA) to RCRA, sometimes called the “land ban,” were a response to concern about hazardous wastes leaking into groundwater. HSWA states that only treated hazardous wastes may be disposed of on or beneath the ground, unless it can be guaranteed that they will not leak out. It also imposes safety requirements on landﬁlls and other land-based hazardous waste disposal facilities. These include leakproof liners and systems to monitor and capture leachate. One consequence of the costly treatment requirements for land disposal of hazardous waste has been a reduction in the amount of hazardous waste; manufacturers have been motivated to substitute nonhazardous materials. HASW also regulates the three to ﬁve million underground storage tanks (USTs) containing petroleum and hazardous products, as distinct from waste. In September 1988 the EPA gave tank owners and operators ten years within which to replace, upgrade, or close existing USTs. Regular inspections are required to help prevent leaks. In 2002, in one of the largest-ever hazardous waste settlements, Mobil Oil Corporation agreed to pay $11.2 million for the alleged mismanagement of benzene-contaminated waste in Staten Island, New York. Despite this and other successes, many facilities holding hazardous waste permits have not been inspected between 2000 and 2002, as required by RCRA, according to information made public by the EPA. S E E A L S O Underground Storage Tank.

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Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Enforcement and Compliance History.” Available from http://www.epa.gov. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “RCRA.” Available from http://www.epa.gov.

Patricia Hemminger

Reuse The reuse of products, materials, and parts can have signiﬁcant environmental and economic beneﬁts. Waste is not just created when consumers throw items away. Waste is generated throughout the life cycle of a product, from extraction of raw materials, to transportation to processing and manufacturing facilities, to manufacture and use. Reusing items or making them with less material decrease waste dramatically. Ultimately, less material will need to be recycled or sent to landﬁlls or waste-combustion facilities. Used goods are widely available to industries, businesses, institutions, and individuals. There are secondhand markets for entire industrial production facilities, such as breweries and chemical production plants, as well as for industrial, construction, and medical equipment. Used goods for individuals include cars, clothes, books, furniture, household items, sports equipment, and musical instruments. Sources of used goods include on-line auctions and markets, secondhand merchandise stores, classiﬁed advertisements, estate sales, auctions, rummage sales, yard sales, salvage yards, materials exchanges, trash salvaging or “dumpster diving.”

Amount of Reuse In the United States, several secondhand markets are $100 billion dollar industries, and several more fall in the $1 to $10 billion range. Each year 40 million used cars are sold in the United States, nearly three times the number of new cars purchased. Overall, secondhand markets are almost as large as consumer recycling in terms of the amount of material processed (approximately ﬁfty million tons of paper and ten million tons of glass are recycled annually in the United States), and the economic value of secondhand markets is far greater than those for recycling. A considerable percentage of secondhand goods are exported from the United States, especially clothing; automobiles; and industrial, construction, and medical equipment. In a number of countries, including the Czech Republic, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, imports of used clothing compete strongly with the domestic production of new clothes.

Theory of Reuse Reuse can reduce the pollution and resource use associated with manufacturing a new item, and can delay or eliminate disposal of the item. In order to experience the greatest environmental beneﬁts, reuse of an item needs to replace, at least partially, the purchase and production of a new item. In some situations, reuse may not incur any real beneﬁts. For example, if a car owner sells or gives a car to someone who would not otherwise possess a car, and then buys a new car to replace the old one, the result is that there are now two operating cars rather than one. In other situations, the reuse of an item may

IRISH PLASTIC BAG TAX In March 2002, stores across Ireland began to charge an extra fifteen euro-cents for each plastic shopping bag, formerly given away to hold purchased merchandise. Before the “green” tax was implemented, Ireland’s 3.9 million people used about 1.2 billion plastic bags each year. After just five months, this number was cut by ninety percent and 3.5 million euros had been raised by the tax program to be spent on environmental projects. Shoppers now bring sturdy reusable shopping bags along and enjoy the beautiful Irish countryside without the eyesore of plastic bags caught on hedgerows and blown into gutters.

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A woman donating clothes to the Salvation Army at a deposit drop-off site. (M. Stone, U.S. EPA. Reproduced by permission.)

have zero effect on the production or purchase of new items. For example, if someone buys a “white elephant” at a rummage sale (perhaps a necklace or a used compact disc), that purchase will not in any way prevent or replace the purchase of a new item. However, even if reuse has no tangible environmental beneﬁts, it can have economic and social welfare beneﬁts. If the car example above is reconsidered, for instance, two people, not just one, now own a useful vehicle. In the compact disc example, the buyer acquires another disc for his or her pleasure, and the seller earns some perhaps much needed cash. Reuse can replace the production and purchase of new items, especially when the ﬁrst owner does not sell in order to be able to buy a new item. Examples of this sort include clothes and furniture, which are typically given away or sold at low prices by the ﬁrst owners, and which second-hand buyers often buy instead of new items.

Role of Government and Industry The U.S. government is one of the largest purveyors of used goods in the United States; it regularly sells surplus items through sealed bids, auctions,

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silent auctions, and ﬁxed-price sales. On the other hand, government regulations largely prevent the purchase of used items by the U.S. government and require the labeling of products containing used parts in a way that may discourage the use of used parts by industry. There are both incentives and disincentives for reuse by industry. Reuse, remanufacturing, repair, and refurbishment of products and parts can be economically beneﬁcial for industry. For example, used copiers are often remanufactured and refurbished. A number of companies now sell modular, reusable carpet. On the other hand, ﬁrms in some cases have an incentive to discourage reuse of their products, in order to maintain and increase production of new goods.

Reuse by the Individual Individuals can maximize the environmental and economic beneﬁts of their own reuse efforts by carefully contemplating their reuse strategies, by developing the ability to make repairs, and by learning about local sources of used goods and replacement parts. The environmental and economic beneﬁts of reuse typically increase as the size and cost of the item increase. For example, new furniture is both resource-intensive and expensive. Repair, repainting, and reupholstering of used furniture can replace the purchase of new furniture. The regular repair of shoes can considerably extend their life. Used clothing, ranging from designer clothes at consignment stores to basic items at rummage sales, is widely available. Used books, sports equipment, and musical instruments are also available at local stores and on-line. Used building materials (doors, windows, hardware, etc.) are increasingly available at salvage yards such as Urban Ore in Berkeley, California.

By reclaiming parts from eleven million vehicles each year, automotive salvage yards in North America save both raw materials and millions of barrels of oil that would otherwise be used to manufacture new replacement parts. Municipal collection programs for latex paints have provided considerable savings in hazardous waste disposal fees while providing usable paints to nonprofit organizations. Many reuse activities such as thrift shops and rummage sales benefit charities and provide low-cost or free goods to those in need. —Source: Reuse Development Organization (ReDo). Available from http://www.redo.org.

Reuse can have signiﬁcant environmental and economic beneﬁts by replacing the purchase of a new item. Secondhand items range from large industrial facilities and equipment to cars, sports equipment, clothes, and toys for individuals. Businesses can beneﬁt from secondhand markets both by buying secondhand equipment and by selling surplus equipment for reuse. Individuals can make a valuable contribution to the environment and their own ﬁnances by learning to make repairs, by wisely shopping for secondhand goods, and by selling or donating their unwanted goods so that others may use them. S E E A L S O Recycling; Waste; Waste Reduction. Bibliography Dacyczyn, Amy. (1998). The Complete Tightwad Gazette: Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle. New York: Villard Books. Goldbeck, Nikki and David. (1995). Choose to Reuse. Woodstock, NY: Ceres Press. Internet Resources Reuse Development Organization (ReDO). Available from http://www.redo.org. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ofﬁce of Solid Waste. “Source Reduction and Reuse.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer.

Valerie M. Thomas

Right to Know An industrial democracy requires well-informed citizens. The use of public information as a means of reducing harm from pollution evolved throughout

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the twentieth century. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Insecticide Act of 1910 established mandatory content labeling for all products. Consumers remained the primary recipients of such information until pressure from unions and public interest groups led to the enactment of the Hazardous Communication Standard Regulations in 1983, administered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). These regulations required all private employers using hazardous substances to label containers in the workplace, to train employees in safe practices, and to provide readily available, action-oriented material safety data sheets (MSDS) for each controlled substance. Each MSDS explains health risks from exposure and provides step-by-step procedures for accident response. Nine months after the 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India, an accidental release at a pesticide factory in West Virginia injured 150 people. It became readily apparent that communities near industrial sites were both ignorant about substances used in factories and poorly prepared for emergency response. In the 1986 reauthorization of the Superfund Act (SARA), the U.S. Congress added Title III, the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA). EPCRA requires states to establish local emergency response planning committees that include elected ofﬁcials and representatives from emergency agencies, industry, the mass media, and the public. Companies using regulated substances must provide an inventory of materials to the local committee along with the corresponding MSDSs. A separate section of EPCRA requires facilities to annually provide states with a Toxic Release Report. These reports specify the quantity of toxic material released or disposed of and where it ends up (landﬁll, underground injection, air, water, and recycling). States forward these reports to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for analysis and public distribution in what is known as the annual Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), available on the Internet. Citizens now have access to information regarding potentially harmful substances in the products they buy, those used in their workplace, and those released in their community. These data are used in making individual decisions about place of employment and residence, as well as schools. Since expenditures for operating each emergency planning committee are a local decision, citizens and community groups play a critical role in generating adequate support. Releases reported in TRI, except for emergency spills, are regulated by discharge permits. TRI can help reveal when the permits are being violated or government enforcement is lax. This may be the basis for a citizen lawsuit. The negative publicity associated with media coverage, coupled with the pressure exerted by well-organized and persistent community groups, has led many companies to reduce emissions well below legally permissible limits.

toluene carbon-containing chemical used in fuel and as a solvent

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Numerous examples demonstrate the power of a well-informed public to create change. A Michigan-based nongovernment organization (NGO), the Ecology Center, has acted in conjunction with the Great Lakes Auto Pollution Alliance to work with industry to implement major reductions in toluene air releases, the source of noxious community odors. Combined with U.S. Census data on the population, TRI now plays a central role in “environmental justice” analyses of the distribution of pollution in low-income and minority communities. Since 1993, businesses in Canada have also been required to report similar releases. These data are available on the Internet as the Canadian National Pollution Release Inventory (NPRI). They play a critical role in

Risk

local and regional environmental initiatives. For example, a Montréal NGO used NPRI to compare discharges from local reﬁneries. It found one facility with double the benzene emissions of a similar facility. Public pressure led the reﬁneries to voluntarily pledge a reduction in emissions. The right to know (RTK) laws have led to signiﬁcant increases in worker safety, the emergency preparedness of communities, and some major voluntary reductions in facility emissions. Citizens can obtain company inventory and MSDS information from their local emergency planning committee. Via the Internet they can access TRI and MSDS information from the EPA. Many environmental organizations also provide on the Internet TRI or NPRI information combined with additional analysis tools such as geographic information system maps. Users should be cautioned, however, about the limits of the data. Not all chemicals are regulated, and uses below speciﬁed quantities are exempt. Some facilities fail to meet the selfreporting requirements. A complete hazard assessment involves the analysis of releases, pathways (such as an air plume), human exposures, and dose–response relationship by population type. Most RTK information only includes estimates of annual source releases. S E E A L S O Activism; Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA); Environmental Justice; Government; Information, Access to; Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs); Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); Public Participation. Bibliography Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). SARA Title III, 42 U.S.C. 11001 et seq. Hadden, Susan. (1989). A Citizen’s Right to Know. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Internet Resources Environment Canada. “National Pollutant Release Inventory.” Available from http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Toxic Release Inventory: Community Right to Know.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/tri. Wolf, Sidney. (1996). “Fear and Loathing about the Public Right to Know: The Surprising Success of the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act.” Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law 11(2):218–319. Also available from http://www.law.fsu/edu/journals.

John P. Felleman

Risk Risk is the potential for harm. Although the concept of risk—and some of the same analytic tools—are also used in ﬁnance and actuarial science, as well as to describe threats from natural events, this discussion focuses on risks to human health and the environment from toxic pollution.

risk=f(hazard, exposure) The magnitude and severity of risk are a function of the types of harm (i.e., the hazards, or what can go wrong) and the extent and likelihood of exposure. If the elements of hazard and exposure are not both in play, there is no biophysical risk to health or the environment. However, the perception of risk can be as damaging, with potential for destroying trust and sapping resources and

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C H A R T DEP I CTI NG RELA TI ONS HI P BETWEEN LI K ELI HOOD A ND C O N S E QUENCE

High Risk Rating

Likelihood

IR Tech.

Cost

Senior X Design

Medium

High: Requires individual management attention and may require a separate development phase or parallel development activities with a low risk fallback. Medium: Requires a mitigation plan and special management processes. Low: No special risk mitigation activities are required.

Low

Low

Medium Consequence

High

emotional energy. Maintaining an appropriate balance between the level of social concern about a threat on the one hand and the extent of its social impact or risk on the other hand is an ongoing challenge for risk communicators, an engaged citizenry, and policymakers.

Hazards Hazards to human health include cancers, asthma, skin rashes, infectious diseases, eye and lung irritation, developmental problems, and broken bones. Population hazards also include habitat destruction, resource degradation, threats to public health from contamination of drinking water, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, famine, and such macroconcerns as global climate change. Of greatest consequence are hazardous effects that are irreversible or long lasting, or which seriously compromise the length or quality of lives in current and future generations. Hazards that will affect future generations, or groups spatially removed from the root of the problem, may go unidentiﬁed or be discounted in formulating an assessment of risk.

The Dose–Response Concept The toxicity or severity of a hazard can be described by a dose–effect (also called dose–response) relationship. This concept is conveyed graphically by plotting dosage (amount or concentration of a toxin) against population. Data for describing dose–response relationships are gathered from tests in which groups of organisms are exposed to a toxin at a range of doses. Typically, as the dose increases, the toxic effect of concern is produced in more of the population. The dosage at which the speciﬁed effect is measured is called the effective dose (ED). The percentage of the population affected is indicated by a subscript. So for example, ED10 refers to the dose at which 10 percent of the population would be affected by the toxin. When the measured effect is mortality, the term lethal dose (LD) or lethal concentration (LC) is used. An LD50 is the dose at which 50 percent of a population is killed.

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CANCER CLUSTERS When a number of people in a neighborhood or workplace develop the same disease within a short period of time, it may signal a disease cluster. A disease cluster is defined by having more cases of an illness within a particular geographic area and time period than would be statistically expected for a population with the same characteristics. Disease clusters can result from exposures to hazardous materials in the local environment or from similar lifestyle risk factors (i.e., people who live or work together may have similar eating, exercising, or smoking habits). Disease clusters can provide clues to the cause—or risk factors—associated with a disease. They are easier to identify when a number of people show the same symptoms soon after exposure, such as when nausea follows soon after eating spoiled food in a restaurant. With a longer lag time or small number of sick people,

or with symptoms that are dissimilar or not obvious, real disease clusters may not be noticed. Conversely, clusters may be suspected due to misperception of a higher-than-average incidence of cases, or when different diseases are perceived to be the same or to have stemmed from the same cause. Cancer clusters are particularly difficult to prove because (1) there are more than one hundred types of cancer, each with different associated risk factors; (2) there is a typically long lag time between exposure to environmental risk factors and noticeable development of the cancer; and (3) the location of the suspected cluster may be different than where a diseased person lived, worked, or went to school at the time they were exposed. Cancer clusters are more likely to be identified if a large number of individuals are diagnosed with a rare cancer or one that is rare for their age group.

At the same dose, chemicals that are more hazardous affect a greater proportion of the population than do chemicals that are less hazardous. Thus chemicals that are less hazardous have a higher ED50 or LD50 than do those that are more hazardous. While human beings are the population of ultimate interest in dose–response studies of human health hazards, rodents are typically used as surrogates in lab tests of the effects of the toxic materials. The process of extrapolating results from rodents (or other indicator organisms) to people introduces layers of uncertainty because of physiological, developmental, and size differences between the species. Hazardous effects on plants and animals are also studied using the same conceptual methods, both because of the intrinsic value of these species and also, in some cases, because they are indicators of indirect effects on the human population.

Population Variability As dose–response relationships show, populations are not equally susceptible to toxic hazards. Differences among individuals are due to gender, age, inherited genetic makeup, and the wear and tear and immunities that develop during the course of life. For example some people have inherited the genes that enable them to detoxify certain pesticide poisons. These people do not get sick from exposure at levels that make other people ill. Current research is linking biomarkers for genetic risk factors to disease outcomes. As it becomes clearer why people are differently vulnerable (or resistant), it also becomes more apparent that the same risk-based standards may not be applicable across populations. For example dietary iron is a risk factor for heart disease among middle-aged men at concentrations considered beneﬁcial to women of reproductive age.

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D O SE– E F F E C T R E L A TI O N S H I P

% Showing specified effect

50

x

40

Below detectable limit

30 x 20 Safety factor, e.g. 0.1, 0.01, 0.001 x NOEL x

10

0

x

x

x

Lowest Regulation Measurable Threshold: Dose e.g. Reference Dose (RfD)

No Observable Effect Level (NOEL)

Effective Dose10 (ED10)— i.e., dose affects 10%

ED25—i.e., dose affects 25%

ED50—i.e., dose affects 50%

Concentration or dose

Vulnerability to hazards also changes during our lifetimes, with greater sensitivity to many toxins during fetal development, the rapidly developing stages of early childhood, and puberty—although negative effects may not be manifest until much later in life. For these reasons, among others, exposures are not easily tied to disease outcomes (see sidebar). Just try to imagine, for example, how you or your parents would struggle to respond accurately to a survey asking which pesticides you were exposed to in early childhood, and in what quantities! Some toxins and infections are particularly hazardous to those with weakened immune systems and defenses, such as the elderly and those whose systems are compromised due to other diseases or by interactive effects with medical treatments or other chemical pollutants.

Exposure

bioavailability degree of ability to be absorbed and ready to interact in organism metabolism

Individuals are not at risk from the consequences of a hazard if they are not exposed to it. The critical factor linking exposure to risk is the quantity of toxin that is bioavailable to vulnerable organs or processes. However, bioavailability is difﬁcult to measure directly, so various measurement endpoints are used as surrogates for exposure. For pesticides, these have included sales and use data, application dosages, residues on food, and fate-andtransport data (i.e., what happens to a pesticide after application, where it goes, and how fast it degrades). Exposures are sometimes estimated from mathematical or simulation models that extrapolate from data collected by empirical studies (e.g., the amount of pesticide reaching skin or clothing, tracked indoors on shoes, or leached through soil into groundwater). Estimates of exposure can vary widely, depending on the method for collecting data, the surrogate indicator used, and whether the assumed range of possible exposures is limited to permitted quantities or also includes accidental or purposeful exposures at much higher levels.

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Risk-Based Decisions Whereas risk assessments are a product of the quality and choice of input data and the assumptions incorporated into the assessment model, the usefulness and relevance of a risk characterization depend largely on how the risk problem is perceived and formulated. A well-formulated problem must engage the perspectives of multiple “publics” and be integrated with decision-management options. Perceived options for risk management are constrained by societal values that determine what are considered acceptable risks and by the resources invested for risk mitigation (i.e., for preventing or remediating the problem). The National Research Council framework for using risk to “inform decisions in a democratic society” (1996) iteratively builds from a multifaceted formulation of the problem incorporating all aspects of risk analysis. As deﬁned by the Society for Risk Analysis, the premier professional organization in the ﬁeld, these components include risk assessment—or the quantiﬁcation and description of hazards and exposure, risk characterization, risk communication, risk management, and policy relating to risk. Criteria for a successful risk-based decision process are listed in the following table. The assessment and regulation of sewage-sludge disposal provides a good illustration of the potential and foibles of risk-based decision making, underscoring the importance of a participatory and iterative analytical and deliberative process in setting risk standards and developing protective environmental policies.

The “X” factor is a major stumbling block in communicating risk. Health standards are expressed in terms of 1 × 10–4 or 1 × 10–6. This is a shorthand way of expressing the increased number of deaths that exposure to the contaminant of concern is likely to cause over a given period of time. A 1 × 10–4 risk is a 1 in 10,000 (4 zeroes) risk; a 1 × 10–6 risk is a 1 in 1,000,000 risk. Since risk is dose (level of exposure) times time (length of exposure), a 30-year 1 × 10–6 health standard for cancer risk is the level of exposure that would be expected to cause one additional case of cancer in a population of one million people exposed at that level for 30 years.

Risks from Sewage Sludge: A Cross-Country Comparison Sewage sludge is the semisolid or concentrated liquid residue generated during the treatment of wastewater. In addition to biodegradable organic material, sludges can contain pathogens (disease organisms) and industrial pollutants (such as heavy metals) that can be damaging to human health. Among the means for disposing of sludges—by incineration, landﬁlling, or spreading across farmland and other open space—only land application has the beneﬁt of returning the fertilizing nutrients in sludge to the soil. However, land application also has associated risks, including the longterm effects of increasing the concentration of nondegradable contaminants in the soil. These elements can be taken up into food plants, ingested by children who put soiled hands into their mouths, eroded into surface waters, or leached into groundwater. The beneﬁts and risks of sludge disposal accrue to different groups: The advantages of cheap disposal are reaped by those generating waste. The beneﬁts from fertilizing nutrients are reaped by farmers and other land managers. Risks accrue to those who may ingest the toxins through the media of food, soil, water, or air, now and especially in the future, when toxins will have accumulated to higher levels. In 1993 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established standards for land-application of sludge, setting limits for permitted quantities of nine pollutants—arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, selenium, and zinc—on the basis of a risk assessment. A maximum

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C R I T E R I A FOR S UCCES S FUL RI S K -BA S ED DECI S I ON P ROCE S SES Criterion

Measurement Procedure

Getting the science right

Ask risk analytic experts who represent the spectrum of interested and affected parties to judge the technical adequacy of the risk-analytic effort

Getting the right science

Ask representatives of the interested and affected parties how well their concerns were addressed by the scientific work that informed the decision

Getting the right participation

Ask public officials and representatives of the interested and affected parties if there were other parties that should have been involved

Getting the participation right

Ask representatives of the parties whether they were adequately consulted during the process; if there were specific points when they could have contributed but did not have the opportunity

Developing accurate, balanced, and informative synthesis

Ask representatives of the parties how well they understand the bases for the decision; whether they perceived any bias in information coming from the responsible organization

SOURCE: National Research Council (1996). Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society. Washington D.C., National Academy Press.

concentration load (MCL) per unit quantity of sludge was derived from an assessment of how much of each element a person could be exposed to in their lifetime without causing unacceptable harm. To calculate the MCL, assumptions were made about the body size of this person and what they would eat in the course of a lifetime (and therefore how much of each pollutant would be consumed). The model person used for the calculations was a young adult male who did not eat many vegetables (the food group that accumulates the heavy metals). Some therefore argue that this risk assessment is not sufﬁciently protective of children and of people who eat many vegetables or would otherwise be exposed to greater contaminant levels. Several European countries (as well as Canadian provinces) have established more conservative standards, permitting only much lower contaminant levels in sludges that will be recycled through land application. The policy objective of these standards is to prevent the concentration of contaminants from accumulating above the level in soils where sludge has not been applied (i.e., above background levels). However, this approach lacks risk-based criteria, since background levels of contaminants vary greatly with the type of soil and how they have been used over time. (European soils have been the site of industrial and agricultural activities for centuries.) It is entirely possible that comparably protective standards could have emerged in the United States from a risk-based policy that was more appropriately sensitive to vulnerable subpopulations, that incorporated protective buffers to compensate for current scientiﬁc uncertainties about the hazards of these elements, and that assumed higher levels of possible exposure through food, soil, and airborne particles. The summary lesson to be taken from this comparison is that no matter what framework or assumptions are used—whether it be risk analysis or some other—decisions regarding health and the environmental protection are based on an intermixed combination of social values and science, neither of

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which is objective nor without uncertainty. While the view and measure of “risk” are not the same for all, the concept of “risk” remains meaningful and useful; “risk reduction” is a critical objective across all policy arenas; and the framework and tools of risk analysis offer a structured approach for evaluating, prioritizing, and acting on environmental and health issues. Bibliography Harrison, E.Z.; McBride, M.B.; and Bouldin, D.R. (1999.) “Land Application of Sewage Sludges: An Appraisal of the US Regulations.” International Journal of Environment and Pollution 11(1):1–36. National Research Council. (1996). Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Internet Resources Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Cancer Clusters.” Available from http:// www.cdc.gov/nceh/clusters. Cornell University, Environmental Risk Analysis Program. “Links to Risk Analysis Resources & Organizations.” Available from http://environmentalrisk.cornell.edu/ ERAP/RiskLinks.cfm. National Cancer Institute. “Cancer Clusters, Cancer Facts.” Available from http:// cis.nci.nih.gov/fact/3_58.htm. Society for Risk Analysis. “Risk Glossary.” Available from http://www.sra.org/ glossary.htm.

Lois Levitan

Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act The modern form of the Rivers and Harbors Act was enacted in 1890, and amended by the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899, also known as the Refuse Act. It was amended again several times during the twentieth century. In general, the act prohibits the dumping of refuse into navigable waters or the creation of any navigational obstruction, and it regulates the construction of wharves, piers, jetties, bulkheads, and similar structures in ports, rivers, canals, or other areas used for navigation. Although the Clean Water Act now predominates in the regulation of surface water pollution, the Rivers and Harbors Act remains valid law. It provides useful supplemental jurisdiction for addressing certain kinds of water pollution, and especially for dredge and ﬁll activities. As with the Clean Water Act, discharges of refuse or ﬁll material, or construction activities in waterways, require a permit. The permitting agency is the Army Corps of Engineers rather than the Environmental Protection Agency, reﬂecting the essentially navigational concerns of this legislation. The Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act imposes civil and criminal penalties. Criminal convictions discourage activities that either directly or indirectly seek to evade permitting requirements. Statutory shortcomings include the absence of a state role and the act’s inapplicability to municipal discharges. In addition, earlier case law restricted its application to actual interference with navigation, rather than construing the act as widely applicable to activities in navigable waters. More recent case law, however, has broadly reinterpreted the act’s purpose and speciﬁcally the term “obstruction.” As a result of this trend, the U.S. Army Corps’ inclusion of environmental considerations, such as the effect of a structure on vegetal habitat and the

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impacts of resulting shadows, in reaching its permitting decisions has been upheld. Nonetheless, recent law has also upheld, against environmental challenges, Army Corps’ environmental assessments and environmental impact statements that minimized or rejected claims of adverse impacts, even when the Army Corps differed with the EPA on practical alternatives. As a consequence, the Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act is useful for environmental challenges, especially in view of its criminal penalties, but challengers should not assume that the statute will always be successful in a legal setting in achieving environmental goals. Its usefulness as a means of reducing or eliminating pollution is restricted. S E E A L S O Laws and Regulations, United States. Bibliography Weinberg, Philip, and Reilly, Kevin A. (1998). Understanding Environmental Law. New York: Matthew Bender & Co. Internet Resource Hudson Watch Web site. “The Nation’s Original Environmental Statute.” Available from http://www.hudsonwatch.net/fyi.html.

Kevin Anthony Reilly

S chromatography means of resolving a chemical mixture into its components by passing it through a system that retards each component to a varying degree electromagnetic spectrum the range of wavelengths of light energy, including visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, and radio waves biomonitoring the use of living organisms to test the suitability of effluents for discharge into receiving waters and to test the quality of such waters downstream from the discharge; analysis of blood, urine, tissues, etc. to measure chemical exposure in humans bioluminescence release of light by an organism, usually a bacterium adherence substances: sticking to; regulation: abiding by absorption the uptake of water, other fluids, or dissolved chemicals by a cell or an organism (as tree roots absorb dissolved nutrients in soil)

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See Wise Use Movement

Science Scientists collect samples of air, water, soil, plants, and tissue to detect and monitor pollution. Pollutants are most often extracted from samples, then isolated by a technique called chromatography and analyzed by appropriate detection methods. Many pollutants are identiﬁed by their spectral ﬁngerprints, unique patterns of absorbed or emitted radiation in the ultraviolet (UV), visible, or infrared (IR) region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Biomonitoring and technologies including satellite observation, sidescan sonar, and bioluminescent reporter chips are also used for pollution monitoring. In the United States, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approves the methods for monitoring regulated pollutants such as pesticide residues and those in air and drinking water.

Sampling and Extraction Air can be actively or passively sampled. Actively sampled air is pumped through a ﬁlter or chemical solution. For example, airborne lead, mostly originating from metals processing plants, is collected on ﬁlters by active sampling and then analyzed spectroscopically. Air that is not pumped but allowed to ﬂow or diffuse naturally is passively sampled. Nitrogen oxides, resulting from vehicle emissions and combustion, can be monitored in passive sampling tubes by their reaction with triethanolamine to form nitrates. The tubes are taken to a laboratory and the amount of nitrate analyzed. Liquid or solid extraction removes a mix of pollutants from samples. In liquid extraction, samples are shaken with a solvent that dissolves the pollutants. Solid extraction involves the adherence or absorption of pollutants to a solid that is then heated to release a mix of vaporized pollutants which are subsequently analyzed.

Science

S E L E C T E D IN S T R U M E N TA L D E TE C T I O N M E THODS Chemical

Method

Anions in water (e.g., nitrate, phosphate, sulfate, bromide, fluoride, chloride)

Ion exchange chromatography/conductivity detector

Criteria pollutants sulfur dioxide, ozone, nitrogen oxides

Ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy

Dioxins and furans

High-resolution gas chromatography/high-resolution mass spectrometry

Greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide

Infrared absorption spectroscopy

Herbicides diquat and paraquat in drinking water

High-performance liquid chromatography/ultraviolet spectroscopy

Chlorinated disinfection byproducts, haloacetic acids

Gas chromatography/electron capture detector or mass spectrometry

Hydrocarbons in vehicle emissions

Infrared absorption spectroscopy

Metals

Inductively coupled plasma–atomic emission spectrometry or mass spectrometry or graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry for trace amounts (e.g. arsenic and lead)

Mercury

Cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometry

Organophosphate pesticides (e.g. malathion, parathion)

Gas chromatography/nitrogen/phosphorus detector

PCBs, chlorinated pesticides (e.g. DDT, lindane) and herbicides in water

Gas chromatography/electron capture detector or mass spectrometry

Phthalates in water or biological samples

Gas chromatography/electron capture or photoionization detector or mass spectrometry

Toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, styrene, hydrogen fluoride

Ultraviolet or infrared absorption spectroscopy

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in water

Gas chromatography/photoionization and electrolytic conductivity detectors in series

Volatile organic compounds in air

Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

Chromatography Chromatography is the method most often used in environmental chemistry to separate individual pollutants from mixtures. The mixture to be analyzed is added to a liquid or gas, depending on whether liquid or gas chromatography is employed. The liquid or gas, called the mobile phase, is then forced through a stationary phase, often a column packed with solid material that can be coated with a liquid. The stationary and mobile phases are chosen so that the pollutants in the mixture will have different solubilities in each of them. The greater the afﬁnity of a pollutant for the stationary phase, the longer it will take to move through the column. This difference in the migration rate causes pollutants to separate. A chromatogram is a graph of intensity peaks that are responses to a detection method, indicating the presence of a pollutant, plotted against time.

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D I A G R A M OF A GA S CHROMA TOGRA P H Flow controller

Injector port

Recorder

Column

Detector

Column oven Carrier gas

Individual pollutants are identiﬁed by comparing their chromatogram to one for the suspected compounds under the same conditions. The pollutant concentration is determined from the height of the peaks and area under them. Different kinds of chromatography work best for different pollutants. Gas chromatography separates organic chemicals that vaporize easily (VOCs). Benzene and ethylbenzene are VOCs in vehicle exhaust and are monitored in drinking water. Many pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and dioxin are separated by gas chromatography. Less volatile substances such as the herbicide diquat are isolated by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Ion exchange chromatography separates inorganic ions such as nitrates that can pollute water when excess fertilizer or leaking septic tanks wash into it.

Detectors Chromatographic methods are routinely automated. A detector that responds to the pollutants’ physical or chemical properties analyzes the gas or liquid leaving the column. Detectors can be speciﬁc for individual pollutants or classes of pollutants, or nonspeciﬁc.

Nonspecific Detectors. Flame ionization, thermal conductivity, and mass spectrometry are common nonspeciﬁc detection methods that detect all molecules containing carbon and hydrogen. In mass spectrometry, molecules of a gas are energized in a variety of ways, such as bombardment with electrons or rapid heating, causing them to gain or lose electrons. Because they have different masses and charges, the resulting ions are separated when they pass through magnetic and electric ﬁelds. The size and distribution of peaks for ions with different mass-to-charge ratios, known as the mass spectrum, identify the gas and determine its concentration. Gas chromatography coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry deﬁnitively identiﬁes PCBs and is the most accurate way to determine their concentration. Portable gas chromatograph/mass spectrometers can measure VOCs in soil and water to parts per billion (ppb). Specific Detectors. Methods that detect classes of pollutants include nitrogen/phosphorous detectors for organophosphate pesticides, thermionic

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ionization detectors that detect molecules containing NO2, nitro groups, such as dinitrotoluene and electron capture. Electron capture is particularly sensitive to compounds, such as organohalide pesticides that contain the halogen atoms, chlorine, bromine, or ﬂuorine. These atoms strongly attract electrons. The electron capture detector emits electrons that are captured by the halogens atom. The reduction in electric current corresponds to the concentration of pollutant. Chlorinated disinfection by-products, haloacetic acid, and phthalates in drinking water can be separated by gas chromatography and measured by electron capture. Sulfur hexaﬂuoride, an ozonedepleting gas, can be measured to parts per trillion (ppt) by electron capture. Spectroscopic detection methods including IR, UV, and atomic absorption and emission spectroscopy are unique for speciﬁc compounds.

Spectroscopic Detection. The electromagnetic spectrum encompasses all forms of electromagnetic radiation from the most energetic cosmic and gamma rays to the least energetic radio waves. The part of the spectrum that is particularly useful in identifying and measuring pollutants consists of radiation that interacts with the atoms and molecules that make up life on Earth. This includes radiation in the UV, visible, and IR regions. Atomic Spectra. Atoms of different elements may be thought of as having different arrangements of electrons around the nucleus in increasing energy levels. When metals such as lead, copper, and cadmium are vaporized at high temperatures, some electrons jump to higher energy levels. When the electrons drop to their original levels, the metal atoms emit radiation in a range of wavelengths from IR to UV, including visible light. The colors in ﬁreworks result from such emissions. The wavelengths emitted constitute a unique “ﬁngerprint” for each element and their intensity reﬂects the metal concentration. Inductively coupled plasma emission spectra (ICP–AES), in which a high-temperature gas or plasma excites metal atoms, are used to identify and quantify heavy metal contamination. The same spectral ﬁngerprint is obtained from the wavelengths of light that each element absorbs. Trace amounts of certain metals such as mercury and arsenic are more accurately measured from their absorption, rather than their emission spectra.

UV and IR Spectra. Many pollutants can be identiﬁed by their UV and IR spectra because all molecules that absorb strongly at speciﬁc wavelengths exhibit spectral ﬁngerprints. Pollutants separated by liquid chromatography are often detected by spectroscopy. Gases such as those from vehicle emissions, landﬁlls, industrial manufacturing plants, electric power plants, and hazardous incineration smokestacks can be monitored by spectroscopic methods. Gas and chemical leaks may also be monitored by spectroscopy. UV Absorption Spectra. Toxic gases such as hydrogen sulﬁde, ammonia, and styrene can be monitored by their UV absorption spectra. Open path monitors emit UV radiation from a source, such as a bulb containing excited xenon gas, across the area to be monitored. Detectors record the absorbed wavelengths to produce a spectral ﬁngerprint for each gas. Ammonia is often used as a coolant for turbine generators in power plants. It can be monitored for worker safety by its UV spectrum. The EPA has established National Ambient Air Quality standards for the six criteria pollutants: carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide.

open path monitor detection device that employs a beam of light passing through an open space

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D IAG R AM O F T H E E L E C T R O M A G N E TI C S P E CTRUM

Visible

Radio

Microwaves

Low Frequency

Long Wavelength

Infrared

Ultraviolet

X-ray

Gamma Ray

High Frequency

Short Wavelength

Satellite instruments monitoring stratospheric ozone generally measure the decrease in intensity in UV solar radiation due to ozone absorption. The total ozone mapping spectrometer on the Earth probe satellite (TOMS/EP) scans back and forth beneath the satellite to detect six individual frequencies of UV light that are scattered by air molecules back through the stratosphere. The more ozone in the stratosphere, the more “backscattered” UV radiation will be absorbed compared to UV radiation directly from the sun. Some IR open path monitors use a tunable diode laser source in the near IR. The laser emits the speciﬁc frequency at which a monitored gas absorbs, so there is no interference from other gases or particles such as rain or snow. Such lasers are widely employed in the telecommunications industry. Pollutants that absorb at speciﬁc wavelengths in this range include hydrogen ﬂuoride, an extremely toxic gas used in the aluminum smelting and petroleum industries. Hydrogen ﬂuoride can be monitored to one part per million (ppm) for worker safety by this method. The greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane may also be monitored by IR spectroscopy. Currently, emissions of carbon dioxide from power plants are not generally measured directly but are estimated. However, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over Mauna Loa has been measured continuously by IR spectroscopy since 1958. The Mauna Loa Observatory is located on the earth’s largest active volcano on the island of Hawaii. It is relatively remote from human activity and changes in carbon dioxide concentration above it are considered a reliable indicator of the trend of carbon dioxide concentration in the troposphere. Data from Mauna

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Loa show a 17.4 percent increase in carbon dioxide concentration from 315.98 parts per million (ppm) by volume of dry air in 1959 to 370.9 ppm in 2001. Remote sensors for vehicle emissions contain units that detect and measure carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrocarbons by their IR spectra. Because IR absorption bands from water and other gases found in car exhaust interfere with the IR spectrum of NOx, the sensor also contains a unit that measures NOx from their UV absorption spectra. Fourier transform IR spectroscopy (FTIR) analyzes the absorption spectrum of a gas mixture to detect as many as twenty gases simultaneously. The technique involves analyzing the spectra mathematically and then comparing the observed ﬁngerprints with calibrated reference spectra stored on the hard drive of the computer to be used for analysis. Reference spectra for more than one hundred compounds are stored, including most of the VOCs considered hazardous by the EPA. Instruments that use UV Fourier transform analysis are now available. The instruments are generally installed at one location, but are portable and can be battery operated for short-term surveys. Multiple gas-monitoring systems are used in a variety of industries, including oil and gas, petrochemical, pulp and paper, food and beverage, public utility, municipal waste, and heavy industrial manufacturing.

absorption spectrum “fingerprint” of a compound generated when it absorbs characteristic light frequencies

Biomonitoring Biomonitoring is the study of plants, vertebrate, and invertebrate species to detect and monitor pollution. Moss and lichens absorb heavy metals, mainly from air, and have been analyzed by scientists studying air pollution. Water pollution can be studied by recording changes in the number and type of species present and in speciﬁc biochemical or genetic changes in individual organisms. Blue mussels accumulate metals in certain tissues over time and are monitored in the United States and international waters for changes in pollution levels. The index of biotic integrity (IBI), ﬁrst developed by James Karr in 1981 to assess the health of small warmwater streams, uses ﬁsh sampling data to give a quantitative measure of pollution. Twelve indicators of stream health, appropriate to the geographical area, including the total number of ﬁsh, the diversity of species, and food chain interactions, are numerically rated with a maximum of ﬁve points each. An IBI close to sixty corresponds to a healthy stream, whereas a rating between twenty and twelve implies a considerable pollution. Versions of the IBI with appropriate indicators are used to assess rivers and streams in France, Canada, and different regions of the United States.

Bioluminescent Reporter Technology In bioluminescent reporter technology, bacteria that break down pollutants are genetically modiﬁed to emit blue green light during the degradation process. The bacteria are embedded in a polymer porous to water and combined with a light sensor integrated with a silicon computer chip. The sensor measures the intensity of the glow to determine the amount of pollution, and that information is transmitted to a central computer. Bioluminescent reporter technology is still being studied by researchers, but is currently employed in some wastewater treatment plants in the United

polymer a natural or synthetic chemical structure where two or more like molecules are joined to form a more complex molecular structure (e.g., polyethylene)

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When New Jersey inventors John Mooney and Carl Keith invented the three-way catalytic converter in 1974, the Wall Street Journal called it a $20 million mistake. Industry estimates today credit the catalytic converter with preventing fifty million tons of carbon monoxide and fifty million tons each of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides from polluting the air worldwide. In addition, the use of catalytic converters required that lead be removed from gasoline.

Kingdom. Incoming wastewater is monitored for chemicals that inhibit the bacterial activity necessary for efﬁcient wastewater treatment. The incoming water is automatically sampled and mixed with freeze-dried luminescent bacteria from the treatment plant. A reduction in light intensity compared to a control with pure water indicates the chemical inhibition of wastewater microorganisms. This technology is also being used to identify petroleum pollutants, such as napthelene.

Sidescan Sonar Sidescan sonar instruments bounce sound off surfaces both vertically and at an angle to produce images of sea and riverbeds. Because PCBs tend to stick preferentially to organic matter, there is a greater possibility of ﬁnding them in small-grain aquatic sediments, since these contain more organic material. The EPA has analyzed sound reﬂection patterns from sidescan sonar data to identify areas of small grain size and selectively sample for PCBs in the Hudson River, New York. Sidescan sonars are also used to detect sea grass, an indicator of marine health, and sewage or oil leaks from underwater pipelines.

Regulations

epidemiological epidemiology: study of the incidence and spread of disease in a population

Once a potentially harmful pollutant is measured in trace amounts, then regulators, such as the EPA, have to decide on a safe limit. Risk analysis is the method used to set limits on harmful pollutants in the United States. Risk is calculated based on laboratory tests, sometimes on animals, and epidemiological studies that relate human health to exposure. Risk analysis is conducted for individual pollutants, but people can be exposed to multiple pollutants simultaneously, such as pesticides, heavy metals, dioxins, and PCBs. Even though a person’s exposure to individual chemicals may fall within regulated limits, the pollutants may interact to cause as yet unknown adverse health effects. It is known, for instance, that exposure to both asbestos and tobacco smoke geometrically increases the risk of cancer. Because there are so many potentially harmful chemicals in the environment scientists cannot predict all their possible interactions and consequent health effects on the body. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Arsenic; Dioxin; Greenhouse Gases; Heavy Metals; Lead; Mercury; Ozone; PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls); Pesticides; Risk; Vehicular Pollution; VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds); Water Treatment. Bibliography Csuros, Maria. (1997). Environmental Sampling and Analysis Lab Manual. Boca Raton, FL: Lewis Publishers. Manahan, Staley E. (2001). Fundamentals of Environmental Chemistry, 2nd edition. Boca Raton, FL: Lewis Publishers. Schnelle, Kard B., Jr., and Brown, Charles A. (2002). Air Pollution Control Technology Handbook. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Internet Resources Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center Web site. “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Record from Mauna Loa.” Available from http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/ sio-mlo.htm. Goddard Space Flight Center Web site. “Ozone Measurements, TOMS on Earth Probe Satellite.” Available from http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/eptoms. University of Tennessee. Center for Environmental Biotechnology Web site. “Bioreporter Research Projects.” Available from http://www.ceb.utk.edu.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ofﬁce of Water. “Approved Methods for Inorganic Chemicals and Other Parameters.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/ safewater. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Technology Transfer Network Emissions Measurement Center. “CFR Promulgated Test Methods.” Available from http:// www.epa.gov/ttn. U.S. Geological Survey. National Environmental Methods Index Web site. Available from http://www.nemi.gov.

Patricia Hemminger

Scrubbers

DI A GRA M OF A S CRUBBER

Scrubbers are air-pollution-control devices that remove harmful gases and particulates from the smokestacks of incinerators, chemical manufacturing facilities, and electric power plants before they enter the atmosphere. There are different types of scrubbers, including wet and dry, regenerative and nonregenerative. Regenerative scrubbers recycle the material that extracts the pollutants.

"Clean" Gas Out

Column Packed with Calcium Hydroxide

The nonregenerative wet scrubber is most commonly used to capture sulfur dioxide emitted from coal and oil burning power plants. It works by spraying limestone and water slurry into the ﬂue gases. Sulfur dioxide reacts with limestone to form gypsum or calcium sulfate. The gypsum sludge is disposed of in landﬁlls or recycled in saleable byproducts such as wallboard, concrete, and fertilizer. Regenerative scrubbers can also be used; one reacts sodium sulﬁte with sulfur dioxide to form sodium bisulﬁte, from which sodium sulﬁte is recovered by adding alkali. The released sulfur is trapped in water to produce sulfuric acid, which is sold to offset the cost of installing the scrubber. Particulates can be removed using venturi and centrifugal or condensation scrubbers. Flue gas enters through the top of the cone-shaped venturi scrubber and water, injected horizontally, forms droplets that absorb dust and other particles. The resulting slurry discharges from the bottom of the unit or can be separated from the clean gas by centrifugation or spinning at high speed. Copper oxide regenerable scrubbers that absorb sulfur and simultaneously convert nitrogen oxides to nitrogen are being researched.

Liquid Out

"Dirty" Gas In Adapted from the Department of Chemistry, University of Kentucky.

SOURCE:

In 1971 the EPA set a maximum limit on sulfur dioxide in air. To help meet this limit, revisions to the Clean Air Act in 1977 required all new power plants to install scrubbers to remove sulfur dioxide. Most spray tower scrubbers remove at least 90 percent of sulfur dioxide, according to the EPA. In 1990 further revisions to the Clean Air Act under the Acid Rain Program allotted allowable amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions to electric utilities, which could trade allowances to meet their quotas. Sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants in 2001 were 33 percent lower than in 1990 and 5 percent lower than in 2000 according to the EPA. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Clean Air Act. Bibliography Schnelle, Karl B. Jr., and Brown, Charles A. (2002). Air Pollution Control Technology Handbook. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

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Internet Resources EPA Air Pollution Technology Fact Sheets. “Condensation Scrubbers” and “SprayChamber/Spray-Tower Wet Scrubber.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/ttn. Illinois Clean Coal Institute Annual Report (2002). Available from http://www.icci.org.

Patricia Hemminger

La Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales See Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources

Sedimentation substrate surface on which an organism, i.e. mold, grows

bed load transport movement of sediments that remain at the bottom of a moving water body hydrodynamic condition related to flow of water

pore waters water present in the pores or cavities in sediments, soil, and rock

biogeochemical interaction interactions between living and nonliving components of the biosphere host in genetics, the organism, typically a bacterium, into which a gene from another organism is transplanted; in medicine, it is an animal infected or parasitized by another organism

Sediments in the aquatic ecosystem are analogous to soil in the terrestrial ecosystem as they are the source of substrate nutrients, and micro- and macroﬂora and -fauna that are the basis of support to living aquatic resources. Sediments are the key catalysts of environmental food cycles and the dynamics of water quality. Aquatic sediments are derived from and composed of natural physical, chemical, and biological components generally related to their watersheds. Sediments range in particle distribution from micron-sized clay particles through silt, sand, gravel, rock, and boulders. Sediments originate from bed load transport, beach and bank erosion, and land runoff. They are naturally sorted by size through prevalent hydrodynamic conditions. In general, fastmoving water will contain coarse-grained sediments and quiescent water will contain ﬁne-grained sediments. Mineralogical characteristics of sediments vary widely and reﬂect watershed characteristics. Organic material in sediments is derived from the decomposed tissues of plants and animals, from aquatic and terrestrial sources, and from various point and nonpoint wastewater discharges. The content of organic matter increases in concentration as the size of sediment mineral particles decreases. Dissolved chemicals in the overlying and sediment pore waters are a product of inorganic and organic sedimentary materials, as well as runoff and ground water that range from fresh to marine in salinity. This sediment/water environment varies signiﬁcantly over space and time and its characteristics are driven by complex biogeochemical interaction between the inorganic, living, and nonliving organic components. The sediment biotic community includes micro-, meso-, and macrofauna and -ﬂora that are interdependent of each other and their host sediment’s biogeochemical characteristics. Sedimentation is the direct result of the loss (erosion) of sediments from other aquatic areas or land-based areas. Sedimentation can be detrimental or beneﬁcial to aquatic environments. Moreover, sediment impoverishment (erosion or lack of replenishment) in an area can be as bad as too much sedimentation. Sedimentation in one area is linked to erosion or impoverishment in another area and is a natural process of all water bodies (i.e., lakes, rivers, estuaries, coastal zones, and even the deep ocean). As an example, detrimental effects can be related to the burial of bottom-dwelling organisms and beneﬁcial effects can be related to the building of new substrates for the development of marshes. These natural physical processes will continue whether or not they are inﬂuenced by the activities of humankind. Human activities, however, have signiﬁcantly enhanced sedimentation as well as sediment loss. Sedimentation activities can be land-based (i.e.,

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agriculture, forestry, construction, urbanization, recreation) and water-based (i.e., dams, navigation, port activities, drag ﬁshing, channelization, water diversions, wetlands loss, other large-scale hydrological modiﬁcations). Sediment impoverishment or loss is generally due to retention behind dams, bank or beach protection activities, water diversions, and many of the aquatic activities cited here. Morphological changes (physical changes over a large area) to large aquatic systems can also result in major changes in natural sediment erosion and sedimentation patterns. As an example, the change in the size and shape of a water body will result in new water ﬂow patterns leading to erosion or sediment removal from sensitive areas. The environmental impacts of sedimentation include the following: loss of important or sensitive aquatic habitat, decrease in ﬁshery resources, loss of recreation attributes, loss of coral reef communities, human health concerns, changes in ﬁsh migration, increases in erosion, loss of wetlands, nutrient balance changes, circulation changes, increases in turbidity, loss of submerged vegetation, and coastline alteration. Abatement or control of sedimentation can be successful if implemented on a broad land area or watershed scale and is directly related to improvement in land-use practices. Agriculture and forestry (logging) improvements where soil loss is minimized are not only technically feasible: They can be carried out at a moderate cost and with net beneﬁts. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a wide range of training and implementation programs for these types of activities. The United Nations Environmental Programme also has global programs, their Regional Seas activities, to guide countries in the management of land-based activities negatively impacting the coastal zone. Improved land-use practices are the primary measures to control sediment sources: terracing, low tillage, modiﬁed cropping, reduced agricultural intensity (e.g., no-till buffer zones), and wetlands construction as sediment interceptors. Forestry practices such as clear-cutting to the water’s edge without replacement tree planting must be seriously curtailed because base soil in exposed areas will erode and import sediment to sensitive aqueous areas. Wetlands that separate upland areas from aquatic areas serve as natural ﬁlters for the runoff from the adjacent land. Wetlands thus serve to trap soil particles and associated agricultural contaminants. The construction of natural buffer zones and wetlands replenishment adjacent to logging areas are effective techniques. Watershed construction activities such as port expansion, water diversions, channel deepening, and new channel construction must undergo a complete environmental assessment, coupled with predictive sediment resuspension and transport modeling, so alternative courses of action and activities to minimize the negative impacts of sedimentation may be chosen. Sediment impoverishment is equally important in coastal areas, such as coastal Louisiana where twenty-ﬁve to thirty square miles of wetlands are being lost each year. This loss primarily results from the Mississippi River levee system halting the annual natural replenishment of sediments that rebuilds the marsh system. Engineered water diversion can replace sediment in the natural system to decrease losses due to dams, levees, jetties, and other structures built to control the ﬂow of water and thus sediments. Proper placement of sediments from navigation dredging can also be a useful abatement technique.

hydraulic related to fluid flow

turbid containing suspended particles

low tillage reduced level of plowing

sediment impoverishment loss of sediment

Sediments are absolutely necessary for aquatic plant and animal life. Managed properly, sediments are a resource; improper sediment management

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results in the destruction of aquatic habitat that would have otherwise depended on their presence. The United Nations Group of Experts on the Scientiﬁc Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection recently recognized that on a global basis, changes in sediment ﬂows are one of the ﬁve most serious problems affecting the quality and uses of the marine and coastal environment. S E E A L S O Disasters: Environmental Mining Accidents; Dredging; Particulates; Water Pollution. Bibliography Huber, M.E., et al. (1999). “Oceans at Risk.” Marine Pollution Bulletin 38 (6):435–438. Fischetti, Mark. (2001). “Drowning New Orleans.” Scientiﬁc American 285 (4):76–85. Internet Resource Joint Group of Experts on the Scientiﬁc Aspects of Marine Environment Protection. (2001). “Sea of Troubles.” GESAMP Study No. 70. Geneva: United Nations Environmental Programme. Also available from http://gesamp.imo.org/no70. USDA-ARS National Sedimentation Laboratory. Available from http://www.sedlab .olemiss.edu.

Robert M. Engler

Septage

See Wastewater Treatment

Settlement House Movement As more women gained access to a college education in the late nineteenth century, many hoped to use their skills and talents for more than homemaking and child rearing. Jane Addams, born in 1860 to a Quaker miller in Illinois, was one of these women who hoped to improve the life of others and society at large. After completing her education, Addams took a trip to Europe, where social activism in the slums of London had a dramatic effect on her. She returned to Chicago to found her own version of London’s “settlement houses” in 1889. The British settlement houses, which inspired Addams, were residences located within destitute neighborhoods with programs designed to improve living conditions. Addams’s Hull House, located in an immigrant area of the city with appalling living conditions, provided numerous women with the opportunity to serve the poor neighborhood and reform conditions there. Environmental reforms became an important component of their work, but settlement houses also organized kindergartens for immigrant children; provided classes on ethnic culture and art; and gave immigrants a place to meet, visit, bathe, and see health professionals. Addams incorporated a large number of environmental reforms in her agenda for Hull House. One of the most notable included her efforts to address the unhealthy piles of garbage in immigrant neighborhoods because of a lack of municipal attention. The mayor of Chicago eventually appointed Addams garbage inspector for her area, a job she took very seriously. Addams supervised garbage collectors and took violators of garbage regulations to court. Although Addams and her cohorts often initiated reforms, the immigrants played an active role too, assisting in information gathering and its communication to their neighbors. Alice Hamilton, also a resident of Hull House, worked extensively on occupational health and safety issues, demonstrating the dangers of lead and other toxic substances.

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The Settlement House Movement, begun by Addams and a part of national Progressive Era reform movements, spread quickly to other industrial urban areas. Lillian Wald established Henry House in New York. Initially hoping to focus on the delivery of modern health care, Wald quickly became outraged over immigrant living conditions and shifted her focus to improving city services, establishing parks for children, and educating immigrants about sanitation issues. Although the most famous settlement house workers were middle- and upper-class white women, African-American women also participated in the movement throughout the United States. They focused on issues similar to those of white women, but had to cope with the additional problems of racism, segregation, disfranchisement, and discrimination facing black communities in general. They worked tirelessly to educate other African-Americans about sanitation and health issues and to improve neighborhoods by pressing for garbage pickup and better city services like sewers and lighting. Although settlement houses failed to eliminate the worst aspects of poverty among new immigrants, they provided some measure of relief and hope to their neighborhoods. Nonetheless, historians have found that settlement house workers held a very condescending attitude toward immigrant populations, one that dismissed native cultures and sought to impose decidedly white middle-class values. Despite any such limitations, settlement house workers raised public awareness of pollution issues, especially in the areas of health, sanitation, and city services. They inﬂuenced politicians and forced them to consider issues of importance to immigrants. Finally and equally importantly, settlement house workers provided a legitimate venue for women to become active in city politics and other national issues, such as the burgeoning women’s suffrage movement. S E E A L S O Activism; Addams, Jane; Environmental Movement; Hamilton, Alice; Industry; Lead; Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); Politics; Progressive Movement; Solid Waste; Workers Health Bureau. Bibliography Addams, Jane. (1911). Twenty Years at Hull House, with Autobiographical Notes. New York: Macmillan. Lasch-Quinn, Elisabeth. (1993). Black Neighbors: Race and the Limits of Reform in the American Settlement House Movement, 1890–1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Levine, Daniel. (1971). Jane Addams and the Liberal Tradition. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Internet Resources “Settlement Houses: New Ideas in Old Communities.” Available from http:// www.socialworker.com/sethouse.pdf. United Neighborhood House Web site. Available from http://www.unhny.org.

Elizabeth D. Blum

Settling Ponds Sewage Sludge

See Wastewater Treatment See Biosolids

Sick Building Syndrome

See Indoor Air Pollution

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Smart Growth The “smart growth” movement arose in the 1990s to combat the perceived negative aspects of the dominant growth patterns of the time: rapidly spreading development that tended to draw people and resources away from existing neighborhoods and created new, look-alike communities where vehicle use was mandatory and walking was discouraged. Proponents of smart growth— a group that includes city planners, environmentalists, urban designers, neighborhood activists, and others—do not try to stop development, but instead work to make development improve life in existing cities and towns, rather than degrade it. They generally agree on several core principles: infrastructure the basic facilities, services and installations needed for the functioning of a system, i.e., the various components of a water supply system

1. Revitalizing communities by directing public investment toward areas where the infrastructure to support development is already in place or planned. 2. Creating walkable neighborhoods by locating housing, shopping, schools, and ofﬁces in closer proximity to each other and providing sidewalks and attractive streetscapes. 3. Offering a choice in transportation modes, whether by foot, car, bike, bus, or train. 4. Involving citizens in deciding how and where their community should grow. 5. Fostering distinctive, attractive communities with a unique sense of place. 6. Providing housing for people of all income levels in close proximity to jobs and activities. 7. Preserving open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas. 8. Saving taxpayers the unnecessary cost of building the infrastructure required to support spread-out development. SEE ALSO

Sprawl.

Internet Resource Smart Growth Online. Available from http://www.smartgrowth.org.

David Goldberg

Smelting Mined ores are processed to concentrate the minerals of interest. In the case of metal ores, these mineral concentrates usually need to be further processed to separate the metal from other elements in the ore minerals. Smelting is the process of separating the metal from impurities by heating the concentrate to a high temperature to cause the metal to melt. Smelting the concentrate produces a metal or a high-grade metallic mixture along with a solid waste product called slag. The principal sources of pollution caused by smelting are contaminantladen air emissions and process wastes such as wastewater and slag.

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One type of pollution attributed to air emissions is acid rain. The smelting of sulﬁde ores results in the emission of sulfur dioxide gas, which reacts chemically in the atmosphere to form a sulfuric acid mist. As this acid rain falls to the earth, it increases the acidity of soils, streams, and lakes, harming the health of vegetation and ﬁsh and wildlife populations. In older smelters, air emissions contained elevated levels of various metals. Copper and selenium, for example, which can be released from copper smelters, are essential to organisms as trace elements, but they are toxic if they are overabundant. These metals can contaminate the soil in the vicinity of smelters, destroying much of the vegetation. In addition, particulate matter emitted from smelters may include oxides of such toxic metals as arsenic (cumulative poison), cadmium (heart disease), and mercury (nerve damage). When compared to pollution caused by air emissions, process wastes and slag are of less concern. In modern smelters, much of the wastewater generated is returned to the process. If the economic value of the metal concentrate in slag is high enough, the slag may be returned to the process, thereby reducing the amount requiring permanent disposal. New technologies are playing an important role in reducing or even preventing smelter pollution. Older smelters emitted most of the sulfur dioxide generated, and now almost all of it is captured prior to emission using new technologies, such as electrostatic precipitators, which capture dust particles and return them to the process. Raw material substitution or elimination,

contaminant any physical, chemical, biological, or radiological substance or matter that has an adverse effect on air, water, or soil particulate fine liquid or solid particles such as dust, smoke, mist, fumes, or smog, found in air or emissions; they can also be very small solids suspended in water, gathered together by coagulation and flocculation

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such as recycling lead batteries and aluminum cans, decreases the need to process ore, which reduces pollution. Some of the major federal statutes and regulations that apply to smelting are the same as those that have applied to mining since the Clean Air Act (CAA) of 1970 became law. The CAA established nationally uniform standards that control particular hazardous air pollutants. Sudbury, in Ontario, Canada, is one of the world’s largest smelting complexes, with an international reputation as a highly polluted area that has been mined for more than one hundred years. The environmental impact was completely or partially denuded vegetation on over 46,000 hectares and 7,000 acid-damaged lakes. Smelting caused much of the ecological damage via acid rain and elevated levels of copper and nickel in the vicinity of the smelters. Efforts by government and industry since the 1970s have eliminated most of the sulfur dioxide emissions in the area, and there has been signiﬁcant progress toward achieving sustainable ecosystems. S E E A L S O Acid Rain; Air Pollution; Lead; Mining; Superfund. Bibliography Gunn, John M. (1995). Restoration and Recovery of an Industrial Region. New York: Springer-Verlag. Weiss, Norman L., ed. (1985). SME Mineral Processing Handbook. Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press. Internet Resources U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1995). “EPA Ofﬁce of Compliance Sector Notebook Project: Proﬁle of the Nonferrous Metals Industry.” U.S. EPA Document No. EPA/310-R-95-010. Available from http://es.epa.gov. U.S. Geological Survey. (2001). “Mine and Mineral Processing Plant Locations— Supplemental Information for USGS Map I-2654.” Available from http:// pubs.usgs.gov. U.S. Geological Survey. (2001). “USGS Tracks Acid Rain.” Fact Sheet FS-183-95. Available from http://pubs.usgs.gov.

Michael J. McKinley

Smog Originally, the term smog was coined to describe the mixture of smoke and fog that lowered visibility and led to respiratory problems in industrial cities. More recently, the term has come to mean any decrease in air quality whether associated with reduced visibility or a noticeable impact on human health. Smog occurs when emissions of gases and particles from industrial or transportation sources are trapped by the local meteorology so the concentrations rise and chemical reactions occur. It is common to distinguish between two types of smog: London smog and Los Angeles smog. London, or sulphurous, smog was noted following the introduction of coal into cities. It is most prevalent in the fall or winter when cool conditions naturally produce a thick surface fog. This fog mixes with the smoke and gases from burning coal to produce a dark, thick, acrid sulphurous atmosphere. Normally, the unpolluted fog would disperse during the day and be reformed at night. However, the presence of smoke particles makes the fog so thick that sunlight cannot penetrate it and so only a major change in meteorology can disperse it. The smog has been shown to contribute to an

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increased death rate, primarily due to respiratory problems. The most notable example of this kind of smog occurred in London, from December 4 to 10, 1954, when some four thousand deaths in excess of normal averages resulted. A similar episode in Donora, Pennsylvania, in 1948 involved approximately twenty excess deaths. Most jurisdictions have instituted control measures to prevent this level of disaster from happening again. They have moved industries out of cities, demanded lower industrial emissions, and increased the heights of smokestacks so emissions are not trapped by local meteorology. These approaches have been largely successful, at least in controlling the most extreme events. Los Angeles, or photochemical, smog ﬁrst became apparent in the late 1940s in warm sunny cities that did not have signiﬁcant coal-burning industries. It is a daytime phenomenon characterized by a white haze and contains oxidants, such as ozone, that cause eyes to water, breathing to become labored, and plants to be damaged. It results from the action of sunlight on the combination of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides (NOx), known as precursor gases. These are emitted from combustion sources to produce a range of oxidized products and oxidants. These compounds have been shown to produce respiratory and cardiac problems in individuals sensitive to pollution, and the damage inﬂicted on crops can cause signiﬁcant decreases in

A thick cloud of smog covering Santiago, Chile. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.)

hydrocarbon compounds of hydrogen and carbon

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yield. In most cities, the automobile is the primary contributor of smog’s precursor gases. As the name would suggest, the most notable example of this type of smog occurs in Los Angeles, California, but it has also been experienced in a large number of cities where the weather is dry, sunlight is plentiful, and there are many automobiles or petroleum industries (e.g., Houston, Athens, and Mexico City.) The control of photochemical smog is more difﬁcult than for sulphurous smog because the compounds responsible for human and crop impacts are not directly emitted, but produced by chemistry in the atmosphere. Thus, greater knowledge on the emissions of gases, their reactions in the atmosphere, and their lifetime is needed. Most jurisdictions continue to focus their control strategies on reducing ozone concentrations, although particle concentrations are receiving increasing attention. Because smog results from the sunlight-initiated chemistry of hydrocarbons and nitrous oxides, the most common approach to smog control is to decrease the emission of these compounds at their source. Lower volatility gasolines and systems to capture gasoline vapors are used to reduce hydrocarbon emissions while tailpipe controls (catalytic converters) reduce emissions of both hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides. The emission control systems of the twenty-ﬁrst century mean that a car typically emits 70 percent less nitrogen oxides and 80 to 90 percent less hydrocarbons than the uncontrolled cars of the 1960s. The expected improvement in air quality, as a result of increasing controls, is estimated by using computer models of the atmosphere and its chemistry. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Asthma; Donora, Pennsylvania; Health, Human; Ozone. Bibliography Brimblecombe, Peter. (1987). The Big Smoke: A History of Air Pollution in London since Medieval Times. London: Methuen. Turco, Richard. (1997). Earth under Siege. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Internet Resources U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Air Quality Index: A Guide to Air Quality and Your Health.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/airnow/aqibroch. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “National Air Pollutant Emission Trends, 1900–1998.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/ttn.

Donald R. Hastie

Snow, John BRITISH ANESTHESIOLOGIST (1813–1858)

epidemiology study of the incidence and spread of disease in a population

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In 1854, John Snow was a well-regarded London anesthesiologist, tending to Queen Victoria, among others. He was born in 1813 of humble stock, but through education and intellectual perseverance—he obtained his M.D. degree in 1844—was able to rise to a position of scientiﬁc prominence. Snow became interested in the emerging ﬁeld of epidemiology, especially as it applied to cholera, a disease of unknown cause (attributed thirty years later by Dr. Robert Koch to Vibrio cholerae). Two population-based studies—both occurring in 1854—established Snow’s reputation, and focused scientiﬁc attention away from the fallacious notion of airborne transmission towards the role of contaminated water in the spread of cholera.

Soil Pollution

Snow’s ﬁrst study occurred after the government had mandated that water companies along the polluted Thames River should move their inlets upstream where the quality of water was better. One company moved its intake pipes in 1852 but still maintained the same local water distribution system. A second company kept its intakes in place (but ﬁnally moved in 1855), providing contaminated water to portions of the same area as the ﬁrst company. When cholera next arrived in London in 1853 and 1854, Snow was able to compare cholera among households according to water source. The populations were very similar—consumers of the two water companies lived side by side. Using existing mortality data, Snow was able to measure the impact the two companies had on cholera, thereby linking water source and quality to the disease. His second study took place in 1854 near his home in the Soho region of London. It followed what he described as: “The most terrible outbreak of cholera which ever occurred in this kingdom.” With skillful assembling of data, analysis, and use of maps, he identiﬁed a single water pump on Broad Street as the likely source, suggesting that the pump water was contaminated with an unseen microbial agent. Water pumps, at that time, were handoperated pumps with spigots—people pumped their water into buckets to be carried home. There was no “running water,” as we know it, in people’s homes. Snow recommended to local politicians that the pump handle be removed, which was done during the declining days of the outbreak. For this, he is remembered as a public health hero. John Snow died in 1858 at age forty-ﬁve. During his short life, he became a pioneer in both anesthesiology and epidemiology, and clariﬁed the role of water, rather than air, in cholera transmission. Ralph R. Frerichs

Soil Pollution Soil pollution comprises the pollution of soils with materials, mostly chemicals, that are out of place or are present at concentrations higher than normal which may have adverse effects on humans or other organisms. It is difﬁcult to deﬁne soil pollution exactly because different opinions exist on how to characterize a pollutant; while some consider the use of pesticides acceptable if their effect does not exceed the intended result, others do not consider any use of pesticides or even chemical fertilizers acceptable. However, soil pollution is also caused by means other than the direct addition of xenobiotic (man-made) chemicals such as agricultural runoff waters, industrial waste materials, acidic precipitates, and radioactive fallout. Both organic (those that contain carbon) and inorganic (those that don’t) contaminants are important in soil. The most prominent chemical groups of organic contaminants are fuel hydrocarbons, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chlorinated aromatic compounds, detergents, and pesticides. Inorganic species include nitrates, phosphates, and heavy metals such as cadmium, chromium and lead; inorganic acids; and radionuclides (radioactive substances). Among the sources of these contaminants are agricultural runoffs, acidic precipitates, industrial waste materials, and radioactive fallout.

PAHs polyaromatic hydrocarbons; compounds of hydrogen and carbon containing multiple ring structures PCBs polychlorinated biphenyls; two-ringed compounds of hydrogen, carbon, and chlorine radionuclide radioactive particle, man-made or natural, with a distinct atomic weight number; can have a long life as soil or water pollutant

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Soil pollution can lead to water pollution if toxic chemicals leach into groundwater, or if contaminated runoff reaches streams, lakes, or oceans. Soil also naturally contributes to air pollution by releasing volatile compounds into the atmosphere. Nitrogen escapes through ammonia volatilization and denitrification. The decomposition of organic materials in soil can release sulfur dioxide and other sulfur compounds, causing acid rain. Heavy metals and other potentially toxic elements are the most serious soil pollutants in sewage. Sewage sludge contains heavy metals and, if applied repeatedly or in large amounts, the treated soil may accumulate heavy metals and consequently become unable to even support plant life. An area of Karabache, Russia, where soil has been poisoned by high concentrations of lead, arsenic, nickel, cobalt, and cadmium. (©Gyori Antoine/ Corbis Sygma. Reproduced by permission.) denitrification the biological reduction of nitrate or nitrite to nitrogen gas, typically by bacteria in soil

In addition, chemicals that are not water soluble contaminate plants that grow on polluted soils, and they also tend to accumulate increasingly toward the top of the food chain. The banning of the pesticide DDT in the United States resulted from its tendency to become more and more concentrated as it moved from soil to worms or ﬁsh, and then to birds and their eggs. This occurred as creatures higher on the food chain ingested animals that were already contaminated with the pesticide from eating plants and other lower animals. Lake Michigan, as an example, has 2 parts per trillion (ppt) of DDT in the water, 14 parts per billion (ppb) in the bottom mud, 410 ppb in amphipods (tiny water ﬂeas and similar creatures), 3 to 6 parts per million (ppm) in ﬁsh such as coho salmon and lake trout, and as much as 99 ppm in herring gulls at the top of the food chain. The ever-increasing pollution of the environment has been one of the greatest concerns for science and the general public in the last ﬁfty years. The rapid industrialization of agriculture, expansion of the chemical industry, and the need to generate cheap forms of energy has caused the continuous release of man-made organic chemicals into natural ecosystems. Consequently, the atmosphere, bodies of water, and many soil environments have become polluted by a large variety of toxic compounds. Many of these compounds at high concentrations or following prolonged exposure have the potential to produce adverse effects in humans and other organisms: These include the danger of acute toxicity, mutagenesis (genetic changes), carcinogenesis, and teratogenesis (birth defects) for humans and other organisms. Some of these man-made toxic compounds are also resistant to physical, chemical, or biological degradation and thus represent an environmental burden of considerable magnitude. Numerous attempts are being made to decontaminate polluted soils, including an array of both in situ (on-site, in the soil) and off-site (removal of contaminated soil for treatment) techniques. None of these is ideal for remediating contaminated soils, and often, more than one of the techniques may be necessary to optimize the cleanup effort. The most common decontamination method for polluted soils is to remove the soil and deposit it in landﬁlls or to incinerate it. These methods, however, often exchange one problem for another: landﬁlling merely conﬁnes the polluted soil while doing little to decontaminate it, and incineration removes toxic organic chemicals from the soil, but subsequently releases them into the air, in the process causing air pollution. For the removal and recovery of heavy metals various soil washing techniques have been developed including physical methods, such as attrition

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scrubbing and wet-screening, and chemical methods consisting of treatments with organic and inorganic acids, bases, salts and chelating agents. For example, chemicals used to extract radionuclides and toxic metals include hydrochloric, nitric, phosphoric and citric acids, sodium carbonate and sodium hydroxide and the chelating agents EDTA and DTPA. The problem with these methods, however, is again that they generate secondary waste products that may require additional hazardous waste treatments. In contrast to the previously described methods, in situ methods are used directly at the contamination site. In this case, soil does not need to be excavated, and therefore the chance of causing further environmental harm is minimized. In situ biodegradation involves the enhancement of naturally occurring microorganisms by artiﬁcially stimulating their numbers and activity. The microorganisms then assist in degrading the soil contaminants. A number of environmental, chemical, and management factors affect the biodegradation of soil pollutants, including moisture content, pH, temperature, the microbial community that is present, and the availability of nutrients. Biodegradation is facilitated by aerobic soil conditions and soil pH in the neutral range (between pH 5.5 to 8.0), with an optimum reading occurring at approximately pH 7, and a temperature in the range of 20 to 30°C. These physical parameters can be inﬂuenced, thereby promoting the microorganisms’ ability to degrade chemical contaminants. Of all the decontamination methods bioremediation appears to be the least damaging and most environmentally acceptable technique. S E E A L S O Abatement; Bioremediation; Cleanup; DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane); Science; Superfund; Technology.

PHYTOREMEDIATION Plants can absorb, accumulate and in some cases break down pollutants such as heavy metals, pesticides, and explosives in soil and groundwater. Now the United States Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy are conducting pilot studies to investigate whether plants can also remove radionuclides from soil. By adding soil amendments such as ammonium compounds, the pigweed plant, Amaranthus retroflexus, will absorb cesium137 that contaminates soil at some DOE sites due to aboveground nuclear testing during the Cold War era.

Bibliography Adriano, D.C.; Bollag, J.-M.; Frankenberger, W.T.; and Sims, R.C., eds. (1999). Bioremediation of Contaminated Soils. Agronomy monograph 37. American Society of Agronomy. Miller, R.W., and Gardiner, D.T. (1998). Soils in Our Environment, 8th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Pierzynski, G.M.; Sims, J.T.; and Vance, G.F. (2000). Soils and Environmental Quality, 2nd edition. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Internet Resources Ministry of the Environment Web site. “Environmental Quality Standards for Soil Pollution.” Available from http://www.env.go.jp/en/lar/regulation/sp.html. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. “Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Act.” Available from http://www.epa.gov.tw/english/laws/soil.htm.

Brigitte Bollag and Jean-Marc Bollag

Solar Energy

See Renewable Energy

Solid Waste The garbage that is managed by local governments is known as municipal solid waste (MSW). Speciﬁcally, MSW is waste generated by commercial and household sources that is collected and either recycled, incinerated, or disposed of in MSW landﬁlls. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) separates MSW into several categories, including containers and packaging, yard wastes, durable goods, and nondurable goods. Examples of

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A bulldozer moving on top of a large mound of garbage. (United States Environmental Protection Agency. Reproduced by permission.)

durable goods, which are designed to last longer than three years, include appliances, tires, batteries, and electronic equipment. Newspapers, clothing, disposable tableware, ofﬁce paper, wood pallets, and diapers, which all have a lifetime of less than three years, are types of nondurable goods. MSW does not include domestic sewage and other municipal wastewater treatment sludges, demolition and construction debris, agricultural and mining residues, combustion ash, and wastes from industrial processes. These types of waste, known collectively as industrial solid waste, are largely excluded from hazardous waste regulation; programs addressing industrial solid waste are still in their infancy. During the 1980s, solid waste management issues emerged in the United States due to the increasing amounts of solid waste generated, shrinking landﬁll capacity, rising disposal costs, and strong opposition to the siting of new solid waste facilities. This problem was illustrated by the muchpublicized Mobro garbage barge, which traveled on a six-month odyssey before the garbage was ﬁnally disposed of in New York state, where it was originally generated. With millions of households and businesses generating garbage in the United States, developing a national management program is challenging. Instead of federal regulations dictating how solid wastes should be managed, solid-waste programs are managed by states and municipalities on the local level according to individual community needs. With the exception of federally mandated landﬁll design and operating criteria to ensure the protection of groundwater and requirements for the federal purchase of products

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containing recovered materials, the EPA’s role in implementing solid-waste management programs includes setting national goals, providing leadership and technical assistance, and developing educational materials.

MSW Stream The generation of MSW has grown steadily over the past thirty years, from 88 million tons per year, or 2.7 pounds per person per day in 1960, to 229.9 million tons, or 4.62 pounds per person per day in 1999. The largest component of the MSW stream is paper and paperboard products (38.1%), with yard trimmings the second most predominant component (12.1%). The top of two pie charts on the next page breaks down this waste by material category. While the generation of waste has grown steadily, so too have its recycling and recovery. In 1960 about 7 percent of MSW was recycled, and in 1999 this ﬁgure had increased to 27.8 percent. How MSW is managed is shown in the bottom of two pie charts on the next page. Although the majority of solid waste is still sent to landﬁlls, statistics indicate that there is a clear trend away from reliance on this method. Combustion of MSW and recovery through recycling are now a common practice in the United States.

MSW Management In response to mounting solid waste problems, EPA published The Solid Waste Dilemma: An Agenda for Action in 1989, which presents goals and recommendations for action by the EPA, state and local governments, industry, and consumers to address the solid waste problems facing the United States. The EPA recommends an integrated, hierarchical approach to waste management using four components: source reduction, recycling, combustion, and landﬁlls. This comprehensive approach addresses critical junctures in the manufacture, use, and disposal of products and materials to minimize wastefulness and maximize value. This strategy favors source reduction to decrease the volume and toxicity of waste and to increase the useful life of products. After source reduction, recycling, including composting, is the preferred waste management approach to divert waste from combustors and landﬁlls. Combustion is used to reduce the volume of waste being disposed as well as to recover energy, whereas landﬁlls are used for the ﬁnal disposal of nonrecyclable and noncombustible material.

source reduction reducing the amount of materials entering the waste stream from a specific source by redesigning products or patterns of production or consumption (e.g., using returnable beverage containers); synonymous with waste reduction

The goal of the integrated management hierarchy is to use a combination of all these methods to handle the MSW stream safely and effectively with the least adverse impact on human health and the environment. The EPA encourages communities to develop community-speciﬁc assessments of potential source reduction, recycling, combustion, and landﬁll programs and to customize programs according to local needs, keeping in mind the strategies preferred in the national hierarchical structure. Because each community’s waste proﬁle (i.e., the amounts and types of waste generated), infrastructure, social and economic structure, and policies differ, decision makers at the local level are the most qualiﬁed to assess community needs and develop an appropriate solid waste management strategy.

Source Reduction Source reduction, also known as waste prevention, is a front-end approach to addressing MSW problems by changing the way products are made and used.

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(top) Breakdown of the 229.9 million tons of MSW generated in the United States in 1999 by material category. Generation amounts represent the percent of total generation by weight in millions of tons. (bottom) Demonstrates how 229.9 million tons of MSW generated in the United States in 1999 were managed: via combustion, recovery for recycling (including composting), and shipment to landfills. Described by the percent of total generation by weight. (Both based on statistics from EPA, Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 1999 Facts and Figures.)

Composition of Municipal Solid Waste in the United States in 1999 Yard Waste 12% 27.7 million tons

Food Waste 10.9% 25.2 million tons

Paper 38.% 87.5 million tons

Plastics 10.5% 24.2 million tons

Other 3.2% 8.2 million tons

Metals 7.8% 17.8 million tons Wood 5.3% 12.3 million tons

Rubber, Leather & Textiles 6.6% Glass 15.3 million 5.5% tons 12.6 million tons

Management of Municipal Solid Waste in the United States in 1999 Combustion 14.8% 34 million tons

Landfill, other 57.4% 131.9 million tons

Recovery for recycling (including composting) 27.8% 63.9 million tons

It represents an attempt to move away from the traditional “end-of-the-pipe” waste management approach used in the past. Source reduction at the “beginning of the pipe” is deﬁned as the design, manufacture, and use of products in a way that reduces the quantity and toxicity of waste produced when products reach the end of their useful lives. Waste-prevention activities include product reuse (e.g., reusable shopping bags), product material volume reduction (e.g., eliminating unnecessary product packaging), reduced

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toxicity of products (e.g., use of substitutes for lead, mercury, and other toxic substances), increased product lifetime (e.g., design of products with a longer useful life), and decreased consumption (e.g., changing consumer buying practices, bulk purchasing). In 1996 the EPA reported that 23 million tons of MSW had been source-reduced, approximately 11 percent of the 209.7 million tons of MSW generated that year. Businesses, households, and state and local governments all play an active role in implementing successful source reduction programs.

Recycling Recycling refers to the separation and collection of wastes and their subsequent transformation or remanufacture into usable or marketable materials. Recycling, including composting, diverts potentially large volumes of material from landﬁlls and combustors, and prevents the unnecessary waste of natural resources and raw materials. Other environmental beneﬁts offered by recycling include a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, energy conservation, and the preservation of biodiversity and habitats that would otherwise be exploited for virgin materials. In addition, recycling programs create new manufacturing jobs, boost the economy, and facilitate U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace. Like any other part of the integrated waste management hierarchy, recycling programs should be carefully designed and implemented to address the needs of the community, including attention to their cost-effectiveness. Recycling collection and separation programs vary in degree of implementation: Some may be simple drop-off programs, whereas others may involve comprehensive curbside collection and complex source separation at a recovery facility. Successful recycling, however, requires more than the separation and collection of postconsumer materials. Recycling programs must identify and develop markets for recovered material; only when the materials are reused is the recycling loop complete. Although markets and uses for recovered materials are constantly expanding, reuse opportunities will vary by material. For example, recycling options for plastic are contingent on the type of resin used. Soft drink bottles are currently incorporated into products such as carpeting, household cleaner bottles, and ﬁberﬁll for coats and pillows, whereas polystyrene food containers and cups are being recycled into insulation, cafeteria food trays, and children’s toys. Depending on their condition, tires can be used for artiﬁcial reefs, playground equipment, ﬂoor mats, and road construction materials. Recycled-content newspapers, stationery, corrugated containers, and toilet paper are some examples of how discarded paper is recycled. Recycling activities also include centralized composting of yard and food wastes. Composting refers to the controlled decomposition of organic matter by microorganisms into a stable humus material that is used primarily on the land to improve soil quality. Many communities conduct large-scale centralized composting of yard waste in an effort to save landﬁll capacity. Individuals are also helping to reduce waste by composting yard waste in their backyards, and by not bagging grass clippings or other yard wastes—these activities are actually classiﬁed as source reduction. The composting of yard waste has seen tremendous growth in the past ten years. In 1980 the amount of yard waste recovered was negligible (less than 5,000 tons, or 0.05%). By

humus rich soil component derived from plant breakdown and bacterial action

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1999 the amount of yard waste recovered had grown to 12.6 million tons, or 45.3 percent.

Combustion

combustion burning, or rapid oxidation, accompanied by release of energy in the form of heat and light

dioxin any of a family of compounds known chemically as dibenzo-p-dioxins. Concern about them arises from their potential toxicity as contaminants in commercial products; tests on laboratory animals indicate that it is one of the more anthropogenic (humanmade) compounds

Burning has been a popular method of reducing the volume and odor of garbage for centuries. With the onset of the 1970s energy crisis and the Clean Air Act, a more sophisticated system of incineration was developed that could use waste as a fuel to produce energy. Modern combustion facilities no longer just destroy garbage, but instead are designed to recover energy that is used to produce steam and electricity. Developing a successful waste-to-energy system involves numerous decisions that will dictate whether such a project is effective in a given community. Over the past two decades communities have demonstrated an increased interest in combustion as a waste management option. Between 1980 and 1999, the combustion of solid waste increased 5.8 percent, with approximately 2.6 million tons of MSW burned in 1999. In addition to the beneﬁts of energy recovery, combustion residues consume less landﬁll space; combustion ash amounts to approximately 25 percent (dry weight) of the MSW input. However, citizens often oppose the building of incinerators close to communities and farmland because of the perception of health risks due to emission of pollutants including mercury and dioxin that are toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulate.

Landfills Even with the use of source reduction, recycling, and combustion, there will always be waste that ultimately must be disposed of in landﬁlls. According to the EPA’s Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 1999 Facts and Figures, landﬁll disposal still remains the most widely used waste management method (accounting for approximately 57.4% of the total). Many communities now face difﬁculties siting new landﬁlls largely because of increased citizen and local government concerns about the potential health risks and aesthetics of situating a landﬁll in their neighborhoods. The EPA issued new technical standards for MSW landﬁlls in 1991. These addressed several aspects of landﬁll management, including location restrictions, design and operating criteria, and groundwater monitoring. Even with national landﬁll standards, decreasing landﬁll capacity and the difﬁculties associated with the construction of new landﬁlls remain signiﬁcant issues. The EPA has explored several solutions to conserving landﬁll capacity, including the viability of engineering materials such as plastics to be less resistant to degradation or, in other words, biodegradable. Biodegradable materials can be broken down into simpler substances (e.g., elements and compounds) by bacteria or other natural decomposers. Paper and most organic wastes such as food and leaves are biodegradable. In contrast, nonbiodegradable substances cannot be broken down in the environment by natural processes. In general, degradation in landﬁlls occurs very slowly due to modern landﬁll design criteria, which minimize waste exposure to sunlight, air, and moisture. In fact, even biodegradable organic materials might take decades to decompose in a landﬁll; carrots and cabbage have been discovered in recognizable form after several years of burial. Studies indicate that biodegradable materials may help diminish risks to wildlife and aesthetic damage (i.e., discarded six-pack beverage rings and wrappers), but will not

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reduce the volume or toxicity of waste nor provide a solution to decreasing landﬁll capacity. In continuing efforts to conserve landﬁll space and reduce waste toxicity, the EPA is currently investigating the potential beneﬁts and drawbacks associated with the use of bioreactor landﬁlls. Bioreactor landﬁlls are designed to transform and more quickly stabilize the decomposable organic constituents of the waste stream through the controlled injection of liquid or air to enhance microbiological degradation processes. In other words, by controlling the moisture content, bioreactor landﬁlls facilitate microbial decomposition of waste. Recent ﬁndings show that bioreactor landﬁlls successfully expedite the degradation process (e.g., from decades to years), offer a 15 to 30 percent gain in landﬁll space, and may reduce postclosure care and leachate disposal costs. In addition, the bioreactor technology signiﬁcantly increases landﬁll gas emissions, which are captured and often used beneﬁcially for energy recovery. Due to their complexity, however, bioreactor landﬁlls may be more costly, and concerns have been raised regarding increased odors, liner instability, and surface seeps. Working in conjunction with state and local governments and private companies, the EPA has initiated several research and pilot projects to examine the effectiveness of this innovative technology.

leachate water that collects contaminants as it trickles through wastes, pesticides, or fertilizers; leaching may occur in farming areas, feedlots, and landfills, and may result in hazardous substances entering surface water, ground water, or soil

International Solid Waste Management Because solid waste is generated everywhere, addressing the environmentally safe management of solid waste is not limited to the United States. Management strategies vary by country and region, although most programs address waste issues with models consisting of some combination of source reduction, combustion, recycling, and landﬁlls. For example, the European Environment Agency (EEA) offers solid-waste management guidance analogous to EPA’s integrated hierarchy. Speciﬁcally, the Community Strategy on Waste recommends that the agency’s eighteen-member countries make waste prevention their top priority, followed by materials recovery, energy recovery, and, ﬁnally, the safe disposal of waste. The international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) compiles worldwide data, including environmental statistics, for its thirty member countries. The bar graphs on the next page compare the total amount of municipal waste generated annually and the annual amount of municipal waste generated per capita, respectively, by the United States and other selected OECD member countries in 1997. Per capita waste generation rates vary signiﬁcantly by country; factors contributing to such discrepancies may include individual lifestyle and national economic structure. Although individual national deﬁnitions may differ, for the purpose of analysis here, OECD regards municipal waste as waste collected by or on the order of municipalities, including that originating from households, commercial activities, ofﬁce buildings, institutions such as school and government buildings, and small businesses. The environmentally safe management of municipal solid waste may always be an issue, simply because societies will continue to generate trash due to increasing populations and the growing demands of modern society. Working together, federal, state, and local governments, industry, and citizens have made substantial progress in effectively responding to solid waste

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(top) Comparison of annual amounts of MSW generated by the United States and other selected OECD countries in 1997. Generation amounts are in 1,000 tons. (bottom) Comparison of annual amounts of MSW generated per capita by the United States and other selected OECD countries in 1997. Generation amounts are in kilograms per capita. (Both based on statistics from OECD Environmental Data 1999.)

Municipal Solid Waste Generated by Country in 1997 200,000 180,000 160,000 140,000 120,000 100,000 80,000 60,000 40,000 20,000 nd Irela

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issues through source reduction, recycling, combustion, and landﬁll programs. Such community-tailored programs provide possible long-term solutions to decreasing the amount of waste that is produced and ultimately placed in landﬁlls. S E E A L S O Composting; Incineration; Landfill; Plastic; Recycling; Reuse; Waste; Waste Reduction. Bibliography Christiansen, Kim Michael. (1999). Waste Annual Topic Update: 1998. Copenhagen: European Environmental Agency. O’Leary, Philip R., and Walsh, Patrick H. (1995). Decision Makers Guide to Solid Waste Management, Vol. II. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530-R95-023. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (1999). OECD Environmental Data: Compendium 1999 Edition. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1994). Composting Yard Trimmings and Municipal Solid Waste. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530-R-94-003.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1990). Environmental Fact Sheet: The Facts on Degradable Plastics. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530-SW-90-017D. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1990). Environmental Fact Sheet: The Facts on Recycling Plastics. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530-SW-90-017E. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1992). “Green” Advertising Claims. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530-f-92-024. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1991). Markets for Scrap Tires. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530-SW-90-074A. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1997). Measuring Recycling: A Guide for State and Local Governments. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530-R-97-011. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2001). Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 1999 Facts and Figures. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530-R-01-014. Also available from http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/ non-hw/muncpl/mswﬁnal.pdf U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1999). National Source Reduction Characterization Report for Municipal Solid Waste in the United States. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530-R-99-034. Also available from http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/reduce/r99034.pdf. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1998). Puzzled About Recycling’s Value? Look Beyond the Bin. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530-K-98-008. Also available from http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/ recycle/beneﬁts.pdf. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1998). RCRA Orientation Manual: 1998 Edition. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530-R-98-004. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1999). Recycling Works! State and Local Solutions to Solid Waste Management Problems. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530-K-99-003. Also available from http://www.epa.gov/ epaoswer/non-hw/recycle/recycle.pdf. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1989). The Solid Waste Dilemma: An Agenda for Action. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA530SW-89-019.

Ofﬁce of Solid Waste/U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Space Pollution In the most general sense, the term space pollution includes both the natural micrometeoroid and man-made orbital debris components of the space environment; however, as “pollution” is generally considered to indicate a despoiling of the natural environment, space pollution here refers to only man-made orbital debris. Orbital debris poses a threat to both manned and unmanned spacecraft as well as the earth’s inhabitants.

Environmental and Health Impacts The effects of debris on other spacecraft range from surface abrasion due to repeated small-particle impact to a catastrophic fragmentation due to a collision with a large object. The relative velocities of orbital objects (10 kilometers per second [km/s] on average, but ranging from meters per second up to 15.5 km/s) allow even very small objects—such as a paint ﬂake—to damage spacecraft components and surfaces. For example, a 3-millimeter (mm) aluminum particle traveling at 10 km/s is equivalent in energy to a bowling ball traveling at 60 miles per hour (or 27 m/s). In this case, all the energy

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FR A G M ENTA TI ON DE BRI S

LEO MEO GEO Elliptical Unknown Totals

Payloads

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1,612 126 587 249 171 2,745

758 28 116 515 120 1,537

651 2 1 135 185 974

3,232 0 2 167 0 3,401

119 0 0 0 0 119

6,372 156 706 1,066 476 8,776

Anz-Meador, P.D., "History of On-Orbit Satellite Fragmentations", 12th ed., NASA Johnson Space Center Report JSC-29517, 31 July 2001.

SOURCE:

would be distributed in an area of the same size as the particle, causing cratering or penetration, depending on the thickness and material properties of the surface being impacted. There has been one accidental collision between cataloged objects to date, but surfaces returned from space and examined in the laboratory conﬁrm a regular bombardment by small particles. Space Shuttle vehicle components, including windows, are regularly replaced due to such damage acquired while in orbit. Debris also poses a hazard to the surface of the Earth. High-melting-point materials such as titanium, steel, ceramics, or large or densely constructed objects can survive atmospheric reentry to strike the earth’s surface. Although there have been no recorded fatalities or severe injuries due to debris, reentering objects are regularly observed and occasionally found. Debris is typically divided into three size ranges, based on the damage it may cause: less than 1 centimeter (cm), 1 to 10 cm, and larger than 10 cm. Objects less than 1 cm may be shielded against, but they still have the potential to damage most satellites. Debris in the 1 to 10 cm range is not shielded against, cannot easily be observed, and could destroy a satellite. Finally, collisions with objects larger than 10 cm can break up a satellite. Of these size ranges, only objects 10 cm and larger are regularly tracked and cataloged by surveillance networks in the United States and the former Soviet Union. The other populations are estimated statistically through the analysis of returned surfaces (sizes less than 1 mm) or special measurement campaigns with sensitive radars (sizes larger than 3 mm). Estimates for the populations are approximately 30 million debris between 1 mm and 1 cm, over 100,000 debris between 1 and 10 cm, and 8,800 objects larger than 10 cm. The number, nature, and location of objects greater than 10 cm in size are provided in the fragmentation debris table and in the image of space debris around Earth. Low Earth orbit (LEO) is deﬁned as orbital altitudes below 2,000 km above the earth’s surface and is the subject of the image of space debris around Earth. Middle Earth orbit (MEO) is the province of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and Russian navigation satellite systems and is located at approximately 20,000-km altitude, whereas the geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) “belt” is inhabited primarily by communications and Earth—observation payloads around 35,800 km. The majority of objects in these orbital regions are in circular or near-circular orbits about the earth. In contrast, the elliptical orbit category includes rocket bodies left in their transfer (payload delivery) orbits to MEO and GEO as well as scientiﬁc, communications, and Earth-observation payloads. Of all objects listed in the

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fragmentation debris table, the vast majority are “debris”—only about 5 percent of objects in orbit represent operational payloads or spacecraft. Also, of the approximately 28,000 objects that have been tracked, beginning with the launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, those not accounted for in the fragmentation debris table have either reentered the earth’s atmosphere or have escaped the earth’s inﬂuence (to land on Mars, for example). The distribution of debris smaller than 10 cm is predicated on the orbits of the parent objects and is assumed to be very similar to the distributions presented in the image of space debris around Earth.

A NASA map showing manmade orbital debris in low Earth orbit. (©NASA/Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Remediation Strategies Remediation takes two courses: protection and mitigation. Protection seeks to shield spacecraft and utilize intelligent design practices to minimize the effects

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of debris impact. Mitigation attempts to prevent debris from being created. Active mitigation techniques include collision avoidance between tracked and maneuverable objects and the intentional reentry of objects over the oceans. Passive techniques include venting residual fuels or pressurized vessels aboard rockets and spacecraft, retaining operational debris, and placing spacecraft into disposal orbits at the end of a mission. Space salvage or retrieval, while an option, is currently too expensive to employ on a regular basis. The United States and international space agencies recognize the threat of debris and are cooperating to limit its environmental and health hazards. The Interagency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC), sponsored originally by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has grown to include all major space-faring nations. The IADC charter includes the coordination and dissemination of remediation research, and strategies based on research results are being adopted by the worldwide space community. Remediation strategies have resulted in a decline in the rate of debris growth in the 1990s although the overall population continues to grow. Continued work is necessary, however, to reduce the orbital debris hazard for future generations and continue the safe, economical utilization of space. Bibliography Committee on Space Debris, Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems, National Research Council. (1995). “Orbital Debris: A Technical Assessment.” Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Also available from http://pompeii.nap.edu/books/0309051258/html/index.html Johnson, Nicholas L. (1998). “Monitoring and Controlling Debris in Space.” Scientiﬁc American 279(2):62–67. Internet Resources Interagency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) Web site. Available from http://www.iadc-online.org.

Phillip Anz-Meador

Sprawl A term used in debates about urban growth, sprawl does not have a precise, academic deﬁnition. As a noun, it most often refers to spread-out development that requires people to use a car for every activity, because it strictly separates housing, shopping, schools, ofﬁces, and other land uses from each other. The commercial sprawl landscape features wide roads ﬂanked by parking lots that surround mostly single-story buildings; there are usually many cars but few pedestrians. As a verb, sprawl most often refers to metropolitan areas that are consuming land at a faster rate than the population is growing. Sprawl is said to be worst in cities that are spreading out even though their population is stagnant or declining. Some people criticize sprawling growth because it creates trafﬁc congestion, air quality, water pollution, and the revitalization of older neighborhoods harder to address. S E E A L S O Smart Growth. Internet Resource Smart Growth Online. “The Cost of Sprawl: How Much Does It Cost to Drive to Work?” Available from http://www.smartgrowth.org/news/article.asp?art=3071.

David Goldberg

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A sprawling neighborhood in Corona, California. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.)

Strong, Maurice CANADIAN ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCATE; FIRST EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME (1929–)

No single international civil servant has contributed more to global attention to environmental problems, including those relating to air and water pollution, than has Maurice F. Strong. Born in Manitoba, Canada, by the age of twenty-two Strong had acquired a small fortune from the Alberta oil boom. His lifelong ambition, however, was public service. After serving as directorgeneral of the Canadian External Aid Ofﬁce (later the Canadian International

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Development Agency), he agreed to head the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (1972). As conference secretary-general and United Nations (UN) undersecretary-general for environmental affairs, he began his lifelong quest to focus the world’s attention on a future environmental catastrophe. He sought to reconcile environmental concerns with development needs and the need of the present generation for sustainable growth with the necessity of leaving a clean environment for future generations. Knowing that the key to successful conferences was their follow up, he agreed to serve as the ﬁrst executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (1973 to 1975). In 1992, the Canadian government nominated him as secretary-general of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), commonly known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In both global environmental conferences, he encouraged participation by nongovernmental organizations.

Maurice Strong. (©Robert Patrick/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

In his capacity as undersecretary-general and senior advisor to the UN secretary-general, Strong is assisting UN Secretary-General Koﬁ Annan in reforming the United Nations (something he has long advocated) and serving as a member of the Commission on Global Governance (1992 to 1996). In his 2000 best-selling autobiography, Where on Earth Are We Going?, he vowed to continue his lifelong quest. S E E A L S O Activism. Bibliography Strong, Maurice (2000). Where on Earth Are We Going? Toronto: Vintage.

Michael G. Schechter

Sulfur Dioxide anthropogenic human-made; related to or produced by the influence of humans on nature

Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is an air pollutant known primarily for its role in acid rain. SO2 is emitted naturally from volcanoes. Anthropogenic emissions arise largely from the production of electricity, particularly coal-ﬁred power plants (65%). The sulfur in the coal reacts with oxygen during combustion, converting it to SO2. Scrubbers, using a slurry of limestone and water, are used to extract the SO2 before it exits the stack. Once in the atmosphere, SO2 is converted to other compounds such as sulfuric acid (H2SO4), the primary contributor to acid rain. SO2 also reacts to form sulfate aerosols. These tiny airborne particles are the major cause of haze in U.S. national parks. Both SO2 gas and sulfate aerosols cause breathing problems, particularly for people with existing respiratory illnesses such as asthma. For health reasons, to reduce acid rain, and to improve visibility, SO2 emissions are regulated by a market-based allowance trading system established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). S E E A L S O Acid Rain; Coal; Electric Power; Scrubbers. Bibliography Turco, Richard P. (1997). Earth under Siege: From Air Pollution to Global Change. New York: Oxford University Press. Internet Resource Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). “ToxFAQ for Sulfur Dioxide.” Available from http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts116.html.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Available from http://epa.gov.

Marin Sands Robinson

Superfund Superfund is a term used for the monies available to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up abandoned or inactive hazardous waste sites. Such sites may involve soil and/or groundwater contamination, and are often contaminated with heavy metals, such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, and zinc; pesticides, including aldrin, dieldrin, chlordane, and DDT; and chlorinated solvents such as carbon tetrachloride, methylene chloride, and tetra and trichloroethylene. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), cyanide, benzene, toluene, vinyl chloride, and radionuclides, including strontium, plutonium, and uranium are also found at hazardous waste sites. The $1.8 billion Superfund was established in 1980 by federal legislation under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). It was created with taxes imposed by the federal government on major oil and chemical companies. At that time, common belief was that sufﬁcient funds and technology existed to clean up all abandoned hazardous waste sites by 1985.

Historical Perspective By 1985, although work had started at many sites, only approximately six sites had been completely remediated, and it soon became clear that revisions to legislation were needed to streamline cleanup efforts and additional taxes for Superfund were required to provide funding. In 1986 Superfund was replenished under the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA). As a result of SARA, Superfund totaled $8.5 billion.

heavy metals metallic elements with high atomic weights (e.g. mercury, chromium, cadmium, arsenic, and lead); can damage living things at low concentrations and tend to accumulate in the food chain DDT the first chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticide (chemical name: Dichlor0Diphenyl-Trichloroethane); it has a half-life of 15 years and can collect in fatty tissues of certain animals; for virtually all but emergency uses, DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972 PCBs polychlorinated biphenyls; two-ringed compounds of hydrogen, carbon, and chlorine

Under CERCLA and SARA, the EPA is given the authority and resources to clean up hazardous waste sites. EPA’s priority is to identify responsible parties—those companies that have caused contamination—and require them to clean up, at their own expense, any corresponding hazardous waste sites. EPA thus reserves the use of Superfund monies for sites in which responsible parties are not identiﬁed or have claimed bankruptcy. As of 1999, responsible parties have contributed over $16 billion toward the cleanup of hazardous waste sites. The EPA follows a detailed procedure to evaluate hazardous waste sites and ranks them according to the severity of risk to human health and the environment. The national priorities list (NPL) includes those sites that are deemed eligible for cleanup by Superfund. In 1987 it listed 1,187 sites and nearly 30,000 sites remained to be assessed. As of March 2002, 1,223 sites remained on the NPL and were eligible for cleanup under Superfund. In addition, 810 sites had achieved “construction completed” status which means that all the measures to clean up the sites, as outlined in the EPA Record of Decisions, have been taken.

Site Cleanup Remedies Technologies employed to clean up sites include procedures that have been used for decades in treating water and air pollution; also, novel techniques

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Map illustrating Superfund sites in the United States, illustration. (Gale.)

volatile any substance that evaporates readily

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have been developed to clean up speciﬁc contaminants in groundwater and soil. Environmental engineers, geologists, chemists, and biologists consider alternatives to clean up sites depending on what medium is contaminated (e.g., groundwater, surface or subsurface soil, surface water, or air), and the nature of the contaminants. Community involvement is also sought as part of the decision process. Contaminants that are biodegradable may be completely converted to environmentally acceptable products. An example of this would be using microorganisms to biodegrade gasoline components in water or soil to carbon dioxide and water. Alternatively, depending on cost and time constraints, other technologies are employed that transfer the contamination from one medium to another. Air stripping and soil vapor extraction are examples of such technologies. Air stripping involves spraying contaminated water into the top of a vertical tower while air is pumped from the bottom to the top of the tower. Chemicals that are volatile will be transferred in the tower from the water to the air. In soil vapor extraction, perforated pipes are drilled into contaminated subsurface soil and a vacuum is applied to encourage volatile chemicals to transfer from the soil to the air. Contaminants transferred to the air by these processes, such as benzene, toluene, and trichloroethylene are sometimes captured with activated carbon or destroyed by a combustion process, such as incineration. Air stripping was employed to clean groundwater contaminated with volatile organic chemicals, including trichloroethylene, benzene, toluene, and xylenes, at the General Mills/Henkel Superfund site, a former technical center and research laboratory in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The contaminants in the ground water have stabilized since the pump and treat system began in the early 1990s, with cleaned water being discharged to the Minneapolis storm sewer system.

Sustainable Development

Since the inception of SARA, the EPA has expressed a preference for cleanup remedies that destroy contamination rather than transfer it. Contaminants may be destroyed by microorganisms that biodegrade chemicals or by incineration processes that transform the chemical with extreme heat. One billion pounds of contaminated soil were incinerated at the Sikes Disposal Pits near Crosby, Texas, where hazardous waste from petrochemical companies had been dumped in unlined pits during the 1960s. The incineration was completed in 1994 and the site is now planted with local grasses. The excavation of contaminated soil for hauling to a landﬁll is an example of the removal and transfer of contamination to another area. The concern with “removal technologies” is that the contamination may create a future hazard to human health or the environment. For this reason, the EPA has come to discourage the use of removal technologies.

Pros, Cons, and Other Countries Superfund’s proponents argue that the EPA must have the authority and resources to clean up hazardous waste sites. Otherwise, reluctant responsible parties will have no incentive to bear the burden of cleanup. In such cases, the protection of public health and remediation of damages to the environment would be left for taxpayers to ﬁnance. Those against Superfund reauthorization claim that many industries are responsibly handling the matter of hazardous waste sites and have invested sizable resources to clean up such locations. Furthermore, these industries have a vested interest in achieving a cost-effective cleanup in a timely manner. Many developed countries have implemented hazardous waste remediation programs. Some countries pay for site cleanup from general government revenues (taxes, etc.), whereas others rely on special taxes on industry (similar to Superfund). S E E A L S O Abatement; Bioremediation; Brownfield; Cleanup; Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA); Hazardous Waste; Radioactive Waste. Bibliography LaGrega, Michael D.; Buckingham, Phillip L.; and Evans, Jeffrey C. (2001). Hazardous Waste Management, 2nd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.

SUPERFUND SITE IN LIBBY, MONTANA In Libby, Montana, the remediation of soil and groundwater contaminated with pentachlorophenol (PCP) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) has been under way since 1985. PCP and PAHs are chemicals used to preserve wood products such as telephone poles and railroad ties. The responsible party, Champion International Corporation, caused soil and groundwater contamination at its lumber and plywood mill in Libby. The EPA determined that wastewater and sludge from the woodtreating process were the sources of contamination. To address the issue of contamination, drinking water from a public water supply was provided to residents of the Libby area, and the use of private wells prohibited. Contaminated soil and groundwater are undergoing cleanup using bioremediation, a technology that employs microorganisms to transform hazardous chemicals into environmentally acceptable products.

Watts, Richard J. (1997). Hazardous Wastes: Sources, Pathways, Receptors. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Internet Resources Federal Remediation Technologies Roundtable. “Remediation Technology.” Available from http://www.frtr.gov. “Libby, Montana, Groundwater Contamination.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/ superfund.

Thomas D. DiStefano

Sustainable Development The term sustainable development gained international recognition after the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission) released its report Our Common Future in 1983. In this report, sustainable development was deﬁned as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to

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meet their own needs.” The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources had introduced the term earlier in its 1980 publication World Conservation Strategy, stating, “Development and conservation operate in the same global context, and the underlying problems that must be overcome if either is to be successful are identical.” It thus recommended a strategy entitled, “Towards Sustainable Development.” Development refers to any systematic progress toward some improved or advanced condition. In the international development ﬁeld, in which the term sustainable development is most often encountered, development refers to the establishment of the physical and social conditions that make economic progress possible. In the past this has at times involved the transformation of forests, wetlands, soil, and other resources in ways that ultimately undermined the capacity of the natural environment to produce conditions able to sustain future advances in the quality of people’s lives. The concept of sustainable development thus suggests an alternative strategy in which economic progress and environmental protection go hand in hand. The negative environmental impacts of some forms of economic development had been recognized long before the term sustainable development was popularized in the 1980s. The earliest settled communities subjected the harvesting of important food and raw materials to rules, customs, and eventually formal laws and regulations designed to protect renewable resources for the future. In his book Man and Nature published in 1867, George Perkins Marsh drew attention to the environmental changes he had witnessed in both the United States and the Mediterranean region. His alarm was echoed by early American conservationists Gifford Pinchot and John Muir at the beginning of the twentieth century and again by Rachel Carson in her 1962 book Silent Spring. Then in 1972 an environmentally aware group of industrialists known as the Club of Rome issued a report, The Limits to Growth, that warned of inadequate natural resource supplies and disruption to global ecosystems if population and economic growth were to continue on their current path. In 1971 the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) was established in Britain with a mandate to seek ways to achieve economic progress without destroying the environmental resource base. In June 1992 the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) further reﬁned the term by developing an agenda for nations to follow that would move the world toward sustainable development. Agenda 21, as it was called, was a three-hundred-page plan for achieving sustainable development in the twenty-ﬁrst century. To assist in follow up and monitor the progress of Agenda 21, and to report on the implementation of related agreements, the United Nations created the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), to report to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSO). Although the concept of sustainable development has received considerable attention in international diplomatic and policy circles, it does have its critics. Many claim sustainable development is an oxymoron. They argue that nothing, least of all economic development, is sustainable forever. For them, the concept of sustainable development is wishful thinking that distracts nations from the necessary transformations of the global economy. Others claim that a determined focus on sustainability is likely to lead to economic stagnation and continued underdevelopment.

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The proponents of sustainable development believe that the current mode of economic development is fundamentally destructive and must be radically reformed, and although nothing is absolutely sustainable, the effort to hold development activities accountable for the environmental conditions they produce makes both long-term economic and ethical sense. They argue that this approach, when combined with efforts to reduce population growth rates, reduce consumption among the richest nations of the world, promote the substitution of renewable for nonrenewable natural resources, reduce waste from manufacturing processes, and improve efﬁciency in the use of materials, is the only approach that offers a positive future outlook for the welfare of the global community. In the decade since Agenda 21 was accepted as a strategy for sustainable development, progress has been made. International agreements have been promulgated that will have a positive effect on sustainable development. These include, among others, the efforts of the United Nations in formulating a framework convention on climate change, a convention on biological diversity and a global compact that combines concerns for human rights, labor, and the environment. In addition, standards for business activity that consider environmental consequences have been agreed to by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 14000), and the international business community has created the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The World Bank has applied the concept of sustainable development with its reformed lending practices requiring recipients to demonstrate sound environmental criteria. Cities around the world are adopting sustainable criteria for land-use planning and zoning, and individuals are making personal consumption choices with sustainable development in mind. Though the problems of a sustainable future are far from solved, there is much about which to be optimistic. S E E A L S O Earth Summit. Bibliography Carson, Rachel. (1963). Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin. International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. (1980). World Conservation Strategy. Marsh, George Perkins. (1867). Man and Nature. New York: Scribners. Meadows, Donella H.; Meadows, Dennis L.; Randers, Jorgen; and Behrens, William W. III. (1972). The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books. Pinchot, Gifford. (1947). Breaking New Ground. New York: Hartcourt, Brace, and Co. World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our Common Future. New York: Oxford University Press. Internet Resource U.S. Department of Energy Center for Excellence for Sustainable Development. Available from http://www.sustainable.doe.gov.

Jack Manno and Ross Whaley

Swallow, Ellen Ellen Swallow Richards (1842–1911) was the ﬁrst female chemist in the United States and the mother of the science of ecology. As she walked to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) each day, this sanitary chemist noticed horse wagons carrying uncovered food over Boston’s dirty, unpaved

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streets, which were often ﬂooded with pools of stagnant waste from the open sewers. She saw ﬁlth, disease, suffering, and poverty that took the lives of half the children living in these conditions. She determined that chemistry should be used to provide a meaningful service to society by improving people’s health and environment. Her pioneering work on the effects of industrial pollution and sewage on human health led to the world’s ﬁrst sanitary engineering program and water-purity testing formulas, which are so precise that they are still being used. Her work in food additives led to the creation of the ﬁrst pure food laws in the United States.

Ellen Swallow. (Courtesy of the MIT Museum. Reproduced by permission.)

In an 1892 speech to other scientists, she ﬁrst introduced the word and concept ecology, referring to the relationships of organisms to their environments, whether natural, domestic or industrialized and human created. Her book, Euthenics: The Science of Controllable Environment: A Plea for Better Living Conditions as a First Step toward Higher Human Efﬁciency, which was published in 1910, introduced ecology to the public. Swallow’s dedication brought environmental concerns about clean air, water, sanitation, and pure food to the societal, home, and individual levels and called for the integration of all the sciences to solve environmental and health problems. Swallow’s difﬁcult but successful entry to higher learning also paved the way for other women. In 1871 she overcame substantial obstacles to become the ﬁrst woman to attend MIT, where she was denied a doctorate in chemistry because MIT did not allow women to be awarded doctorate degrees. She then became the ﬁrst female member of the faculty at MIT, resulting in, for example, both women and men having access to the school’s new chemistry lab in 1878. S E E A L S O Industry; Environmental Movement; Settlement House Movement. Bibliography Internet Resources Chemical Heritage Foundation. Available from http://www.chemheritage.org/ EducationalServices/chemach/hnec/esr.html. MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections. “Ellen Swallow Richards.” Available from http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/esr.

Susan L. Senecah

Systems Science Most traditional science works within a very restricted disciplinary domain requiring a careful and often technically rigorous and demanding approach that includes, at least in theory, the use of the Baconian scientiﬁc method of test and control in a restricted laboratory environment. This is how most science operates, and it is often a very successful approach. However, such an approach is very difﬁcult to apply to many real problems, including those in the complex natural or seminatural world outside the laboratory where many interacting variables can render laboratory results rather meaningless. For example, cleaning up sewage in a treatment plant can increase air pollution both directly and through the energy required. One antidote to this problem is systems science, which seeks to ﬁnd and use general principals, concepts, and equations that are applicable across, and can integrate, many disciplines. Numerous thinkers throughout history have

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used some kind of systems approach (e.g., Isaac Newton realized that billiard balls and planets both followed the same laws of motion). General systems theory was formalized and popularized by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in a book by that name; he founded the Society for General Systems and advanced its studies. This society is still active, continuing to attract ecologists, physicians, psychologists, engineers, mathematicians, economists, and others who seek new ideas in other disciplines. There are, generally speaking, two approaches to systems science. The ﬁrst undertakes analysis of the properties of systems as a whole. For example, one might ask what is the photosynthesis of an entire ecosystem or indeed of the globe as a whole. The most comprehensive, and some might say most controversial, application of this approach is the Gaia hypothesis of deep ecologists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. This hypothesis postulates that the earth as a living system itself regulates the chemical and other characteristics of the atmosphere (and other entities) in order to maintain optimal conditions for life. In other words, life maintains its own environment. This concept, or one somewhat like it, has been called self-design by Howard Odum and others, and Odum applies the view especially to ecosystems. The second general approach is a “systems” analysis of how parts of a system interact and generate the behavior of some entire entity. Such an approach, originally used to link radar, artillery, and aircraft during the Battle of Britain in World War II, has been especially well developed in the engineering sciences. For example, computers are used routinely in designing automobiles to model how springs and shock absorbers interact with wheels and terrain so that automobiles with smoother rides can be designed. Here and elsewhere in a systems approach, the feedback of one motion or operation on the subsequent behavior of the system is of paramount importance. Many systems investigators try to capture the essence of the behavior and other attributes of their ecosystem of interest through the construction of mathematical and/or computer simulation models. Examples of how systems science has contributed to science include the use of techniques originally designed for measuring photosynthesis and respiration in aquatic ecosystems to understand the metabolism of the Northern Hemisphere. It has also included the application of ﬁsheries analysis techniques to assess the success of drilling for oil. Oil return per unit effort spent in acquiring it, like ﬁshing for ﬁsh, decreases with increasing effort. A systems approach can be applied in many ways, including modeling the fate and transport of pollutants dumped into a river or groundwater. The classic example is the Streeter Phelps model, developed in the 1930s, that predicts the oxygen level in a river as a function of sewage load, dispersion, microbial activity and interactions with the atmosphere. A general systems approach has been most thoroughly developed for the environmental sciences by Odum in General and Systems Ecology. Other speciﬁc examples include its use in combined hydrological, biological, and economic models to determine the cheapest way to clean up the Delaware estuary; combined atmospheric and pollutant generation models to predict, for example, acid rain deposition downwind; and models to generate groundwater pollution and its impact. More recently, some efforts to integrate economics into traditional systems analyses of natural systems have evolved. An extensive systems approach has been used, for example, to examine the economy of Costa Rica, not just with

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the conventional tools of economics but also through a biophysical approach originally developed for natural ecosystems (Hall, 2000). In fact, some kind of systems approach is almost a necessity in any sophisticated environmental impact statement. S E E A L S O Environmental Impact Statement; GIS (Geographic Information System); Global Warming; Groundwater; Risk. Bibliography Hall, C.A.S., and C.J. Cleveland. (1981). “Petroleum Drilling and Production in the United States: Yield per Effort and Net Energy Analysis.” Science 211:576–579. Hall, C.A.S., ed. (2000). Quantifying Sustainable Development: The Future of Tropical Economies. San Diego: Academic Press. Odum, Howard T. (1994). Ecological and General Systems. Niwot: University of Colorado Press. von Bertalanffy, Ludwig. (1968). General Systems Theory. New York: George Brazillier. Internet Resource Principia Cybernetica Project (PCP) Web site. Available from http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ DEFAULT.

Charles Hall

T

TCE (Trichloroethylene)

See Dry Cleaning

Technology, Pollution Prevention A pollution prevention (P2) technology is one that creates less pollution in its life cycle than the one it replaces. P2 can be achieved in many ways, from better housekeeping and maintenance to redesign of products and processes. The range of P2 technologies is therefore very broad. It includes relatively cleaner technologies, technologies that help other technologies to be cleaner, and certain mass-market technologies. All of them reduce environmental impacts compared to their alternatives. It is important to understand that P2 technology does not include pollution-control or -treatment technologies that do not make the technology producing the pollution any cleaner itself. They just manage the resulting waste.

Relatively Cleaner Technologies Technology is always advancing and improving. Many new technologies are naturally more energy efﬁcient and less polluting than the ones they replace. Sometimes, this is because they were designed with environmental improvement in mind. Usually, however, it is simply the result of using newer and better materials and components. Therefore, pollution-preventing technologies can be found in every area of a product’s life cycle. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is needed to determine if a particular technology really pollutes less than its alternatives. LCA is the examination of the environmental impacts of a product, from its origins as raw material through processing and production to use and ﬁnal disposal. This can be a complex process. For example, ﬂuorescent light bulbs may seem to be less polluting than incandescent light bulbs because they use much less energy. However, they actually use polluting chemicals such as mercury that are not found in incandescent light bulbs. So they use less energy, but more toxic chemicals. The choice of indicators for P2 performance and LCA, such as toxicity or energy efﬁciency, is important for evaluation.

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Facilitative Technologies Some technologies are important for helping other technologies reduce pollution. For example, process controls such as meters and sensors can make many production processes more efﬁcient and less polluting by providing improved control, which reduces waste and defects. Centrifuges can reduce the amount of solids in wastewaters, thereby reducing water pollution. Catalytic converters on engine exhaust systems can reduce air pollution. There are many such examples of technologies that help other technologies be cleaner. This is important in situations where there is a large investment in an existing technology already installed that cannot be easily or economically replaced with new and cleaner technology.

Technologies Designed to Prevent Pollution Some technologies are designed speciﬁcally for protecting the environment while also improving business performance. For example, recycling technologies can help recover valuable materials from wastes, cutting manufacturing costs, while also preventing pollution. Examples include gene-engineered plants that do not need protection using chemical insecticides and fuel cells for generating electricity. However, it is surprisingly challenging to identify such technologies. Most technologies that stop pollution were usually created to simply reduce costs and save on materials. Technologies designed to prevent pollution usually rely on cost efﬁciency, rather than pollution prevention, as their main selling point. One important and fundamental exception is P2 in chemical design. Thousands of chemicals are used in industry, commerce, and daily life. Many of them have environmental impacts, from mild to serious. By developing alternative chemicals with better environmental performance, signiﬁcant reductions in pollution can be obtained throughout product life cycles. A common application of green chemistry is in the design of environmentally benign solvents. Traditional solvents such as acetone, xylene, and methylene chloride are being replaced by new chemicals designed speciﬁcally to be less hazardous or less polluting.

Mass-Market P2 Technologies Mass-market P2 technologies are those that can be used in many different industries or even in consumer households. These technologies create new markets because their production creates jobs and spin-offs, and they generate ready demand from producers who want to reduce input costs. Each has the following criteria: 1. The technology is widely applicable across a variety of industry types and sizes. 2. The technology does not require very large capital expenditures. 3. The technology’s usefulness has been proven through years of implementation experience. 4. The technology has demonstrated free-market feasibility, that is, a positive payback in the productivity of materials, not including reductions in disposal costs.

EU COMMISSION ON THE ENVIRONMENT Each citizen of the European Union produces an average of 3.5 tonnes (3.85 U.S. tons) of total waste annually. In view of this, on May 27, 2003, the European Union Commission announced a formal communication or policy statement aimed at reducing waste generation and the use of natural resources, and developing a coherent policy on recycling. Current recycling regulations in the EU are inconsistent. For instance, cardboard and paper packaging are recycled but office paper and newsprint are not. Recycling also often costs more than landfilling or incineration. More industry involvement, tradable environmental permits, national landfill bans and taxes, pay-as-you-throw schemes, and producer responsibility initiatives are among the communication’s proposals.

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5. The technology can be supported in the ﬁeld by local technicians with basic competence. 6. Parts for repair are locally available at reasonable cost. Example mass-market technologies for P2 include household waterconservation ﬁxtures, variable-speed motors, programmable heating and air conditioning controls, citrus-based solvent cleaners, plastic ﬁlms for reducing heat transmission through windows, and many others.

International P2 Technologies The major differences in P2 technologies among countries lie in the age of the technology and the level of process control. In less developed countries, much of the technology is old and would be considered out of date and uncompetitive in developed countries. Consequently, it usually produces much more pollution per unit of output. Less developed countries also tend to use fewer process controls and instrumentation. Much of the operation is controlled by hand or based on experience, rather than real-time data. Human error thus potentially creates more waste and pollution in such situations. But there are no hard and fast rules for differences in P2 technologies between countries. In Thailand, for example, there has been signiﬁcant investment in new factories in the electronics and auto parts industries. These plants use the latest technology and management practices and are much less polluting than older plants in the same industries operating nearby. S E E A L S O Catalytic Converter; Energy Efficiency; Green Chemistry; Life Cycle Analysis. Bibliography European Environment Agency. (1997). Comparing Environmental Impact Data on Cleaner Technologies, Copenhagen: European Environment Agency. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2001). Cleaner Technologies Substitutes Assessment, Washington: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Burt Hamner

Terrorism Terrorism, as deﬁned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), is “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” The destruction inherent in any act of mass terrorism inevitably causes secondary environmental pollution effects, many of them serious. Acts of terrorism can also be directed against the environment itself, or speciﬁc natural resources such as freshwater, oil, or agricultural products.

Terrorist Attack on the World Trade Center The secondary environmental effects of terrorism can often be as signiﬁcant as its primary effects. The attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City on September 11, 2001, had negative health consequences beyond the staggering loss of life. The collapse of the structures and subsequent ﬁres spewed an enormous cloud of dust and toxins into the air over the city.

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Pulverized concrete, building materials, heavy metals, and human remains were inhaled by residents and rescue workers in lower Manhattan until a heavy rain three days later washed away most of the dust. The immediate environmental fallout from the WTC collapse contained asbestos and ﬁbrous glass from the building structure; mercury, dioxins, furans, and other cancer-causing toxins from the burning of ﬂuorescent light bulbs and computer screens; heavy metals such as cadmium and lead and volatile organic compounds like benzene. Federal, state, and local agencies went right to work monitoring air quality and cleaning up dust and debris from the WTC collapse, but these actions themselves have serious environmental consequences. One in four cleanup workers at Ground Zero report-

Map showing long-term contamination due to detonation of cobalt bomb in New York City, illustration. (Gale.)

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South tower of the World Trade Center collapsing as black smoke billows from the burning north tower following the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, by members of al-Qaeda. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.)

edly suffer from asthma and respiratory illness brought about by dust inhaled at the site. Some airborne pollutants and dust were resuspended as a result of ongoing cleanup efforts. The secondary pollution concerns include possible contamination of waterways around lower Manhattan as well as the challenge of where to dispose of the catastrophe’s 1.2 million tons of waste. Fresh Kills landﬁll on Staten Island has been accepting WTC debris, some containing asbestos and other toxic materials, despite being slated to close December 31, 2001. Since Fresh Kills was not designed to accept hazardous waste, there is concern about whether or not contaminants could leach from the landﬁll into surrounding groundwater.

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COMMON POLLUTANTS FROM SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, ATTACK AND THEIR HEALTH EFFECTS Contaminant

Health Effects

Source

Asbestos

Carcinogenic. Causes tissue damage in the lungs when inhaled over long periods and can lead to asbestosis, mesothelioma, and lung cancer.

Used as an insulator and fire retardant, applied to steel beams.

Benzene

Flammable and carcinogenic. Short-term effects include dizziness, headaches, and tremors. Long-term exposure can lead to leukemia.

Combustion of plastics.

Biohazards

Exposure to blood and body parts can transmit infectious diseases such as hepatitis and AIDS.

Human remains.

Chromium

Carcinogenic when inhaled at high concentrations; can cause skin ulcers.

Video and computer monitors.

Copper

Can cause dizziness, headaches, vomiting, liver and kidney damage.

Electrical wiring and cables.

Diesel fumes

Asthma trigger. Can aggravate symptoms in asthmatics.

Truck traffic and heavy machinery.

Dioxins

Chloracne is a short-term effect of exposure. Strong evidence for carcinogenic, teratogenic, reproductive, and immunosuppressive effects.

Combustion of polyvinyl chloride found in electrical cables and other insulating materials.

Freon

Damages the ozone layer. When burned, can produce phosgene, a potent cause of severe and life-threatening pulmonary edema.

Refrigeration and airconditioning equipment.

Lead

Neurotoxin. Damages the central nervous system, especially in children. Can also cause kidney damage and reproductive damage in adults.

Video and computer monitors, rustproofing paint used on steel beams.

Mercury

Neurotoxin. Damages the peripheral nervous system, especially in children.

Thermometers and other precision instruments.

Particulate matter

Asthma trigger. Can also aggravate cardiovascular disease.

Pulverized concrete and other materials, smoke, dust and soot.

Polychlorinated biphenyls

Carcinogen. May also cause reproductive and developmental abnormalities.

Electrical equipment.

Sulfur dioxide

Pulmonary toxicant. Can cause severe airway obstruction when inhaled at high concentrations.

Combustion.

SOURCE:

Adapted from Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 109, No. 11, November 2001.

With the passage of time, and through the cleansing effect of rainfall and the specialized cleanup efforts of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), air quality in lower Manhattan has now returned roughly to pre-9/11 levels. However, despite reassurances from the EPA and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), residents of lower Manhattan worry about the long-term health effects of dust and particulates deposited on rooftops and windowsills, and in the ventilation systems of nearby buildings. Only now are the long-term effects of exposure to Ground Zero being studied.

Renewed Efforts to Protect Environmental Infrastructure After the attacks of September 11, 2001, federal and state authorities began to wonder what else might offer a tempting target for terror attacks. New

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York City and other large cities immediately took steps to protect their water systems by guarding the infrastructure and testing the water for known contaminants. In 2002 President George W. Bush’s administration passed the Public Health and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act, which required, among other actions, that all water utilities across the country conduct security assessments to gauge possible vulnerability and take steps to protect their water.

Bioterrorism

inhalation drawing into the lungs by breathing

The environment can also be a conduit for terrorism. Biological elements such as disease-causing bacteria and viruses can become potent weapons when taken out of their natural environment. Shortly after the attack on the WTC, several pieces of mail in and around Florida, Washington, D.C., and New York City tested positive for the biocontaminant anthrax. Anthrax is a bacterium that, in its most potent inhaled form, has a fatality rate of over 90 percent. Over ten thousand people may have been exposed, and ﬁve people died of inhalational anthrax before the contaminated mail was quarantined. The FBI and the Postal Service have offered a $2.5 million reward for information leading to those responsible, and medical researchers have been working on a cure. Authorities have not yet determined if the anthrax-contaminated mail is connected to al-Qaeda and the events of September 11, but the combined effect of these two attacks occurring in close proximity served to heighten the perception that America is under siege.

Nuclear Terrorism Biocontamination is not the only threat to safety in the United States. One of the most frightening terror scenarios that government ofﬁcials must consider is the possibility of a nuclear device, or “dirty bomb,” being detonated in a U.S. city. Quite separate from the direct human health consequences, the environmental effects of even a low-yield (ﬁve kiloton) nuclear weapon are severe: The shock wave will disperse radioactive fallout over a wide area, poisoning wildlife and groundwater. The heat (thermal radiation) will destroy plants and trees. And although the global nuclear winter theory (cooling of the earth’s surface due to airborne fallout, thus blocking sunlight) has largely been discredited, this phenomenon can have devastating effects on local agriculture and ecosystems.

Relationship between Resource Competition and Terrorism asymmetrical warfare conflict between two forces of greatly different sizes; e.g., terrorists versus superpower

The United States is often a target of asymmetrical warfare, such as terrorism, because of its military superiority and worldwide economic interests. Many scholars studying peace have reasoned that, in order to defeat terrorism, we must remedy the conditions that give rise to it. One of the most pressing American national security interests is ensuring continued global access to natural commodities such as oil, minerals, and timber. However, the United States already consumes approximately 30 percent of all raw materials consumed by humans in a given year and is perceived as a nation that seeks more than its fair share of the world’s resources. One concern is that as the world population grows and resources are stretched to cover its needs, supplies will fall and prices will rise, making necessary commodities

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ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE GULF WAR Although there is some debate among scholars about the difference between war and terrorism, the retreating Iraqi army committed two particularly wanton acts of environmental destruction during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. First, they released six million barrels of oil from the Kuwaiti Sea Island offshore loading terminal, and scuttled five fully loaded oil tankers at the Mina Ahmadi terminal. They also set fire to 732 oil wells across Kuwait. These burned for months before they were extinguished. The combined oil pollution output from these acts totaled 1.5 billion barrels, or 6,000 times the amount spilled from the Exxon Valdez.

The environmental effects of these acts were clearly immense. A plume of soot and oil droplets spread over 1.3 million square miles, contaminating the air with pollutants such as nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and vast amounts of CO2. The oil lakes on land have contaminated the fragile desert ecosystem, virtually guaranteeing that it will not regenerate for decades. The oil in the Gulf itself destroyed mangrove thickets, fish, shrimp, marine mammals, and sea birds. Ten years after the war, this region is still environmentally degraded.

available only to wealthy countries or the upper class within a country. This means that the rich would get richer and the poor poorer, and such inequity of supply and distribution might give rise to unilateral actions on the part of those who feel they are on the losing end of this globalization gap. To reduce this potential for conﬂict, developed societies are being encouraged to recognize that global resource consumption and international security are connected, and that obtaining resources cooperatively rather than competitively will enhance long-term security. International agencies can help to ensure the equitable distribution of critical resources both between and within countries. In addition, nations can contribute their relative expertise to ﬁnding new sources of natural resources, to developing substitutes for commodities such as oil and natural gas, and to enhancing conservation and efﬁciency technology to certify that existing resources are used to their maximum beneﬁt. If poorer citizens can be assured they have access to the resources needed to live, they are less likely to adopt combative ideologies that lead to terrorism. S E E A L S O Ecoterrorism; War. Bibliography Gugliotta, Guy, and Matsumoto, Gary. (2002). “FBI’s Theory on Anthrax Is Doubted.” Washington Post, October 28, 2002, A1. Hawley, T.M. (1992). Against the Fires of Hell: The Environmental Disaster of the Gulf War. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Klare, Michael T. (2001). Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conﬂict. New York: Henry Holt. Makhijani, Arjun; Hu, Howard; and Yih, Katherine, eds. (2000). Nuclear Wastelands: A Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and Its Health and Environmental Effects. Special Commission of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nordgren, Megan D.; Goldstein, Eric A.; and Izeman, Mark A. (2002). The Environmental Impacts of the World Trade Center Attacks: A Preliminary Assessment. New York: Natural Resources Defense Council. Internet Resources Federation of American Scientists. (2002). “Special Weapons Primer: Biological Warfare Agents.” Available from http://www.fas.org/nuke.

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New York State Department of Environmental Protection. (2001). “Statement on Water Supply Security.” Available from http://www.nyc.gov/html. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. Further information on the environmental and human health effects of 9/11 available from http://www.epa.gov/wtc.

Elizabeth L. Chalecki

Thermal Pollution ambient surrounding or unconfined; air: usually but not always referring to outdoor air

turbid containing suspended particles

The broadest deﬁnition of thermal pollution is the degradation of water quality by any process that changes ambient water temperature. Thermal pollution is usually associated with increases of water temperatures in a stream, lake, or ocean due to the discharge of heated water from industrial processes, such as the generation of electricity. Increases in ambient water temperature also occur in streams where shading vegetation along the banks is removed or where sediments have made the water more turbid. Both of these effects allow more energy from the sun to be absorbed by the water and thereby increase its temperature. There are also situations in which the effects of colder-than-normal water temperatures may be observed. For example, the discharge of cold bottom water from deep-water reservoirs behind large dams has changed the downstream biological communities in systems such as the Colorado River.

Sources

turbine machine that uses a moving fluid (liquid or gas) to gas to turn a rotor, creating mechanical energy sink hole or depression where a compound or material collects; thermodynamics: part of a system used to collect or remove heat

megawatt one million watts

condenser apparatus used to condense vapors diffuser something that spreads out or dissipates another substance over a wide area

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The production of energy from a fuel source can be direct, such as the burning of wood in a ﬁreplace to create heat, or by the conversion of heat energy into mechanical energy by the use of a heat engine. Examples of heat engines include steam engines, turbines, and internal combustion engines. Heat engines work on the principal of heating and pressuring a ﬂuid, the performance of mechanical work, and the rejection of unused or waste heat to a sink. Heat engines can only convert 30 to 40 percent of the available input energy in the fuel source into mechanical energy, and the highest efﬁciencies are obtained when the input temperature is as high as possible and the sink temperature is as low as possible. Water is a very efﬁcient and economical sink for heat engines and it is commonly used in electrical generating stations. The waste heat from electrical generating stations is transferred to cooling water obtained from local water bodies such as a river, lake, or ocean. Large amounts of water are used to keep the sink temperature as low as possible to maintain a high thermal efﬁciency. The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station between Los Angeles and San Diego, California, for example, has two main reactors that have a total operating capacity of 2,200 megawatts (MW). These reactors circulate a total of 2,400 million gallons per day (MGD) of ocean water at a ﬂow rate of 830,000 gallons per minute for each unit. The cooling water enters the station from two intake structures located 3,000 feet offshore in water 32 feet deep. The water is heated to approximately 19°F above ambient as it ﬂows through the condensers and is discharged back into the ocean through a series of diffuser-type discharges that have a series of sixty-three exit pipes spread over a distance of 2,450 feet. The discharge water is rapidly mixed with ambient seawater by the diffusers and the average rise in temperature after mixing is less than 2°F.

Thermal Pollution

These ASTER false-color images were acquired over Joliet 29, a coal-burning power plant in Illinois. Joliet 29 can be seen in the VNIR image (top) as the bright blue-white pixels just above the large cooling pond. Like many power plants, Joliet 29 uses a cooling pond to discharge heated effluent water. In the bottom image a single ASTER Thermal Infrared band was color-coded to represent heat emitted from the surface. The progression from warmest to coolest is shown with the following colors: white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and black. (Image courtesy NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/ JAROS, and U.S./Japan Aster Science Team. Reproduced by permission.)

Environmental Effects The primary effects of thermal pollution are direct thermal shock, changes in dissolved oxygen, and the redistribution of organisms in the local community. Because water can absorb thermal energy with only small changes in temperature, most aquatic organisms have developed enzyme systems that operate in only narrow ranges of temperature. These stenothermic organisms can be killed by sudden temperature changes that are beyond the tolerance limits of their metabolic systems. The cooling water discharges of power plants are designed to minimize heat effects on local ﬁsh communities. However, periodic heat treatments used to keep the cooling system clear of

thermal shock rapid temperature change beyond an organism’s ability to adapt

stenothermic living or growing within a narrow temperature range

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fouling organisms that clog the intake pipes can cause ﬁsh mortality. A heat treatment reverses the ﬂow and increases the temperature of the discharge to kill the mussels and other fouling organisms in the intake pipes. Southern California Edison had developed a “ﬁsh-chase” procedure in which the water temperature of the heat treatment is increased gradually, instead of rapidly, to drive ﬁsh away from the intake pipes before the temperature reaches lethal levels. The ﬁsh chase procedure has signiﬁcantly reduced ﬁsh kills related to heat treatments. Small chronic changes in temperature can also adversely affect the reproductive systems of these organisms and also make them more susceptible to disease. Cold water contains more oxygen than hot water so increases in temperature also decrease the oxygen-carrying capacity of water. In addition, raising the water temperature increases the decomposition rate of organic matter in water, which also depletes dissolved oxygen. These decreases in the oxygen content of the water occur at the same time that the metabolic rates of the aquatic organisms, which are dependent on a sufﬁcient oxygen supply, are rising because of the increasing temperature.

thermotolerance ability to withstand temperature change protein complex nitrogenous organic compound of high molecular weight made of amino acids; essential for growth and repair of animal tissue; many, but not all, proteins are enzymes planktonic that portion of the plankton community comprised of tiny plants; e.g. algae, diatoms thermal infrared imaging photographs in which contrast depends on differences in temperature effluent discharge, typically wastewater—treated or untreated—that flows out of a treatment plant, sewer, or industrial outfall; generally refers to wastes discharged into surface waters cascade waterfall; a system that serves to increase the surface area of the water to speed cooling evaporative relating to transition from liquid to gas

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The composition and diversity of communities in the vicinity of cooling water discharges from power plants can be adversely affected by the direct mortality of organisms or movement of organisms away from unfavorable temperature or oxygen environments. A nuclear power-generating station on Nanwan Bay in Taiwan caused bleaching of corals in the vicinity of the discharge channel when the plant ﬁrst began operation in 1988. Studies of the coral Acropora grandis in 1988 showed that the coral was bleached within two days of exposure to temperatures of 91.4°F. In 1990 samples of coral taken from the same area did not start bleaching until six days after exposure to the same temperature. It appears that the thermotolerance of these corals was enhanced by the production of heat-shock proteins that help to protect many organisms from potentially damaging changes in temperature. The populations of some species can also be enhanced by the presence of cooling water discharges. The only large population of sea turtles in California, for example, is found in the southern portion of San Diego Bay near the discharge of an electrical generating station.

Abatement The dilution of cooling water discharges can be effectively accomplished by various types of diffuser systems in large bodies of water such as lakes or the ocean. The only thermal effects seen at the San Onofre nuclear generating station are the direct mortality of planktonic organisms during the twentyﬁve-minute transit through the cooling water system. The effectiveness of the dilution systems can be monitored by thermal infrared imaging using either satellite or airborne imaging systems. The use of cooling towers has been effective for generating stations located on smaller rivers and streams that do not have the capacity to absorb the waste heat from the cooling water effluent. The cooling towers operate by means of a recirculating cascade of water inside a tower, with a large column of upwardly rising air that carries the heat to the atmosphere through evaporative cooling. Cooling towers have been used extensively at nuclear generating stations in both the United States and France. The disadvantages of cooling towers are the potential for local changes in meteorological conditions due to large amounts of warm air

Times Beach, Missouri

entering the atmosphere and the visual impact of the large towers. S E E A L S O Electric Power; Energy; Fish Kills; Visual Pollution; Water Pollution Bibliography Brown, Richard D.; Ouellette, Robert P.; and Chermisinoff, Paul N. (1983). Pollution Control at Electric Power Stations: Comparisons for U.S. and Europe. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann. Henry, J. Glenn, and Heinke, Gary W. (1996). Environmental Science and Engineering. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Hinrichs, Roger A., and Kleinbach, Merlin. (2001). Energy: Its Use and the Environment, 3rd edition. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company. Langford, Terry E. (1990). Ecological Effects of Thermal Discharges. New York: Elsevier Applied Science. Larminie, James, and Dicks, Andrew. (2000). Fuel Cell Systems Explained. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Liu, Paul Ih-fei. (1997). Introduction to Energy and the Environment. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Ristinen, Robert A., and Kraushaar, Jack J. (1998). Energy and the Environment. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Slovic, Paul. (2000). The Perception of Risk. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd. Other Resources

Thermal pollution from power plants in Florida turned out to be a lifesaver for the state’s threatened manatee population. The ecology changed when irrigation wells and diversion channels that support Florida’s agricultural development severely impacted the natural springs that moderate river-water temperatures. Manatees cannot survive in cold water and naturalists feared that irregular cold snaps would put the sea mammals at risk. Manatees, however. discovered the power-plant discharge zones and today, naturalists take advantage of cold weather to tally manatee population as the herds gather at local power plants.

California Energy Commission. “Energy-Related Environmental Research.” Available from http://www.energy.ca.gov/pier/energy/energy_aquatic.html.

Larry Deysher

Times Beach, Missouri According to former mayor Marilyn Leistner, the 2,000 residents of Times Beach, Missouri, a community located along the Meramec River, endured a lasting toxic waste episode throughout the Christmas holiday season of 1982. In 1974 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) identiﬁed dioxincontaminated waste oil as the cause of death for an unspeciﬁed number of dogs and songbirds in Times Beach. In the early 1970s, many municipalities, including Times Beach, commissioned the use of waste oil to control dust on unpaved roads. On December 3, 1982, in response to local complaints spurred by the CDC’s earlier ﬁndings, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conducted soil tests in Times Beach. Floodwaters from the Meramec forced the evacuation of the entire community the very next day. On December 23 the CDC received the EPA’s Times Beach soil test results. Because dioxin levels in the soil signiﬁcantly exceeded public health standards, ofﬁcials recommended that Times Beach residents not return home. The Times Beach episode exempliﬁes how agencies can use their ﬁnancial and legal resources to address environmental risks to public health. On February 23, 1983, for instance, former EPA Director Anne Burford announced a $25 million plan to buy out the homes and businesses of Times Beach through the Superfund program. Later, a presidential commission on this environmental pollution episode ﬁned Syntex Agribusiness $200 million for their culpability. Syntex Agribusiness produced the dioxin as a waste product in manufacturing pesticides. Russell Bliss, a commercial waste

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hauler, transported the dioxin from Syntex Agribusiness, mixed the chemical with waste oil, and then, for a fee, sprayed the oil on Times Beach roads. Between 1996 and 1997 Missouri ofﬁcials, using an environmentally controversial incineration technique, restored the former Times Beach site and turned what was Times Beach into a state park on and dedicated to U.S. Route 66. S E E A L S O Dioxin; Superfund; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Bibliography Humphrey, Craig R.; Lewis, Tammy L.; and Buttel, Frederick H. (2002). Environment, Energy, and Society: A New Synthesis. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Internet Resources Leistner, Marilyn. (1985). “The Times Beach Story.” In Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Hazardous Materials Management Conference, Philadelphia, PA, June 1985. Available at www.greens.org/s-r/078/07-09.html. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web site. “History.” Available from http:// www.epa.gov/history.

Craig R. Humphrey

Tobacco Smoke Tobacco smoke has long been recognized as a major cause of mortality and morbidity, responsible for an estimated 434,000 deaths per year in the United States. It is also a source of indoor air pollution due to the release of harmful chemicals, particles, and carcinogens. Exposure to tobacco smoke affects everybody. Children are more vulnerable than any other age group because they are still growing and developing.

Chemical Composition and Health Effects Tobacco smoke from cigarettes, cigars, and pipes is composed of more than 4,000 different chemicals including carbon monoxide and formaldehyde. More than forty of these compounds are known to cause cancer in humans or animals, and many of them are strong irritants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has concluded that exposure to tobacco smoke in the United States poses a serious and signiﬁcant public health threat. New long-term studies estimate that about half of all regular cigarette smokers die of smoking-related diseases. However, controversy still surrounds the exact extent of such health effects. Attempts have been made to study the effect of tobacco smoke on individuals exposed to other toxic chemicals. The risk of developing lung cancer among asbestos workers grows when they smoke an increasing number of cigarettes per day and their cumulative asbestos exposure increases. Cigarettesmoking asbestos workers tend to develop both restrictive lung disease (decreased lung capacities) and chronic obstructive lung disease, as compared to nonsmoking asbestos workers who have a tendency to develop only restrictive lung disease. In recent years, there has been great concern that nonsmokers may also be at risk for some of the above health effects as a result of their exposure to the tobacco smoke (known as secondhand smoke) that occurs in various environments occupied by smokers.

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The tobacco industry has denied the claim of such health hazards and has legally challenged the EPA over its secondhand smoke ﬁndings. In addition, some researchers argue that a number of the studies involve ﬂawed data or the selective interpretation of ﬁndings. Many of these critics contend that the health risks involved with secondhand smoke are not as extensive as reported.

Regulations on Smoke-free Environment As of December 31, 1999, smoke-free indoor air laws of one type or another had been enacted in forty-ﬁve states and the District of Columbia. Smoking in private work sites is limited in twenty states and the District of Columbia. Forty-one states and the District of Columbia have laws restricting smoking in state government work sites. Thirty-one states have enacted laws that regulate smoking in restaurants, and out of these, only Utah and Vermont completely prohibit smoking in restaurants. Most European countries have regulations that either ban or restrict smoking to designated areas in public places such as government/private work sites, health care facilities, and educational facilities. Japan and Singapore also have enacted laws that restrict smoking to designated areas, whereas other Asian countries such as India have no regulations in place. South Africa introduced a ban on tobacco smoking in public places, including the workplace, in 1999. S E E A L S O Asbestos; Asthma; Cancer; Health, Human; Indoor Air Pollution. Bibliography American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. (1998). Industrial Ventilation: A Manual of Recommended Practice, 23rd edition. Cincinnati, OH: Author. Wadden, Richard A., and Scheff, Peter A. (1983). Indoor Air Pollution: Characterization, Prediction and Control. New York: Wiley. Internet Resources American Lung Association. “Trends in Tobacco Use.” Available from http://www. lungusa.org/data. National Cancer Institute. “Health Effects Associated with Tobacco Smoke.” Available from http://cis.nci.nih.gov/fact. National Tobacco Information Online System. “Laws and Regulations.” Available from http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/nations.

Ashok Kumar and Sunil Ojha

Todd, John INNOVATIVE ECOLOGICAL DESIGNER (1939–)

John Todd is an internationally recognized biologist and pioneer in ecological design. He has been a practical activist in the ecology movement since 1969 when he cofounded the New Alchemy Institute in order to explore science and engineering based on ecological principles. Todd developed earthbased technologies to grow food, generate fuel, transform waste, and purify water. Todd is best known for his wastewater treatment systems in which ﬂoating structures support plants whose roots grow in the wastewater, becoming home to a variety of introduced creatures, including bacteria, fungi, snails,

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insects, and ﬁsh. Underwater bafﬂes direct water through the plant roots, and bubbled air increases oxygen and microbial activity. As the bacteria and other organisms feed off the waste and purify the water, they reproduce to form an efﬁcient ecological living machine. Because they utilize natural processes, these systems require little energy to operate, minimize the use of chemicals, produce only small amounts of sludge, and cost less to install than traditional wastewater treatment plants. More than one hundred such systems are currently operating worldwide.

John Todd. (Courtesy of Ocean Arks International. Reproduced by permission.)

Todd is president of Ocean Arks International, a nonproﬁt organization that is dedicated to ecological research, education, and development. A professor at the University of Vermont, he has authored over two hundred articles on biology and earth stewardship. He is involved in developing a zero-emissions community food center in Burlington, Vermont, where wastes from food production are recycled as resources. Spent grain, for example, can be used to grow mushrooms. He has received a number of awards for his innovative wastewater treatment system, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Achievement Award in 1996. S E E A L S O Wastewater Treatment. Bibliography Todd, Nancy Jack, and Todd, John. (1994). From Eco-Cities to Living Machines: Principles of Ecological Design. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. Internet Resource Ocean Arks Web site. Available from http://www.oceanarks.org.

Patricia Hemminger

Toxic Release Inventory In 1986 the U.S. Congress passed a federal law called the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), which gives the public the right to know about industrial toxic chemicals that are released into the environment. At present this law, which is also known as Title III of the Superfund Amendment and Reauthorization Act, requires businesses in certain industries that manufacture, process, or otherwise use any chemical from a list of 651 designated chemicals or chemical groups in amounts greater than a certain threshold to report annually to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on their releases of these chemicals. The EPA maintains this information in a database called the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), which is available to the public over the Internet.

TRI Reporting Requirements A plant, factory, or other facility must report chemical releases if it has ten or more full-time employees and manufactures, processes, or imports any of the listed chemicals in amounts greater than 25,000 pounds per year—or 10,000 pounds per year if any of the listed chemicals are otherwise used but not incorporated into a ﬁnal product. The TRI classiﬁes the chemicals according to their chemical and physical characteristics and contains information on release location. The TRI reports amounts that are released each year to the air, water, and land, as well as information on chemicals sent to wastemanagement facilities. Air emissions are separated into passive emissions

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TOP TEN TRI CHEMICAL ON-SITE AND OFF-SITE REPORTED RELEASES (IN POUNDS) FOR FACILITIES IN ALL INDUSTRIES, UNITED STATES, 2000 Underground Injection

Chemical

Air

Water

Copper compounds Zinc compounds Hydrochloric acid Manganese compounds Arsenic compounds Lead compounds Nitrate compounds Barium compounds Methanol Ammonia

1,656,106 7,513,386 645,632,582 2,214,810 240,956 1,225,794 336,731 2,850,794 183,176,226 139,047,851

426,419 1,276,151 96,763 5,696,403 166,482 80,510 232,960,319 1,749,324 3,753,931 7,560,654

SOURCE:

1,737,251 22,580,44 54,125 10,829,146 1,809,735 8,512,731 57,203,694 2,099,443 18,353,232 27,335,270

Land 1,346,061,845 828,086,567 15,549 4,048,797,705 469,413,711 328,875,879 13,041,063 243,702,122 1,828,212 5,772,773

Total Onand Off-Site 1,367,338,006 1,037,602,367 647,112,538 479,942,409 476,640,941 357,844,917 317,119,741 299,780,394 208,566,348 184,124,675

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

TRI TOTAL RELEASES BY INDUSTRY, 1998–2000. (DOES NOT INCLUDE PBT CHEMICALS.)

Industry Manufacturing Industries Metal Mining Coal Mining Electric Utilities Chemical Wholesale Distributors Petroleum Terminals/Bulk Storage Hazardous Waste/Solvent Recovery SOURCE:

Total On- and Off-Site Releases, 2000, in Pounds 2,267,118,555 3,310,956,485 15,327,860 1,120,615,348 1,611,790 3,725,152 7,001,138,027

Change 1998–2000, in Pounds and Percentage –154,218,664; –252,183,558; 19,334,956; –9,834,598; 91,350; –786,620; –409,262,569;

–6.4 –7.1 14.4 –0.9 6.0 –17.4 –5.5

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

from storage or production and “stack” or point emissions. Releases to water include the name of the receiving water body. Businesses required to report to TRI have expanded from the original manufacturing facilities and now include manufacturing, metal mining, coal mining, electric utilities that combust coal and/or oil, chemical wholesale distributors, petroleum terminals, bulk-storage facilities, hazardous-waste treatment and disposal facilities, solvent-recovery services, and federal facilities.

PBT Emissions Persistent bioaccumulative toxic (PBT) chemicals are a class of compounds that persist and bioaccumulate in the environment. They have the potential to result in greater exposure to humans and the environment over a longer period of time, making even smaller quantities of these chemicals of concern. In 2000 the TRI was expanded to include new PBT chemicals, and the reporting threshold was lowered for both the newly added chemicals and certain PBT chemicals already on the TRI list. The reporting criteria for most PBT chemicals was lowered to a threshold of one hundred pounds if manufactured, used, or processed. A threshold of ten pounds was established for another subset of PBT chemicals that are highly persistent and highly bioaccumulative, including mercury compounds, pesticides such as chlordane,

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COMPANIES WITH LARGEST EMISSIONS; TOTAL SURFACE WATER DISCHARGES

Companies with Largest Discharges AK Steel Corp., PA BASF Corp., TX AK Steel, IN Vicksburg Chemical Co., MS IBP Inc., NE Smithfield Packing Co., NC SOURCE:

Surface Water Discharges, in Pounds, 2000 28,048,653 21,515,040 12,211,850 7,966,805 6,700,250 5,129,795

Principal Chemical Releases Nitrate Nitrate Nitrate Nitrate Nitrate Nitrate

Compounds Compounds Compounds Compounds Compounds Compounds

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

COMPANIES WITH LARGEST EMISSIONS; TOTAL AIR EMISSIONS

Companies with Largest Emissions Magnesium Corp. of America, UT CP&L Roxboro Steam Electric Plant, NC Reliant Energies Inc., Keystone Power Plant, PA Bowen Steam Electric Plant, GA Lenzing Fibers Corp., TN Gulf Power Co. Crist Plant, FL SOURCE:

Total Air Emissions, in Pounds, 2000 43,932,001 19,247,325 18,460,972 17,807,778 17,345,982 16,621,882

Principal Chemical Releases Chlorine, Hydrochloric Acid Hydrochloric Acid Hydrochloric Acid, Sulfuric Acid Sulfuric Acid, Hydrogen Fluoride Carbon Disulfide Hydrochloric Acid, Sulfuric Acid

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

COMPANIES WITH LARGEST EMISSIONS; TOTAL LAND RELEASES

Companies with Largest Releases Kennecott Utah Copper Mine, UT Red Dog OPS Mine Facility, AK Barrick Goldstrike Mines Inc., NV Newmont Mining Corp., Twin Creeks Mine, NV ASARCO Inc. Ray Complex Mine, AZ Newmont Mining Corp., Carlin, NV SOURCE:

Total Releases to Land, in Pounds, 2000

Principal Chemical Releases

813,758,255 445,322,528 346,539,178 219,922,901 155,098,189 154,157,564

Copper, Zinc, Antimony Cadmium, Lead Arsenic, Manganese, Zinc Arsenic, Antimony Copper Arsenic, Zinc, Antimony

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

heptachlor, methoxychlor, and toxaphene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs). Since dioxins are highly persistent but are produced in extremely small amounts, the threshold for dioxin and dioxin-like compounds was set at 0.1 grams, with the provision that reporting include dioxin and dioxin-like compounds that are present as contaminants in a chemical or that are created during the manufacture of another chemical.

Reporting Trends From 1998 to 2000, total TRI releases by all industries fell by 409.3 million pounds, or more than 5 percent. The largest decrease from 1999 to 2000 occurred in the metal mining industry. S E E A L S O Comprehensive

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Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA); Hazardous Waste; Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Toxics Release Inventory Program.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/tri.

Joan Rothlein

Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), enacted by Congress in 1976, gives the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the responsibility for checking the relative safety of all chemical substances not already covered under other federal laws. The EPA can control or ban a chemical if it poses an unreasonable risk to human or environmental health. Manufacturers must give the EPA information about new chemicals before they are commercially produced or marketed. The EPA then reviews the information and can order further testing to determine, for instance, whether the substance is persistent, carcinogenic, or otherwise acutely toxic. The acute toxicity or short term poisoning effects of chemicals can be evaluated by the LD50 test that determines the lethal dose required to kill ﬁfty percent of test animals, usually rats or mice. Microbial biotechnology products for use in industry have been subject to EPA review under TSCA since 1997. Over 70,000 chemicals were in use in the United States in 2002 according to the TSCA Chemical Substances Inventory. Pesticides, and substances used in cosmetics, food, and drugs are regulated under other federal laws, but many chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), were not subject to review or regulation until TSCA was passed. Studies showing PCBs to be dangerous to human health were an impetus for TSCA. In 1977 the EPA outlawed PCBs and subsequently regulated their disposal with strict safety requirements. Amendments to TSCA in 1986, 1988, and 1992 were aimed at reducing the health threats from asbestos, radon, and lead exposure. The amendments required the EPA to test schools and federal buildings for radon contamination and establish state programs for monitoring and reducing lead exposure levels. The Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Amendment (AHERA) imposed stricter standards on the reduction of asbestos contamination in schools. Any person or company not complying with TSCA can be ﬁned or jailed. Many landlords have been ﬁned and required to remove lead-based paint as a result of TSCA’s enforcement. In 2002 two landlords were also sentenced to prison terms for noncompliance. In Europe regulations for assessing the safety of new chemical substances were established in 1981 and for all existing chemicals in 1993. In 2001 the European Commission proposed a new policy called “Strategy for a Future Chemicals Policy” aimed at determining the environmental risk posed by thousands of chemicals that came on the European market before 1981. S E E A L S O Asbestos; Lead; Radon. Internet Resources EPA’s New Chemical Program Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov/opptintr.

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European Commission Environment Web site. Available from http://www.europa.eu.int/ comm.

Patricia Hemminger

Toxicology Toxicology is the science of poisons, which are sometimes referred to as toxins or toxicants. The former term applies to all natural poisons produced by organisms, such as the botulinum toxin produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum. The latter more generic term includes both natural and anthropogenic (human-made) toxicants like dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT), which is perhaps the most commonly recognized toxicant.

hemoglobin oxygen-carrying protein complex in red blood cells ingest take in through the mouth

metabolize chemically transform within an organism

Even though the botulinum toxin is extremely toxic to humans, and DDT is relatively toxic to insects, it is important to recognize that virtually any element or compound will become toxic at some concentration. For example, iron, which is an essential component of hemoglobin, can cause vomiting, liver damage, and even death if it is ingested in excess. This concept of toxicity was recognized ﬁve centuries ago by the Swiss alchemist and physician Paracelsus (1493–1541), who stated that, “The right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy.” How much of the toxicant an organism receives depends on both the exposure and dose. Exposure is a measure of the amount of a toxicant that comes into contact with the organism through air, water, soil, and/or food. Dose is a measure of the amount of toxicant that comes into contact with the target organ or tissue, within the organism, where it exerts a toxic effect. The dose is largely determined by how effectively the toxicant is absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and eliminated by the body. As a consequence, basic toxicological studies include measurements of the effects of increasing doses of a toxicant on an organism or some component of that organism (e.g., tissue, cell, subcellular structure, or compound). The measurements are commonly plotted as dose–response curves. A dose– response curve typically ranges from relatively low concentrations that do not elicit a toxic effect to higher concentrations that are increasingly toxic. One of the great challenges to the science of toxicology is the prediction and discovery of chronic, sublethal responses. For example, in the 1920s, excessive exposure of workers to tetraethyl lead (the lead in leaded gasoline) in several United States gasoline production facilities caused approximately ﬁfteen deaths, and over three hundred cases of psychosis. Despite this discovery of the apparent hazard of lead in gasoline, and the concerns of many at the time, rigorous scientiﬁc studies were required to demonstrate the subtle, sublethal dangers of chronic lead exposure, including adverse neurological effects in children, which eventually led to the ban of lead additives in gasoline in the United States.

Characterizing Toxicity One measure of response is acute toxicity, which is the amount of a toxicant that will cause an adverse effect within a relatively short period of time (e.g., from instantaneous to within a few days). Another measure of response is chronic toxicity, which is the long-term response to a toxicant. Although the same types of dose–response curves are used to measure the chronic toxicity

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D O SE– R E SP O NS E C U R V E

100 90 80 70 % Mortality

60 50 40 30 LC50

20 10 0 0.1

1

10

100

1000

Dose (mg/kg)

of toxicants, those measurements are more difﬁcult to quantify because the responses are often less absolute and more complex. For example, chronic benzene toxicity causes lung cancer, but it may be years before that benzeneinduced cancer appears, and many other factors may retard the development of that cancer (antagonistic effect), contribute to its development (synergistic effect), or independently cause lung cancer (e.g., smoking cigarettes). Forms of toxicity can also be characterized by the type of adverse response they create. Carcinogens cause cancer, either by the initiation or promotion of an uncontrolled growth of cells. Mutagens cause mutations by altering the DNA sequences of chromosomes. Teratogens cause mutations in the DNA structure of developing fetuses that can result in developmental abnormalities. The latter form of toxicity includes the infamous teratogen thalidomide, which was prescribed as a sedative for pregnant women before it was found to cause severe birth defects in their children.

antagonistic working against synergistic combination of effects greater than the sum of the parts

sedative substance that reduces consciousness or anxiety

Differences in Sensitivities Resolving the adverse effects of a toxicant are further complicated by the variations in those effects in different species. Some species are more sensitive to certain toxicants than others, and the effects of toxicants on different tissues often vary between species. Because such variations occur between humans and rodents, in spite of the similarity (95%) in their DNA, extrapolations of laboratory studies on the effects of toxicants on rats and mice to human health must always take this into account. Moreover, the toxic effects of a pollutant on the gall bladder of humans cannot be determined in studies involving rats because rats do not have gall bladders. There are also relatively large differences in the sensitivities and effects of toxicants between individuals of the same species. Fetuses, neonates, and infants are more sensitive to the neurotoxic effects of lead than older individuals, because lead interferes with the development of the central nervous

neonate newborn neurotoxic harmful to nerve cells

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TOX TOWN A user friendly website, Tox Town http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/main .html has been developed by the National Institutes of Health to provide information on toxic substances likely to be encountered in everyday situations and the health risks associated with them. The site can be searched by clicking on an individual toxic such as mercury, toluene or asbestos to see where it might occur, or by clicking on a location, such as a school building, or drinking water to see what toxics could be encountered. Links to sites describing the health and environmental effects of each toxic substance are easily accessed.

system, which is formed during the ﬁrst few years of life. Finally, healthy individuals are generally less sensitive to pollutants than individuals with weakened immune systems who are less capable of responding to additional threats to their health. Genetics also plays a major role in the sensitivities of individuals. Although some differences have been observed in humans, the most commonly recognized genetic differences in toxic responses have been observed in other species. These include the acquired genetic resistance of some mosquitoes to DDT and some bacteria to antibiotics. However, the development of molecular techniques to genotype humans has now made it possible to identify individual sensitivities to different toxicants.

Risk Assessment Another important aspect of toxicology is risk assessment, which is a characterization of the potential adverse effects resulting from exposure to a toxicant. Risk is the probability of an adverse outcome. The basic steps involved in risk assessment are the identiﬁcation of the magnitude of the hazard, which is the potential for harm of a toxicant, and the resultant characterization of risk, which is the probability of realizing that harm. The results of risk assessments are routinely used by regulators to establish acceptable concentrations of toxicants in the environment.

Environmental Toxicology Environmental toxicology is a relatively recent ﬁeld that examines the occurrence of, exposure to, and form of toxicants in the environment, and the comparative effects of these toxicants on different organisms. DDT, for example, is a pesticide that has been used to control mosquitoes responsible for spreading malaria. Although this pesticide is effective in combating the spread of malaria, DDT and its chemical products have also been found to affect reproduction in birds by causing egg shell thinning, and in other organisms (e.g., alligators) by altering their estrogen balance. Consequently, studies of toxicology now extend well beyond dose–response assays of toxicants on speciﬁc target organisms to analyses of their impact on entire ecosystems. In addition to anthropogenic toxicants like pesticides, environmental toxicologists also study naturally occurring toxicants, such as metals and metalloids. Selenium, for example, is a naturally occurring element that is essential at low concentrations in the diet of many animals. Excessive intake of selenium, however, can be toxic to organisms. In the 1980s scientists working at Kesterson Slough in the San Joaquin Valley, California, observed a large number of deformed and dying waterfowl. The slough was part of a water project designed to receive and evaporate excess irrigation water and remove pesticides from the highly productive agriculture regions in the San Joaquin Valley. The observed effects on the waterfowl were eventually linked to an excess of selenium in the water. The selenium accumulated in the slough because the soils and runoff from the valley were naturally rich in selenium, and because evaporation in the slough further increased its concentration in the water. In this example, it was discovered that a rare, but naturally occurring and essential element was unwittingly concentrated to toxic levels in the environment by human activity. S E E A L S O Cancer; DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane); Hazardous Waste; Health, Human; Lead; Risk.

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Bibliography Crosby, Donald G. (1998). Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. New York: Oxford University Press. Needleman, H.L. (1998). “Clair Patterson and Robert Kehoe: Two Views of Lead Toxicity.” Environmental Research 78(2):79–85. Ohlendorf, H.M.; Hoffman, D.J.; Daiki, M.K.; and Aldrich, T.W. (1986). “Embryonic Mortality and Abnormalities of Aquatic Birds—Apprent Impacts of Selenium from Irrigation Drainwater.” Science of the Total Environment 52(44). Williams, P.L.; James, R.C.; and Roberts, S.M., eds. (2000). Principles of Toxicology: Environmental and Industrial Applications, 2nd edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Internet Resource Society of Toxicology. Available from http://www.toxicology.org.

A. Russell Flegal and Christopher H. Conaway

Tragedy of the Commons The term tragedy of the commons was coined by Garrett Hardin who hypothesized in 1968 that, as the size of the human population increased, there would be mounting pressures on resources at the local and global levels, leading to overexploitation and ruin. Partly the tragedy would occur because some “commoners” (or users of common resources) would reap the full beneﬁt of a particular course of action while incurring only a small cost, while others would have to share the cost but receive none of the beneﬁts. The classic examples of such overexploitation are grazing, ﬁshing, and logging, where grasslands, ﬁsh stocks, and trees have declined from overuse. Hardin suggested that governmental intervention and laws could become the major method of solving such overexploitation. More recently, the concept of the commons has been expanded to include air, water, the Internet, and medical care. Much controversy has developed over whether commoners are caught in an inevitable cycle of overexploitation and destruction of resources, or whether the wise use and management of natural resources are possible. Although many examples of overexploitation exist, particularly in ﬁsheries, Elinor Ostrom, Bonnie McCay, Joanna Burger, and others have argued that there are also examples of local groups effectively managing commonly held resources, and that such local control requires accepted rules, with appropriate sanctions and some governmental control to prevent exploitation by outside interests. That is, a ﬁshing cooperative can succeed only if outside ﬁshermen agree to adhere to existing rules or laws. In an age with increasing populations, understanding how different societies and groups have managed a common pool of resources allows us to apply successful methods in managing these resources. S E E A L S O Ehrlich, Paul; Limits to Growth, The; Malthus, Thomas Robert. Bibliography Burger, Joanna, and Gochfeld, Michael. (1998). “The Tragedy of the Commons—30 Years Later.” Environment 41:4–13, 26–28. Ostrom, Elinor; Burger, Joanna; Field, Christopher B.; Norgaard, Richard B.; and Policansky, David. (1999). “Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges.” Science 284:278–282.

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Internet Resource Hardin, Garret. (1968). “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162:12–13. Also available from http://dieoff.org/page95.htm.

Joanna Burger

Treaties and Conferences Treaties, conventions, protocols, and conferences are tools for creating and shaping international law, and for establishing sanctions in the event of noncompliance. A treaty is a compact, or contract, made between or among sovereign nations, involving matters of each country’s public interest. It has the force of law within each signing nation. Treaties are the formal conclusion of the negotiating process rather than an intermediate step. Ideally, they include both the formal commitment of nations and mechanisms for enforcement, although many international environmental treaties fall short on the adequacy of enforcement mechanisms. A convention is also an international agreement, although it often has a narrower scope and is less politically motivated than a treaty. In addition, a convention may consist of agreed-upon arrangements that precede a formal treaty or that serve as the basis for an anticipated treaty. A protocol is an agreed-upon document or instrument that provides the template for subsequent diplomatic transactions, serving, in a manner of speaking, as a ﬁrst draft that is subject to further reﬁnement. Conferences are diplomatic meetings conducted in order to agree upon policy statements in lieu of formal, and more time-consuming, international negotiations. In addition to such bilateral or even multilateral agreements between nations, international organizations may create mechanisms for examining and resolving international disputes and other issues. Most notably, the United Nations, through its Environmental Programme, and joined by the World Meteorological Organization, was instrumental in establishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. The IPCC created working groups and special committees that assessed the scientiﬁc information related to various components of climate change, including, speciﬁcally, data regarding the emissions of major greenhouse gases, analyzed that information in environmental and socioeconomic contexts, and then formulated realistic response strategies for the management of climate change. The IPCC’s analysis and recommendations thus became the template for subsequent attempts to draft international agreements. The Climate Change Convention, discussed below, was one such result. These various tools and arrangements are unique to international law, which imposes constraints not typically present in national, or “domestic,” law. International law has traditionally differed from the domestic law of nation-states in that it is fundamentally voluntary, notwithstanding the fact that political or military pressures may have prompted the parties to negotiate or enter into any compacts in the ﬁrst place. Hence, ultimate enforcement, short of political or military responses, can be problematic. The contrast with a nation’s own regulatory law is instructive. When a country enacts and enforces laws that have an effect within its boundaries or

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with respect to its citizens or other residents, it does so by virtue of its internationally recognized sovereign power to coercively regulate within its own boundaries. However, with the possible exception of an evolving European Union, no supranational authority exists to regulate conduct among countries. Thus, treaties and other international agreements historically evolved as a means of controlling the behavior of nations and, by less direct means, their businesses and citizens. These compacts then operate between nations at a level that traditionally was often beyond the realm of domestic regulation. As such, they have traditionally been more akin to contracts, into which countries voluntarily enter, rather than manifest regulatory authority. However, in recent decades, particularly on matters where international environmental law and trade law intersect, there has been an interesting convergence. The distinctions between these contractual remedies that characterize treaties and the enforcement remedies that characterize regulations in which a tribunal issues supposedly binding decisions on disputes, have been merging in interesting ways. For instance, the World Trade Organization (WTO), of which the U.S. is a member, and whose rule the U.S. has agreed to submit, ruled against efforts by the United States to protect dolphins and sea turtles. The WTO decision had included trade sanctions, and found that such unilateral American efforts violated the WTO’s free trade rules. Hence, the U.S. was faced with a choice between submitting to this suprasanctional “regulation,” supposedly binding, or pursuing conservation-oriented treaty-making that was inconsistent with some of the tenets of free trade.

Hiroshi Oki, Japanese Environment Minister, addressing the final plenary session of the United Nations Global Warming Conference, Kyoto, Japan, December 1–10, 1997. (Photograph by Aizawa Toshiyuki. Hulton/Archive. Reproduced by permission.)

Treaty making extends to all aspects of international dealings. It is most often associated with a declaration of war or the end of an armed conﬂict, or the allocation of resources between or among countries, with those two broad areas historically related. Interestingly, international environmental treaties and law have usually addressed resource conservation rather than resource

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exploitation, although, naturally, various parties may seek to maximize their use of resources within the scope of international environmental treaties. In terms of transnational pollution, international sensitivities have evolved that recognize the drastic regional and potentially global impact of uncontrolled or poorly regulated disposal practices. Thus, it is also interesting that although treaties traditionally acknowledged the political and jurisdictional sovereignty of nation-states, present international environmental treaty making effectively underscores the geographic and climate-related commonality of nation-states. Therefore, in an era when globalism is much discussed as an emerging economic paradigm, environmental factors highlight the global consequences of many environmental events and policies formerly viewed through only local or domestic legal prisms. Perhaps as a consequence, treaties and conventions are assuming signiﬁcantly wider reach, and are entered into, or participated in, by many more numerous parties than was historically typical in international law. Despite concerns about the ultimate effectiveness of international environmental law developed by means of treaties and other agreements, recent history provides the basis for some optimism. As of 2002 approximately 140 multinational agreements on numerous international environmental issues (or including environmental provisions) have been reached. Preliminary studies indicate that notwithstanding weak or even nonexistent enforcement mechanisms, the general trend has been one of compliance. However, it has also been pointed out that nations often enter such agreements when it appears the price of their cooperation will be low, with the result that many such agreements are successfully negotiated by only minimally addressing the particular environmental problems at hand. Modern treaty making has also demonstrated a greater tendency to accommodate equitable goals, although the ability to effectively resolve disputes on the basis of common principles has not been an easy matter. The best treaties, as with contracts, are pragmatic. And, of course, all is not equitable. The usual methods used to inﬂuence other parties still prevail. The inﬂuence of the United States is a case in point on how national attributes may affect the outcome of international environmental agreements. It is hard to generalize about the direction of U.S. policy. The economic clout of the United States, especially the manner in which American business interests mesh with other national economies, and the sheer dimension of U.S. consumption of the world’s resources, continue to inﬂuence the outcome of international environmental negotiations. Recent ofﬁcial U.S. policy has demonstrated a reluctance to enter into agreements that would require a signiﬁcant reduction in resource or energy use by or within the United States. On the other hand, U.S. environmental activists and national policy have often taken the lead in highlighting signiﬁcant international environmental issues. Nongovernmental organizations, such as Environmental Defense, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Sierra Club, all headquartered in the United States, not only assert a global presence but often shape both international and U.S. domestic policies. The manner in which the United States formulates its own environmental policies has especially complicated its international role on environmental matters. With power divided between a powerful presidency and a strong but often fragmented legislative branch, with various leaders elected in different regions from different political parties at different times, a balance on domes-

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tic issues may be reached, but often at the expense of a coherent and consistent foreign policy. This dynamic, resulting in a diffuse and often contradictory U.S. voice on international environmental issues, still requires some development in the relatively young ﬁeld of international environmental law. International agreements in recent years have paralleled the recognition of international environmental problems, even if they have not always effectively mitigated those issues. Early examples include the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which enumerates speciﬁc compliance mechanisms and has generally been successful in banning the international trade of endangered species or products derived from such species; the Intergovernmental Conference on the Dumping of Wastes at Sea, also known as the London Dumping Convention, which banned the maritime dumping of radioactive wastes and spurred enactment of the U.S. Ocean Dumping Ban Act; the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat, also known as the Ramsar Convention, which addressed the loss of migratory waterfowl habitat. More recent agreements include the Montréal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, known generally as the Montréal Protocol, which entails formal compliance mechanisms and has enjoyed signiﬁcant success in reducing the use of CFCs (chloroﬂurocarbons) despite the absence of actual sanctions; the 1994 protocol to the 1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution on Further Reduction of Sulphur Emissions, known generally as the Sulfur Protocol, largely directed against acid rain, for which compliance provisions have been negotiated; and the previously mentioned Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which matured into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, effective in 1994, now known as the Climate Change Convention. Other regional and global environmental crises have been addressed under the auspices of the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development, including the Convention on Biological Diversity; the Convention to Combat Desertiﬁcation in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertiﬁcation; and the Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, also known as the Rotterdam Convention. This latter convention sought to transfer the responsibility for regulating hazardous materials trade to exporting nations rather than leaving regulatory control only to importing nations that, for various reasons, might be ineffective regulators. Most recently, the Kyoto Protocol has been the subject of much negotiation and perhaps even greater controversy. An outgrowth of the Climate Change Convention, it seeks the global reduction of greenhouse gases below 1990 levels by targeted dates and provides for an international emissions trading program. The actual reductions proposed are not evenly distributed, and equitable factors have been cited as the justiﬁcation for the reductions required of, and exemptions afforded to, particular nations. Although the need for an effective mechanism to reduce hydrocarbon emissions as a means of addressing incipient global warming has been widely acknowledged, the best mechanisms for achieving this goal have been sharply debated. The Kyoto Protocol is not yet in force, and the United States is one of several large industrialized nations that have not signed it. S E E A L S O Agenda 21; Earth Summit;

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Laws and Regulations, International; Montréal Protocol; NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement); Precautionary Principle. Kevin Anthony Reilly

Trichloroethylene TSCA

U

See Dry Cleaning

See Toxic Substances Control Act

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Established in 1775, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (otherwise known as the corps) is the world’s largest public, engineering, design, and construction management agency. The corps obtains its authority from the secretary of the army and is a division serving the chief of engineers within the Department of the Army. Funded by Congress, the corps’ primary responsibilities include the management and execution of civil works programs in or adjacent to the nation’s waterways (e.g., rivers, harbors, and wetlands), administration of environmental laws to protect and preserve these waterways, and the review of applications and issuance of permits for proposed projects affecting such bodies of water. As part of its responsibility, the corps assesses the consequences of proposed activities on water bodies, balancing environmental and developmental need and concerns. This often brings environmental and business groups into conﬂict such as in the case of dredging. Environmental groups oppose dredging due to its adverse effects on aquatic species whereas industry asserts that such dredging reduces the costs of river transportation by allowing larger ships to pass through waterways with fuller cargo loads. The corps reviews and issues permits under the Clean Water Act or Rivers and Harbor Act, ensuring that proposed activities do not adversely affect or impede U.S. waterways. Under the Clean Water Act, the corps primarily issues permits for the discharge of excavated material or ﬁll, whereas under the Rivers and Harbor Act, the agency issues permits for the construction of structures such as bridges, dams, dikes, or causeways. With respect to both laws, the corps considers reasonable and alternative locations and methods for a proposed project, potential effects on private and public uses, and the need for a speciﬁed project. During the past several years, however, senators have introduced legislation such as the Corps of Engineers Modernization and Improvement Act of 2002, in an effort to reform the corps’ project review and authorization procedures. These procedures have been criticized for allowing a number of projects to go forward that have had few economic beneﬁts and high environmental costs. Agencies similar in purpose to the corps exist in countries such as Australia, Britain, and Canada, but they function on a much smaller scale in comparison. Bibliography National Research Council, Committee to Assess the U.S. Army Corps of Water Resources Planning Procedures. (1999). New Directions in Water Resources Planning for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Internet Resource Services for the Public. Available at http://www.usace.army.mil/public.html #environmental.

Robert F. Gruenig

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U.S. Coast Guard Established in 1790 as the Revenue Marine Service but named as such after combination with the U.S. Lifesaving Service, the U.S. Coast Guard provides support for the protection and preservation of the United States’ marine and natural resources. Although a branch of the armed forces, the agency operates under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation during times of peace. The agency is responsible for managing the nation’s seas and coastal waters, with environmental issues primarily handled by two ofﬁces: Marine Safety, Security, and Environmental Protection, and Law Enforcement and Defense Operations. Two primary agency functions are the enforcement of environmental laws (e.g., Clean Water Act, Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act, and Oil Pollution Act) and the provision of an emergency response system to mitigate the release of pollution (e.g., garbage discharges, hazardous substance releases, and oil spills) into seas and coastal waters. With respect to enforcement, the agency enforces U.S. environmental laws along with all treaties and international agreements that allow the Coast Guard to assess penalties for violations under the law. With respect to its emergency response system, the agency is proactive by serving as a lead agency under the National Oil and Hazardous Pollution Plan by coordinating federal, state, local, and responsible party resources in conducting spill response efforts in the containment, removal and disposal of oil, and hazardous substance discharges in the country’s coastal zone areas. The agency also assesses movements of potential pollutants (e.g., discharges and spills), accounts for wind and ocean currents, and evaluates potential chemistry changes due to those caused by evaporation, mixing, and sunlight. S E E A L S O Clean Water Act; Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act; Petroleum. Bibliography Goldsteen, Joel B. (1999). The ABCs of Environmental Regulation. Rockville, MD: Government Institutes. Internet Resource Marine Safety, Security and Environmental Protection. Available from http:// www.uscg.mil/hq/g-m/gmhome.htm.

Robert F. Gruenig

U.S. Department of Agriculture Established in 1862, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (DOA) works with landowners to maintain the productive capacity of their land while helping them to protect soil, water, forests and other natural resources. The department conducts a large part of this work through two of its agencies: the Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). The Forest Service is charged with the oversight of 191 million acres of federal land. In advancing its pollution-control efforts, the Forest Service relies on a number of practices to inhibit air, land, and water pollution, including erosion and ﬂood control, timber-harvesting methods to protect water bodies, and the minimization of pollution created by natural resource extraction. It also invokes a number of laws (the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and National Forest Management Act) to penalize individuals or industries operating contrary to its efforts. The NRCS oversees pollution management of

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U.S. agricultural and range lands. Such management is conducted cooperatively with farmers, ranchers, and landowners who utilize technical assistance provided by the NRCS to address such things as the environmental effects of pesticides on agricultural and ranch lands. Among the programs that the NRCS has jurisdiction over are the Natural Resources Inventory, Rural Abandoned Mines, and Wetlands Reserve Program. A number of countries, including Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and Spain, have taken the DOA’s lead in conducting similar pollution control activities. S E E A L S O Agriculture; Pesticides. Internet Resources U.S. Department of Agriculture Web site. Available at www.usda.gov/energyandenvironment/faq.html. U.S. Forest Service Web site. Available at www.fs.fed.us.

Robert F. Gruenig

U.S. Department of the Interior Established in 1849, the U.S. Department of the Interior has primary management and conservation responsibility for all federal lands and minerals, national parks, water resources, and wildlife refuges. Its secretary reports directly to the president, and the department’s responsibilities are divided among a number of agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Mines, Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife Service, Geological Survey, National Park Service, and Ofﬁce of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. Among its primary objectives are the wise use of land and natural resources, the protection of animal and plant species, the promotion of environmental values among U.S. citizens, and environmental protection balanced with mineral resource needs. Its responsibilities include the coordination of its agencies’ activities, data collection and analysis concerning natural resources, and minimization and mitigation of mining and other human activities adversely affecting public lands. Serving in a complementary role to the department’s management responsibilities, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency enforces a number of environmental laws (e.g., the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and Wilderness Act) which help to protect the resources under the department’s jurisdiction. S E E A L S O Mining; National Park Service. Bibliography Goldsteen, Joel B. (1999). The ABCs of Environmental Regulation. Rockville, MD: Government Institutes. Internet Resource “Orientation to the U.S. Department of the Interior.” Available at http:// www.doiu.nbc.gov/orientation.

Robert F. Gruenig

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the primary regulatory agency of the federal government responsible for pollution control. EPA’s

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A worker is undergoing a decontamination process. (U.S. EPA. Reproduced by permission.)

stated mission is to protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment—air, water, and land—on which life depends. The EPA was created in 1970 as an outgrowth of the burgeoning environmental movement in the United States during the 1960s. President Richard M. Nixon signed the Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970, the legal document that established the EPA. Although at that time a number of federal environmental programs already existed, they were scattered throughout several different federal agencies. For example, the Federal Water Quality Administration of the Department of the Interior was responsible for certain water pollution programs, the Department of Agriculture was responsible for the regulation of pesticides, and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare was responsible for air pollution and solid waste management. The creation of the EPA was an attempt to consolidate these environmental programs in a coordinated way under the control of one agency with clear-cut responsibility for environmental protection. The EPA opened its doors for business on December 2, 1970, less than eight months after the ﬁrst Earth Day celebration.

Organization and Administration The EPA is one of many independent agencies of the executive branch of the U.S. government. It derives its authority to carry out pollution-control

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programs through statutes passed by Congress. Although there have been several unsuccessful efforts over the years, especially during the late 1980s and early 1990s, to make the EPA a cabinet-level department, it remains an independent agency. EPA’s administrator is appointed by the president, but must be conﬁrmed by the Senate. Although not a member of the cabinet, the administrator is directly responsible to the president. The EPA has a number of assistant administrators who oversee ofﬁces with responsibility for EPA’s primary programs, including air and radiation; enforcement and compliance assurance; international affairs; prevention, pesticides, and toxic substances; research and development; solid waste and emergency response; and water.

Seal of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA. Reproduced by permission.)

In addition, the EPA has ten regional ofﬁces throughout the United States. Each of these is responsible for working with the states in its region to implement and enforce EPA’s regulations. Within these various ofﬁces and regional centers, the EPA carries out wide-ranging duties related to environmental protection, including: • Researching the causes and effects of speciﬁc environmental problems • Monitoring environmental conditions • Determining how to best regulate activities causing environmental harm • Setting speciﬁc standards for particular pollutants of concern • Administering environmental permitting programs • Providing ﬁnancial and technical assistance to states • Coordinating and supporting research activities of states and other private and public organizations • Providing oversight of states that have assumed responsibility for federal environmental program • Enforcing environmental laws The EPA receives its funding through congressional appropriation. In 1970 EPA’s annual budget was slightly over $1 billion. In 2002 its annual budget was in excess of $7.3 billion. EPA’s workforce has grown from approximately 4,000 employees in 1970 to more than 17,000 employees in 2002.

Activities and Accomplishments The EPA is responsible for implementing and enforcing more than twentyfour major environmental statutes. Some of the most signiﬁcant environmental statutes include the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (Superfund); the Toxic Substances Control Act; the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act; and the Safe Drinking Water Act. The EPA has achieved many signiﬁcant successes in implementing these programs. One of the agency’s earliest accomplishments was banning the pesticide DDT in 1972 after it was found to accumulate in the food chain, where it threatened wildlife populations. This ban, enacted fewer than two years after the formation of the EPA, had particular signiﬁcance because the environmental risks associated with DDT, about which Rachel Carson warned

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the public about in her 1962 book Silent Spring, were in large part publicized and disseminated by the environmental movement. Some of EPA’s other early accomplishments include the 1973 ban on lead in gasoline; funding to build an advanced network of sewage-treatment facilities to prevent raw sewage from ﬂowing into the nation’s waters; establishing discharge limitations for industrial water pollution under the Clean Water Act; the establishment of health-based standards to protect the public water supply under the Safe Drinking Water Act; the 1978 ban on the use of chloroﬂuorocarbons (CFCs) as propellants in most aerosol cans to protect the ozone layer; and the 1980 establishment of the Superfund program for hazardous waste cleanup. In the 1990s some of EPA’s major accomplishments included the annual release of information on the location and nature of toxic chemical releases in communities throughout the country through the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI); the 1990 establishment of the ﬁrst public–private partnership to reduce industrial emissions under the Pollution Prevention Act; obtaining the largest environmental criminal damage settlement in history in 1991 (totaling over $1 billion) for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill; and establishing pollution-control standards under the Clean Air Act to reduce toxic air pollutants by 90 percent. During this same decade, in response to the rapid development of biotechnology products, the EPA established new regulatory programs to address the risks from the release of genetically modiﬁed organisms into the environment. In addition, one of EPA’s most signiﬁcant roles remains that of enforcer of the nation’s environmental laws. In 1997 alone, the EPA levied nearly $170 million in administrative penalties, and referred 278 criminal cases to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for prosecution. In that same year the EPA referred 426 civil cases to the DOJ and assessed $95 million in civil penalties.

Relationship to Other Environmental Agencies Although the EPA is the primary federal agency responsible for environmental protection in the United States, there are several other federal agencies that bear some responsibility for environmental protection in speciﬁed areas. The EPA is primarily concerned with regulatory programs, such as pollution-control programs, designed to protect human health and the environment. Other federal agencies are responsible for other types of programs, such as the management of public lands and natural resources and the protection of threatened and endangered species. In addition to other federal agencies with environmental responsibility, virtually every one of the ﬁfty states has an agency responsible for pollution control. The type and extent of state regulation vary widely. The EPA has delegated the majority of federal environmental laws it administers to state environmental agencies. However, when the EPA delegates a program to a state, it retains oversight authority over that program. Outside the United States, many other developing countries, particularly those in the West, have agencies responsible for environmental protection that are very similar in scope and structure to the EPA. For example, Germany, France, and Great Britain all have national environmental agencies with primary responsibility for the regulation of air and water pollution and public and hazardous waste disposal. Other countries have taken somewhat different approaches. For example, in Japan, although a national Environmental

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“It seemed to me important to demonstrate to the public that the government was capable of being responsive to their expressed concerns; namely, that we would do something about the environment. Therefore, it was important for us to advocate strong environmental compliance, back it up, and do it; to actually show we were willing to take on the large institutions in the society which hadn’t been paying much attention to the environment.” —William D. Ruckelshaus, on his expectations when named the first EPA Administrator in December 1970.

Agency was established in 1971, the national government initially did not play an active role in environmental regulation. Instead, many of Japan’s large cities developed their own environmental protection programs. Rather than rely on formal laws and regulations, these cities sought to achieve environmental protection through agreements between the local governments and industry there. The pollution-control agreements resulting in environmental protection within Japan stand in contrast to the regulatory systems of many Western countries.

Conclusion During its existence, despite its numerous successes and accomplishments, EPA often has been the target of criticism, both by industries asserting that EPA’s regulations are too stringent and are imposing too great an economic cost, and by environmentalists who claim that EPA is not doing enough to protect public health and the environment. Despite these debates, public opinion polls consistently show a strong support for environmental protection programs. Nevertheless, controversy continues over the appropriate direction and scope of EPA’s speciﬁc regulatory programs. S E E A L S O Agencies, Regulatory; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Environment Canada; Environment Mexico; U.S. Coast Guard. Bibliography Antista, James V.; Boardman, Dorothy Lowe; Cloud, Thomas A.; et al. (2001). “Federal, State, and Local Environmental Control Agencies.” In Treatise on Florida Environmental and Land Use Law, Vol. 1. Tallahassee, FL: The Florida Bar. Carson, Rachel. (1962). Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifﬂin. Ferrey, Steven. (2001). Environmental Law: Examples and Explanations, 2nd edition. New York: Aspen Publishers. Lovei, Magda, and Weiss, Charles, Jr. (1998). Management and Institutions in OECD Countries: Lessons from Experience. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Moya, Olga L., and Fono, Andrew L. (2001). Federal Environmental Law: The User’s Guide, 2nd edition. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company. Rodgers, William H., Jr. (1994). Environmental Law, 2nd edition. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1995/1996). Information Resource Management. Access EPA 220-B-95-004. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce. Internet Resource Government Institutes. (1994). “How EPA Works: A Guide to EPA Organization and Functions.” Rockville, MD. Available from http://www.epa.gov/html.

Mary Jane Angelo

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Established in 1927, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) protects public health by guarding against impure and unsafe foods, drugs, cosmetics, and other potential hazards. The FDA carries out this role through regulation, testing, studies, and consumer advisories. In addition, the FDA actively enforces a number of laws, including the Food Quality Protection Act and Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act, to protect the public against unsafe foods and other products. Foods can be adversely affected by dioxins,

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mercury, and lead that are ingested or absorbed by, or adhere to animals and plants intended for human consumption. The FDA takes the necessary measures to ensure that these substances do not make the food supply unsafe. It monitors dairy and seafood products for dioxin residues created by fuel burning and material incineration. With respect to mercury, the FDA tests for its bioaccumulation in ﬁsh because fetuses and infants are especially sensitive to and can be adversely affected by its presence. Lead, existing in food cans (often imported from foreign countries), plumbing, solder, and brass faucets, has led to the FDA’s establishment of a contaminants branch in the ofﬁce of plant and dairy foods and beverages and the creation of a test kit to screen for the presence of lead. S E E A L S O Dioxin; Lead; Mercury. Bibliography Parisian, Suzanne. (2001). FDA Inside and Out. Front Royal, VA: Fast Horse Press. Internet Resource “Dioxins: FDA Strategy for Monitoring, Method Development, and Reducing Human Exposure.” Available at http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/dioxstra.html.

Robert F. Gruenig

U.S. Geological Survey Established as part of the Department of the Interior in 1879 and funded by Congress, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) provides support to federal agencies (e.g., the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA, and the U.S. Coast Guard) in the form of useful information for decision-making purposes concerning the management of U.S. environmental and natural resources. As part of this support, the USGS examines the relationship between humans and the environment by conducting data collection, longterm research assessments, and ecosystem analyses, and providing forecast changes and their implications. One example of this support is the provision of information about earthquake and seismic activities that is used to assess the potential impact of such activities on water quality. In addition to its federal agency support, the USGS also manages some of the following programs that address the problems of environmental pollution: (1) coastal and marine geology program; (2) contaminants program; (3) energy program; (4) ﬁsheries and aquatic resources; and (5) global change/wetland ecology program. These external support activities and internal programs have been similarly adopted by countries such as Australia, Britain, Finland, and Japan, although not to the same degree as provided by the USGS. S E E A L S O Environmental Protection Agency; Interior Department, United States; National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); U.S. Coast Guard. Bibliography Natural Research Council, Committee on Geosciences, Environment and Resources. (2001). Future Roles and Opportunities for the U.S. Geological Survey. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Internet Resource Coastal and Marine Geology Program Site. Available from http://marine.usgs.gov.

Robert F. Gruenig

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Ultraviolet Radiation

Ultraviolet Radiation

incident solar sun energy that hits a particular spot

suppression reduction in or prevention of an effect

Ultraviolet (UV) radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation that lies between visible light and x rays in its energy and wavelength. It is a component of the radiation that reaches the Earth from the sun. The broad UV band, having wavelengths between 190 nanometers (nm) and 400 nm, is conventionally divided into three parts: UV-A or near-UV (315 to 400 nm), UVB or mid-UV (280 to 315 nm), and UV-C or far-UV (190 to 280 nm). Much of the incident solar UV radiation is absorbed by gases in the earth’s atmosphere and never reaches the earth’s surface. This is fortunate, because UV radiation can chemically alter important biological molecules, including proteins and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and thereby cause damage to living systems. The most familiar effect on humans is sunburn, which is the manifestation of UV’s damage to outer skin cells. Long-term effects of excessive UV exposure include skin cancer, eye damage (cataracts), and suppression of the immune system. Among the atmospheric gases that are the major absorbers of UV radiation is ozone (O3), which lies predominantly in the upper atmospheric region known as the stratosphere. Stratospheric ozone is particularly important in absorbing UV-B radiation. A current environmental issue concerns the depletion of stratospheric ozone (the ozone layer) by human-made chemicals such as chloroﬂuorocarbons (CFCs) and halons. With even small percentages of ozone depletion, more UV-B radiation reaches the surface of the earth and the harmful effects of UV increase. S E E A L S O CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons); Halon; Ozone. Bibliography World Meteorological Organization. (2003). Scientiﬁc Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2002. Global Ozone Research and Monitoring Project, Report No. 47. Geneva: Author. Internet Resource NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division Web site. “Ultraviolet Radiation.” Available from http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/Ozone/radiation.html. United Nations Environment Programme. (1998). “Environmental Effects of Ozone Depletion 1998 Assessment.” In the Global Change Research Information Ofﬁce Web site. Available from http://www.gcrio.org/ozone/toc.html. World Meteorological Organization. “UV Radiation Page.” Available from http:// www.srrb.noaa.gov/UV.

Christine A. Ennis

Underground Storage Tank groundwater the supply of freshwater found beneath the Earth’s surface includes; aquifers, which supply wells and springs drinking water water used or with the potential to be used for human consumption

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Leaking underground storage tanks (LUSTs) containing hazardous liquids, primarily petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene, or oil have contaminated the groundwater and drinking water of thousands of communities across the United States. Following the boom in automobile sales after World War II, gasoline stations mushroomed across the county to meet the demand for personal mobility. At these new stations, gasoline was stored underground in tanks made of bare steel, which were not protected from corrosion—the oxidation, or rusting, of other metals as well as iron metal in steel that can cause metals to

FOULING THE WATER Gasoline and its additives, leaking from underground storage tanks, threaten the drinking water in residential wells. At greatest risk res in Bergen County are Wyckoff, Midland Park, Glen Rock, and Ridgewood, because all their water comes from wells.

gro well

Residential groundwater well

Spille Spilled gasoline ne

SOURCE: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Geological Survey.

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Underground Storage Tank

crack or disintegrate and leak. The average life expectancy of steel tanks installed in the 1950s and 1960s was thirty to ﬁfty years. This statistic suggests that petroleum products have been leaking from these tanks, spread throughout the country, since the early 1980s. By 2001, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was dealing with cleanups at 379,243 LUST sites in the United States.

unsaturated capable of dissolving more solute, i.e., water water table the level of water in the soil volatile any substance that evaporates readily

maximum contaminant level in water: the maximum permissible level of a contaminant in water delivered to any user of a public system; MCLs are enforceable standards

carcinogen any substance that can cause or aggravate cancer

biodegradation decomposition due to the action of bacteria and other organisms

remediation cleanup or other methods used to remove or contain a toxic spill or hazardous materials from a Superfund site or for the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response program

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Corrosion usually causes tanks to leak slowly. Leaks from older tanks are often difﬁcult to detect because inventory control is imprecise. Once released from a tank, gasoline sinks through unsaturated soil and, because gasoline is less dense than water, ﬂoats on the surface of the water table. Because most components of gasoline are fairly volatile—they readily become a vapor at a relatively low temperature—leaks often go undetected until the vapors are present at the ground’s surface. In addition to the risk to water supplies, leaking gasoline also presents risk of ﬁre and explosion when vapors from leaking tanks can travel through sewer lines and soils into buildings. Because nearly half of all Americans depend on groundwater for their drinking water, leaking underground storage tanks represent a signiﬁcant public health threat. The most hazardous components of petroleum products are the BTEX compounds—benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes. Benzene is the most hazardous of these compounds due to the risk of cancer from drinking and bathing in water containing benzene. The maximum contaminant level set by the EPA is 5 parts per billion (ppb). Another potentially hazardous compound in gasoline is methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE). Ironically, MTBE is added to gasoline to combat air pollution by making the fuel burn cleaner. At concentrations as low as 20 ppb, MTBE makes drinking water unﬁt for human consumption. (This assessment is based on standards that correlate unﬁtness with the taste and odor left in the water by MTBE.) MTBE is currently classiﬁed as a potential human carcinogen, but there is no maximum contaminant level for MTBE in drinking water. As many as 9,000 community water wells in thirty-one states may be affected by MTBE contamination, and many states are phasing out its use in gasoline. Once LUSTs are identiﬁed and the extent of soil and groundwater contamination is determined, remediation can include removal of the leaking tanks, the contaminated soil, and the contaminants from the groundwater. Tank and contaminated soil removal is accomplished by excavation. Removal of groundwater contaminants is accomplished by the suction pumping of gasoline ﬂoating on the water table by air stripping, a process in which air is pumped through the water to cause the volatile compounds to evaporate, and by natural attenuation, the biodegradation of contaminants by microorganisms. Remediating contaminated groundwater can take decades, and some waters will never be made safe enough to drink. Dozens of communities have had to ﬁnd alternative sources of drinking water because of gasoline contamination. The primary responsibility for the licensing, operation, and regulation of underground storage tanks (USTs) and the cleanup of LUSTs falls to the state. Most states fund remediation of LUST sites through licensing fees and surcharges on most petroleum products. The EPA oversees the state programs and augments their remediation efforts through grants to support

Unintended Consequences

LUST program stafﬁng, and through direct assistance with emergency responses and cleanup. To prevent future problems, the EPA established UST standards in 1988 and gave tank owners ten years to upgrade or replace old tanks. New tanks must have corrosion protection and improved leak-detection systems. Nearly 1.5 million USTs and LUSTs have been closed. S E E A L S O Petroleum; Superfund; Water Pollution. Bibliography American Petroleum Institute. (1989). “Recommended Practices on Underground Petroleum Storage Tank Management.” RP 1650. Washington, D.C.: Author. American Society for Testing and Materials. (1998). “Standard Guide for Performing Evaluations of Underground Storage Tank Systems for Operational Conformance with 40 CFR, Part 280 Regulations.” Report ASTM E 1990-98. West Conshohocken, PA: ASTM. Internet Resources Ofﬁce of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. (1998). “Technical Standards and Corrective Action Requirements for Owners and Operators of Underground Storage Tanks (Section 610 Review).” 63 FR 22709. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Also available from http://www.epa.gov/swerust1. Ofﬁce of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. (2000). Catalog of EPA Materials on Underground Storage Tanks. EPA Report 510-B-00-001. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Also available from http://www.epa.gov/swerust1.

Joseph N. Ryan

Unintended Consequences Solutions to environmental problems occasionally create unintended consequences, that is, solving one problem creates another. Scientists and engineers must carefully evaluate potential negative results before implementing new remediation programs. For example, burying wastes in landﬁlls may cause groundwater contamination, incinerating wastes reduces waste volumes but can cause air pollution, and excavating abandoned waste sites as part of a remediation effort may expose workers to contamination. Recycling can have a net negative environmental impact if air pollution associated with transportation outweighs environmental beneﬁts. Stimulating the biodegradation of trichloroethylene (TCE) in contaminated groundwater can lead to the formation of vinyl chloride, a more hazardous chemical. Two examples are described here: MTBE and disinfection by-products.

biodegradation decomposition due to the action of bacteria and other organisms

MTBE Methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) is a fuel additive that has improved air, but degraded groundwater. Its primary use in the United States began in the 1990s as a fuel oxygenate added to gasoline to help meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act. By providing a source of oxygen during gasoline combustion, MTBE reduces carbon monoxide levels. It has been used in a number of localities to help combat signiﬁcant air pollution problems, and studies have identiﬁed important air quality and public health beneﬁts from its use.

oxygenate increase the concentration of oxygen within an area

Unfortunately, the addition of MTBE to fuels resulted in unintended consequences. MTBE is highly soluble in water and relatively nonbiodegradable. It has been detected in groundwater across the United States, primarily

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from fuel leaks and spills. For example, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) analyzed drinking water information from over one thousand community water systems (CWS) in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States for the period from 1993 to 1998. MTBE was found in drinking water from 8.9 percent of the CWSs. Levels over 20 µg/l were determined in 1 percent of those same cases. Once introduced to groundwater, MTBE’s high solubility makes it very mobile. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did issue a drinking water advisory for MTBE in 1997. Although there are no data on the effects of drinking MTBE-contaminated water on humans, cancer and other deleterious effects occur in animals at high exposure levels. Furthermore, MTBE has an unpleasant taste and odor.

Disinfection By-Products Disinfection, one of the primary tools of water treatment, is the removal and inactivation of pathogenic microbes, that is, small organisms such as viruses, bacteria, and protozoa, that can cause disease. Disinfection has historically been accomplished using chlorination, the destruction of microbes by hypochlorous acid and the hypochlorous ion, formed by the reaction of chlorine gas and water or added directly as hypochlorite salts. Large improvements in public health occur when pathogen-free waters are available for human consumption, and signiﬁcant portion of the life span increase achieved in the modern era is the result of safe drinking water. However, there have been unintended consequences of disinfection by chlorination. If organic compounds are present in the water, halogenated disinfection by-products (DBPs) may be formed. Two halogenated DBPs regulated by U.S. drinking water standards are trihalomethanes (THM) and haloacetic acids. Both can increase the risk of cancer. THMs can also cause liver, kidney, and central nervous system problems. A USGS study found THMs in the drinking water of 45 percent of some 2,000 CWSs randomly selected in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. Fortunately, there are a number of ways CWSs can limit the generation of halogenated DBPs, including using water sources with low organic content, removing organic compounds before chlorination, and using disinfectants that produce fewer or no halogenated DBPs, such as ozone or chloramines. S E E A L S O Abatement; Disinfection; Vehicular Pollution. Bibliography Grady, S., and Casey, G. (2001). “Occurrence and Distribution of Methyl tert-Butyl Ether and Other Volatile Organic Compounds in Drinking Water in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Regions of the United States, 1993–98.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1997). “Drinking Water Advisory: Consumer Acceptability Advice and Health Effects Analysis on Methyl Tertiary-Butyl Ether (MtBE).” EPA-822-F-97-009. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Investigations Report 00-4228. Internet Resources Davis, J. Michael. “How to Avert the Problems of MTBE.” Available from http:// www.epa.gov/ord. Reshkin, K. “EPA Student Center.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/students.

Jess Everett

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Union of Concerned Scientists The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonproﬁt alliance of some ﬁfty thousand scientists and citizens across the United States. The group’s stated goal is to combine rigorous scientiﬁc analysis with committed citizen advocacy in order to build a cleaner environment and a safer world. The group focuses on issues such as global warming and the environmental impact of vehicles and various energy sources. The UCS was formed in 1969 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where a number of faculty members and students banded together to protest what they saw as the abuse of science and technology for military purposes. The new group called for greater emphasis on the application of scientiﬁc research to solve social and environmental problems. In its early years, the organization issued statements urging an end to the nuclear arms race and a ban on space weapons research. In recent years, the group has focused more on environmental issues. In 1992, seventeen hundred of the world’s leading scientists, including many Nobel prize winners, issued an emotional appeal through the UCS. Their statement, titled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,” noted that “human activities inﬂict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources.” It urged the world community to take action by moving away from fossil fuels and giving high priority to more efﬁcient use of natural resources such as water. In 1997, the UCS issued another statement at the Kyoto Climate Summit in Japan. This statement, which addressed the threat of global warming, was signed by more than ﬁfteen hundred scientists from sixty-three countries, including sixty U.S. National Medal of Science winners. UCS efforts helped set the stage for the adoption of an international treaty on climate change. Such joint appeals are inﬂuential, because they show world leaders that there is growing agreement among scientists on key issues. In the United States, the UCS has been a force for social change as well. For example, in California, the UCS and other environmental and public health groups helped convince the state to begin requiring sport utility vehicles, light trucks, and diesel cars to meet the same tailpipe emissions standards as gasoline-powered cars. In Connecticut, the UCS and its allies helped persuade the legislature to pass a law that included strong support for clean, renewable energy sources. In short, the UCS continues to be a powerful voice for concerned scientists and citizens. S E E A L S O Environmental Movement; Global Warming; Treaties and Conferences. Bibliography Brown, Michael, and Leon, Warren. (1999). The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists. New York: Three Rivers Press. Internet Resources Union of Concerned Scientists. “World Scientists’ Call for Action” and “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity.” Available from http://www.ucsusa.org.

Linda Wasmer Andrews

Urban Sprawl

See Sprawl

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Vehicular Pollution

V

Vehicular Pollution The large majority of today’s cars and trucks travel by using internal combustion engines that burn gasoline or other fossil fuels. The process of burning gasoline to power cars and trucks contributes to air pollution by releasing a variety of emissions into the atmosphere. Emissions that are released directly into the atmosphere from the tailpipes of cars and trucks are the primary source of vehicular pollution. But motor vehicles also pollute the air during the processes of manufacturing, refueling, and from the emissions associated with oil reﬁning and distribution of the fuel they burn. Primary pollution from motor vehicles is pollution that is emitted directly into the atmosphere, whereas secondary pollution results from chemical reactions between pollutants after they have been released into the air. Despite decades of efforts to control air pollution, at least 92 million Americans still live in areas with chronic smog problems. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) predicts that by 2010, even with the beneﬁt of current and anticipated pollution control programs, more than 93 million people will live in areas that violate health standards for ozone (urban smog), and more than 55 million Americans will suffer from unhealthy levels of ﬁne-particle pollution, which is especially harmful to children and senior citizens. While new cars and light trucks emit about 90 percent fewer pollutants than they did three decades ago, total annual vehicle-miles driven have increased by more than 140 percent since 1970 and are expected to increase another 25 percent by 2010. The emission reductions from individual vehicles have not adequately kept pace with the increase in miles driven and the market trend toward more-polluting light trucks, a category that includes sports utility vehicles (SUVs). As a result, cars and light trucks are still the largest single source of air pollution in most urban areas, accounting for onequarter of emissions of smog-forming pollutants nationwide.

Ingredients of Vehicular Pollution The following are the major pollutants associated with motor vehicles: • Ozone (O3). The primary ingredient in urban smog, ozone is created when hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides (NOx)—both of which are chemicals released by automobile fuel combustion—react with sunlight. Though beneﬁcial in the upper atmosphere, at the ground level ozone can irritate the respiratory system, causing coughing, choking, and reduced lung capacity. • Particulate matter (PM). These particles of soot, metals, and pollen give smog its murky color. Among vehicular pollution, ﬁne particles (those less than one-tenth the diameter of a human hair) pose the most serious threat to human health by penetrating deep into lungs. In addition to direct emissions of ﬁne particles, automobiles release nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and sulfur dioxide, which generate additional ﬁne particles as secondary pollution. • Nitrogen oxides (NOx). These vehicular pollutants can cause lung irritation and weaken the body’s defenses against respiratory infections such as pneumonia and inﬂuenza. In addition, they assist in the for-

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mation of ozone and particulate matter. In many cities, NOx pollution accounts for one-third of the ﬁne particulate pollution in the air. • Carbon monoxide (CO). This odorless, colorless gas is formed by the combustion of fossil fuels such as gasoline. Cars and trucks are the source of nearly two-thirds of this pollutant. When inhaled, CO blocks the transport of oxygen to the brain, heart, and other vital organs in the human body. Newborn children and people with chronic illnesses are especially susceptible to the effects of CO.

During the morning rush hour, the Miguel Hidalgo area of Mexico City is clogged with traffic and smog. (©Stephanie Maze/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

• Sulfur dioxide (SO2). Motor vehicles create this pollutant by burning sulfur-containing fuels, especially diesel. It can react in the atmosphere to form ﬁne particles and can pose a health risk to young children and asthmatics. • Hazardous air pollutants (toxics). These chemical compounds, which are emitted by cars, trucks, reﬁneries, gas pumps, and related sources, have been linked to birth defects, cancer, and other serious illnesses. The EPA estimates that the air toxics emitted from cars and trucks account for half of all cancers caused by air pollution.

Vehicular Emissions That Contribute to Global Warming Carbon monoxide, ozone, particulate matter, and the other forms of pollution listed above can cause smog and other air quality concerns, but there are vehicular emissions that contribute to a completely different pollution issue: global warming.

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Morning rush hour traffic waiting to pay the toll to cross the Oakland Bay Bridge in August 1989. (©James A. Sugar/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

The gases that contribute to global warming are related to the chemical composition of the Earth’s atmosphere. Some of the gases in the atmosphere function like the panes of a greenhouse. They let some radiation (heat) in from the sun but do not let it all back out, thereby helping to keep the Earth warm. The past century has seen a dramatic increase in the atmospheric concentration of heat-trapping gasses, due to human activity. If this trend continues, scientists project that the earth’s average surface temperature will increase between 2.5°F and 10.4°F by the year 2100. One of these important heat-trapping gasses is carbon dioxide (CO2). Motor vehicles are responsible for almost one-quarter of annual U.S. emissions of CO2. The U.S. transportation sector emits more CO2 than all but three other countries’ emissions from all sources combined.

Curbing Vehicular Pollution Vehicular emissions that contribute to air quality problems, smog, and global warming can be reduced by putting better pollution-control technologies on

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FUEL ECONOMY BY MODEL YEAR

30

Average MPG

25 Cars Both 20 Trucks

15

10 1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Model Year

cars and trucks, burning less fuel, switching to cleaner fuels, using technologies that reduce or eliminate emissions, and reducing the number of vehiclemiles traveled.

Pollution Control Technology Federal and California regulations require the use of technologies that have dramatically reduced the amount of smog-forming pollution and carbon monoxide coming from a vehicle’s tailpipe. For gasoline vehicles, “threeway” catalysts, precise engine and fuel controls, and evaporative emission controls have been quite successful. More advanced versions of these technologies are in some cars and can reduce smog-forming emissions from new vehicles by a factor of ten. For diesel vehicles, “two-way” catalysts and engine controls have been able to reduce hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions, but nitrogen oxide and toxic particulate-matter emissions remain very high. More advanced diesel-control technologies are under development, but it is unlikely that they will be able to clean up diesel to the degree already achieved in the cleanest gasoline vehicles. Added concerns surround the difference between new vehicle emissions and the emissions of a car or truck over a lifetime of actual use. Vehicles with good emission-control technology that is not properly maintained can become “gross polluters” that are responsible for a signiﬁcant amount of existing air-quality problems. New technologies have also been developed to identify emission-equipment control failures, and can be used to help reduce the “gross polluter” problem.

Burning Less Fuel The key to burning less fuel is making cars and trucks more efﬁcient and putting that efﬁciency to work in improving fuel economy. The U.S. federal government sets a fuel-economy standard for all passenger vehicles. However,

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these standards have remained mostly constant for the past decade. In addition, sales of lower-fuel-economy light trucks, such as SUVs, pickups, and minivans, have increased dramatically. As a result, on average, the U.S. passenger-vehicle ﬂeet actually travels less distance on a gallon of gas than it did twenty years ago. This has led to an increase in heat-trapping gas emissions from cars and trucks and to an increase in smog-forming and toxic emissions resulting from the production and transportation of gasoline to the fuel pump. This trend can be reversed through the use of existing technologies that help cars and trucks go farther on a gallon of gasoline. These include more efﬁcient engines and transmissions, improved aerodynamics, better tires, and high strength steel and aluminum. More advanced technologies, such as hybrid-electric vehicles that use a gasoline engine and an electric motor plus a battery, can cut fuel use even further. These technologies carry with them additional costs, but pay for themselves through savings at the gasoline pump.

Zero-Emission Vehicles As more cars and trucks are sold and total annual mileage increases, improving pollution-control technology and burning less fuel continues to be vital, especially in rapidly growing urban areas. However, eliminating emissions from the tailpipe goes even further to cut down on harmful air pollutants. Hydrogen fuel-cell and electric vehicles move away from burning fuel and use electrochemical processes instead to produce the needed energy to drive a car down the road. Fuel-cell vehicles run on electricity that is produced directly from the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen. The only byproduct is water—which is why fuel-cell cars and trucks are called zero-emission vehicles. Electric vehicles store energy in an onboard battery, emitting nothing from the tailpipe. The hydrogen for the fuel cell and the electricity for the battery must still be produced somewhere, so there will still be upstream emissions associated with these vehicles. These stationary sources, however, are easier to control and can ultimately be converted to use wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources to come as close as possible to true zero-emission vehicles.

Cleaner Fuels The gasoline and diesel fuel in use today contains signiﬁcant amounts of sulfur and other compounds that make it harder for existing control technology to keep vehicles clean. Removing the sulfur from the fuel and cutting down on the amount of light hydrocarbons helps pollution-control technology to work better and cuts down on evaporative and refueling emissions. Further large-scale reductions of other tailpipe pollution and CO2 can be accomplished with a shift away from conventional fuels. Alternative fuels such as natural gas, methanol, ethanol, and hydrogen can deliver beneﬁts to the environment while helping to move the United States away from its dependence on oil. All of these fuels inherently burn cleaner than diesel and gasoline, and they have a lower carbon content—resulting in less CO2. Most of these fuels are also more easily made from renewable resources, and fuels such as natural gas and methanol help provide a bridge to producing hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles.

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Reducing Driving Because we are still dependent on fossil fuels and the number of cars on the road is expected to double, a signiﬁcant reduction in vehicular pollution requires more than gains in fuel efﬁciency. Measures that encourage us to drive less can help curb vehicular pollution and protect natural resources and public health. Alternatives that can reduce the number of vehicle-miles traveled include • providing transportation alternatives to cars, including mass transit, bicycle, and pedestrian routes; • promoting transit-oriented, compact developments in and around cities and towns; and adopting policies to improve existing roads and infrastructure.

Personal Contributions Individuals can also make a difference in the effort to reduce pollution from cars and trucks. How we drive and how we take care of our vehicles affects fuel economy and pollution emissions. The following are several ways people can reduce the harmful environmental impact of cars. • Driving as little as possible is the best way to reduce the harmful environmental impact of transportation needs. Carpooling, mass transit, biking, and walking are ways to limit the number of miles we drive. Choosing a place to live that reduces the need to drive is another way. • Driving moderately and avoiding high-speed driving and frequent stopping and starting can reduce both fuel use and pollutant emissions. • Simple vehicle maintenance—such as regular oil changes, air-ﬁlter changes, and spark plug replacements—can lengthen the life of your car as well as improve fuel economy and minimize emissions. • Keeping tires properly inﬂated saves fuel by reducing the amount of drag a car’s engine must overcome. • During start-up, a car’s engine burns extra gasoline. However, letting an engine idle for more than a minute burns more fuel than turning off the engine and restarting it. • During warm periods with strong sunlight, parking in the shade keeps a car cooler and can minimize the evaporation of fuel. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Carbon Dioxide; Carbon Monoxide; Lead; NOx; Ozone; Smog; VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds).

Internet Resources American Automobile Association. “Daily Fuel Gauge Report.” Available from http:// 198.6.95.31/index.asp. American Council for an Energy Efﬁcient Economy. “GreenerCars.com.” Available from http://www.greenercars.com/indexplus.html. How Stuff Works. “How Ozone Pollution Works.” Available from http://science .howstuffworks.com/ozone-pollution.htm. U.S. Department of Energy. “Fuel Economy.” Available from http://www.fueleconomy .gov. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Green Vehicle Guide.” Available from http:// www.epa.gov/greenvehicles.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Light-Duty Automotive Technology and Fuel Economy Trends: 1975 through 2003.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/ otaq/fetrends.htm. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Motor Vehicle Emissions.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/otaq/ld-hwy.htm. Weather Channel. “Health Forecast Search.” Available from http://www.weather .com/activities/health/search.html?from=tabset.

David Friedman

Visual Pollution Visual pollution is an aesthetic issue, referring to the impacts of pollution that impair one’s ability to enjoy a vista or view. The term is used broadly to cover visibility, limits on the ability to view distant objects, as well as the more subjective issue of visual clutter, structures that intrude upon otherwise “pretty” scenes, as well as grafﬁti and other visual defacement.

The top of a ninety-five-foottall wireless phone antenna made to look like a cypress tree, blending with the other cypress trees in a Metairie, Louisiana, neighborhood. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.)

deuterium a hydrogen atom with an extra neutron, making it unstable and radioactive

Visibility is a measure of how far and how well people can see into the distance. Haze obscures visibility. It is caused when light is absorbed or scattered by pollution particles such as sulfates, nitrates, organic carbon compounds, soot, and soil dust. Nitrogen dioxide and other pollution gases also contribute to haze. Haze increases with summer humidity because sulfate and other particles absorb moisture and increase in size. The larger the particles, the more light they scatter. Haze is most dramatically seen as a brownish-grey cloud hovering over cities, but it also obscures many beautiful vistas in U.S. national parks. At Acadia National Park in Maine, visual range on a clear day can be 199 miles. On a hazy day, that can be reduced to 30 miles. At its worst, haze at Grand Canyon National Park was so severe that people could not see across the 10mile wide canyon. An enormous coal-ﬁred electric plant, the Navajo Power Generating Station, about 80 miles north of the Grand Canyon, was thought to be the source of the pollution causing canyon haze. In 1985 researchers at Colorado State University injected methane-containing deuterium into the power plant’s smoke emissions. Deuterium is not normally present in the air. When monitors determined the presence of deuterium in canyon air, researchers were able to demonstrate that the plant was responsible for much of the canyon haze. The result was a landmark settlement in which Navajo’s owners agreed to a 90-percent cutback in sulfur dioxide emissions by 1999. Utility boilers and vehicular emissions are both major sources of hazecausing pollution. The haze problem is greatest on the east coast of the United States because of the higher levels of pollution and humidity in that region. The pollution that causes haze can travel thousands of miles, and improving regional visibility requires interstate cooperation. Wood smoke is a contributor in the west, and forest ﬁre smoke and windblown dust are natural sources of haze. The pollutants that cause haze are also a health concern because they often result in respiratory problems among humans and other species. Controls designed to reduce the pollution from vehicular and smokestack emissions will also reduce visual pollution. In addition, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued regional haze regulations that call on

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states to establish goals and strategies and to work together in regional groups to improve visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas. In Southeast Asia, haze caused by massive forest ﬁres cost billions of dollars in health care and lost tourist revenue in the last decade. Fires in Sumatra and Borneo affected not only Indonesia, but also Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Most ﬁres were set deliberately, and often illegally, to clear land for planting and development and to cover up illegal logging. Some of the ﬁres spread to peat deposits beneath the forest, and these may continue to burn for years.

The Los Angeles skyline with mountain peaks visible in the background. (© Mark L. Stephenson/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Visual blight—billboards, power lines, cell towers, even ugly buildings— is literally in the eye of the beholder. It is subjective. To the businessman, a well-placed billboard may be a thing of beauty. But to the traveler whose view of the rolling hills or the rustic village is obstructed, it is visual pollution. Billboards proliferated in the 1940s and 1950s, spurred by the growth of automobile trafﬁc and construction of interstate highway system, but in 1965 Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon Johnson, attacked their growing presence on our nation’s roadways. “Ugliness is so grim,” the ﬁrst lady proclaimed, and she fought for and won passage of the Highway Beautiﬁcation Act of 1965. This groundbreaking law prompted a number of states, including Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont, to ban billboards totally; there were loopholes, however. Sensitivity to visual pollution has led utility companies to bury power and telephone lines in some communities. The latest ﬁght against visual pollution centers on cell towers, needed to provide cellular telephone service. One solution has been to disguise cell towers as trees or cacti. Grafﬁti, spray-painted

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VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds)

A similar perspective of the Los Angeles skyline, but with much of the scenery obscured by smog. (© Robert Landau/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

names and messages, are a form of urban visual blight. Attempts to curb grafﬁti by banning the sale of spray paint to minors have had little effect. Bibliography Gudis, Catherine (2003). Buyways: Automobility, Billboards and the American Cultural Landscape. New York: Routledge. National Research Council Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. (1991). Haze in the Grand Canyon: An Evaluation of the Winter Haze Intensive Tracer Experiment. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. National Research Council Environment and Resources Commission on Geosciences. (1993). Protecting Visibility in National Parks and Wilderness Areas. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Internet Resources Malm, William (National Park Service and Colorado State Institute for Research on the Atmosphere). “Introduction to Visibility.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/ oar/visibility. Scenic America Web site. Available from http://www.scenic.org/billboards.htm.

Richard M. Stapleton

VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) volatile of any substance that evaporates readily photochemical light-induced chemical effects

280

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are small organic molecules that take part in photochemical reactions in the atmosphere, resulting in smog. They have low boiling points and vaporize easily. When present in the atmosphere,

War

VOCs, such as benzene and ethylbenzene, are not removed by passing the air through a ﬁlter. The atmosphere also contains nonvolatile organic compounds and semivolatile species such as anthracene and nicotine. The latter separate partly on a ﬁlter and partly in the gas phase, depending on temperature. VOCs (isoprene and pinene) are emitted by living trees and decomposition of vegetation. The process of reﬁning crude oil to various fuels and the use, spillage, and incomplete combustion of those fuels in vehicles is another major source of VOCs. When mixed with nitric oxide emissions, mainly from combustion sources, and allowed to stagnate in intense sunlight, this mix forms ozone (a colorless gas) and oxidizes much of the VOCs to involatile particulate matter that scatters and absorbs light. This combination is termed photochemical smog. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Health, Human; Risk; Smog.

Environmental destruction as a tool of war is not new. In 146 B.C.E., at the end of the Third Punic War, Roman soldiers reportedly plowed salt into the fields of Carthage, leaving them infertile and ensuring that the North African city would never again be a challenge to the Roman Empire.

Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Organic Gases (Volatile Organic Compounds—VOCs).” Available from http://www.epa.gov/iaq.

Donald Stedman

Volatile Organic Compounds

See VOCs

War War, deﬁned as armed conﬂict between nations or between opposing factions within a nation, can have grave consequences for the environment, public health, and natural resources. The impact of military tactics and weaponry extends beyond military targets to affect civilian populations and their infrastructure, air and water; armed forces directly target forests, jungles, and other ecosystems in order to deprive enemy troops of cover, shelter, and food; mass refugee movements and other disruptions caused by armed conﬂict can deplete nearby sources of timber and wildlife; and the general atmosphere of lawlessness that often prevails during or after conﬂict can make it difﬁcult to prevent illegal logging, mining, and poaching. Even peacetime military activities and preparation for war can be extraordinarily harmful to the environment. Although wartime environmental damage is as old as war itself, it is modern, industrial warfare that has raised the possibility of destruction on an ecosystem or global scale. From the use of poison gases in World War I and atomic bombs in World War II to the use of chemical defoliants in Vietnam and land mines in numerous internal conﬂicts, war now leaves a legacy that extends far beyond the battleﬁeld and long past the duration of the original conﬂict. This problem has resulted in international treaties that attempt to constrain the adverse impacts of warfare on civilian populations and the environment. It also has ensured that environmental issues are closely monitored during wartime by the international community, in much the same way as humanitarian or refugee issues.

W

ecosystem the interacting system of a biological community and its non-living environmental surroundings defoliant an herbicide that removes leaves from trees and growing plants

History Wartime environmental impacts were noted as far back as the ancient world, when the Romans salted the earth around Carthage to keep the Carthaginians from replanting their ﬁelds. Medieval sieges took a heavy toll on soldiers and civilians alike. During the U.S. Civil War, General William Tecumseh

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A U.S. Air Force jet spraying Agent Orange along the Cambodian border during the Vietnam War. Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Geneva Conventions humanitarian rules governing treatment of soldiers and civilians during war Hague Conventions international agreements governing legal disputes between private parties

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Sherman’s “March to the Sea” laid waste to large areas of the South, including civilian settlements and farms. In World War I, British forces deliberately set Romanian oilﬁelds aﬁre; in World War II, both Germany and the Soviet Union engaged in “scorched earth” tactics; and in the Korean War, the United States intentionally bombed North Korean dams to cause ﬂoods. Such tactics have always been controversial and led to periodic attempts to regulate them. The Old Testament (Deuteronomy 20:19–20) prohibits armies from cutting down fruit-bearing trees, and the Qur’an similarly commands against cutting trees or killing animals unless necessary for food. In 1863 the U.S. Army adopted the Lieber Code, which limited the actions of Union troops and was a precursor of modern military manuals. Since the twentieth century, international armed conﬂict has been governed by a series of treaties, the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions, that have progressively restricted military tactics and weaponry, such as banning the targeting of civilian property or the use of poisonous gases. Occasionally, this body of law was directed toward environmental damage. For example, at the Nuremberg Trials, German General Alfred Jödl was found guilty of war crimes for his scorched earth tactics in occupied territory (although another general who used similar tactics, Lothar Rendulic, was found not guilty on the grounds that his actions were dictated by military necessity). However, the primary purpose of the international law of war remained humanitarian, aimed at eliminating inhumane weapons and reducing civilian casualties.

War

Burning oil wells in Kuwait, which were sabotaged by retreating Iraqi troops at the end of the Persian Gulf War, 1991. (©Peter Turnley/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Vietnam War The Vietnam War was the ﬁrst conﬂict to highlight the devastating effects of modern warfare on entire ecosystems. There, U.S. forces adopted a strategy of defoliating jungle canopy, ultimately spraying “Agent Orange” and other toxic herbicides over 10 percent of South Vietnam. In addition to destroying vegetation, the public health implications of these actions—primarily birth defects, diseases, and premature deaths—have since become apparent, both in the Vietnamese population and U.S. war veterans. In his memoir My Father, My Son, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Sr., the commander of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam, defended his order to defoliate Vietnamese river banks as

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necessary to save American sailors from ambush, even though he acknowledged that it ultimately may have caused cancer in his own son, who was serving there at the time. U.S. veterans eventually were compensated for illnesses resulting from their exposure to Agent Orange, but proposals to compensate the Vietnamese victims have remained controversial. The defoliation campaign and other U.S. tactics in Vietnam led to an international movement for treaties that speciﬁcally protect the environment during wartime. This resulted in adoption of the Environmental Modiﬁcation Convention (1976), which prohibits manipulating the environment as a weapon of war, and of Protocol Additional I to the Geneva Conventions (1977), which includes a prohibition against “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment.” However, many critics have called these treaties vague and impractical, and in fact they have yet to be applied to a speciﬁc case of wartime environmental damage. The U.S. government signed both treaties, but has never formally ratiﬁed Protocol Additional I. This Vietnamese infant was born with deformed arms and legs caused by his parents’ exposure to Agent Orange. (©Owen Franken/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

tribunal committee or board appointed to hear and settle an issue

Persian Gulf War Wartime environmental damage again came to the fore during the 1990 to 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which Iraq invaded and occupied neighboring Kuwait. Driven from Kuwait by a U.S.–led military alliance, Iraqi troops deliberately ignited hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells and diverted pipelines directly into the Persian Gulf. The resulting smoke plumes and oil slicks caused enormous harm to the Kuwaiti population and to desert and marine ecosystems and wildlife. Smoke from the oil ﬁres was reported as far away as the Himalayas and was visible from space. As images of the devastation circulated around the globe, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 687, which held Iraq liable for all damage, including environmental damage, resulting from the occupation and liberation of Kuwait. This unprecedented action resulted in the establishment of a special commission, the United Nations Compensation Commission, to verify damage claims and issue awards. Kuwait and other Gulf countries ﬁled more than sixty billion dollars in environmental, natural resource, and public health claims against Iraq, which a decade later were still being resolved. The extraordinary nature of the Security Council’s action led to renewed calls for an international treaty or institution to regulate the environmental impacts of armed conﬂict. Subsequently, prohibitions against environmental damage were included in the charter for the International Criminal Court, a new tribunal that will have global jurisdiction over war crimes.

Internal Conflicts Although the best-known examples of wartime environmental damage occurred during international conﬂicts, the vast majority of recent conﬂicts have been civil wars or other internal strife, in places such as Angola, Cambodia, Colombia, Congo, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Liberia, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and the former Yugoslavia. These conﬂicts often take the form of low-level guerrilla warfare that continues for years, with the same territory changing hands several times. In addition to the tragic toll on civilian

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HERBICIDE SPRAY MAP

Quang Tri Ashau Da Nang

I Corps

Dak To

Phu Cat Pleiku

II Corps Nha Trang

Cam Ranh Bay

Bien Hoa Cu Chi

III Corps Saigon

IV Corps Mekong Delta

Note: This map is a representation of herbicide spray missions in Vietnam. The dark areas represent concentrated spraying areas. This map only represents fixed-wing aircraft spraying, and does not include helicopter spraying of perimeters, or other spray methods. The III Corps area received the heaviest concentrations of spraying, followed by I Corps, II Corps, and IV Corps.

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The pollution associated with military preparedness is substantial, ranging from the effects of housing, feeding, supplying, and moving large bodies of people, to the impacts of weapons practice and war games. The closure, under protest, of the U.S. Navy’s live-fire bombing and artillery ranges on Vieques Island off the coast of Puerto Rico will require the cleanup of nearly sixty years of accumulation of bomb fragments, unexploded ordinance, waste munitions, and landfills. The Navy is conducting an environmental investigation under a consent order signed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, or Superfund, requires the military to clean up hazardous waste on its bases. In particular, this is required at bases being closed. The scope and cost of these cleanups are staggering, even for the Department of Defense. A RAND research study of the closure of six California bases recommended setting interim cleanup goals, concluding that “cleanup too long delayed—in the interest of fulfilling a total cleanup program—is cleanup never realized.”

consent order a legal agreement requiring specific actions to remedy a violation of law half-life the time required for a pollutant to lose one-half of its original concentration; for example, the biochemical halflife of DDT in the environment is fifteen years

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populations, such conﬂicts have considerable environmental impacts: Opposing armies engage in deforestation and defoliation, hunt wildlife for food, lay thousands of antipersonnel land mines, and clash over valuable natural resources (such as timber and diamonds) to ﬁnance their arms purchases. Because sovereign nations generally control their own affairs, it has been very difﬁcult for the international community to address internal conﬂicts and their human and environmental consequences. Most international treaties governing wartime environmental damage do not apply to internal conﬂict, and even where they do, they are difﬁcult to apply to loosely organized guerilla forces. Armed intervention or peacekeeping missions can solve some humanitarian and environmental problems while creating others. For example, the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo ignited a petrochemical plant in the city of Pancevo, exposing thousands of civilians to a cloud of toxic fumes; during the Rwandan civil war, United Nations refugee camps stressed natural resources and wildlife reserves in neighboring Congo. Another attempted solution has been global consumer boycotts of tropical timber, diamonds, and other commodities that originate in war-torn countries and give rise to or ﬁnance armed conﬂict.

The Cold War Legacy Military activities and preparations for war can have enormous environmental impacts even without a shot being ﬁred. The development of the atomic bomb during the early 1940s, referred to as the Manhattan Project, not only had devastating consequences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also produced a long-lasting legacy of deadly radioactive pollution in the United States. In 1939 Nobel Prize physicist Niels Bohr warned that although it was possible for the United States to build an atom bomb, it could not be done without “turning the country into a gigantic factory.” Following the end of the Cold War in 1991, it became apparent to what extent that factory had contaminated such diverse sites as Hanford, Washington; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Rocky Flats, Colorado; where the air, groundwater, surface water, soil, vegetation, and wildlife all show signs of radioactivity. The Soviet Union’s nuclear program created similar problems, concentrating production in “secret cities” such as Chelyabinsk-7, which many have called the most polluted city on earth. Given the highly toxic nature and extremely long half-life of most radioactive waste, cleanup and containment of these sites will pose problems for generations. The Cold War legacy brings into focus the “necessity” and “proportionality” calculations that underlie most reasoned decisions about environmentally damaging wartime actions: whether there are alternatives to taking a particular action, and whether the military advantage gained from taking such an action outweighs the environmental and other harm that potentially may result. Most scholars would agree that the development of the atomic bomb was justiﬁable as a means of defeating fascism and winning World War II; they similarly agree that Iraq’s actions in retreating from Kuwait were indefensible, even on military grounds. Other cases, such as the United States’ defoliation campaign in Vietnam or bombing of civilian infrastructure in Kosovo, are more controversial. In any case, the historical record, the continued development of international treaties and institutions, and the increasing awareness that environmental issues must be considered

Warren County, North Carolina

even during wartime, all should provide a basis for improved military tactics and more environmentally aware decision making in the future. S E E A L S O Terrorism. Bibliography Austin, Jay E., and Bruch, Carl, eds. (2000). The Environmental Consequences of War: Legal, Economic, and Scientiﬁc Perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bloom, Saul; Miller, John M.; Warner, James; and Winkler, Philippa, eds. (1994). Hidden Casualties: The Environmental, Health and Political Consequences of the Persian Gulf War. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. Browne, Malcolm W. (1991). “War and the Environment.” Audubon 93:89. Dycus, Stephen. (1996). National Defense and the Environment. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. Earle, Sylvia A. (1992). “Persian Gulf Pollution: Assessing the Damage One Year Later.” National Geographic 181:122. Feshbach, Murray, and Friendly, Albert. (1992). Ecocide in the U.S.S.R.: The Looming Disaster in Soviet Health & Environment. New York: Basic Books. Hawley, T.M. (1992). Against the Fires of Hell: The Environmental Disaster of the Gulf War. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Lanier-Graham, Susan. (1993). The Ecology of War: Environmental Impacts of Weaponry and Warfare. New York: Walker & Co.

Ever since the U.S.S. Arizona sank in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a slow trickle of fuel oil has seeped toward the surface, casting a rainbow sheen on the now-still waters. The Arizona had 1.5 million gallons of oil in its tanks when it was attacked, and it is unknown how much remains. Although the current 2.5-gallon-per-day leak does not present much of an environmental hazard, the caretakers of what is now the Pearl Harbor National Monument have made plans to minimize impacts if the Arizona’s hull collapses and releases the remainder into the harbor’s fragile marine ecosystem.

Levy, Barry S., and Sidel, Victor W., eds. (1997). War and Public Health. New York: Oxford University Press. Rhodes, Richard. (1986). The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster. Roberts, Guy B. (1991). “Military Victory, Ecological Defeat.” In Worldwatch, July/Aug. 1991. Webster, Donovan. (1996). Aftermath: The Landscape of War. New York: Pantheon. Weinberg, William J. (1992). War on the Land: Ecology and Politics in Central America. London: Zed Press. Zumwalt, Elmo Jr.; Zumwalt, Elmo III; and Pekkanen, John. (1986). My Father, My Son. New York: Macmillan. Internet Resources Environmental Change and Security Project. “Bibliographic Guide to the Literature.” Available from http://wwics.si.edu/PROGRAMS. Environmental Law Institute. (1998). “Addressing Environmental Consequences of War: Background Paper for the First International Conference on Addressing Environmental Consequences of War: Legal, Economic, and Scientiﬁc Perspectives.” Washington, D.C.: Environmental Law Institute. Available from http://www.eli.org/pdf. Environmental Law Institute. (1998). “Annotated Bibliography: First International Conference on Addressing Environmental Consequences of War: Legal, Economic, and Scientiﬁc Perspectives.” Washington, D.C.: Environmental Law Institute. Available from http://www.eli.org/pdf. Hoffman, Leslie. “Saving the Ghost Ship.” Albuquerque Tribune, July 31, 1998. Available from http://www.abqtrib.com/arc1. United Nations Environment Programme. (1999). “The Kosovo Conﬂict: Consequences for the Environment & Human Settlements.” Geneva: United Nations Environment Programme. Available from http://www.grid.unep.ch/btf.

Jay Austin

Warren County, North Carolina In 1982 residents of the predominantly African-American Warren County, North Carolina, began to protest the construction of a hazardous waste landﬁll near Warrenton in which the state planned to bury 400,000 cubic yards of

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soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The contamination occurred when a disposal contractor dripped approximately 12,850 gallons of PCB-tainted ﬂuids along 210 miles of roads in fourteen counties in North Carolina in 1978. Soon after the spill was discovered, the state acquired a 142.3-acre tract of land on which it proposed building a 19.3-acre landﬁll to bury the wastes. Opponents of the Warren County site ﬁled two lawsuits in 1979 in their attempts to halt plans for the landﬁll. At the time, the Warren County site, chosen from ninety sites considered, had a higher percentage of African-American residents of any county in the state. It was 64 percent black and the unincorporated Shocco Township, site of the landﬁll, was 75 percent black. Warren County ranked ninety-seventh in per capita income out of North Carolina’s one hundred counties. In November 1981 the district courts ruled against landﬁll opponents. Shortly thereafter protests began; these received widespread national attention. Local police and soldiers from the U.S. Army base at Fort Bragg (which was also contaminated with PCBs) were called in to quell the protests. In total, 523 people were arrested, including local congressman Walter Fauntroy and members of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice. Fauntroy and other protesters urged the General Accounting Ofﬁce (USGAO) to examine the relationship between the location of landﬁlls in the Southeast and the demographics of host communities. This led to the publication of the well-known 1983 USGAO study. Four years later, the United Church of Christ (UCC) Commission for Racial Justice published a national study examining the siting of hazardous facilities and waste sites. Both of these widely cited studies had a signiﬁcant impact on mobilizing minority communities around environmental issues and the growth of the environmental justice movement. They were among the earliest studies to link race with the increased likelihood of close proximity to hazardous facilities and toxic waste sites. Unlike other studies of the same genre, they were widely circulated among minority activists and in minority communities. S E E A L S O Environmental Justice. Bibliography LaBalme, Jenny. (1988). “Dumping on Warren County.” In Environmental Politics: Lessons from the Grassroots, edited by Bob Hall. Durham, NC: Institute for Southern Studies, pp. 23–30. Twitty v. State of North Carolina. (1981). 527 F. Supp. 778; 1981 U.S. District, Nov. 25. UCC. (1987). Toxic Waste and Race in the United States. New York: United Church of Christ. U.S. General Accounting Ofﬁce (USGAO). (1983). Siting of Hazardous Waste Landﬁlls and Their Correlation with the Racial and Socio-economic Status of Surrounding Communities. Washington, D.C.: General Accounting Ofﬁce. Warren County v. State of North Carolina. (1981). 528 F. Supp. 276; 1981 U.S. District, Nov. 25.

Dorceta E. Taylor

Waste Waste has been deﬁned as a moveable object with no direct use that is discarded permanently. There are many different kinds of waste, including solid, liquid, gaseous, hazardous, radioactive, and medical. Wastes can also be

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deﬁned by generator, for example, municipal, commercial, industrial, or agricultural.

Waste Types

Garbage in bags and containers accumulating at curbside. (U.S. EPA. Reproduced by permission.)

A solid waste does not ﬂow like water or gas. Examples include paper, wood, metals, glass, plastic, and contaminated soil. Solid wastes can be hazardous or nonhazardous. Problems associated with nonhazardous solid waste include aesthetic problems (litter and odors), leachate from the inﬁltration of water through the waste, and off-gases resulting from biodegradation. Nonhazardous solid wastes are commonly handled by recycling, combustion, landﬁlling, and composting. Liquid wastes must be transported in containers or through pipes. Examples include sewage, contaminated groundwater, and industrial liquid discharges. In some cases, direct discharge to the environment may be allowed. However, depending on the waste’s characteristics, direct discharge may cause unacceptable environmental harm. For example, large amounts of sewage discharged into a stream can result in ﬁsh kills. Liquid wastes containing excreta can contain pathogenic organisms. Other liquid wastes may be toxic. Liquid wastes are often handled at wastewater treatment plants, followed by discharge to the environment. Sludges contain various ratios of liquid and solid material. They generally result from liquid waste-treatment operations, such as sedimentation tanks. Depending on the percent of solids, sludge may have the characteristics of a liquid or solid. Biological sludge can contain pathogenic organisms. Some sludges contain heavy metals or other toxins. Sludges are commonly handled with treatment, combustion, landﬁlling, and land application.

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Gaseous wastes, of course, consist of gases. They are primarily generated by combustion (e.g., internal combustion engines, incinerators, coal-ﬁred electrical generating plants) and industrial processes. Depending on their characteristics, gaseous wastes can be odiferous or toxic. Some are implicated in global warming, ozone depletion, and smog. Gaseous wastes may be released to the atmosphere or captured/treated with pollution control equipment. Hazardous wastes pose a substantial present or potential danger to human health or the environment. They can be solid, sludge, liquid, or gas. Hazardous wastes have at least one of the following characteristics: corrosivity, ignitability, reactivity, and toxicity. Hazardous wastes are commonly handled by recycling, combustion, stabilization, chemical-physical-biological treatment, and landﬁlling.

half-life the time required for a pollutant to lose one-half of its original concentration; for example, the biochemical halflife of DDT in the environment is 15 years

Radioactive wastes emit particles or electromagnetic radiation (e.g., alpha particles, beta particles, gamma rays, and x rays). Radioactive wastes can be high level, transuranic, or low level. High-level radioactive wastes are from spent or reprocessed nuclear reactor fuel. Transuranic wastes are from isotopes above uranium in the periodic table. They are generally low in radioactivity, but have long half-lives. Low-level wastes have little radioactivity and can often be handled with little or no shielding. Radiation can damage living cells and cause cancer. Although recycling and incineration may reduce waste amounts, the primary method for handling radioactive wastes is long-term storage. Medical wastes, that is, wastes generated at medical facilities, can be infectious, toxic, and/or radioactive. Though they may have hazardous characteristics, they are not regulated as hazardous wastes. Some medical wastes are sterilized, disinfected, or incinerated, especially infectious wastes. Recycling and landﬁlling are also used to dispose of them.

Waste Amounts The amount of waste generated by a given household is directly related to lifestyle, culture, and economic status. Climate can also increase generation rates (e.g., yard waste). General differences are great enough to produce different country-wide generation rates. The United States has the highest rate, 2.0 kilograms per person per day—probably the result of high economic status, a culture of consumption, and a lifestyle that includes large amounts of disposable items. However, the United States also has a relatively high recycling rate, 27.8 percent in 1999. Some European countries have generation rates varying from 0.9 to 1.7 kilograms per person per day. Developing regions tend to have still lower rates, ranging from 0.3 to 1. S E E A L S O Air Pollution; Hazardous Waste; Lifestyle; Medical Waste; Ozone; Radioactive Waste; Solid Waste; Waste to Energy; Waste, Transportation of; Wastewater Treatment. Bibliography Davis, M., and Cornwell, D. (1998). Introduction to Environmental Engineering, 3rd edition. New York: WCB McGraw-Hill. Reinhardt, P., and Gordon, J. (1991). Infectious and Medical Waste Management. Chelsea, MN: Lewis Publishers. Siegel, M. (1993). “Garbage and Other Pollution—How Do We Live with All the Trash?” Information Plus. Detroit, MI: Gale.

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Tchobanoglous, G.; Theisen, H.; and Vigil, S. (1993). Integrated Solid Waste Management. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Jess Everett

Waste, Hazardous

See Hazardous Waste

Waste, International Trade in During the past three decades, one of the most persistent international environmental issues has been the toxic waste trade between industrialized countries and less developed nations. From 1968 to 1988 alone, more than 3.6 million tons of toxic waste—solvents, acetone, cobalt, cadmium, chemical and pharmaceutical waste, and perhaps some low-level radioactive waste— were shipped to less developed nations. The saga of the freighter Khian Sea is a graphic example of this trade. In 1988 the ship departed from Philadelphia loaded with toxic incinerator ash. Four thousand tons of the waste, which contained dioxin and furans, two of the most toxic chemicals known to humans, were dumped on a beach in Haiti. No effort has ever been made to clean it up. Another ten thousand tons were later dumped illegally at sea. That same year, another international toxic waste shipment led to a major diplomatic row in New Guinea. The government there jailed a Norwegian consul and ﬁned him $600 after a Norwegian ship transported ﬁfteen thousand tons of incinerator ash from the United States and dumped it in New Guinea. Ironically, the growing clout of environmentalists in the United States has driven much of this trade. Strict U.S. laws now regulating toxic waste disposal have considerably increased the cost of disposing of toxic waste. In 2001 one U.S. ofﬁcial estimated that it cost from $250 to $300 a ton to dispose of toxic wastes in the United States, whereas some developing countries have accepted the same wastes for as little as $40 per ton. Ofﬁcials of some developing nations have called the trade “toxic terrorism” and “garbage imperialism,” and others worry that the developing world will change from “the industrialized world’s backyard to its outhouse,” as an African ofﬁcial said. Many developing countries have had little appreciation of both the short- and long-term health and environmental risks of toxic waste and the dangers it can create. Those developing countries willing to accept shipments of toxic waste are usually enticed by the prospect of millions of dollars that can be made for their struggling economies. In one deal, for example, the local government of Oro, New Guinea, negotiated a deal with Global Telesis Corporation, a ﬁrm from California, to build in that province a $38 million detoxiﬁcation plant, which would process six million metric tons of toxic waste a month from the West Coast. The deal fell through under pressure by the national government and because of concerns that Global Telesis would not be able to raise the necessary funding. Since the 1980s, when the issue of international trade in toxic waste ﬁrst came to widespread attention, there has been a global movement to ban it. In March 1989, 105 countries met under the auspices of United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in Basel, Switzerland, and passed the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes

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and Their Disposal. When the convention went into effect in 1992, eightyeight countries signed it. In 1995 parties to the 1989 Basel Convention agreed to make legally binding a voluntary export ban that was agreed to in 1994. Surprisingly, the United States, one of the original proponents of the Basel Convention, has not thus far ratiﬁed the agreement. Supporters of stronger international toxic trade laws insist that, for the Basel Convention to have full force, the United States, as the world’s leading producer of toxic waste, must be convinced to sign it. Bibliography French, Hilary. (2001). “Can Globalization Support the Export of Hazard.” In USA Today (Magazine), May 2001, p. 20ff. “Ratifying Global Toxic Treaties: The United States must Provide Leadership.” (2002) In SAIS Review, Winter-Spring, 2002, p. 109ff. Internet Resource Lewis, Deana L., and Chepesiuk, Ron. “The International Trade in Toxic Waste; A Select Bibliography.” Available from http://egj.lib.uidaho.edu/egj02/lewis01.htm.

Ron Chepesiuk

Waste, Transportation of The transportation of waste is the movement of waste over a speciﬁc area by trains, tankers, trucks, barges, or other vehicles. The types of wastes that may be transported range from municipal garbage to radioactive or hazardous wastes. Hazardous wastes may be transported to be treated, stored, or disposed of. Facilities that generate hazardous waste are required to prepare a shipping document, or “manifest,” to accompany the waste as it is transported from the site of generation. This manifest must accompany the waste until its ﬁnal destination and is used to track the wastes from cradle-to-grave. The potential for pollution releases during the transportation of waste varies; the more hazardous the waste and the larger the volume that is transported, the more devastating the environmental/human health impact if an accident occurs. Trafﬁc accidents or train wrecks can result in waste spills and releases of pollutants that may contaminate the air, water, and soil. Wastes may also be released while being loaded or unloaded during transportation. Approximately four billion tons of regulated hazardous materials are shipped within the United States each year with more 250,000 shipments entering the U.S. transportation system daily. The Emergency Response Notiﬁcation System (ERNS) database of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows that from 1988 to 1992 an average of nineteen transportation accidents involving toxic chemicals occurred each day.

DOT Regulations

HAZMAT team hazardous materials response group

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The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) requires that placards identifying the type of hazardous material being transported be placed on the outside of any vehicle transporting hazardous materials or wastes. Placards are used to determine potential hazards in the event of a spill and are placed on all four sides of a vehicle so that HAZMAT teams, ﬁre, emergency, medical, and other personnel who respond to accidents may quickly identify the contents

Waste, Transportation of

and associated hazards. Placards are required if one thousand pounds or more of a hazardous material is transported and if any amount of material classiﬁed as explosive, poisonous, radioactive, or a ﬂammable solid is transported. The DOT classiﬁes materials based on nine hazard classes represented by symbols. The classes are explosives, gases, flammable liquids, ﬂammable solids, oxidizers, poisonous materials, biohazards, radioactive materials, corrosives, or other regulated materials.

flammable any material that ignites easily and will burn rapidly

The routes that transporters of hazardous waste use must be carefully considered to minimize the risk of an accidental release. If possible, densely populated areas should be avoided. The type of highway or road and the weather conditions along the route must also be considered. Risk analysis may become important in selecting routes for hazardous waste transport in order to minimize adverse impacts to human health in case of an accidental release. MOBRO BARGE ACCOUNT

Municipal Waste Due to rapidly decreasing space in urban landﬁlls, ofﬁcials have been forced to ﬁnd alternate locations for municipal waste disposal. This has created signiﬁcant ﬁnancial incentives for rural communities to accept garbage from urban areas. Depending on the location of these rural facilities, it may be necessary to transport large quantities of wastes by a variety of methods, most often by truck, railway, or barge. Many citizens are concerned about the transportation of the waste through their communities and the risks involved. People are also concerned that the municipal waste from urban areas may be contaminated with toxic chemicals or substances that could contaminate local drinking water supplies. Disposal of hazardous wastes in the United States can cost up to $2,500 per ton. This has led to the practice of selling waste to developing countries for disposal at a much lower cost. This international waste trade may be illegal in some instances, but the hefty sum paid to those who accept the wastes remains tempting to developing countries. However, the actual composition of the wastes received by developing countries is often misrepresented by those selling the waste. In addition, most developing countries lack the resources and technical expertise to safely manage these hazardous wastes. Trade in hazardous wastes is a global issue. About ten percent of all hazardous wastes generated around the world cross international boundaries. A large portion goes from industrialized countries to developing countries where disposal costs are lower. Although developing countries may lack the ﬁnancial and technical capacities to clean up hazardous waste releases in their countries, these countries nevertheless are sites for treatment, recycling, and disposal of wastes from abroad. The Basel Convention on the Control of the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal is the ﬁrst global environmental treaty to control the international trade of waste. Under the Convention, trade in hazardous wastes cannot take place without the consent of the importing country and cannot occur under conditions that are assessed as not environmentally sound. As of April 2002, 150 countries had ratiﬁed the convention. A new protocol adopted by the convention in 2000 provides the ﬁrst international framework establishing liability for damages that may result from the transportation or disposal of hazardous wastes across foreign

Due to overcapacity at the Islip landfills, New York, officials negotiated with Jones County, North Carolina, to accept 3,200 tons of municipal garbage in March 1987. The garbage was transported on the Mobro barge. When officials discovered hospital wastes in the garbage, North Carolina refused to accept it for fear that it might contaminate local water supplies. Louisiana, Mexico, Belize, British Honduras, and the Bahamas all refused to accept the contaminated garbage and the Mobro returned to New York. The Mobro then began a six-thousand-mile, six-month voyage looking for some place to take the garbage. After several court battles, the controversy ended when numerous flatbed trucks were used to transport the garbage to a Brooklyn incinerator where the volume was reduced and the ash was landfilled. —Goff, Liz. “The Old Disaster: Queens’ Garbage Standoff.” The Queens Tribune. Available from http://queenstribune.com/archives /featurearchive/feature2001/0208 /feature_story.html —“The Voyage of the Mobro.” Available from http://www.gracespace.com/Hamilton/recycle.htm.

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borders. S E E A L S O Economics; Hazardous Waste; Laws and Regulations, United States; Radioactive Waste; Sewage Sludge; Solid Waste. Bibliography La Grega, Michael D.; Buckingham, Philip L.; Evans, Jeffrey C., and Environmental Resources Management. (2001). Hazardous Waste Management. Boston: McGraw Hill. Watts, Richard J. (1998). Hazardous Wastes: Sources, Pathways, Receptors. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Internet Resources U.S. Department of Transportation. “HAZMAT Safety.” Available from http:// hazmat.dot.gov. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Waste Transportation.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/ebtpages/wastwastetransportation.html.

Margrit von Braun and Deena Lilya

Waste Reduction Waste reduction, also known as source reduction, is the practice of using less material and energy to minimize waste generation and preserve natural resources. Waste reduction is broader in scope than recycling and incorporates ways to prevent materials from ending up as waste before they reach the recycling stage. Waste reduction includes reusing products such as plastic and glass containers, purchasing more durable products, and using reusable products, such as dishrags instead of paper towels. Donating products, from ofﬁce equipment to eyeglasses and clothing, reduces the amount of material manufactured overall. Purchasing products that replace hazardous materials with biodegradable ingredients reduces pollution as well as waste. In general, waste reduction offers several environmental beneﬁts. Greater efﬁciency in the production and use of products means less energy consumption, resulting in less pollution. More natural resources are preserved. Products using less hazardous materials are used. Finally, less solid waste ends up in landﬁlls. Waste reduction also means economic savings. Fewer materials and less energy is used when waste-reduction practices are applied. Rather than using the traditional cradle-to-grave approach, a cradle-to-cradle system is adopted. In this cradle-to-cradle system, also called industrial ecology, products are not used for a ﬁnite length of time. Instead of disposing of materials, or the components of a product after a single use, products are passed on for further uses. This is considered a ﬂow of materials. This can be applied within an organization, or between organizations that may be considered unrelated, on a cooperative basis. For example, a cotton manufacturer sends its unwanted scraps to an upholsterer, who uses the scraps as stufﬁng in chairs. When the life span of the chair is reached, the materials are returned to the manufacturer, who reuses the parts with endurance. The damaged upholstery, which was originally created using nonhazardous materials, is sold to a local farmer who uses it in composting. Money is also saved through reduced purchasing. Waste-disposal costs are decreased because fewer materials end up as waste. Waste can be reduced by individuals, businesses, institutions such as hospitals or educational facilities, organizations, municipalities, or government

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agencies. There are several ways individuals can practice waste reduction: (1) Reusing products. This could mean reusing ﬁle folders rather than throwing them away after one use, or reﬁlling water bottles; (2) Using products more efﬁciently. This could mean using both sides of paper in photocopying; and (3) Donating or exchanging products or materials that may seem useless, but that another party may ﬁnd valuable. For example, the chair manufacturer mentioned above had no internal use for the scrap upholstery leftover after recycling the more durable parts of the used chairs. However, a cooperative agreement with a local farmer allowed the scraps to be used once again, beneﬁting the farmer by adding to his compost.

The EPA’s WasteWise Program The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lists waste reduction and reuse as top priorities in its solid waste management hierarchy, followed by recycling, composting, waste-to-energy, and landfilling. Many governments and businesses have adopted the practice of waste reduction. The EPA offers a free, comprehensive waste-reduction program to businesses, organizations, and municipalities. The program, called WasteWise, offers educational and technical assistance in developing, executing, and measuring waste-reduction activities. Through WasteWise, groups can design and maintain a waste-reduction program that is ﬂexible to their speciﬁc needs. The nationwide program was started in 1994, and it had over eleven hundred participating partners in 2002. Large corporations, universities, and cities across the country have seen signiﬁcant beneﬁts, both economically and environmentally, by using WasteWise.

The National Recycling Coalition Recommendations The National Recycling Coalition lists several steps that purchasing departments of organizations can use in their waste-reduction strategies: 1. Reduce product use. Adopt the practice of printing on both sides of ofﬁce paper. 2. Rent or lease products or equipment. This includes leasing, rather than purchasing, equipment such as photocopiers, which can become obsolete, leaving the organization with old, unnecessary, and sometimes hazardous equipment to discard. 3. Purchase remanufactured or rebuilt products, or products that can be refurbished.

ZERO EMISSIONS In natural ecosystems, what is waste for one species is food for another. The concept of zero emissions, first elucidated in the early 1990s by Gunter Pauli, applies this principle to business endeavors and is being tested in Burlington, Vermont. At a 3,200 square meter eco-industrial complex enclosing a number of greenhouses. Waste heat from an existing power plant, fueled by discarded Christmas trees, will warm the greenhouses and fire up the brew kettle for a microbrewery. Pilot tests have shown that “wastes” from the brewing process can be efficiently transformed into nutritious growing medium for marketable mushrooms, salad greens and fish. What remains can be sold as cattle feed and soil amendment.

waste-to-energy to convert solid waste into a usable form of energy landfills sanitary landfills are disposal sites for nonhazardous solid wastes spread in layers, compacted to the smallest practical volume, and covered by material applied at the end of each operating day; secure chemical landfills are disposal sites for hazardous waste, selected and designed to minimize the chance of release of hazardous substances into the environment

4. Purchase more durable products. Higher-quality products typically have a longer life cycle. 5. Purchase products that use nonhazardous materials. Nonhazardous materials are safer for individuals and landﬁlls. 6. Purchase returnable, reusable, or reﬁllable products. For instance, transport containers can be reused. 7. Purchase products in bulk. 8. Purchase products that reuse packaging or use less packaging.

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9. Share and reuse resources within the organization. Companies can implement an internal computer equipment and ofﬁce supply exchange before purchasing new products. The EPA reports that 232 million pounds of waste were generated in 2000. The amount of waste produced per person has grown over the last thirty-ﬁve years, from 2.7 to 4.6 pounds per day. In 1999, waste reduction saved over ﬁfty million tons of municipal solid waste from being dumped into landﬁlls. S E E A L S O Abatement; Composting; Green; Lifestyle; Recycling; Reuse; Technology, Pollution Prevention. Bibliography National Recycling Coalition. (1999). Purchasing Strategies to Prevent Waste and Save Money. Alexandria, VA: Author. Other Resources U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “WasteWise: Preserving Resources, Preventing Waste.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/wastewise.

Terra Lenihan

Waste to Energy Waste to energy (WTE) is the term used to describe the conversion of waste by-products into useful steam or steam-generated electricity. Typically, WTE is produced by converting municipal solid waste (MSW), which is deﬁned as residential and commercial refuse, and makes up the largest source of waste in industrialized countries. This industry has been producing heat and power in the United States for a century, and there are currently more than one hundred WTE plants nationwide. Recently, however, the deﬁnition of waste has been expanded from MSW to include wastes such as wood, wood waste, peat, wood sludge, agricultural waste, straw, tires, landﬁll gases, ﬁsh oils, paper industry liquors, railroad ties, and utility poles. In 1999 these by-products produced approximately 3.2 quadrillion BTUs (i.e., 1 × 1015 British thermal units, which is also known as a quad) of energy out of approximately 97.0 quads of energy consumed in the United States. Nearly thirty million tons of trash are processed each year in WTE facilities to generate steam and electricity. The beneﬁts to society include the following: preventing the release of greenhouse gases such as methane into the atmosphere if the trash were landﬁlled; reducing the impact on landﬁlls by reducing the volume of the waste 80 to 90 percent; providing an alternative to coal use, which prevents the release of emissions such as nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere; and saving the earth’s natural resources by using less oil, coal, or natural gas for electricity generation.

The Process of Converting Waste to Energy Generally, WTE facilities can be divided into two process types: mass burn and refuse-derived fuel (RDF). Mass burn facilities process raw waste that has not been shredded, sized, or separated before combustion, although large items such as appliances and hazardous waste materials and batteries are removed before combustion. In mass burn systems, untreated MSW is simply burned, with the heat produced converted into steam, which can then be

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passed through a steam turbine to generate electricity or used directly to supply heat to nearby industries or buildings. RDF is a result of processing MSW to separate the combustible fraction from the noncombustibles, such as metals and glass. RDF is mainly composed of paper, plastic, wood, and kitchen or yard wastes, and has a higher energy content than untreated MSW. Like MSW, RDF is then burned to produce steam and/or electricity. A beneﬁt of using RDF is that it can be shredded into uniformly sized particles or compressed into briquettes, both of which facilitate handling, transportation, and combustion. Another beneﬁt of RDF rather than raw MSW is that fewer noncombustibles such as heavy metals are burned.

turbine machine that uses a moving fluid (liquid or gas) to gas to turn a rotor, creating mechanical energy

Energy Production from Waste in the United States and South America South America, with its agrarian societies, surprisingly consumes very few wastes for the production of steam or electricity. Brazil is the largest country in South America and is also the largest energy consumer, consuming about 8.5 quads of energy each year as compared to 6.1 quads for Mexico, 12.5 quads for Canada, and 97.0 quads for the United States. Due to the large size of Brazil’s agricultural sector, biomass is seen as the best future alternative energy source. Currently, Brazil produces about 4,000 gigawatt (1 × 109) hours annually (i.e., 0.1 quads equivalent) in the sugar industry to run its own reﬁneries and distilleries. At the same time, Brazil produces up to 3.9 billion gallons of ethanol (i.e., 0.5 quads equivalent) for automobiles each year, although it is manufactured from sugar and not waste materials. No other South American countries produce signiﬁcant quantities of energy from waste; however, Argentina’s biomass energy use, like Brazil’s, is expected to grow in the coming years.

biomass all of the living material in a given area; often refers to vegetation

In the United States, corn is the primary feedstock along with barley and wheat that is currently being used to produce ethanol, although neither corn or grains are considered wastes. Considerable ongoing research is exploring the use of true biomass wastes such as corn stover or wood chips and sawdust for ethanol production. One project at the U.S. Department of Energy involves the coﬁring of sawdust and tires with coal in utility boilers. S E E A L S O Renewable Energy. Internet Resources Energy Information Agency. “Energy in the Americas.” Available from http:// www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/theamericas.html. Energy Information Agency. “Renewable Energy Annual 2000.” Available from http:// www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/rea_data/rea_sum.html. Integrated Waste Services Association. “About Waste-to-Energy.” Available from http://www.wte.org/waste.html.

Bruce G. Miller

Wastewater Treatment Wastewater is simply water that has been used. It usually contains various pollutants, depending on what it was used for. It is classiﬁed into two major categories, by source:

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H O W SEP TI C E FFLUENT P E RCOLA TE S TO THE WA TE R TA BLE

Evaporation Well

Septic tank

Drain field Percolation

Pumping Level

SOURCE:

Water table

Adapted from U.S. EPA.

1. Domestic or sanitary wastewater. This comes from residential sources including toilets, sinks, bathing, and laundry. It can contain body wastes containing intestinal disease organisms. 2. Industrial wastewater. This is discharged by manufacturing processes and commercial enterprises. Process wastewater can contain rinse waters including such things as residual acids, plating metals, and toxic chemicals. Wastewater is treated to remove pollutants (contaminants). Wastewater treatment is a process to improve and purify the water, removing some or all of the contaminants, making it ﬁt for reuse or discharge back to the environment. Discharge may be to surface water, such as rivers or the ocean, or to groundwater that lies beneath the land surface of the earth. Properly treating wastewater assures that acceptable overall water quality is maintained. In many parts of the world, including in the United States, health problems and diseases have often been caused by discharging untreated or inadequately treated wastewater. Such discharges are called water pollution, and result in the spreading of disease, ﬁsh kills, and destruction of other forms of aquatic life. The pollution of water has a serious impact on all living creatures, and can negatively affect the use of water for drinking, household needs, recreation, ﬁshing, transportation, and commerce.

Objectives and Evolution of Wastewater Treatment We cannot allow wastewater to be disposed of in a manner dangerous to human health and lesser life forms or damaging to the natural environment. Our planet has the remarkable ability to heal itself, but there is a limit to what it can do, and we must make it our goal to always stay within safe bounds. That limit is not always clear to scientists, and we must always take the safe approach to avoid it. Basic wastewater treatment facilities reduce organic and suspended solids to limit pollution to the environment. Advancement in needs and technology

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have necessitated the evolving of treatment processes that remove dissolved matter and toxic substances. Currently, the advancement of scientiﬁc knowledge and moral awareness has led to a reduction of discharges through pollution prevention and recycling, with the noble goal of zero discharge of pollutants. Treatment technology includes physical, biological, and chemical methods. Residual substances removed or created by treatment processes must be dealt with and reused or disposed of in a safe way. The puriﬁed water is discharged to surface water or ground water. Residuals, called sludges or biosolids, may be reused by carefully controlled composting or land application. Sometimes they are incinerated. Since early in history, people have dumped sewage into waterways, relying on natural puriﬁcation by dilution and by natural bacterial breakdown. Population increases resulted in greater volume of domestic and industrial wastewater, requiring that we give nature a helping hand. Some so-called advancements in cities such as Boston involved collecting sewage in tanks and releasing it to the ocean only on the outgoing tide. Sludge was barged out to sea so as to not cause complaint. Until the early 1970s, in the United States, treatment mostly consisted of removal of suspended and ﬂoating material, treatment of biodegradable organics, and elimination of pathogenic organisms by disinfection. Standards were not uniformly applied throughout the country. In the early 1970s until about 1980, aesthetic and environmental concerns were considered. Treatment was at a higher level, and nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus were removed in many localities. Since 1980, focus on health concerns related to toxics has driven the development of new treatment technology. Water-quality standards were established by states and the federal government and had to be met as treatment objectives. Not just direct human health but aquatic-life parameters were considered in developing the standards.

Wastewater Treatment Types Rural unsewered areas, for the most part, use septic systems. In these, a large tank, known as the septic tank, settles out and stores solids, which are partially decomposed by naturally occurring anaerobic bacteria. The solids have to be pumped out and hauled by tank truck to be disposed of separately. They often go to municipal wastewater treatment plants, or are reused as fertilizer in closely regulated land-application programs. Liquid wastes are dispersed through perforated pipes into soil ﬁelds around the septic tank. Most urban areas with sewers ﬁrst used a process called primary treatment, which was later upgraded to secondary treatment. Some areas, where needed, employ advanced or tertiary treatment. Common treatment schemes are presented in the following paragraphs.

Primary Treatment. In primary treatment, ﬂoating and suspended solids are settled and removed from sewage. Flow from the sewers enters a screen/bar rack to remove large, ﬂoating material such as rags and sticks.

The liquid and solid material removed from domestic septic tanks is called septage. Most septage is hauled to municipal sewage treatment facilities and most septage haulers must be licensed.

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It then ﬂows through a grit chamber where heavier inorganics such as sand and small stones are removed. clarifier a tank in which solids settle to the bottom and are subsequently removed as sludge

Grit removal is usually followed by a sedimentation tank/clarifiers where inorganic and organic suspended solids are settled out. To kill pathogenic bacteria, the ﬁnal efﬂuent from the treatment process is disinfected prior to discharge to a receiving water. Chlorine, in the form of a sodium hypochlorite solution, is normally used for disinfection. Since more chlorine is needed to provide adequate bacteria kills than would be safe for aquatic life in the stream, excess chlorine is removed by dechlorination. Alternate disinfection methods, such as ozone or ultraviolet light, are utilized by some treatment plants. Sludge that settles to the bottom of the clariﬁer is pumped out and dewatered for use as fertilizer, disposed of in a landﬁll, or incinerated. Sludge that is free of heavy metals and other toxic contaminants is called Biosolids and can be safely and beneﬁcially recycled as fertilizer, for example.

outfall the place where effluent is discharged into receiving waters

Secondary Treatment. Primary treatment provided a good start, but, with the exception of some ocean outfalls, it is inadequate to protect water quality as required by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). With secondary treatment, the bacteria in sewage is used to further purify the sewage. Secondary treatment, a biological process, removes 85 percent or more of the organic matter in sewage compared with primary treatment, which removes about 50 percent. The basic processes are variations of what is called the “activated sludge” process or “trickling ﬁlters,” which provide a mechanism for bacteria, with air added for oxygen, to come in contact with the wastewater to purify it. In the activated sludge process, ﬂow from the sewer or primary clariﬁers goes into an aeration tank, where compressed air is mixed with sludge that is recycled from secondary clariﬁers which follow the aeration tanks. The recycled, or activated, sludge provides bacteria to consume the “food” provided by the new wastewater in the aeration tank, thus purifying it. In a trickling ﬁlter the ﬂow trickles over a bed of stones or synthetic media on which the purifying organisms grow and contact the wastewater, removing contaminants in the process. The ﬂow, along with excess organisms that build up on the stones or media during the puriﬁcation, then goes to a secondary clariﬁer. Air ﬂows up through the media in the ﬁlters, to provide necessary oxygen for the bacteria organisms. Clariﬁed efﬂuent ﬂows to the receiving water, typically a river or bog, after disinfection. Excess sludge is produced by the process and after collection from the bottom of the secondary clariﬁers it is dewatered, sometimes after mixing with primary sludge, for use as fertilizer, disposed of in a landﬁll, or incinerated.

Advanced or Tertiary Treatment. As science advanced the knowledge of aquatic life mechanisms and human health effects, and the need for purer water was identiﬁed, technology developed to provide better treatment. Heavy metals, toxic chemicals and other pollutants can be removed from domestic and industrial wastewater to an increasing degree. Methods of advanced treatment include microﬁltration, carbon adsorption, evaporation /distillation, and chemical precipitation.

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Industrial Waste Treatment. Depending on the type of industry and the nature of its wastes, industries must utilize methods such as those used for advanced treatment of sewage to purify wastewater containing pollutants such as heavy metals and toxic chemicals before it can be discharged. Industries are permitted to discharge directly to receiving waters under the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit system or to municipal sewers under the Industrial Pretreatment Program. Pollution prevention programs are very effective in helping industries reduce discharged pollutants, by eliminating them at the source through recycling or through the substitution of safer materials. More and more industries are approaching or attaining zero discharge by cleaning and reusing their water over and over and over.

Combined Sewer Overflows Combined sewer systems are sewers that are designed to collect rainwater runoff, domestic sewage, and industrial wastewater in the same pipe. Most of the time, combined sewer systems transport all of their wastewater to a sewage treatment plant, where it is treated and then discharged to a water body. During periods of heavy rainfall or snowmelt, however, the wastewater volume in a combined sewer system can exceed the capacity of the sewer system or treatment plant. For this reason, combined sewer systems are designed to overﬂow occasionally and discharge excess wastewater directly to nearby streams, rivers, or other water bodies. Some designs utilize an overﬂow at the treatment plant that diverts the excess ﬂow to chlorination facilities for disinfection prior to discharge. These overﬂows, called combined sewer overﬂows (CSOs), contain not only storm water but also untreated human and industrial waste, toxic materials, and debris. They are a major water pollution concern for the approximately 772 U.S. cities that have combined sewer systems. CSO outfalls often result in violations of receiving stream-water quality standards and impairment to designated water uses. Violations can include aesthetics (including ﬂoatables, oil and grease, colors, and odor), solids, nutrients, harmful bacteria, metals, and reduced dissolved oxygen levels.

Historical and Regulatory Aspects Environmental awareness and activism is not a present-day concept: In the mid-1700s Benjamin Franklin and others petitioned the Pennsylvania Assembly to stop dumping waste and attempted to regulate waste disposal and water pollution. European countries were correlating sickness with lead and mercury in the late 1700s. In 1855, Chicago became the ﬁrst U.S. city with a comprehensive sewer plan, and all U.S. towns with populations over 4,000 had city sewers by 1905. In 1899 the Refuse Act prevented some obvious pollution of streams and placed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in charge of permits and regulation. In 1914 U.S. government agencies began pollution surveys of streams and harbors. Reports ﬁled by the early 1920s showed heavy damage from oil dumping, mine runoff, untreated sewage, and industrial wastes.

SETTLING POND A settling pond, usually manmade, collects and slows water flow so that suspended solids (sediments) have time to precipitate or settle out of the water. Some applications of settling ponds include capturing runoff from farms (agricultural waste), construction projects (soil sediment) and mines (sediment and toxic waste). Settling ponds eventually fill and must be dredged to remain in operation. Polluted water from abandoned mines is diverted to settling ponds to remove solids such as iron oxide. When dredged, these sediments must be treated as contaminated waste. Pilot projects are underway to recapture iron oxide for use in paint pigments.

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In 1924 the Oil Pollution Control Act prohibited discharge from any vessel within the three-mile limit, except by accident. In 1948 the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and active House and Senate Public Works Committee in water pollution came about. In 1956 Congress passed the Water Pollution Control Act, in 1961 the Clean Water Act, and in 1965 the Water Quality Act, setting standards for states. In 1970 Congress and the president established the EPA. In 1972 Congress passed the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (the “Clean Water Act”). In 1973 EPA issued the ﬁrst NPDES permits. In 1974 Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The Clean Water Act of 1972. Said to be one of the most signiﬁcant pieces of environmental regulations ever enacted, the federal Clean Water Act of 1972 was prompted by growing national concern for the environment in the late 1960s, fueled by such concerns as the burning Cuyahoga River in Ohio, an unﬁshable, unswimmable Potomac River, and a nearly dead Lake Erie. National goals and objectives were established “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.” There were two major goals: 1. Eliminate the discharge of all pollutants into navigable waters of the United States; and 2. Achieve an interim level of water quality that provides for the protection of ﬁsh, shellﬁsh, and wildlife and recreation (the “ﬁshable, swimmable” goal). To help do this, the following were established: A state grant program to support the construction of sewage treatment plants; the NPDES program, whose goal was to eliminate discharges to U.S. waters; and technological standards or discharge limits that had to be met, based on water-quality standards set by the states. A minimum required percent removal of pollutants was added in 1985. Secondary treatment was required, and limits were set for three major efﬂuent parameters: biological oxygen demand, suspended solids, and pH. nonpoint source pollution pollution originating from a broad area, such as agricultural runoff or automobile emissions

The Water Quality Act of 1987 made several changes, addressing (1) excess toxic pollutants in some waters and (2) nonpoint source pollution. The construction grant program was phased out and replaced by ﬁnancing projects with revolving fund, low-interest-rate loans. The amendments passed in 1987 also addressed storm-water controls and permits, regulation of toxics in sludge, and problems in estuaries. Penalties were added for permit violations. Also initiated were sludge-disposal regulations and funding for studies relative to nonpoint and toxic pollution sources. The 1972 act has provided remarkable achievements, but there is still a long way to go. Forty percent of waters assessed by states still do not meet water-quality standards, mostly due to pollution from nonpoint sources. Other than from storm or combined storm sewer overﬂows, most of the

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remaining problem is not from pipes (point sources) but from sources such as farming and forestry runoff, construction sites, urban streets (storm water), automobiles, and atmospheric depositions, such as from power-plant air emissions (nonpoint sources). Current approaches to addressing nonpoint pollution include targeting and permitting by given watersheds and TMDL (total maximum daily load for a river stretch) assessments. Many of the facilities funded by federal construction grants, which make up the wastewater collection and treatment infrastructure, are wearing out and are now undersized. Many, many dollars are needed to keep providing adequate treatment to maintain the status quo, let alone meet the needs of a growing populace.

Other Countries Unfortunately, since the Industrial Revolution, most of Europe’s rivers (not unlike in the United States) were utilized for transporting wastes to the sea, resulting in harm to human and aquatic health and causing coastal pollution. In earlier times, the rivers could handle the limited wastes discharged, through dilution and natural puriﬁcation. Signiﬁcant progress has been made in treating the wastewater entering Europe’s rivers, with measurable improvements in water quality. The agricultural sector (nonpoint pollution source) has not kept up, and nitrate levels are still high. The ﬁfteen-nation European Union’s (EU) Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive has resulted in signiﬁcant improvements in wastewater treatment capacity and methods. According to the European Environment Agency, increased treatment capacity has been realized in all EU countries except Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands, where it is already efﬁcient. The largest increase will be in southern Europe and Ireland. As a result, the EU’s collection and treatment systems should be able to cope with all organic discharges from most member states by 2005. In Finland and Sweden most of the wastewater was being treated in tertiary plants in the 1980s. S E E A L S O Abatement; Biosolids; NPDES; Pollution Prevention; Water Pollution.

aerobic life or processes that require, or are not destroyed by, the presence of oxygen anaerobic a life or process that occurs in, or is not destroyed by, the absence of oxygen

CONSTRUCTED WETLANDS Constructed wetlands are wetlands that are specially built for the purpose of wastewater treatment and are utilized in place of naturally occurring wetlands. They provide a greater degree of wastewater treatment than natural wetlands, as their hydraulic loadings can be managed as required. Because these wetlands are constructed specifically for wastewater treatment, they should not be included in the jurisdictional group, which avoids the regulatory and environmental entanglement associated with natural wetlands. This is in accordance with Environmental Protection Agency regulations. The

treatment process can be either aerobic or anaerobic, depending on whether the wetlands are constructed with an exposed water surface or one with subsurface flow. These wetlands can also be used to remove nitrogen, which is usually not removed during the standard wastewater treatment process. Nitrogen removal is accomplished by the growth of cattails and reeds, which utilize the highly nutrient wastewater and consequently remove nitrogen in the process. Sometimes the cattails and reeds must be harvested to complete the removal process.

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Internet Resources Environmental Protection Agency, Ofﬁce of Water. (1993). “Constructed Wetlands for Wastewater Treatment and Wildlife Habitat.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/ owow/wetlands/construct. Ohio State University Extension, Food, Agricultural, and Biological Engineering. “Wastewater Treatment Principles and Regulations.” Available from http://ohioline.osu.edu/aex-fact/0768.html.

Raymond Cushman and George Carlson

Water Pollution Water covers more than 70 percent of Earth’s surface. It is essential to all life. Organisms can survive longer without food than without water. It is one of our most valuable resources. Pollute means to make impure or unclean. In that sense, water pollution has always occurred as a natural phenomenon. Forest ﬁres, storms, volcanoes, or a heavy leaf fall can contaminate a water body. However, these organic materials are broken down or biodegraded naturally. Pollution as we know it began when humans started discarding waste including sewage and toxic chemicals. By the middle of the twentieth century, the extent of water pollution became apparent when Ohio’s Cuyahoga River caught ﬁre as a result of widespread oil pollution. The Clean Water Act of 1972 and its subsequent amendments reduced surface-water pollution by prohibiting the dumping of toxic chemicals and medical waste, and by establishing a permitting system to reduce the direct discharge of pollutants. The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, later amended in 1987, set maximum allowable contaminant levels for drinking water and called for the regular monitoring of groundwater. And the Ocean Dumping Ban prohibited the marine disposal of sewage and industrial waste after 1991. Water pollution is described as point source or nonpoint source. Point source means one can pinpoint and reduce pollution at its source. Point source pollution may come from an industrial discharge pipe, a wastewater treatment plant, or a capsized oil tanker. Nonpoint source pollution occurs when substances such as fertilizer, pesticides, and soil from erosion enter water bodies through rain runoff. Other pollutants include heavy metals such as mercury, salt, acid rain, silt, hot water, petroleum products, excess nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, sewage, and animal waste. Since polluted water is extremely difﬁcult and costly to clean up, prevention is by far the best approach to this form of environmental pollution. S E E A L S O Acid Rain; Agriculture; Clean Water Act; Cryptosporidiosis; Fish Kills; Hypoxia; Mercury; Nonpoint Source Pollution; PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls); Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act; Sedimentation; Water Pollution; Water Treatment; Wastewater Treatment. Bibliography EPA Clean Water Act. Available from http://www.epa.gov/r5water/cwa.htm. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988.” Available from http://www.epa.gov/history.

Diana Strnisa

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Liquid waste pouring from pipe into flowing river. (United States Environmental Protection Agency. Reproduced by permission.)

Water Pollution: Freshwater Freshwater pollution is the contamination of inland water (not saline) with substances that make it unﬁt for its natural or intended use. Pollution may be caused by fecal waste, chemicals, pesticides, petroleum, sediment, or even heated discharges. Polluted rivers and lakes are unﬁt for swimming or ﬁshing; polluted water is unsafe to drink.

Background For centuries, fecal waste and other pollutants were dumped in rivers, with “dilution the solution” to pollution. In the mid-twentieth century, many

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Steel mills in Indiana along the southern coast of Lake Michigan. (©Joel W. Rogers/ Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

American rivers and streams were open sewers, choking on everything from human waste to highly toxic industrial discharges. New York City alone pumped a half billion gallons of raw sewage into its harbor every day. As pollution levels grew, so did the impacts. “No swimming” signs became the norm. Lake Erie was dying. The Hudson River’s commercial striped bass ﬁshery, once valued at $40 million a year, was closed and it became illegal to sell oysters from Oyster Bay, Long Island. And then, in June 1969, Ohio’s Cuyahoga River caught ﬁre. The damning image of a river in ﬂames is credited by many for passage of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set standards to regulate the discharge of industrial and municipal waste—so-called end-of-the-pipe pollution. With them came signiﬁcant federal funding to help localities improve wastewater treat-

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ment. Billions of dollars have been invested since 1972 building and upgrading sewage treatment facilities. Improvements in municipal wastewater treatment have been matched by progress in the private sector. Nationally, more than thirty thousand major industrial dischargers pretreat their wastewater before it enters local sewers. By 2000, some 75 percent of toxic discharges, including heavy metals and PCBs, were being prevented.

Firemen standing on a bridge over Cuyahoga River to spray water on the burning tug boat Arizona, which caused an oil slick at the Great Lakes Towing Company site, Cleveland, Ohio (November 3, 1952). (©Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.)

Surface Water Pollution Freshwater makes up less than three percent of earth’s water, but is the source of virtually all drinking water. In 2002, each U.S. household used an average of 94,000 gallons of water per year. Some 55 percent of that water comes from reservoirs, rivers, and lakes, and a 2000 survey published in EPA’s National Water Quality Inventory found almost 40 percent of U.S. rivers and 45 percent of lakes are polluted. These sources, called surface water, are vulnerable to pollution discharged out of pipes and precipitating out of the air but the primary source of their pollution today is runoff, pollutants washing off the land. These nonpoint or scattered sources are not easily traceable. Pesticides and fertilizers used in agriculture and on golf courses and suburban lawns account for a major portion of nonpoint source pollution. Runoff from parking lots and roads ﬂush spilled oil and gasoline and road salt into lakes and streams. Runoff containing manure from livestock and poultry producers has

307

Water Pollution: Freshwater

S O U R CE S OF LOA DI NG P HOS P HA TE S TO WA TERWA Y S

Animal feeds 5%

Other 3%

Detergents 12%

Fertilizers 80%

SOURCE:

Adapted from International Fertilizer Industry Association.

been a major source of surface water pollution. More than 150 pathogens found in livestock manure pose risks to humans. In 2003, concentrated animal feeding operation guidelines, or CAFO standards, were ﬁnalized requiring inspection of waste lagoons and outdoor manure tanks, as well as permits for applying manure on land. Air pollutants such as dioxin and mercury along with sulfur and nitrogen oxides precipitate into lakes and rivers by rainfall in the form of acid rain. More than 95 percent of rainwater tested at four sites in Indiana between 2001 and 2002 contained unsafe levels of mercury according to a National Wildlife Federation report. Point sources, such as chemical and municipal wastewater treatment plants, were the leading source of contamination for about ten percent of river and lake water according to the 2000 National Water Quality Inventory. Toxic chemicals, although now regulated, can still be discharged directly into surface water. AK Steel Corporation in Pennsylvania discharged the largest amount of any industrial pollutant, about 28 million pounds of nitrate compounds, to surface water between 1998 and 2000, according to the Toxic Release Inventory. Other sources of surface water pollution include silt washed into streams and lakes that smothers organisms on the lake ﬂoor, upsetting or destroying aquatic ecosystems. Thermal pollution such as an inﬂux of warm water from cooling towers for power plants also has a detrimental effect on aquatic ecosystems. The recent discovery of surface-water contamination by minute amounts of pharmaceuticals and personal-care products, including synthetic hormones

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Water Pollution: Freshwater

N IT R O G E N L O A D I N G B Y L A N D U S E O N C HES A P EA K E BA Y 8

Pounds per acre per year

7 6 5 4 3 2 1

SOURCE:

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from birth control pills, is being investigated to determine whether it poses a threat to humans, aquatic species, or wildlife. Water Quality Act amendments of 1987 established a $400-million program to help states to develop and implement nonpoint source management programs based on watershed protection.

Groundwater Pollution Water contained in the pores of soil or in aquifers is called groundwater. About 40 percent of U.S. municipal water comes from groundwater and an additional forty million people, including most of the rural population, draw drinking water from domestic wells. Groundwater, while protected by the ﬁltering action of soil, can be contaminated by leaking municipal landﬁlls, sewage lagoons, and chemicals from industrial activity. Centers for Disease Control data shows that 318 waterborne disease outbreaks associated with groundwater systems occurred between 1971 and 1996. Leaking underground oil tanks and spills at gas stations account for oil and other chemicals such as benzene and methyl-tertiary-butyl ether (MBTE) found in groundwater. More than 400,000 leaking underground storage tanks were reported in the United States in 2001. Pesticides and agricultural fertilizers drain into groundwater polluting it with carcinogenic chemicals and nitrates.

aquifer an underground geological formation, or group of formations, containing water; are sources of groundwater for wells and springs

The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 (SWDA) regulates groundwater. More than eighty possible contaminants are monitored, including carcinogens such as tetrachloroethylene, discharged from dry cleaners. Health effects of these contaminants range from increased cancer risk, intestinal lesions, kidney damage, and reproductive difﬁculties, to gastrointestinal distress. Municipal and private water suppliers are responsible for seeing that contaminants do not exceed the limits set by the EPA.

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Water Pollution: Freshwater

Human and Environmental Health Effects Fertilizer, animal manure, and waste-treatment plant efﬂuent all contain nutrients that stimulate excessive plant and algal growth in freshwater bodies. When the plants die and decompose, dissolved oxygen is depleted, causing die-offs of ﬁsh and other species living in the water. Persistent organochlorine insecticides, such as DDT, deposited in lake sediments can bioaccumulate, harming the ﬁsh and birds that eat them. Pyrethroid insecticides, though derived from chrysanthemums, are extremely toxic to aquatic organisms. Estrogenmimicking substances such as some pesticides and industrially produced chemicals have been shown to interfere with the reproductive system of ﬁsh. Human and animal fecal waste contain disease-carrying organisms such as the bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) and pathogens that causes cholera, typhoid, and cryptosporidiosis. Cholera is rarely seen in the United States, but E. coli outbreaks are not rare, and in 1993, more than ﬁfty people died, and an estimated 400,000 became ill from a massive outbreak of cryptosporidiosis in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The outbreak was attributed to a failure in drinking water treatment, allowing the cyst form of the parasite, introduced by animal waste, to pass into tap water and be ingested. Ten outbreaks of cryptosporidiosis were reported in the United States between 1990 and 2000.

watershed the land area that drains into a stream; the watershed for a major river may encompass a number of smaller watersheds

You can help prevent water pollution by simply not littering. Street trash that washes down storm drains is a major source of floatable debris. Properly dispose of used oil; oil poured down storm drains and sewers is a major source of petroleum pollution. Use nonphosphate detergents for dish and clothes washing. Don’t overfertilize lawns and use integrated pest management practices to reduce pesticide use. Use hazardous waste collection programs to dispose of batteries, fluorescent lights that contain mercury, unused oil, paint remover, pesticides and old household chemicals.

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Mercury bioaccumulates in ﬁsh and can damage the nervous systems and brains of humans. It can interfere with normal behavior in birds, such as loons, causing them to spend less time looking for food or incubating eggs. About one-quarter of breeding adult loons have higher-than-normal (10 parts per million) levels of mercury. To protect people from eating contaminated ﬁsh, states and local governments post ﬁsh-consumption advisories when contaminant levels become unsafe. There were 2,800 advisories posted in the United States in 2002, alerting people to high levels of mercury, PCBs, chlordane, dioxins, and DDT in ﬁsh.

Prevention and Abatement Once water is contaminated, it is difﬁcult, expensive, and sometimes impossible to remove pollutants. Technologies to remove contaminants from groundwater are air stripping, granular activated carbon, and advanced oxidation. Air stripping involves pumping out the contaminated water, then heating it to evaporate the contaminant. The cleaned water is reinjected into the ground. Pumping out contaminated water and absorbing the pollutant on activated charcoal can remove less volatile compounds. Ninety percent of trichloroethylene was removed from NASA’s launch complex thirty-four groundwater cleanup site on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station by thermal treatment. In this method an electric current heats soil and water, evaporating some water and the contaminant, which is carried out of the ground by the force of the steam and collected in recovery wells. Preventing pollution is obviously important. Drinking water suppliers have discovered that watershed protection is cost-effective because it reduces pollution and cuts the cost of drinking water treatment. A watershed is the area that drains into surface or groundwater and keeping that area free from development and agricultural runoff are among the goals of watershed protection. The Barnes Aquifer in Massachusetts supplies water to sixty thousand residents and the aquifer’s recharge area is under heavy development pressure from

Water Pollution: Freshwater

large-scale residential subdivisions. Municipal wells have been contaminated with traces of ethylene dibromide and trichloroethylene. After learning about watershed protection, citizens voted against proposed changes to zoning that would have increased the number of new homes and increased the potential for groundwater pollution. And by investing $1 billion in watershed protection, New York City, with an enormous reservoir system, has avoided having to build water-ﬁltration facilities, saving construction costs of some $8 billion.

Global The United Nations (UN) theme for World Environment Day 2003 was “Water: Two Billion People are Dying for It!” It was not en exaggeration. The UN reports that one person in six lives without regular access to safe drinking water. Over twice that number—2.4 billion people—lack access to adequate sanitation. Water-related diseases kill a child every eight seconds, and are responsible for 80 percent of all illnesses and deaths in the developing world. Cholera outbreaks, due to water contaminated with raw sewage, occur regularly in India and Bangladesh and less frequently in many other countries. In Africa in 1997, 5,853 deaths due to cholera were reported to the World Health Organization. It is a situation, the UN said, “made all the more tragic by our long-standing knowledge that these diseases are easily preventable.” S E E A L S O : Acid Rain; Agriculture; Clean Water Act; Cryptosporidiosis; DDT (Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane); Health, Human; Nonpoint Source Pollution; PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls); Point Source; Snow, John; Wastewater Treatment; Water Treatment. Bibliography Pielou, E.C. (1998). Fresh Water. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Internet Resources Natural Resources Defense Council. “What’s on Tap: Grading Water in 19 U.S. Cities.” Available from http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/uscities/contents.asp. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Browse EPA Topics. Available from http:// www.epa.gov/ebtpages/alphabet.html. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Clean Water Act. Available from http:// www.epa.gov/r5water/cwa.htm. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation Final Rule. Available from http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/afo/cafoﬁnalrule.cfm. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. List of Drinking Water Contaminants and their MCLs. Available from http://www.epa.gov/safewater/mcl.html#mcls. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Polluted Runoff (Nonpoint Source Pollution). Available from http://www.epa.gov/OWOW/NPS/facts/point1.htm.

The Great Lakes Basin includes areas of the eight Great Lakes states: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. In 1995, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Great Lakes states agreed to a plan called the Great Lakes Initiative, aimed at reducing pollution and restoring the health of the Great Lakes. The plan included setting water quality standards for twenty-nine pollutants. In 2000, the EPA initiated a ten-year phase-out of the use of mixing zones for bioaccumulative chemicals in the Great Lakes. The EPA says this ruling will reduce discharges of toxic chemicals by 700,000 pounds a year.

recharge the process by which water is added to a zone of saturation, usually by percolation from the soil surface; e.g., the recharge of an aquifer mixing zone an area of a lake or river where pollutants from a point source discharge are mixed, usually by natural means, with cleaner water bioaccumulative relating to substances that increase in concentration in living organisms as they take in contaminated air, water, or food because the substances are very slowly metabolized or excreted

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Proposed Groundwater Rule. Available from http://www.epa.gov/OGWDW/gwr.html. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Safe Drinking Water Act. Available from http://www.epa.gov/safewater/sdwa/sdwa.html. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2000 National Water Quality Inventory. Available from http://www.epa.gov/305b/2000report. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Water Science Great Lakes Initiative Topic. Available from http://www.epa.gov/ost/GLI/mixingzones/ﬁnalfact.html. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Fish Advisories. Available from http:// www.epa.gov/waterscience/ﬁsh. U.S. Geological Survey National Water Quality Assessment Program. Available from http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa.

Patricia Hemminger

311

Water Pollution: Marine

Water Pollution: Marine Marine pollution is the release of by-products of human activity that cause harm to natural marine ecosystems. The pollutants may be sewage, farm waste, toxic chemicals, or inert materials that may smother, choke, or strangle living organisms.

Sewage, Animal Waste, and Fertilizers

macroscopic large enough to be visible, in contrast to microscopic eutrophication in nature, the slow aging process during which a lake, estuary, or bay evolves into a bog or marsh and eventually disappears; in pollution, excess algal growth or blooms due to introduction of a nutrient overload of nutrients, i.e., from un- or poorly treated sewage

Sewage, animal waste, and chemical fertilizers all have a high content of nitrogen and phosphorus. Artiﬁcially high levels of these substances in the water promote excessive growth of microscopic or macroscopic plants, in a process called eutrophication. When these plants accumulate, die, and decay, they cause low oxygen content in the water. Even if sewage is treated to remove solids, the liquid discharged contains high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus. Intensive cultivation of animals in feedlots, or application of more fertilizer than a crop can absorb, also cause runoff rich in nitrogen and phosphorus that ﬁnd their way into rivers and estuaries. Vehicle exhausts and industrial chimneys are large sources of nitrogen compounds that are transported in the atmosphere and deposited in coastal waters. On a global scale, agricultural runoff is the most important source of eutrophication, but atmospheric deposition is the fastest-growing source. It is the largest source of nitrogen off the coast of the northeastern United States, in the western Baltic Sea, and in the western Mediterranean Sea. International agencies consider that, worldwide, eutrophication is the most serious pollution problem in coastal waters. For example, in the Gulf of Mexico, off the mouth of the Mississippi River, water near the bottom has severely reduced oxygen content over a very large area, sixteen thousand square kilometers (6,200 square miles) by 1998. Mobile animals such as ﬁsh and shrimp leave the hypoxic area, but sedentary animals such as clams and worms are killed in large numbers. A classic example of eutrophication and its treatment occurred in the estuary of the River Thames, near London, England. In the 1950s the water was severely hypoxic for thirty-ﬁve kilometers (twenty-two miles) below London Bridge. After several sewage treatment plants were built, the water returned to a well-oxygenated state and migratory ﬁsh such as salmon once again ascend the river. In the case of the Mississippi River, treatment of the eutrophication is more difﬁcult because runoff from agricultural land is the major cause of the problem, and more than half of the agricultural land in the United States drains into the Mississippi basin. Cleaning up the pollution would involve changes in farming methods on a national scale.

estuary region of interaction between rivers and near-shore ocean waters, where tidal action and river flow mix freshand saltwater (i.e., bays, mouths of rivers, salt marshes, and lagoons); these ecosystems shelter and feed marine life, birds, and wildlife phytoplankton that portion of the plankton community comprised of tiny plants; e.g. algae, diatoms

312

Eutrophication has important indirect effects. The plants known as sea grasses, which grow in the shallow water of estuaries, provide food and shelter for a wide range of animals, including geese, turtles, manatees, and ﬁsh. In eutrophicated water, the dense microscopic plant life signiﬁcantly reduces the penetration of light and smothers the sea grasses. In Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, eutrophication caused an area of sea grasses to decrease by twothirds between 1960 and 1980, and there was a corresponding decrease in landings of ﬁsh and crabs. Similar effects have been observed in Australia. Red tides, or harmful algal blooms, are associated with eutrophication. Single species of phytoplankton multiply at the expense of all other species

Water Pollution: Marine

Garbage strewn across a sandy area. (S. Barnett, United States Environmental Protection Agency. Reproduced by permission.)

and become so abundant that the water is discolored. Many bloom species produce toxic substances. During the 1990s in estuaries located in the southeastern United States, there were numerous cases of blooms of Pﬁesteria piscida, a dinoflagellate that produced a toxin which killed thousands of ﬁsh. The source of the nutrients support Pﬁesteria is believed to be agricultural runoff or sewage discharge. Other types of blooms are ingested by shellﬁsh, which become toxic for humans who consume them, causing partial paralysis, memory loss, or even death. Toxic blooms have been reported much more frequently in the 1990s than in the past, and the spread of eutrophication is believed to be a contributing factor.

dinoflagellate single-celled aquatic organism

Pollution and Coral Reefs On coral reefs, eutrophication causes seaweed to grow and smother the corals. Several kinds of environmental problems interact with eutrophication to cause the deterioration of coral reefs. Overharvesting of the ﬁsh and invertebrates that eat seaweed accelerates the smothering. Careless development along coastlines and in river basins leads to soil erosion and the transport of heavy loads of silt and clay, which settle on the corals and smother them. Oil spills also take their toll. When corals are exposed to abnormally high water temperature, they respond by discharging the microscopic algae living within their tissues. Sometimes they recover, but often they die. These episodes, called coral bleaching, became much more frequent during the 1990s and are believed to be caused by global warming. The result of pollution and global warming is that at least half of the area of coral reefs in southeast Asia is in poor condition, and in parts of the Caribbean Sea only 5 percent of the reef area consists of living coral.

Metals and Organic Contaminants Industrial effluents often contain metallic compounds. For example, Halifax, a small city in eastern Canada, discharged into its harbor during the 1990s about thirty-three tons of zinc and thirty-one tons of lead per year, with

effluent discharge, typically wastewater—treated or untreated—that flows out of a treatment plant, sewer, or industrial outfall; generally refers to wastes discharged into surface waters

313

Water Pollution: Marine

Coral grows a new layer each year, much as a tree adds a new ring each year. Scientists analyzing layers of Bermudan coral have discovered an environmental record dating back to the mid-1800s. Marine pollution can be measured across the Industrial Revolution. Marine levels of lead have dropped dramatically since the phaseout of leaded gasoline but levels of lead in the Atlantic are still double their preindustrial concentrations.

organochlorine chemical containing carbon and chlorine

lesser amounts of copper and other metals. These metals are held in the sediment in a relatively inert form, but if stirred up into the water column, they become oxygenated and toxic. Tin is another common pollutant in harbors. It occurs as tributyltin (TBT), which is used as a component of antifouling paints on the undersides of ships. When taken up by shellﬁsh, it accumulates in their tissues and has proved toxic to the shellﬁsh and to organisms that consume them. The United States began to phase out TBT in 1988, and it will be banned internationally beginning in 2008. Industry also produces organic compounds such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and various pesticides. These accumulate in the fatty tissue of plants and animals low in the food chain, and as they pass through the food web to larger and long-lived animals, there is an increase in concentration of the substances in their fat, a process known as bioaccumulation. The St. Lawrence River, which drains the Great Lakes, has accumulated large amounts of organochlorines, which have amassed in the tissues of Beluga whales. During the 1990s, the level of this pollution was much reduced, and the whales have been protected from hunting, but their population fails to increase. Many animals have tumors and disease. There is mounting evidence that chronic exposure to contaminants causes suppression of the immune responses of marine mammals. Similar problems have occurred with seals in the Baltic Sea.

Oil Pollution The most serious types of oil pollution occur when an oil tanker goes ashore or hits a reef and spills its contents. As the oil drifts ashore, great damage is done to beaches, rocky shores, salt marshes, or mangrove forests. Cleanup is often attempted using mechanical means, or the application of dispersants, with mixed results. Usually, a proportion of native organisms are killed, but given time, the lighter fractions of oil evaporate, while the heavier fractions are decomposed by photochemical processes and microorganisms. International law now requires that vessel owners be responsible for any loss of oil, damage to existing ecosystems, and the costs of recommended cleanup. Chronic low levels of oil pollution, resulting from accidental spills when loading or unloading, or from washing out oil tanks, are widespread and of signiﬁcant concern. For example, it has been determined that corals around an oil terminal in the Red Sea have experienced lower growth rates and poor reproduction as a result of chronic low-level oil pollution. Oil pollution of the open ocean is also a major concern. When Thor Heyerdahl crossed the South Paciﬁc on the raft Kon-Tiki in 1947 he reported pristine waters, but his Ra expedition across the Atlantic twenty-two years later encountered oil slicks on forty-three of ﬁfty-seven days at sea. The International Convention for Prevention of Pollution from Ships was devised in 1973 and modiﬁed by the Protocol of 1978. Oceangoing vessels are subject to strict regulations concerning the discharge of oil, bilge water, and ballast water, and are forbidden to dump garbage and other solid waste. Accidental spills must be reported.

Marine Debris Marine beaches serve as natural traps for marine debris. Globally, the most common materials are plastics, followed by glass and metal. The chief

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Water Pollution: Marine

When Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian biologist (1914–2002), sailed the balsa wood raft named Kon-Tiki, from Peru to Polynesia in 1947, he saw no pollution in the Pacific Ocean. Just over twenty years later, in 1970, when sailing a papyrus reed boat from Morocco to Barbados, Heyerdahl saw extensive marine pollution including oily wastes, plastic bottles and other trash floating in the water. He radioed the United Nations to

report that floating lumps of solidified, asphalt-like oil polluted over one thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean. After seeing the extent of the ocean’s pollution first hand, Heyerdahl became actively involved in fighting marine pollution. In 1999, with the Norwegian Shipowners Organization, he initiated the Thor Heyerdahl International Maritime Environmental Award to be given for improvement of the global environment.

dangers to marine life result from the ingestion of these fragments, which may block the gut, and from entangling, which may cause suffocation or prevent locomotion and feeding. In a survey of U.S. beaches close to urban centers, cigarette butts were the most abundant debris, followed by packaging items (boxes, bags, caps, lids), medical waste, and sewage. A high proportion of this material reached the sea by way of sewers. Even street litter can be washed into surface drains and then to the sea. The dumping of sewage and waste by ships is another source. Public revulsion at the state of U.S. beaches was a key factor in the enactment of stronger environmental protection laws, like the Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988 that prohibited the dumping of sewage into the ocean. On sites more remote from cities, pieces of rope and netting are the most common types of marine debris.

locomotion self-powered movement

Reduction and Regulation of Marine Pollution There is much that individuals can do to prevent marine pollution: avoid putting toxic substances into drains, avoid dropping litter, minimize the use of pesticides and fertilizers, reduce automobile emissions, and pressure your local government for sewage treatment in the community if it does not yet exist. Larger-scale problems require legislation and enforcement, ranging from the local laws of coastal states in the United States, through national laws such as the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, to international conventions such as the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships. Such laws are effective only if they have the support of the people. S E E A L S O Acid Rain; Clean Water Act; Cryptosporidiosis; Fish Kills; Hypoxia; Mercury; Ocean Dumping; PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls); Petroleum; Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act; Snow, John; Water Treatment; Wastewater Treatment. Bibliography Clark, R.B.; Frid, C; and Attrill, M. (2001). Marine Pollution, 5th edition. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Pelley, J. (1998). “Is Coastal Eutrophication out of Control?” Environmental Science and Technology 32:462A–466A. Internet Resources Global Investigation of Pollution in the Marine Environment (GIPME). “Marine Pollution Programme.” Available from http://ioc.unesco.org/iocweb. Ocean Conservancy. Available from http://www.oceanconservancy.org.

Thousands of volunteers in every U.S. state and territory as well as in more than fifty other countries pick up tons of marine debris each fall in a one-day coastal cleanup. The Ocean Conservancy, which organizes the annual cleanup, collects data on the debris to determine sources of pollution. The most common item washed up on the shoreline? Cigarette butts and filters— a total of 1,640,614 were picked up in 2001. Volunteers also found 259 entangled animals, most snared in nylon fishing line.

Kenneth H. Mann

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Water Treatment

Water Treatment The goal of water treatment, usually from surface sources such as lakes, reservoirs, or rivers, is to remove contaminants and organisms through a combination of biological, chemical, and physical processes to make it safe for drinking. Some of these occur in the natural environment, whereas others occur in engineered and constructed water treatment plants. The engineered processes usually mimic or build on natural processes.

History of Water Treatment Water-treatment concepts underlying those used today were developed in Europe during the 1700s. An outbreak of cholera in London was linked to a sewage-contaminated drinking water well in 1854. John Snow was credited with this ﬁnding. At the point in which the United States began using chlorine to disinfect drinking water (1908), Europe was also using chlorine but exploring the possibility of employing ozone to treat drinking water. The U.S. Public Health Service developed the ﬁrst drinking-water regulations in the United States in 1914. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) later assumed responsibility for this task when it was established in 1970. The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) became law in 1974, and was signiﬁcantly revised in 1986 and 1996. The revisions reﬂected improvements in analytical methods to detect contaminants at lower levels and improvements in automated monitoring used to evaluate treatment plant performance. The revisions also started to address the need to balance immediate (acute) risks versus long-term (chronic) risks. The need to disinfect water to kill pathogens to protect against acute illnesses, versus the formation of disinfection by-products and their chronic health effects is an example of this risk balance. The United States has continued to examine water treatment practices in Europe, particularly water-quality standards established by the World Health Organization (WHO). Although there are some philosophical differences between the United States and Europe relating to the treatment of the distribution system and its operations, the United States has beneﬁted from the European experience. One such philosophical difference is that the European water treatment community does not see the maintenance of a disinfectant residual to the end of the distribution system as a necessary public health protection measure. The United States drinking water community sees this as an important step to protect customers and the water system from bacteriological regrowth or recontamination. As the United States entered the twentyﬁrst century, researchers were collaborating with scientists around the world to continuously improve water quality and treatment, and openly share their research ﬁndings.

Water Quality Regulations in the United States The EPA, under the requirements of the SDWA, regulates drinking water in the United States. The EPA additionally regulates wastewater, but under the requirements of the Clean Water Act (CWA). Storm water and discharges into surface water are also regulated under the CWA. The SDWA sets maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) and treatment techniques (TTs) that drinking water must meet to be considered safe for

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consumption. The list includes microorganisms, disinfectants and disinfection by-products, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals, and radionuclides.

The Water Cycle The requirements of the CWA and SDWA are different, but interrelated. Consider the water cycle and the water-use cycle. Water falls to the earth in the form of precipitation. It drains into rivers, lakes, and streams either naturally or via constructed storm-water-drainage systems. Industrial manufacturers and wastewater treatment plants discharge effluent from their processes into lakes and rivers. Under the CWA, these facilities have waterquality limits that their efﬂuent must meet. These limits have been established to protect the water ecosystem and downstream users. Water suppliers withdraw water from lakes and rivers to be treated for human consumption and other uses. The water is treated and delivered to customers’ taps through a system of pipes and storage facilities that make up the water distribution system. After the water is used, it is conveyed to a wastewater treatment plant and discharged back as efﬂuent to a receiving water body. If the water is used outside, it either seeps into the ground or drains to a storm-water system, which may go to a treatment plant or directly to a river, lake, or another body of water. The cycle continues as the water ﬂowing to the ocean evaporates,

Solid waste settling pond next to manure fiber piles at the Three Mile Canyon Farm near Boardman, Oregon. (AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.)

effluent discharge, typically wastewater—treated or untreated—that flows out of a treatment plant, sewer, or industrial outfall; generally refers to wastes discharged into surface waters

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TH E H Y DROLOGI C CY CLE

Condensation Overland Flow

River Precipitation

Infiltration Transpiration

Evaporation Evaporation Groundwater Recharge Groundwater Flow SOURCE:

Montana Water Center.

ultimately falling again as precipitation. See the illustration for a diagram of the water or hydrologic cycle.

Source Water Protection Source water protection, often referred to as “watershed protection,” is the reduction or prevention of water pollution at its source, represents a tradeoff between treatment plant construction and operation costs. This kind of protection is not always possible, but it has been very effectively implemented by several water systems. A water system that has access to a high-quality source may not need as extensive a treatment plant as a system with a poorer-quality source. This is especially true if a high-quality source, such as a reservoir in an isolated natural area, can be protected by limiting human activity close to that source. Water from such a source may not require the settling step, may involve fewer chemicals or smaller doses of them, or might be able to kill pathogens with strong disinfectants like ozone or ultraviolet light instead of providing ﬁltration.

The Water-Treatment Process Whether in the natural environment or a constructed water-treatment plant, there are several key processes that occur during water treatment: dilution, coagulation and ﬂocculation, settling, ﬁltration, disinfection, and other chemical treatments. The quality of the source water and the effectiveness of source-water protection and management have a direct bearing on the complexity of the treatment that is required. Source-water protection is the ﬁrst step in water treatment, with the natural and engineered processes following. The processes in a water treatment plant are shown in the illustration.

Dilution. Prior to industrialization, the pollution of rivers and streams was not as signiﬁcant a problem. Waste products were released into water bodies, but the quantity of such discharges was not as great as present-day levels. The receiving waters were large enough and the mixing or detention time was long enough that the contaminants were diluted to a level that reduced the

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Water Treatment

W AT E R– T R E A T M E N T PL A N T

Lake or Reservoir

Coagulation removes dirt and other particles suspended in water. Alum and other chemicals are added to water to form tiny sticky particles called "floc" which attract the dirt particles. The combined weight of the dirt and the alum (floc) become heavy enough to sink to the bottom during sedimentation.

Sedimentation: The heavy particles (floc) settle to the bottom and the clear water moves to filtration.

Disinfection: A small amount of chlorine is added or some other disinfection method is used to kill any bacteria or microorganisms that may be in the water.

Storage: Water is placed in a closed tank or reservoir for disinfection to take place. The water then flows through pipes to homes and businesses in the community.

Filtration: The water passes through filters, some made of layers of sand, gravel, and charcoal that help remove even smaller particles.

SOURCE:

AWWA Drinking Water Week Blue Thumb Kit.

amount of concern about risks. A common saying in the past was “the solution to pollution is dilution.” This is not the most efﬁcient treatment method because even small amounts of pollutants, such as some pesticides, can build up, or bioaccumulate, in body fat over time. It is also not the preferred

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Water Treatment

approach because it sends the message that polluting the environment is an acceptable course of action.

Coagulation and Flocculation. Sometimes, the particles that need to be ﬁltered out during water treatment are very small. This makes them less likely to settle out and less likely to be ﬁltered out. Chemicals called coagulants and/or ﬁlter aids are added to the water and mixed in (ﬂocculated) to make the ﬁne particles stick together to form bigger particles that can better settle out or be ﬁltered out more effectively. Depending on the microbial and chemical makeup of the water, different chemicals are used as coagulants. The purpose of these two steps is to improve the performance of the remaining treatment processes.

raw water intake water prior to any treatment or use

diatomaceous earth a chalklike material (fossilized diatoms) used to filter out solid waste in wastewater treatment plants; also used as an active ingredient in some powdered pesticides

Settling. For facilities treating water that contains a lot of solids, settling or sedimentation is a common treatment step. The process slows the ﬂow of the water in a pond or basin so heavier items can settle to the bottom. If the water is not sufﬁciently slowed down, these items are carried along to the next step in the process, which is not desirable. For plants treating very polluted raw water, settling may be used as the ﬁrst step in the treatment plant (presedimentation) and again following the coagulation and ﬂocculation steps. Filtration. There are several methods of ﬁltration used in water treatment. The selection of which type to use is generally a function of the raw water quality. As ﬁltration implies, water ﬂows through a material that removes particles, organisms, and/or contaminants. The material used is most often a granular medium such as sand, crushed anthracite coal, or activated carbon. Some facilities layer different types and sizes of media. Along with varying the size and type of ﬁlter media, facilities are also designed to operate at different ﬂow rates through the ﬁlter media. Traditional ﬁltration plants include slow sand ﬁltration, high-rate ﬁltration, and diatomaceous earth ﬁltration. Another type of ﬁltration that was more widely used in the late 1990s and early 2000s is membrane ﬁltration. It occurs by forcing water through a membrane barrier. A membrane is like a high-tech coffee ﬁlter. As water under pressure ﬂows through the membrane, contaminants and organisms are captured on the membrane and not allowed to pass through. Membranes are not well suited to highly contaminated source waters because the solid materials clog up the membrane almost immediately. Membrane ﬁltration is gaining use in the United States for special applications and in combination with other types of ﬁltration.

Disinfection. Filtration and the steps prior to ﬁltration focus on the physical removal of contaminants in the water. In addition to physical removal, it is still important to provide chemical disinfection. Disinfectants used include chlorine, chloramines (chlorine plus ammonia), ozone, ultraviolet light, and chlorine dioxide. Chlorine was ﬁrst used in the United States in a watertreatment plant in 1908. The advantage of chlorination is that it continues to kill bacteria as water moves through pipes to the tap. Its disadvantage is the possibility of disinfection by-products. Excess chlorine in water can combine with organic material in the water to form substances such as trihalomethanes, which can cause liver, kidney, or central nervous system problems, and are linked to an increased risk of cancer over a lifetime exposure. Disinfection is needed to inactivate (kill) bacteria and viruses that make it through the physical removal (ﬁltration) steps. Viruses and giardia are

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effectively killed by chlorine. Over time, scientists have found that some organisms such as Cryptosporidium are resistant to chlorine. Cryptosporidium rose to public attention in 1993 when it sickened over 400,000 people, killing a hundred, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Largely because of this scare, new or amended U.S. drinking-water regulations developed early in the twenty-ﬁrst century that expanded water treatment requirements speciﬁcally to address Cryptosporidium. Although chlorine is not effective against Cryptosporidium, alternative disinfectants such as ozone and ultraviolet light do appear to be effective at killing it. In Europe, both of these disinfectants are often used without chlorination to kill bacteria in the water supply. An amendment to the SDWA requires that all sources of potable water in the United States be ﬁltered. In some locales throughout the nation, such as Boston and Seattle, reservoir water is essentially free of organic matter, and municipalities have been able to avoid ﬁltration because they have extensive watershed protection and management programs in place.

Other Chemical Treatments. Chemicals are added to drinking water to adjust its hardness or softness, pH, and alkalinity. Water that is acidic is very corrosive to the pipes and materials with which it comes into contact. The addition of sodium hydroxide can reduce corrosivity and extend the service life of pipelines, storage tanks, and building plumbing systems. Pipes may also be coated with chemicals to prevent metals like copper from dissolving in the water. In addition, chemicals are used to reduce the leaching of lead from old lead pipes and lead-soldered copper supply pipes. Fluoride is frequently added to the water in many communities to improve the dental health of younger residents.

pH an expression of the intensity of the basic or acid condition of a liquid; may range from 0 to 14, where 0 is the most acid, 7 is neutral, and 14 is most base; natural waters usually have a pH between 6.5 and 8.

Groundwater Protection and Treatment Wellhead protection is critical to preventing the contamination of groundwater supplies. Groundwater is pumped out of an aquifer, which is like a small underground lake surrounded by layers of rock and soil. Water from the surface ﬂows through the rock and soil to get to the aquifer. The earth naturally provides ﬁltration of microscopic pathogens. It does not always provide adequate protection against viruses or chemicals that are dumped on the ground. Groundwater typically contains higher concentrations of metals like iron and manganese because these metals occur naturally in the earth. Groundwater may also be much harder than surface water. Processes similar to those outlined above are also used to treat groundwater, except that the ﬁltration steps are often focused on removing chemicals or metals rather than pathogens. Some groundwater supplies are not treated at all, while others may be ﬁltered and disinfected. As with surface waters, the quality of the source dictates what treatment steps are required.

Regulatory Reporting and Public Education Water systems in the United States submit reports each month to state or federal regulatory agencies, summarizing treatment-plant performance and sampling results. The majority of medium and large water systems in the United States have staff working twenty-four hours a day. If something were to go wrong at the plant, the plant operators have procedures that they would follow to shut down the plant, switch to alternate equipment, adjust chemical dosages, or collect additional samples. State and federal regulations

One of the problems in protecting drinking water is that by the time results of tests for E. coli or Cryptosporidium or even anthrax are known, an urban population can already be at risk. Inventors Gregory Quist and Hanno Ix are out to change that. They use laser beams to scan a flow of water; particles in the water scatter the light beam and each scatter pattern is different. A computer analyzes the pattern and provides continuous realtime identification of microorganisms. The system is being tested at a Los Angeles, California, water facility.

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specify when the water plant operator must notify the state or federal agency, and these requirements are built into the plant’s procedures. The regulations also specify when the public must be notiﬁed. Orders to boil the water are usually jointly issued by the state health agency and the drinking-water system quickly after a problem has been discovered (most likely via telephone and radio). Public notices about problems with routine monitoring results or the failure to collect required samples would generally be distributed in the newspaper or via the water utility’s annual water quality report (also called a consumer conﬁdence report). The requirement that all water systems compile and distribute a user-friendly report began in 1998. This report provides an overview of the water-system activities and compliance with regulations for the year, as well as identifying ways that customers can get involved or acquire more information. S E E A L S O Agriculture; Cryptosporidiosis; Groundwater; Health, Human; Nonpoint Source Pollution; Snow, John; Wastewater Treatment; Water Pollution. Bibliography American Water Works Association. (1999). Water Quality and Treatment, A Handbook of Community Water Supplies, 5th edition. San Francisco: McGraw-Hill. American Water Works Association and American Society of Civil Engineers. (1998). Water Treatment Plant Design, 3rd edition. San Francisco: McGraw-Hill. Peavy, Howard S.; Rowe, Donald R.; and Tchobanoglous, George. (1985). Environmental Engineering. McGraw-Hill Series in Water Resources and Environmental Engineering. San Francisco: McGraw-Hill. Symons, James M. (1992). Plain Talk about Drinking Water: Answers to 101 Important Questions about the Water You Drink. Boulder, CO: American Water Works Association. Internet Resource U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ofﬁce of Water Web site. Available from http://www.epa.gov/ow.

Julie Hutchins Cairn

Whistleblowing Employees are the eyes and ears of environmental protection. They bury waste, operate incinerators, and witness the discharge of pollutants into the environment. However, employees who “blow the whistle” and report environmental wrongdoing are often subject to harassment, dismissal, and blacklisting. In 1972 as part of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, Congress recognized the critical role workers play in ensuring the enforcement of environmental laws and enacted the ﬁrst environmental whistleblower law. Retaliating against environmental whistleblowers was made illegal and the victims of such misconduct ﬁnally beneﬁtted from a government remedy at the federal level. By 1980 Congress passed six other environmental whistleblowers laws, protecting employees who blow the whistle on violations of the Toxic Substances, Safe Drinking Water, Solid Waste Disposal, Clean Air, Atomic Energy, and Comprehensive Environmental Response (Superfund) Acts. Nearly every American worker is protected under these laws. The types of employees who have successfully ﬁled suit include high-level managers who exposed the dumping of raw sewage into rivers, quality-assurance inspectors who reported nuclear safety violations, federal EPA scientists who

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published papers documenting ﬂaws in risk assessments, and state inspectors who blew the whistle on a school built on a toxic waste dump. In each case the public was able to learn about and prevent signiﬁcant threats to the environment and public health. The federal environmental protection laws offer a remedy to the victims of retaliation. The employee initiates the process by ﬁling a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) within thirty days of learning of the discriminatory action. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigates the complaint, and the whistleblower is entitled to a full evidentiary hearing before the DOL. If the whistleblower wins, that individual is entitled to reinstatement, back pay, attorney fees, damages for loss of reputation, and emotional distress. Under the Toxic Substances and Safe Drinking Water laws, whistleblowers may also be awarded punitive damages. Although hundreds of employees have obtained relief under these laws (including some multimillion-dollar judgments), whistleblower cases are hard fought, and many environmental whistleblowers with valid cases lose in court. Some cannot afford attorneys experienced in this special area of the law, whereas others miss the thirty-day statute of limitations for ﬁling complaints. Many whistleblowers are overwhelmed by the personal crises they must face after losing their jobs. Environmental whistleblowers have also received signiﬁcant support outside the legal system. For example, press coverage of Karen Silkwood’s whistleblowing in the early 1970s called attention to the hazards of nuclear power plants. Additionally, public interest groups, such as the National Whistleblowers Center and Public Employees for Professional Responsibility, provide resources and assistance to environmental whistleblowers. S E E A L S O Activism; Laws and Regulations, International; Laws and Regulations, United States Bibliography Kohn, Stephen. (2001). “Environmental and Nuclear Whistleblowing.” In Concepts and Procedures in Whistleblower Law. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. Internet Resources National Whistleblower Center. “Environmental Issues and Nuclear Safety.” Available from www.whistleblowers.org. U.S. Department of Labor Ofﬁce of Administrative Law Judges. “Whistleblower.” Available from www.oalj.dol.gov.

Stephen M. Kohn

Wise-Use Movement The wise-use movement is a general term relating to an approach to the management of federal lands in the United States that encompasses many themes, but emphasizes a preference for extractive (e.g., mining, oil drilling) or utilitarian (e.g., grazing) uses over ecological, scenic, wildlife, or aesthetic values. The movement was founded in 1988 by Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, who run the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise based in Seattle, Washington. The movement is a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that initially advocated increased access to and development of federal lands and resources. Although the movement has enlisted some support

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nationwide, its appeal has existed primarily in the West, where the percentage of land owned by the federal government is the highest. The federal government owns approximately one-third of U.S. lands, but the percentage is much higher in many western states, a fact that has engendered considerable resentment among corporations and individuals who want to use or develop the resources on those lands. The movement had its ideological origins in the Sagebrush Rebellion of the late 1970s and 1980s that focused on eliminating federal ownership of many lands in the West. However, the wise-use movement focuses less on ownership issues and more on changing public and corporate access to and uses of federal lands, and encompasses other issues as well. “Wise use” was a phrase originally used by Gifford Pinchot, an early conservationist and the ﬁrst head of the Forest Service in the early 1900s, who advocated the use of federally owned natural resources for the greatest good of the greatest number. However, the phrase is used by the wise-use movement to encompass a wide range of issues, from eliminating environmental controls, to defense of private property rights with compensation for all environmental regulation, to local control of federal lands in order to permit unrestricted logging, grazing, drilling, and mineral development—even in national parks and wilderness areas. The movement is largely sustained by corporate funding and contributions from other organizations. The movement deliberately adopted the grassroots techniques and terminology of the environmental movement to create a proworker and community image for policies that actually furthered corporate and industrial goals (i.e., mining). Many of the positions advocated by the wise-use movement continue to be inﬂuential. Anti–big-government policies in general, greater nonfederal control of federal lands, self-audits by corporations to determine environmental compliance, increased emphasis on commodity development, and the weakening of environmental laws are but a few examples. Some of the laws the movement seeks to reverse or eliminate include the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and the Endangered Species Act. Many wise-use movement organizations have adopted names that camouﬂage the organization’s prodevelopment, antienvironmentalist stance, such as the National Wetlands Coalition, the Public Lands Council, Citizens for the Environment, Environmental Conservation Organization, and Defenders of Property Rights. Some aspects of movement positions also reﬂect the policies of other organizations. For example, the American Enterprise Institute and Political Economy Research Center advocate the privatization of natural resources through “free market environmentalism”—policies that overlap with some of those of the wise-use movement. On the other end of the spectrum, the movement has ties to more extreme organizations, such as militia groups. Its writings range from constitutional interpretations supporting its viewpoint to vitriolic attacks on “pagan” and “communist” environmentalists whose alleged goal is a “totalitarian one-world government.” Bibliography Arnold, Ron, and Gottlieb, Alan M. (1998). Trashing the Economy: How Runaway Environmentalism Is Wrecking America. Bellevue, WA: Free Enterprise Press. Helvarg, David. (1994). The War Against the Greens: The Wise Use Movement, the New Right, and Anti-Environmental Violence. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Pendley, Perry. (1995). War on the West: Government Tyranny on America’s Great Frontier. Washington, D.C.: Regnery.

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Internet Resources Arnold, Ron. “Overcoming Ideology.” Available from Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise Web site, http://www.cdfe.org/wiseuse.htm. Environmental Working Group Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research (CLEAR). “The Wise Use Movement: Strategic Analysis and Fifty-State Review.” Available from http://www.ewg.org/pub.

Pamela Baldwin

Workers Health Bureau The Workers Health Bureau of America (WHB), active from 1921 to 1928, was a grassroots organization run by Grace Burnham, Harriet Silverman, and Charlotte Todes. Primarily an advocacy organization, WHB is known for focusing public attention on occupational health and safety issues for the ﬁrst time. The bureau endorsed local trade labor unions’ efforts to improve workers’ health conditions. WHB conducted investigations, wrote informational reports, and organized union movements. During its eight years, WHB enjoyed the membership of approximately 180 local trade unions and garnered support from leading public health experts. WHB contended that workers’ health problems resulted from a combination of industrial employment and urban living. The bureau had little conﬁdence in government agencies’ abilities to improve working conditions, although it did advocate for changes in national labor laws. Considering workers’ problems a class issue, WHB solicited memberships among workers and unions in exchange for help in improving work conditions at the local level. WHB advised employees and labor unions to solve problems at their source. By advocating that unions add health and safety clauses into their employment contracts, WHB hoped that employers would proactively improve conditions in their plants. The bureau concentrated on the most common occupational health problems of the time. Some of WHB’s major campaigns addressed workplace exposures to benzol, carbon dioxide, coal and silica dust, lead, and mercury. The bureau used scientiﬁc studies and terminology to strengthen their arguments in highly politicized debates. Ironically, WHB ended its work in 1928 because it was too successful. The Afﬁliated Federation of Labor (AFL) pressured local unions to withdraw from WHB, perhaps to rein in their inﬂuence over unions. In the end, WHB is best remembered for bringing labor health issues to national attention, beginning the movement that eventually led to the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Bureau (OSHA) in 1970. S E E A L S O Activism; Industry; Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); Public Policy Decision Making. Bibliography Rosner, David, and Markowitz, Gerald. (1987). “Safety and Health as a Class Issue: The Workers Health Bureau of America during the 1920s.” In Dying for Work: Workers’ Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America, edited by David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Internet Resource Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives and Tamiment Archives. Available from http:// www.nyu.edu/library.

Mary Elliott Rollé

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World Trade Organization The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was an international organization created in 1947 to reduce trade barriers through multilateral negotiations. The World Trade Organization (WTO) was organized in January 1995 to replace GATT and improve international trade. Its membership in 2002 totaled more than 140 nations. Whereas GATT focused on tariff reduction, the WTO works to eliminate so-called nontariff barriers, which can include environmental, health, and other public-interest regulations that are considered impediments to international trade. Any member country has the right to challenge other members’ laws under the WTO dispute-settlement process. When this occurs, the WTO forms a three-person tribunal to hold hearings on the case, which take place in secret in Geneva, Switzerland. If the tribunal ﬁnds that the law is illegal within the context of WTO policy, it has the power to order the country to change the law or face trade sanctions. The WTO’s ﬁrst ruling involved a successful challenge to the U.S. Clean Air Act. Brazil and Venezuela had complained that a part of the act that required all foreign sources of U.S. gas imports to meet a certain cleanliness standard was discriminatory. The U.S. government was ordered to amend its regulation or face retaliatory trade sanctions of approximately $150 million per year. It opted to modify the law. This ruling unleashed a ﬂood of other challenges against environmental laws, such as U.S. dolphin and sea turtle protections, Japan’s ban on fruit imports carrying invasive species, and the European Union’s ban on U.S. beef injected with growth hormones. The WTO does allow some exceptions for laws that are “necessary to protect human, animal or plant life and health.” However, this exception has proved virtually useless, since WTO panels have interpreted the language to mean that laws must represent the “least trade-restrictive” way to achieve the environmental goal. Although WTO rulings have most often targeted environmental protections, the organization has also drawn strong criticism from labor unions. Among other complaints, they argue that the WTO should adopt rules in support of internationally recognized labor rights as a way to prevent corporations and governments from gaining an unfair trade advantage by abusing workers. In December 1999 tens of thousands of environmentalists joined with trade unionists and other activists to protest the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle, Washington. The “Teamsters and Turtles” united in the streets, combined with disputes among some member countries, forced the organization to abandon plans to launch a new round of negotiations. The “Battle in Seattle” also thrust the WTO into the public limelight for the ﬁrst time. The next WTO meeting was sited far from angry crowds and international media attention in isolated Doha, Qatar. Although it concluded with the announcement of plans for a new round of discussion, the meeting was fraught with tensions and the WTO’s future appears anything but smooth. S E E A L S O Economics; Environmental Crime; Environmental Justice; Laws and Regulations, International; Treaties and Conferences.

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Bibliography Shrybman, Steven. (1999). The World Trade Organization: A Citizen’s Guide. Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Internet Resource World Trade Organization Web site. Available from http://www.wto.org.

Sarah Anderson

Writers Although writers have explored the relationship between humans and the natural world for centuries, they primarily viewed the environment as subordinate to the needs of civilization and human progress. However, by the middle of the nineteenth century, writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson began to reinterpret the signiﬁcance of nature and our relationship to it. Although not writing of pollution speciﬁcally, these writers laid the groundwork for an evolution in environmental thought and ethics in which the environment was seen as more than just a natural resource. For example, in Walden and other writings, Thoreau pointed out that our natural environment had far more to offer than material resources to be exploited. Rather, Thoreau noted that nature and the environment were sources of spiritual truth and support.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

Although these writers and others, like John Muir and Aldo Leopold, helped educate the public about nature and the environment, one of the ﬁrst “environmental” books published in the United States to include a discussion of pollution was Man and Nature. In his 1865 book, author George Perkins Marsh presented a comprehensive discussion of ecological problems brought on by the impact of human civilization, including the growing problem of water pollution. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most writings about pollution focused on how industrial pollution was affecting those in the workplace. For example, Alice Hamilton, a University of Michigan Medical School graduate of 1893, conducted studies of occupational diseases, including those brought on by industrial pollution in the lead, rubber, and munitions industry. Her books included the 1925 work called Industrial Poisons in the United States, an early and compelling scientiﬁc look into pollution in the workplace and its effects on workers. Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle exposed the horrendous working and living conditions of slaughterhouse workers in the meat packing industry of Chicago. His exposure of the unsanitary slaughterhouse conditions led to the ﬁrst U.S. meat protection laws and raised public awareness of corporate greed and the plight of poorly paid workers and their families in dense, polluted sections of large urban areas. Leopold’s conversational essays compiled in A Sand County Almanac (1949) argued persuasively that nature is not a machine of interchangeable parts but an interdependent community and that humans are part of this community, not detached from it. Because we are part of it and have the power to impact it so profoundly, we have an ethical obligation to act in ways

“We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” —Aldo Leopold

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“As crude a weapon as the cave man’s club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life.” —Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

that preserve the integrity of the whole community. Leopold called this integration of science, aesthetics, and ethics “the land ethic” and it laid the practical foundation for systems thinking and the ecological perspective. Few would argue that Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was a seminal work that launched both a growing public concern about pollution and the modern environmental movement. First published in serialized form in the New Yorker magazine, Silent Spring was published in 1962 and exposed the dangers posed by numerous pesticides and fertilizers, including DDT. The book was a catalyst for a new view of industry and pollution that would overturn the long-held belief that scientiﬁc progress was always for the good. Silent Spring’s publication set off a storm of controversy. The pesticide industry tried to suppress the book’s publication and challenged its ﬁndings. Carson’s book eventually led to a presidential commission to study the effects of pesticides. The commission veriﬁed Carson’s ﬁndings, which eventually led to the banning of DDT in 1972. More importantly, the book led to a wave of public concern over the use of chemicals and pollution and how they impact the environment and life. When the Modern Library published its list of the 100 Best Nonﬁction Books of the Century, Silent Spring was listed as the ﬁfth-most-important book of the twentieth century. As public concern and interest in the environment and pollution grew, more writers began to explore the possible catastrophic impact of everincreasing pollution. Many writers pointed out that it was important to look at more than the impact of speciﬁc chemicals and pollutants on the environment. For example, in his 1968 book The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich took the writings of Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) about overpopulation and expanded them. Ehrlich stated that overpopulation not only would lead to widespread starvation in the world but also affected the environment by creating more garbage and other pollutants. In his 1971 book The Closing Circle, social commentator and one-time presidential candidate Barry Commoner also placed the environmental message about pollution into a broader context as he connected the growth of technology to environmental degradation. Not only did Commoner discuss the environmental crises in terms of population and “afﬂuence” but also provided in-depth looks at how growing population and advancing technology were the culprits behind such speciﬁc environmental problems as the hazardous air pollution in Los Angeles and the polluted waters of Lake Erie. Commoner argued three principles that became rallying cries of early environmentalists: Everything has to go somewhere, nature knows best, and there is no such thing as a free lunch.

“To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.” —Paul Ehrlich

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Arne Naess, the Norwegian philosopher and founder of the deep ecology movement, is another notable philosopher and writer who created a philosophy of how to deal with issues such as pollution. In a 1973 article in Inquiry magazine, Naess laid out her philosophy of shallow ecology versus deep ecology. Naess argues that a shallow ecology philosophy ﬁghts against pollution but continues to inadvertently support those who cause much of the world’s pollution, namely those in healthy and afﬂuent nations. Naess notes that deep ecology, on the other hand, focuses on changing the relationship between civilization and the natural world, not only by ﬁghting pollution but also by establishing a philosophy of human respect for all species and nature.

Writers

George Sessions played an important role in popularizing deep ecology in North America and its emphasis on biocentrism (nature-centered, not human-centered philosophy) and social justice from exploitation of poorer countries by afﬂuent ones. Deep ecology argues that nature has inherent value apart from human use. It traces the destruction of nature to industrial society. Gary Snyder’s poetry reﬂects deep ecology through sensual images. In 1989, Bill McKibben, proliﬁc nature writer and environmental commentator and historian, followed in the tradition of Silent Spring when he changed the public’s deepest perceptions of the world with his book The End of Nature. McKibben brought to the forefront a public and policy discussion about the latest scientiﬁc evidence concerning pollutants such as acid rain and their impact on the greenhouse effect, the depletion of the ozone layer, and global warming. In the book, McKibben points out that industrial society with all of its pollutants has altered the chemistry of the atmosphere and changed the most elemental process of life everywhere. In the end, McKibben states that the only hope in stopping pollution and saving the environment is that people will come to fully understand the dangers caused by pollution and other environmental problems and make a conscious decision to live with less, thus creating less pollution.

“The invention of nuclear weapons may actually have marked the beginning of the end of nature: we possessed, finally, the capacity to overmaster nature, to leave an indelible imprint everywhere all at once.” —Bill McKibben, The End of Nature

About two years after McKibben’s book was published, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit appeared on bookshelves. The book’s author Al Gore, at the time a United States senator, states that a fundamental change in how we view the world and interact with it is necessary if we are to save the earth’s ecology for future generations. Gore discusses the deteriorating quality of air, water, and soil due to a variety of pollutants, including those that cause a rise in carbon dioxide levels, which is leading to a deteriorating ozone layer. Like McKibben, Gore also points out that pollution problems are no longer local or regional but global. Because of Gore’s highproﬁle career and place of power on the American scene, the book received worldwide attention from the public as well as political circles. Like deep ecologists, ecofeminist authors, both men and women, are varied in their understandings of the philosophy. Nevertheless, all ecofeminists begin with the premise that the exploitive and abusive treatment of nature is linked to the patriarchal (male-dominated) exploitation and violence towards women. For example, see Susan Griffen’s Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her for a discussion of the metaphors of “the rape of nature” and “virgin land,” and “Mother Earth/Nature.” Another theme of many ecofeminist writings is the rediscovery and celebration of the goddess that was once the center of earlier cultures and Native American spiritual teachings. Sandra Steingrabber’s popular book Living Downstream highlights the cumulative risks faced by river human and nonhuman communities living downstream from pollution. She argues for the responsibility of upstream communities to act environmentally responsible for their downstream neighbors. Nature and environmental writing has exploded since the ﬁrst Earth Day in 1970. This article presents just a few representative writers of ﬁction, nonﬁction, and poetry. Because of writers like Carson, McKibben, and many others, few people would argue that pollution is not a threat to the environment and the health of people and other species. More books and articles than ever are being

“We can believe in that future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can whirl blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no children to inherit our legacy. The choice is ours; the earth is in the balance.” —Al Gore, Earth in the Balance

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“When considering hormones such as estradiol, the most potent estrogen, forget parts per million or parts per billion. The concentrations are typically parts per trillion, one thousand times lower than parts per billion. One can begin to imagine a quantity so infinitesimally small by thinking of a drop of gin in a train of tank cars full of tonic. One drop in 660 tank cars would be one part in a trillion; such a train would be six miles long.” —Theo Colborn, Our Stolen Future

written about pollution issues, and many writers are carrying on the legacy of Carson. For example, in 1996’s Our Stolen Future, the authors discuss the various ways in which chemicals are disrupting human reproductive patterns and causing such problems as birth defects, sexual abnormalities, and reproductive failure. In 2002, Devra Lee Davis was nominated for the National Book Award in nonﬁction for her book When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle against Pollution. In the book, Davis discusses how industry and government have conspired to conceal the true effects of pollution on public health. Man and Nature (1865) by George Perkins Marsh; Early scientiﬁc look at the environment and how humans inﬂuence it, including the effects of human pollution on water Industrial Poisons in the United States (1925) by Alice Hamilton; Scientiﬁc study of industrial pollutants and how they affect workers Silent Spring (1962) by Rachel Carson; Groundbreaking look at pesticides that helped create the modern environmental movement and led to government banning of DDT The Closing Circle (1971) by Barry Commoner; Connected growth of technology to pollution and environmental degradation The End of Nature (1990) by Bill McKibben; Helped raise worldwide concern over pollution, the greenhouse effect, and the depletion of the ozone layer When Smoke Ran Like Water (2002) by Devra Lee David; National Book Award ﬁnalist that tells of government and industry coverups concerning the effects of pollution on the populace Bibliography Carson, Rachel. (1962). Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin. Caulﬁeld, Henry. (1989). “The Conservation and Environmental Movements: An Historical Analysis.” In Environmental Politics and Policy: Theories and Evidence, ed. James Lester. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Davis, Devra Lee. (2002). When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle against Pollution. New York: Basic Books. Ehrlich, Paul. (1968). The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine. Gore, Al. (1992). Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin. McKibben, Bill. (1989). The End of Nature. New York: Random House. Naess, Arne. (1973), “The Shallow and the Deep: The Long-Range Ecology Movement,” Inquiry 16:95-100. Netzley, Patricia D., compiler. (1999). Environmental Literature: An Encyclopedia of Works, Authors, and Themes. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Thoreau, Henry David. (1995). Walden, or, Life in the Woods. New York: Dover Publications.

David Petechuk

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Yucca Mountain The United States has accumulated more than forty thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive wastes from commercial, research, and defense activities with an estimated two thousand tons added every year. The

Yucca Mountain

materials are currently stored in thirty-nine states at 131 temporary aboveground facilities, requiring constant monitoring and maintenance. Worldwide, scientiﬁc consensus holds that deep geologic disposal, with robust engineered barriers, can best contain and isolate these materials from the accessible environment. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 established this approach as U.S. policy. If ultimately licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Yucca Mountain, in southern Nevada, could become the ﬁrst U.S. geologic repository for such materials. The Department of Energy (DOE) plans to open the proposed repository by 2010 if a license is granted. Between about ﬁfteen and twelve million years ago, large volcanic eruptions deposited hot ash that solidiﬁed into the rock composing Yucca Mountain. The proposed repository would be built about one thousand feet underground and, on average, about one thousand feet above the water table in rock that has remained undisturbed for millions of years. For about two thousand feet under the mountain’s surface the rock is very dry, or unsaturated, meaning its pore spaces are not completely ﬁlled with water.

Waste Forms and Other Engineered Barriers All materials sent to a repository would be in solid form. Spent nuclear fuel comprises hard ceramic pellets in sealed corrosion-resistant metal tubes. Liquid wastes from defense-related activities would be solidiﬁed into glass logs, inside sealed metal containers, before shipment. At the repository, the materials would be sealed inside double-walled containers, called waste packages, made of stainless steel and a corrosion-resistant alloy. Once underground, each waste package would be placed on its own individual pallet, in one of dozens of miles of tunnels carved deep within the rock. In addition, corrosion-resistant titanium drip shields would be placed above the sealed containers as an added barrier to water. (See illustration.)

Potential Problems at Site Groundwater contamination. Yucca Mountain’s climate is very dry, with annual precipitation averaging about 7.5 inches (190 millimeters or mm). About 95 percent either runs off, evaporates, or is taken up by vegetation. Overall, very little water inﬁltrates the mountain and reaches the repository level. The bulk of any water moves very slowly through the unsaturated rock. Some data, however, suggest that water may reach the repository level in a few decades by moving through fractures that are large enough to permit this. Therefore, the sophisticated computer calculations used to estimate the repository’s likely performance assume the presence of such fractures and their impact. After water has inﬁltrated the repository level, it must move down through approximately one thousand more feet of unsaturated rock to reach the saturated zone. Only from this zone can water be pumped to the surface. Earthquake activity. Southern Nevada has low to moderate seismic activity. Experts have analyzed potentially active faults within sixty miles of Yucca Mountain. Although scientists expect earthquakes to occur at or near the mountain, those working on the design of the Yucca Mountain repository think that with modern techniques, repository facilities can be designed and constructed to withstand the effects of earthquakes and other natural phenomena. Contributing to underground safety is the fact that seismic

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Low water infiltration: Any water would tend to flow around the tunnels rather than into them

Titanium drip shield above the waste packages: Prevents water from contacting the waste package

Waste package: Prevents water from contacting waste form for thousands of years

Spent fuel claddng: Delays water contacting the spent nuclear fuel after waste packages have degraded

Waste form: Limits radionuclide release as a result of low solubilities and leach rates Invert below the waste packages: Limits transport of radionuclides out of the engineered barrier system

Cutaway illustrating natural and engineered barriers working together in an emplacement tunnel. Capillary action would cause most available water to flow around, rather than into, the tunnels. Federal law limits the proposed repository to seventy thousand metric tons of heavy metal “until such time as a second repository is in operation,” unless the law is changed. (From Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Energy. (2002). Why Yucca Mountain? Frequently Asked Questions. Washington, D.C., p. 10.)

ground motion diminishes with depth, so earthquakes have less impact deep underground than they do on or near the surface.

Transportation. Some people fear that vehicles moving nuclear waste across the country could be subject to accidents or become a target for terrorists. Federal regulations require that transportation cask designs be certiﬁed to withstand a series of severe impacts and extreme conditions without leaking radioactive materials. The regulations also require that shipments be monitored and tracked by satellite twenty-hour hours a day and accompanied by trained escorts, who must report in regularly. Armed escorts would be required through heavily populated metropolitan areas. Other Nations’ Approaches. Some nations using nuclear power do not have economical sources of fresh uranium to make nuclear fuel. France and the United Kingdom, for example, reprocess their own spent nuclear fuel for a second usage; they also do reprocessing for other countries, such as Japan and Switzerland. Current techniques for reprocessing involve complex chemical and physical procedures and actually produce additional radioactive

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waste. Most nations with nuclear power intend to build their own geologic repositories.

Health and safety. For more than twenty years, scientists and engineers have gathered technical data about the rock in Yucca Mountain, water movement through it, expected earthquakes, and the potential for volcanic disturbance of the proposed repository. Applying advanced software and high-powered computers to these data, scientists have estimated radiation doses due to the repository for tens of thousands of years. The radiation protection standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) require that the calculations estimate the likely level of radiation that the most exposed member of the public would receive from the repository for ten thousand years after its closure. The standards require that this hypothetical person be assumed to live about ﬁfteen miles from the repository, to eat some foods grown with local groundwater, and to drink two liters of water per day drawn from the most concentrated plume of repository-caused contamination in the aquifer. The estimates indicate that, for at least ten thousand years, the level of repository-yielded radioactivity this hypothetical person would likely receive, through all potential exposure pathways, would be far below ﬁfteen millirem per year, the radiation protection standard for public health and safety. S E E A L S O Cancer; Health, Human; Radioactive Waste; Waste, Transportation of. Bibliography Board on Radioactive Waste Management, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences. (2001). Disposition of High-Level Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel: The Continuing Societal and Technical Challenges. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Also available from http://www.books.nap.edu/books. International Atomic Energy Agency. (2002). Institutional Framework for Long Term Management of High Level Waste and/or Spent Nuclear Fuel. (IAEA-TECDOC-1323) Vienna, Austria: IAEA Press. Also available from http://www.pub.iaea.org/mtcd. Ofﬁce of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Energy. (2002). Why Yucca Mountain? Frequently Asked Questions. Washington, D.C. Also available from http://www.ocrwm .doe.gov/ymp. Wheelwright, Jeff. (2002). “Welcome to Yucca Mountain.” Discover 23(9):66–75. Internet Resource Herne Data Systems Web site. “WasteLink: Guide to Radioactive Waste Resources on the Internet.” Available from http://www.radwaste.org.

Donald J. Hanley

Zero Population Growth Malthus’s Essay on Population, published in 1798, still plays a role in environmental policymaking. The discrepancy between rates of human population growth and agricultural productivity lies at the heart of Malthusianism. One dynamic leads to ever-increasing population; the other to diminishing food and ecological degradation.

Z

To avoid human suffering, Malthusians pursue worldwide zero population growth (ZPG). Because worldwide mortality levels are low, a society can attain ZPG through replacement fertility. If the average number of children born to women in a particular society equals two, then it has reached replacement fertility or ZPG. Governments today annually spend a total of

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$900 million to promote ZPG, mostly in less developed countries. ZPG is also the name of a nongovernmental organization that advocates for population awareness. Its origin in 1968 was inspired by Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb. S E E A L S O Ehrlich, Paul; Malthus, Thomas Robert; Population; Smart Growth. Bibliography Bongaarts, John. (1998). “Demographic Consequences of Declining Fertility.” Science 282:419–420. Humphrey, Craig R.; Lewis, Tammy L.; and Buttel, Frederick H. (2002). Environment, Energy, and Society: A New Synthesis. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. United Nations Fund for Population Action. (2000). Financial Resource Flows for Population Activities in 1999. New York.

Craig R. Humphrey

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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; regulation: abiding by adjudicative: involving the court system adsorption: removal of a pollutant from air or water by collecting the pollutant on the surface of a solid material; e.g., an advanced method of treating waste in which activated carbon removes organic matter from wastewater advise and consent: the formal responsibility of a government body to provide counsel and approval for the actions of another body, especially the Senate to the president aerate: process of injecting air into water aerobic: life or processes that require, or are not destroyed by, the presence of oxygen affinity: physical attraction afforestation: conversion of open land to forest air scrubbers: pollution-control devices that remove pollutants from waste gases before release to the atmosphere air stripping: a treatment system that removes volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from contaminated groundwater or surface water by forcing an airstream through the water and causing the compounds to evaporate allergen: a substance that causes an allergic reaction in individuals sensitive to it

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Glossary

alloy: mixture of two or more metals alluvial: relating to sediment deposited by ﬂowing water alpha radiation: fast-moving particle composed of two protons and two neutrons (a helium nucleus), emitted by radioactive decay ambient: surrounding or unconﬁned; air: usually but not always referring to outdoor air anaerobic: a life or process that occurs in, or is not destroyed by, the absence of oxygen antagonistic: working against anthropogenic: human-made; related to or produced by the inﬂuence of humans on nature antimicrobial: an agent that kills microbes aquaculture: practice of growing marine plants and raising marine animals for food aquifer: an underground geological formation, or group of formations, containing water; are sources of groundwater for wells and springs archetype: original or ideal example or model arithmetic: increase by addition, e.g., 2, 4, 6, 8 . . . as opposed to geometric, in which increase is by multiplication, e.g., 2, 4, 8, 16 . . . arthropod: insects, spiders, and other organisms with jointed appendages and hard outer coverings asbestosis: a disease associated with inhalation of asbestos ﬁbers; the disease makes breathing progressively more difﬁcult and can be fatal asymmetrical warfare: conﬂict between two forces of greatly different sizes; e.g., terrorists versus superpower autoimmune: reaction of the body’s immune system to the body’s own tissues baghouse: large fabric bag, usually made of glass ﬁbers, used to eliminate intermediate and large particles ballast: material in a ship used for weight and balance bed load transport: movement of sediments that remain at the bottom of a moving water body beta radiation: high-energy electron, emitted by radioactive decay bilge: deepest part of a ship’s hold bioaccumulation: buildup of a chemical within a food chain when a predator consumes prey containing that chemical bioaccumulative: relating to substances that increase in concentration in living organisms as they take in contaminated air, water, or food because the substances are very slowly metabolized or excreted bioaerosol: very ﬁne airborne particles produced by living organisms

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Glossary

bioassay: a test to determine the relative strength of a substance by comparing its effect on a test organism with that of a standard preparation bioavailability: degree of ability to be absorbed and ready to interact in organism metabolism bioconcentrate: chemical buildup in an organism, i.e., ﬁsh tissue, to levels higher than in the surrounding environment biodegradation: decomposition due to the action of bacteria and other organisms biodegrade: to decompose under natural conditions 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 biogeochemical interaction: interactions between living and nonliving components of the biosphere biological capital: oceans, forests, and other ecosystems that provide resources or other values biological effects: effects on living organisms bioluminescence: release of light by an organism, usually a bacterium biomass: all of the living material in a given area; often refers to vegetation biomonitoring: the use of living organisms to test the suitability of efﬂuents for discharge into receiving waters and to test the quality of such waters downstream from the discharge; analysis of blood, urine, tissues, etc. to measure chemical exposure in humans bioremediation: use of living organisms to clean up oil spills or remove other pollutants from soil, water, or wastewater; use of organisms such as nonharmful insects to remove agricultural pests or counteract diseases of trees, plants, and garden soil biosolid: solid or semisolid waste remaining from the treatment of sewage bituminous: soft coal, versus the harder anthracite coal boom: a ﬂoating device used to contain oil on a body of water; or, a piece of equipment used to apply pesticides from a tractor or truck boreal: northern, subarctic botanical: derived from or relating to plants breakdown product: part of a whole resulting from a chemical transformation breakdown: degradation into component parts brine: salty water

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Glossary

British thermal unit (BTU): unit of heat energy equal to the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit at sea level bush-fallow: practice of alternating between cultivating a piece of land and leaving it unplanted cabinet: in government: collective name for the heads of federal departments that report directly to the president carbamate: class of chemicals widely used as pesticides carcinogen: any substance that can cause or aggravate cancer carcinogenic: causing or aggravating cancer cascade: waterfall; a system that serves to increase the surface area of the water to speed cooling casing: the exterior lining of the well catalyst: a substance that changes the speed or yield of a chemical reaction without being consumed or chemically changed by the chemical reaction catalytic: of a substance that promotes reaction without being consumed cesspool: holding compound for sewage in which bacterial action breaks down fecal material chelating agents: chemicals that trap metal ions (chele = claw) chemically active: able to react with other chemicals chloramination: use of chlorine and ammonia to disinfect water chromatography: means of resolving a chemical mixture into its components by passing it through a system that retards each component to a varying degree chronic: in medicine, long-term or happening over time claim: legal statement of intent clarifier: a tank in which solids settle to the bottom and are subsequently removed as sludge codify: put into law coke: carbon fuel, typically derived from bituminous coal, used in blast furnaces for the conversion of iron ore into iron combustion: burning, or rapid oxidation, accompanied by release of energy in the form of heat and light complex emergency: a humanitarian crisis in which there is a breakdown of political authority compliance: in law: meeting the terms of a law or regulation computer model: a program that simulates a real event or situation concordance: state of agreement

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Glossary

condenser: apparatus used to condense vapors congener: a member of a class of chemicals having a of similar structure consensus-building: negotiation to create agreement consent order: a legal agreement requiring speciﬁc actions to remedy a violation of law conservation easement: legal agreement restricting a landowner’s development rights to preserve long-term conservation and environmental values conservationist: a person who works to conserve natural resources containment: prevention of movement of material beyond the immediate area contaminant: any physical, chemical, biological, or radiological substance or matter that has an adverse effect on air, water, or soil control rod: a rod containing substance that absorbs neutrons inserted into a nuclear reactor to control the rate of the reaction conversion: chemical modiﬁcation to another form counterculture: a culture with social ideas that stand in opposition to the mainstream culture criteria pollutant: a pollutant for which acceptable levels can be deﬁned and for which an air quality standard has been set crop rotation: alternation of crop species on a ﬁeld to maintain soil health cultivar: a plant variety that exists only under cultivation DDT: the ﬁrst chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticide chemical name: DichloroDiphenyl-Trichloroethane); it has a half-life of ﬁfteen years and can collect in fatty tissues of certain animals; for virtually all but emergency uses, DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972 defoliant: an herbicide that removes leaves from trees and growing plants defoliation: loss of vegetation deicer: chemical used to melt ice denitrification: the biological reduction of nitrate or nitrite to nitrogen gas, typically by bacteria in soil deposit: concentration of a substance, i.e., mineral ore desertification: transition of arable land to desert desiccant: a chemical agent that absorbs moisture; some desiccants are capable of drying out plants or insects, causing death despoliation: deprivation of possessions by force deuterium: a hydrogen atom with an extra neutron, making it unstable and radioactive

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Glossary

diatomaceous earth: a chalk-like material (fossilized diatoms) used to ﬁlter out solid waste in wastewater treatment plants; also used as an active ingredient in some powdered pesticides diffuser: something that spreads out or dissipates another substance over a wide area dinoflagellate: single-celled aquatic organism dioxin: any of a family of compounds known chemically as dibenzo-p-dioxins; concern about them arises from their potential toxicity as contaminants in commercial products; tests on laboratory animals indicate that it is one of the more toxic anthropogenic (man-made) compounds disaster cycle: phases in the public response to a disaster: preparedness, disaster, response, recovery, and mitigation of effects dissolution into the oceans: dispersion in ocean water dissolved oxygen: the oxygen freely available in water, vital to ﬁsh and other aquatic life and for the prevention of odors; DO levels are considered a most important indicator of a water body’s ability to support desirable aquatic life; secondary and advanced waste treatment are generally designed to ensure adequate DO in waste-receiving waters distillation: the act of purifying liquids through boiling, so that the steam or gaseous vapors condense to a pure liquid; pollutants and contaminants may remain in a concentrated residue double containment: use of two independent protection systems around a potential pollutant drier: a compound that increases the drying rate drilling waste: material (soil, ground rock, etc.) removed during drilling drinking water: water used or with the potential to be used for human consumption ecosystem: the interacting system of a biological community and its nonliving environmental surroundings effluent: discharge, typically wastewater—treated or untreated—that ﬂows out of a treatment plant, sewer, or industrial outfall; generally refers to wastes discharged into surface waters efflux pump inhibitors: a drug that prevents a cell from expelling another drug; used with antibiotics to increase their effectiveness electoral consensus: the will of the voters electrode: conductor used to establish electrical contact with a substance by delivering electric current to it or receiving electric current from it electromagnetic spectrum: the range of wavelengths of light energy, including visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, and radio waves emissions: substances, often polluting, discharged into the atmosphere

340

Glossary

endocrine: the system of glands, hormones, and receptors that help control animal function endocrine disruption: disruption of hormone control systems in the body environmental stewardship: human commitment to care for the environment epidemic: rapid spread of disease throught a population, or a disease that spreads in this manner epidemiological: epidemiology: study of the incidence and spread of disease in a population epidemiology: study of the incidence and spread of disease in a population epilepsy: seizure disorder estrogenic: related to estrogens, hormones that control female sexual development estuary: region of interaction between rivers and near-shore ocean waters, where tidal action and river ﬂow mix fresh- and saltwater (i.e., bays, mouths of rivers, salt marshes, and lagoons). These ecosystems shelter and feed marine life, birds, and wildlife eutrophication: in nature, the slow aging process during which a lake, estuary, or bay evolves into a bog or marsh and eventually disappears; in pollution, excess algal growth or blooms due to introduction of a nutrient overload of nutrients, i.e., from un- or poorly treated sewage evaporative: relating to transition from liquid to gas excavate: dig out excess death: deaths over the expected number exothermic: releasing heat fatalistic: of a person who believes that nothing one does can improve a situation fecal matter: animal or human excrement fetus: unborn young of vertabrate animals; human: developing child in the womb from eighth week to birth filtration: process for removing particulate matter from water by means of porous media such as sand or synthetic ﬁlter flammable: any material that ignites easily and will burn rapidly flux: 1. a ﬂowing or ﬂow; 2. a substance used to help metals fuse together French drain: buried plastic tubing with numerous holes, to collect or disperse water friable: capable of being crumbled, pulverized, or reduced to powder by hand pressure fungicide: pesticide used to control, deter, or destroy fungi

341

Glossary

gamma radiation: very high-energy light with a wavelength shorter than x rays gelling agent: chemical used to thicken a substance, i.e., oil, to prevent it from spreading out genetic diversity: the broad pool of genes that insures variety within a species Geneva Conventions: humanitarian rules governing treatment of soldiers and civilians during war geometric: by multiplication, e.g., 2, 4, 8, 16 . . ., as opposed to arithmetic, in which increase is by addition, e.g., 2, 4, 6, 8 . . . global warming: an increase in the near-surface temperature of the Earth; the term is most often used to refer to the warming believed to be occuring as a result of increased emissions of greenhouse gases grassroots: individual people and small groups, in contrast to government green choice: a product that is not harmful for the environment greenhouse gas: a gas, such as carbon dioxide or methane, which contributes to potential climate change groundwater: the supply of freshwater found beneath the Earth’s surface includes; aquifers, which supply wells and springs guano: solid or semisolid waste from birds and bats, rich in nutrients Hague Conventions: international agreements governing legal disputes between private parties half-life: the time required for a pollutant to lose one-half of its original concentration; for example, the biochemical half-life of DDT in the environment is ﬁfteen years halogenated organic compounds: organic (carbon-containing) compounds containing ﬂuorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, or astatine HAZMAT team: hazardous materials response group heavy metals: metallic elements with high atomic weights; (e.g. mercury, chromium, cadmium, arsenic, and lead); can damage living things at low concentrations and tend to accumulate in the food chain hemoglobin: oxygen-carrying protein complex in red blood cells herbicide: a chemical pesticide designed to control or destroy plants, weeds, or grasses heterotrophic phytoplankton: ﬂoating microorganisms that consume other organisms for food hexavalent: an oxidation state characterized by the ability to make six bonds; symbolized by (VI) hormone receptors: cell proteins that respond to hormones to inﬂuence cell behavior hormone: a molecule released by one cell to regulate development of another

342

Glossary

host: in genetics, the organism, typically a bacterium, into which a gene from another organism is transplanted; in medicine, it is an animal infected or parasitized by another organism humus: rich soil component derived from plant breakdown and bacterial action hybridization: formation of a new individual from parents of different species or varieties hydraulic: related to ﬂuid ﬂow hydrocarbon: compounds of hydrogen and carbon hydrodynamic condition: related to ﬂow of water hydrology: the science dealing with the properties, distribution, and circulation of water hydromodification: any process that alters the hydrologic characteristics of a body of water immobile: not moving immunocompromised: having a weakened immune system impact: a change to the environment resulting from a human activity or product 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 in situ: in its original place; unmoved or unexcavated; remaining at the site or in the subsurface incident solar: sun energy that hits a particular spot industrial metabolism: ﬂow of resources and energy in an industrial system inertness: inability to react chemically infrastructure: the basic facilities, services, and installations needed for the functioning of a system, i.e., the various components of a water supply system ingest: take in through the mouth inhalation: drawing into the lungs by breathing injection well: a well into which ﬂuids are pumped for purposes such as underground waste disposal, improving the recovery of crude oil, or solution mining inorganic: compounds not containing carbon integrative commons governance: a governing system which recognizes and protects publicly shared resources, usually under local control integrity: wholeness and stability interest groups: corporate or citizen groups with a stake in inﬂuencing legislation

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Glossary

intergenerational sustainability: ability of a system to remain stable and productive over several generations ion: an electrically charged atom or group of atoms isotope: a variation of an element that has the same atomic number of protons but a different weight because of the number of neutrons; various isotopes of the same element may have different radioactive behaviors, some are highly unstable labor market: the area or pool of workers from which an employer draws employees lake acre: an acre of lake surface land subsidence: sinking or settling of land landfills: sanitary landﬁlls are disposal sites for nonhazardous solid wastes spread in layers, compacted to the smallest practical volume, and covered by material applied at the end of each operating day; secure chemical landﬁlls are disposal sites for hazardous waste, selected and designed to minimize the chance of release of hazardous substances into the environment late-onset: occurring in adulthood or old age leach pad: in mining: a specially prepared area where mineral ore (especially gold) is heaped for metal extraction leach solution: in mining: chemical solution sprayed on ore to extract metal leach: dissolve out leachate: water that collects contaminants as it trickles through wastes, pesticides, or fertilizers; leaching may occur in farming areas, feedlots, and landﬁlls, and may result in hazardous substances entering surface water, ground water, or soil leguminous: members of the pea family, or legumes lipophilicity: solubility in or attraction to waxy, fatty, or oily substances locomotion: self-powered movement loess: soil deposited by wind low tillage: reduced level of plowing maceral: organic remains visible in coal macroscopic: large enough to be visible, in contrast to microscopic Magna Carta: English charter giving landowners rights under the king’s authority malleable: able to be shaped and bent Malthusian hypothesis: idea that populations always grow faster than their food supply, from Thomas Malthus

344

Glossary

maximum contaminant level: in water: the maximum permissible level of a contaminant in water delivered to any user of a public system; MCLs are enforceable standards media: speciﬁc environments—air, water, soil—which are the subject of regulatory concern and activities mediation: dispute resolution in which a neutral third party helps negotiate a settlement megawatt: one million watts mesothelioma: malignant tumor of the mesothelium, a cell layer within the lungs and other body cavities metabolism: physical and chemical reactions within a cell or organism necessary for maintaining life metabolite: any substance produced by biological processes, such as those from pesticides metabolize: chemically transform within an organism methanogenesis: creation of methane gas by microbes microorganism: bacteria, archaea, and many protists; single-celled organisms too small to see with the naked eye mine workings: the parts of a quarry or mine that is being excavated mineralize: convert to a mineral substance mitigation: measures taken to reduce adverse impacts mixing zone: an area of a lake or river where pollutants from a point source discharge are mixed, usually by natural means, with cleaner water mole: a chemical quantity, 6 x 1023 molecules. For oxygen, this amounts to 32 grams molecule: the smallest division of a compound that still retains or exhibits all the properties of the substance molluscicide: chemical that kills mollusks monoculture: large-scale planting of a single crop species multilateral treaty: treaty between more than two governments multisite: several sites mutagenic: capable of causing permanent, abnormal genetic change natural attenuation: reduction in a pollutant through combined action of natural factors nematocide: a chemical agent which is destructive to nematodes nematode: worm-like organisms common in soil neo-Malthusians: modern adherents to the ideas of Thomas Malthus neonate: newborn

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Glossary

neural: related to nerve cells or the nervous system neurodegeneration: loss of function and death of brain cells neurology: medical science relating to the nervous system neurotoxic: harmful to nerve cells neurotoxicant: chemical that is toxic to neurons, or brain cells nitrate catch crop: crop planted to harvest soil nitrates nitrification: the process whereby ammonia, typically in wastewater, is oxidized to nitrite and then to nitrate by bacterial or chemical reactions nonpoint source pollution: pollution originating from a broad area, such as agricultural runoff or automobile emissions nucleotide: building block of DNA and RNA in a cell off-gas control: control of gases released into the air open path monitor: detection device that employs a beam of light passing through an open space organic: referring to or derived from living organisms; in chemistry, any compound containing carbon organochlorine: chemical containing carbon and chlorine organophosphate: pesticide that contains phosphorus; short-lived, but some can be toxic when ﬁrst applied outfall: the place where efﬂuent is discharged into receiving waters overburden: rock and soil cleared away before mining ovoid: shaped like an oval or egg oxidize: react with oxygen oxygenate: increase the concentration of oxygen within an area ozonation: application of ozone to water for disinfection or for taste and odor control PAHs: polyaromatic hydrocarbons; compounds of hydrogen and carbon containing multiple ring structures particulate: ﬁne liquid or solid particles such as dust, smoke, mist, fumes, or smog, found in air or emissions; they can also be very small solids suspended in water, gathered together by coagulation and ﬂocculation patent: legal document guaranteeing the right to proﬁt from an invention or discovery pathogenic: causing illness pathway: the physical course a chemical or pollutant takes from its source to the exposed organism PCBs: polychlorinated biphenyls; two-ringed compounds of hydrogen, carbon, and chlorine

346

Glossary

per capita: per individual person in the population percolating: moving of water downward and radially through subsurface soil layers, usually continuing downward to groundwater; can also involve upward movement of water persistent bioaccumulative toxics: a group of substances that are not easily degraded, accumulate in organisms, and exhibit an acute or chronic toxicity pH: an expression of the intensity of the basic or acid condition of a liquid; may range from 0 to 14, where 0 is the most acid, 7 is neutral, and 14 is most base; natural waters usually have a pH between 6.5 and 8.5 photochemical: light-induced chemical effects phthalate: particular class of complex carbon compounds physical removal: digging up and carting away phytoplankton: that portion of the plankton community comprised of tiny plants; e.g. algae, diatoms planktonic: that portion of the plankton community comprised of tiny plants; e.g. algae, diatoms plume: a visible or measurable discharge of a contaminant from a given point of origin; can be visible, invisible, or thermal in water, or visible in the air as, for example, a plume of smoke PM-10: airborne particles under 10 micrometers in diameter polymer: a natural or synthetic chemical structure where two or more like molecules are joined to form a more complex molecular structure (e.g., polyethylene) polyvinyl chloride (PVC): class of complex carbon compounds containing chlorine pore waters: water present in the pores or cavities in sediments, soil, and rock porosity: degree to which soil, gravel, sediment, or rock is permeated with pores or cavities through which water or air can move priority pollutant: a designated set of common water pollutants protein: complex nitrogenous organic compound of high molecular weight made of amino acids; essential for growth and repair of animal tissue; many, but not all, proteins are enzymes protocol: in government: agreement establishing rules or code of conduct; science: a series of formal steps for conducting a test pyrethroid: chemicals derived from chrysanthemums and related plants radionuclide: radioactive particle, man-made or natural, with a distinct atomic weight number; can have a long life as soil or water pollutant ratification: formal approval raw water: intake water prior to any treatment or use

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Glossary

reactive chemicals: chemicals likely to undergo chemical reaction recharge: the process by which water is added to a zone of saturation, usually by percolation from the soil surface (e.g., the recharge of an aquifer) reclamation: in recycling: restoration of materials found in the waste stream to a beneﬁcial use which may be for purposes other than the original use reevaporate: return to the gaseous state refractory: resistant (to heat: difﬁcult to melt; also to authority) refrigerant: liquid or gas used as a coolant in refrigeration regenerative: able to be regenerated or created anew remediate: reduce harmful effects; restore contaminated site remediation: cleanup or other methods used to remove or contain a toxic spill or hazardous materials from a Superfund site or for the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response program residue: the dry solids remaining after evaporation respiratory: having to do with breathing river mile: one mile, as measured along a river’s centerline royalty: money paid by a user to an owner scrubber: an air pollution control device that uses a spray of water or reactant or a dry process to trap pollutants in emissions sedative: substance that reduces consciousness or anxiety sediment impoverishment: loss of sediment sedimentary: related to or formed by deposition of many small particles to form a solid layer seep: movement of substance (often a pollutant) from a source into surrounding areas septic tank: an underground holding tank for wastes from homes not connected to a sewer line sick building syndrome: shared health and/or comfort effects apparently related to occupation of a particular building sink: hole or depression where a compound or material collects; thermodynamics: part of a system used to collect or remove heat smelting: the process in which a facility melts or fuses ore, often with an accompanying chemical change, to separate its metal content; emissions cause pollution solubility: the amount of mass of a compound that will dissolve in a unit volume of solution; aqueous solubility is the maximum concentration of a chemical that will dissolve in pure water at a reference temperature soluble: able to be dissolved in

348

Glossary

solvent: substance, usually liquid, that can dissolve other substances sorbent: a substance that absorbs (within) or adsorbs (on the surface) another substance source reduction: reducing the amount of materials entering the waste stream from a speciﬁc source by redesigning products or patterns of production or consumption (e.g., using returnable beverage containers); synonymous with waste reduction spatial: related to arrangement in space spent radioactive fuel: radioactive fuel rods after they has been used for power generation spray dryers: dryer used to remove heavy metals and other pollutants from incineration gases standing: the legal right to pursue a claim in court stenothermic: living or growing within a narrow temperature range stewardship: care for a living system stratosphere: the portion of the atmosphere ten to twenty-ﬁve miles above the earth’s surface subset: a smaller group within a larger one subsidence: sinking of earth surface due to underground collapse substrate: surface on which an organism, i.e. mold, grows Superfund: the fund established to pay for the cleanup of contaminated sites whose owners are bankrupt or cannot be identiﬁed supersonic: faster than the speed of sound suppression: reduction in or prevention of an effect surface water: all water naturally open to the atmosphere (rivers, lakes, reservoirs, ponds, streams, seas, estuaries, etc.) sustainable development: economic development that does not rely on degrading the environment sustainable: able to be practiced for many generations without loss of productivity or degradation of the environment synergistic: combination of effects greater than the sum of the parts systemic: throughout the body tailings: residue of raw material or waste separated out during the processing of mineral ores Takings impacts analysis: analysis of the impacts due to government restriction on land use teach-in: educational forum springing from a protest movement (derived from sit-in protests)

349

Glossary

temperature inversion: temporary trapping of lower warm air by higher cold air teratogen: something that causes birth defects, may be radiation, a chemical or a virus teratogenic: causing birth defects thermal infrared imaging: photographs in which contrast depends on differences in temperature thermal shock: rapid temperature change beyond an organism’s ability to adapt thermodynamic limitations: tendency of chemical reactions to reverse when products remain in the reaction mixture thermotolerance: ability to withstand temperature change titleholder: the person or entity holding the legal title or deed to a property toluene: carbon-containing chemical used in fuel and as a solvent topography: the physical features of a surface area including relative elevations and the position of natural and man-made (anthropogenic) features transient: present for a short time transuranic waste: waste containing one or more radioactive elements heavier than uranium, created in nuclear power plants or processing facilities tribunal: committee or board appointed to hear and settle an issue trophic: related to feeding turbid: containing suspended particles turbine: machine that uses a moving ﬂuid (liquid or gas) to gas to turn a rotor, creating mechanical energy ultraviolet radiation: high-energy, short-wavelength light beyond human vision unitary system: a centralized system or government unreactivity: lack of chemical reactivity unsaturated: capable of dissolving more solute, i.e., water variable vale control: a system for automatically adjusting engine valve timing for better fuel efﬁciency vector: an organism, often an insect or rodent, that carries disease; plasmids, viruses, or bacteria used to transport genes into a host cell: a gene is placed in the vector; the vector then “infects” the bacterium volatility: relating to any substance that evaporates readily volatilize: vaporize; become gaseous Warsaw Pact: nations allied with the former Soviet Union waste-to-energy: to convert solid waste into a usable form of energy

350

Glossary

water table: the level of water in the soil watershed: the land area that drains into a stream; the watershed for a major river may encompass a number of smaller watersheds wetland: an area that is saturated by surface or ground water with vegetation adapted for life under those soil conditions, as swamps, bogs, fens, marshes, and estuaries

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Index Page numbers in boldface type indicate article titles; those in italic type indicate illustrations.

1002 Area of ANWR, 1:41–43 1996 Olympics, 1:49 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, 1:24, 1:153 24-hour standards, deﬁned, 2:90

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 Acadia National Park, Maine, 2:278 Accidents. See Disasters Acetylcholine, deﬁned, 2:96 Acetylcholine (ACh), 2:96–97 AcH (Acetylcholine), 2:96–97 Acid drainage, from mining, 1:129–130 Acid gases, from incineration, 1:273–274

Acid mine drainage (AMD), 1:101, 2:48 Acid rain, 1:3–6, 1:4, 1:5, 1:6, 1:206, 1:261 ﬁsh kills from, 1:214 international conventions on, 2:257 monitoring, 2:177 nitrogen oxides and, 1:36, 2:64 from petroleum, 2:106 from smelting, 2:205–206 from soil pollution, 2:210 studies on, 1:15 sulfur dioxide and, 1:36, 2:224 surface water pollution from, 2:308 U.S. program on, 1:175, 1:175, 2:199 Acid Rain Program, 1:175, 1:175, 2:199 ACMs (Asbestos-containing materials), 1:45–47 Activated carbon, 2:310 Activated sludge process, 2:300 Active attentives, 1:230 Activism, 1:7–20, 1:13, 1:14, 1:17, 1:253 1960s, 1:8–11, 1:202–204, 2:154 1970s, 1:11–13, 1:204–206 1980s, 1:13–16, 1:18 1990s, 1:18–19 environmental justice and, 1:197, 1:197–199 historical roots, 1:7–8 student, 2:150–151 whaling, 1:203

See also Antinuclear movement; Earth Day 1970; Environmental movement; speciﬁc activists and organizations Acute, deﬁned, 1:134 Acute respiratory infections, 1:251 Acute toxicity, 1:127, 2:250 Adaptation, to climate changes, 1:227, 1:228 Adaptive management, 1:21 Addams, Jane, 1:21–22, 1:22, 1:200, 1:246, 2:148, 2:202–203 Adenoﬁbrosis, 2:92 Adherence, deﬁned, 2:192 Adjudication, deﬁned, 1:110 Adjudicative dispute resolution, 1:110 Administrative Procedures Act (APA), 1:289, 2:18 Adolescents environmental health and, 1:253–254 noise pollution and, 2:66–67 Adsorption for arsenic removal, 1:44 for chemical spills, 1:128 deﬁned, 1:2, 2:129 for indoor air pollution, 1:278 Advanced treatment, of wastewater, 2:300 Advertising consumerism and, 2:21 for Earth Day, 1:148 environmentalism in, 2:132–133 greenwashing and, 2:135 Advise and consent, deﬁned, 2:146 AEC (Atomic Energy Commission), 1:39–40 AEP (American Electric Power), 1:183

353

Aeration

Aeration, deﬁned, 1:107 Aerobic, deﬁned, 2:303 Aerosol Connection, 2:71–72 Afﬁnity, deﬁned, 2:92 Afforestation, deﬁned, 1:72 Africa agriculture in, 1:27–28 cholera in, 2:311 population growth in, 2:138 See also Developing countries Afterburners, 1:273 Afton, North Carolina, 1:220 Agencies, regulatory. See Regulatory agencies Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, 1:257 Agenda 21, 1:24, 1:152, 1:234, 2:77, 2:143–144, 2:228 See also Earth Summit Agent Orange, 1:122, 1:123, 2:282, 2:283–284, 2:284 Aging, environmental health and, 1:255 Agitation dredging. See Hydrodynamic dredging Agricultural wastes, 2:176 green chemicals from, 1:235–236 water pollution from, 2:307–308, 2:312 See also Animal wastes; Pesticides Agricultural workers. See Labor, farm Agriculture, 1:24–30, 1:25 acid rain and, 1:3 colonization and, 2:142 education in, 1:84–85 green revolution in, 1:240–241 multinational corporations and, 1:241 nonpoint source pollution from, 2:73–74, 2:76 pollution prevention in, 2:126 population growth and, 2:139 sedimentation and, 2:201 solar energy in, 2:177 sustainable, 1:28–29, 2:100 See also Pesticides AHERA (Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act) of 1987, 1:46, 2:249 Air pollution, 1:30–38, 1:31, 1:32, 1:33, 1:34, 1:283 California regulations, 1:23

354

critical levels of, 1:201–202 electric power plants and, 1:169 global aspects of, 1:34–35 history of, 1:261 MTBE and, 2:269 from petroleum, 2:106–107 point sources of, 2:117–119, 2:118 prevalence of, 2:272 protests and, 1:253 sampling and, 2:192 from smelting, 2:204–206 from soil pollution, 2:210 from vehicle emissions, 1:219, 2:106–107 See also Clean Air Act; Indoor air pollution; Smog; speciﬁc pollutants and locations Air pollution control, 1:37, 1:261 EPA on, 2:263 with incineration, 1:270–271, 1:273–274, 1:274 indoor pollution, 1:275, 1:278–279 nitrogen oxides and, 2:64 Air Pollution Control Act (APCA) of 1955, 1:8, 1:32, 1:38 Air quality activism and, 1:9 indoor, 1:277–279 managers, 1:79 mining and, 2:47 NOAA and, 2:58 standards, 2:118 See also Air pollution Air scrubbers, 2:129, 2:130 Air stripping, 2:130 deﬁned, 1:97, 2:129 for groundwater contamination, 1:97, 2:268, 2:310 at Superfund sites, 2:226 Air toxics. See Hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) Aircraft noise, 2:66–68 AK Steel Corporation, 2:308 Alabama, 1:209 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980, 1:41 Albee, Edward, 1:159 Aldicarb, 2:97 Aldrin, 2:94, 2:96 Aleutian Islands, 1:11–12 ALF (Animal Liberation Front), 1:160

Algal blooms, 1:214, 1:215 Alien Torts Claims Act (ATCA), 2:25 Alkali Acts, 1:285 Alkaline fuel cells, 1:217 Allergens, deﬁned, 2:54 Allergies from indoor air pollutants, 1:278 from molds, 2:53–54 See also Asthma; Health problems Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, 1:62 Allkyllead, 2:93 Alloys, deﬁned, 2:14 Alluvial soils, deﬁned, 1:25 Alpha decay, 2:162, 2:168 Alpha radiation, deﬁned, 2:167 al-Qaeda, 2:238 See also Terrorist attacks, September 11, 2001 Altamont Pass, California, 1:166 Alternating current, 1:165 Alternative feedstock, 1:235–236 Alternative fuels, 1:183, 1:189, 1:246, 2:107, 2:276 Alternative household products, 1:268 Altgeld Gardens, 1:209 Aluminum acid rain and, 1:3, 1:5 recycling, 2:170, 2:171, 2:206 Ambient air, deﬁned, 1:2, 2:66 Amchitka Island, 1:11–12, 1:243 AMD. See Acid mine drainage American Cancer Society, 2:121 American Electric Power (AEP), 1:183 American Enterprise Institute, 2:324 American Legion convention, 1:278 American lore, 2:134–135 American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and AirConditioning Engineers, 1:279 Ammonia, 2:195 Ammonium, in acid rain, 1:5 Anaerobic, deﬁned, 2:176, 2:303 Anaerobic water, 1:84 Analysis, environmental, 1:81 Analytical chemistry, green, 1:236

Attainment areas

ANILCA (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act) of 1980, 1:41 Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), 2:100 Animal diseases, ﬁsh kills from, 1:214–215 See also Aquatic species Animal Liberation Front (ALF), 1:160 Animal rights, 1:18, 1:160–161 Animal wastes in agriculture, 1:26 electricity from, 1:29 in freshwater, 2:307–308, 2:310 in marine water, 2:312–313 Animals in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1:43 arthropods, 1:293 biomonitoring of, 2:197 hazards to, 2:187 livestock, 1:25–26, 2:44, 2:74 mammals, 1:138–139, 2:314–315 oil spills and, 1:138–139 See also Aquatic species; Birds; Wildlife Annan, Koﬁ, 1:153, 2:224 Anne Anderson, et al. v. W.R. Grace & Co., et al., 1:69 Antagonistic, deﬁned, 2:251 Antarctic ice sheets, 1:226, 1:227 Antarctica. See Ozone hole Anthracene, 2:281 Anthrax, 2:238 Anthropocentric environmental ethics, 1:211–212 Anthropogenic pollutants, 1:32, 1:242 deﬁned, 1:3, 2:43 particulates, 1:35, 2:89 See also speciﬁc pollutants and sources Antibiotics. in wastewater, 1:112 Antifreeze. recycling, 2:172 Antimicrobials. deﬁned, 1:122 Antinoise groups. See Noise pollution Antinuclear movement, 1:38–41, 1:39, 1:202 Brower, David, 1:61 Greenpeace, 1:11–12 Nader, Ralph in, 2:56

Union of Concerned Scientists and, 2:271 Antiwar activists, 2:154 ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), 1:41–43, 2:107 AOCs (Areas of concern), 1:121 APA. See Administrative Procedures Act Apartheid, eco-, 2:25–26 APCA (Air Pollution Control Act) of 1955, 1:8, 1:32, 1:38 APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service), 2:100 Appliances, 1:169, 2:212 Aquaculture, deﬁned, 1:214 Aqualung, 1:116 Aquatic species biomonitoring of, 2:197 exposure to PPCPs, 1:111–112 ﬁsh kills, 1:213–215 heavy metals and, 1:257–258 hydromodiﬁcation and, 2:74 hypoxia and, 1:270 mercury exposure and, 2:42, 2:310 oil spills and, 1:127–128 pesticides and, 2:98–99 sedimentation and, 2:200–202 thermal pollution and, 2:241–242 water pollution and, 2:310–315 See also Eutrophication Aqueous phase chemicals, 1:97 Aquifers, 1:243–244, 1:292, 2:309, 2:321 Arab Oil Embargo (1973-1974), 2:102 Arbitration, 1:41, 1:110, 2:32 Archetypes, deﬁned, 1:132 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), 1:41–43, 2:107 “Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death?”, 2:35 Areas of concern (AOCs), 1:121 Argentina, environmental law enforcement in, 1:191 Argonne National Laboratory, 2:26 Arithmetic, deﬁned, 2:33 Arizona, 2:307 Army Corps of Engineers. See U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Arnold, Ron, 2:323 Arsenic (As), 1:43–45, 1:69, 2:205 Arthropods, deﬁned, 1:293

The Articles of Confederation, 1:230–231 Asbestos, 1:45–47, 1:46 in building materials, 1:266, 1:268, 1:276 as carcinogen, 1:67, 1:69 in mining, 2:50 with tobacco smoke, 2:244 Toxic Substances Control Act and, 2:249 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:235 Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA) of 1987, 1:46, 2:249 Asbestos identiﬁcation surveys, 1:47 Asbestos-containing materials (ACMs), 1:45–47 Asbestosis, 1:45, 1:46 Ascension Parish, 2:141 Ash, 1:103, 1:168–169, 2:115 Asia fertilizers in, 1:28 green revolution in, 1:240 on smoke-free environments, 2:245 See also Southeast Asia; speciﬁc countries Aspergillosis, 2:53 Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, 1:60 Asteroid impacts, 1:132 Asthma, 1:47–49, 1:48, 1:254 from molds, 2:53–54 from ozone, 2:85 from sulfur dioxide, 2:224 Astronomical research, light pollution and, 2:28–30 Asymmetrical warfare, deﬁned, 2:238 ATCA (Alien Torts Claims Act), 2:25 Atmosphere, ozone in, 2:85–86 Atomic absorption spectroscopy, 2:195 Atomic bombs, 1:38–39, 1:186, 2:286 Atomic energy. See Nuclear energy Atomic Energy Act of 1954, 2:77 Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 1:39–40 Atomic spectra, 2:195 Attainment areas, 1:92

355

Audubon Society

Audubon Society. See National Audubon Society Australia environmental law enforcement in, 1:191 Kyoto Protocol, 1:229 on lead-based paint, 2:14 light control policy, 2:31 on medical wastes, 2:39 ocean dumping restrictions, 1:57 Autoimmune system, deﬁned, 1:255 Automobile emissions. See Vehicle emissions Automobiles fuel economy, 1:218–219 plastics in, 2:113–114 recycling, 2:171, 2:173 used, 2:181, 2:183 See also Vehicle emissions

B Babies. See Infants Bacteria biodegradation by, 1:53, 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 Movement of Hazardous Waste (1989), 2:7, 2:291–292, 2:293–294 Batteries, 2:212 lead in, 2:14 recycling, 2:172, 2:206

356

BCCs (Bioaccumulating chemicals), 1:121, 2:52, 2:311 BCF (Bioconcentration factor), 1:52 Beaches, 2:314–315 Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Corp., 1:197–198 BEAR (Business and Environmentalists Allied for Recycling), 1:61 Beatty, Nevada, 2:165 Becquerel, Antoine Henri, 2:161 Bed load transport, deﬁned, 2:200 Bees, 2:98 Belarus Ministry of Health, 1:135 Bendiocarb, 2:97 Beneﬁcial use, 1:50 of biosolids, 1:58, 1:58 of dredged sediments, 2:82 Benign manufacturing, 1:236 Benomyl, 2:98 Benzene, 2:194, 2:281 as carcinogen, 1:67, 2:251 in LUSTs, 2:266 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:235 Benzene hexachloride (BHC), 2:96 Benzo(a)pyrene, 2:93 Benzotriazoles, phytoremediation of, 1:55 Bergen Declaration on Sustainable Development, 2:145 Bertalanffy, Ludwig von, 2:231 Best management practices (BMPs), 2:76 Beta decay, 2:162 Beta radiation, deﬁned, 2:167 Beverage industry, bottle deposit laws and, 1:60–61 Beyond the Limits, 1:239 BHC (Benzene hexachloride), 2:96 Bhopal, India, 1:125, 1:127, 1:173, 1:206, 1:263, 1:264, 2:99 Bifuel vehicles, 1:189 “Big Yellow Taxi,” 2:133 Bikini Atoll, 1:202 Billboards, 2:279 Bills, congressional, 2:16–17 Binding arbitration, 1:41 Bioaccumulating chemicals (BCCs), 1:121, 2:52, 2:311 Bioaccumulation, 1:50–52, 1:51 deﬁned, 1:134, 2:91 dilution and, 1:121 marine pollution and, 2:314

of mercury, 2:42 of organochlorines, 2:96 of PCBs, 2:92 soil pollution and, 2:210 See also speciﬁc chemicals Bioaerosols, 1:276–277 Bioassays, deﬁned, 2:82 Bioavailability, deﬁned, 2:188 Bio-based IPM. See Bio-intensive IPM Biocentrism, 2:329 Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), 2:84 Bioconcentration, 1:50 deﬁned, 2:96 of pesticides, 2:98 Bioconcentration factor (BCF), 1:52 Biodegradation, 1:52–53 deﬁned, 2:15 for groundwater remediation, 2:268 of hazardous wastes, 1:249 lead and, 2:15 for soil pollution, 2:211 of solid wastes, 2:216–217 at Superfund sites, 2:226 Biodiesel, 2:176 Biodiversity deﬁned, 1:242 pesticides and, 2:98 Biogas, 2:176 Biogeochemical interaction, deﬁned, 2:200 Bio-intensive IPM, 1:294 Biological capital, deﬁned, 1:239 Biological control, of pests, 1:293–294 Biological effects, deﬁned, 1:171 Biological sludges, 2:289 Biological treaties, 1:239 Bioluminescence, deﬁned, 2:192 Bioluminescent reporter technology, 2:197–198 Biomagniﬁcation, 1:50, 1:51 Biomass deﬁned, 1:72, 2:297 as energy source, 2:175, 2:176, 2:297 ethanol from, 1:236 fuels from, 1:183 gasiﬁcation, 1:167 Biomonitoring, 2:192, 2:197 Bioreactor landﬁlls, 2:217

Canada

Bioremediation, 1:53–56, 1:54, 1:98 for chemical spills, 1:128 deﬁned, 1:98 of hazardous wastes, 1:249–250 at Libby, Montana site, 2:227 of metal-contaminated soils, 1:59 for petroleum pollution, 2:106 Biosolids, 1:56–60, 1:57, 1:58, 1:59, 1:60 composting, 1:105–108, 1:107, 1:108 deﬁned, 1:50 reuse of, 2:299–300 Bioterrorism, 2:238 Bioventing, 1:55 Birds DDT and, 1:119, 1:119, 1:252 light pollution and, 2:30 oil spills and, 1:138–139 pesticides and, 2:96, 2:98 population of, 1:90 Birth control, 2:137, 2:138, 2:140 Birthrates, 2:138–139 Bituminous coal, deﬁned, 1:167 Black mold, 2:53 Black Monday, 1:201 Blair, Alasdair, 1:284 Blaushild, David, 1:8 Bliss, Russell, 2:243–244 Blowouts, in oil drilling, 2:104 Blue mussels, 2:197 BMPs (Best management practices), 2:76 BOD (Biochemical oxygen demand), 2:84 Bohr, Niels, 2:286 Boilers, 1:181–182 Bombs, atomic, 1:38–39, 1:186, 2:286 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 1:282 Booms, deﬁned, 1:139 Boreal forests, deﬁned, 1:41 Borlaug, Norman, 1:240 Boston Harbor, 1:258 Botanical insecticides, deﬁned, 2:97 Bottle deposit laws, 1:60–61, 1:61 Bottles, recycling of, 2:112 Botulinum toxin, 2:250 Boycotts, consumer, 2:286 BP Amoco, 1:238 Brain cancer, radio frequency and, 1:67

Branches of government, 1:229, 1:231 Brazil activists and, 1:19 waste to energy in, 2:297 Breakdown, deﬁned, 1:87, 2:84 Breakdown product, deﬁned, 1:177 Breast cancer, 1:69–70, 1:176, 1:254–255 The Breast Cancer and the Environment on Long Island Study, 1:69–70 “Breathers’ Lobby,” 1:9 A Brief History of Pollution, 1:282 Brine, deﬁned, 1:292 British Columbia, Canada, 1:239 British thermal units (BTUs), deﬁned, 1:167 Broad Street well (England), 1:260 Broad-spectrum insecticides, 2:97 Brokovich, Erin, 2:134 Brominated ﬂame retardants, 1:51, 2:93 Bromine, 2:87, 2:195 Brookhaven Town Natural Resources Committee (BTNRC), 1:205 See also Environmental Defense Fund Brower, David, 1:9, 1:61, 1:61–62 Brownﬁelds, 1:62–64 Brundtland, Gro, 1:64, 1:64–65, 1:151 The Brundtland Report. See Our Common Future BTEX compounds, 2:266 BTNRC (Brookhaven Town Natural Resources Committee), 1:205 BTUs (British thermal units), deﬁned, 1:167 Building materials asbestos in, 1:45–47 indoor air pollution from, 1:276 See also Sick building syndrome Buildings, mold in, 2:52–53 Bullard, Robert, 1:198, 2:26, 2:141 Bullitt Foundation, 1:247 Bunker Hill, Idaho, 1:59, 2:49 Burford, Anne, 2:243 Burger, Joanna, 2:253 Burn barrels, 1:65 Burnham, Grace, 2:325 Bush, George

Convention on Biodiversity, 1:152 on Kyoto Protocol, 1:149 Bush, George W. on Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1:42 CEQ and, 2:147 environmental reporting and, 2:36 EPA reforms and, 2:159 on fuel cell research, 1:216 on Kyoto Protocol, 1:229, 1:261 terrorism legislation and, 2:238 on transportation of nuclear wastes, 1:40 on Yucca Mountain, 2:165 Bush-fallow systems, deﬁned, 1:27 Business and Environmentalists Allied for Recycling (BEAR), 1:61 Buzzards Bay watershed, 2:76 BZ numbers, 2:91

C CAA. See Clean Air Act CAAA. 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, 1:3 California asthma studies in, 1:49 Corona, 2:223 pervious concrete use in, 2:77 regulatory agencies, 1:23 See also Los Angeles smog California Air Resources Board, 1:23 Callicott, J. Baird, 1:211 Calypso (ship), 1:116, 2:132–133 “Calypso” (song), 2:132–133 Campaign Against Pollution (CAP), 1:204 Canada acid rain legislation, 1:5

357

Canada

Canada (continued) on bioaccumulation, 1:52 consumerism in, 2:22 Environment Canada, 1:121, 1:193–194 NAFTA and, 2:56–57 National Pollution Release Inventory, 2:184–185 National Water Resource Institute, 1:291 parliamentary government in, 1:233 petroleum use in, 2:101–102 sewage sludge standards in, 2:190 See also speciﬁc towns and provinces Cancer, 1:65–70, 1:66, 1:68, 1:69, 1:255 endocrine disruptors and, 1:176 in Louisiana, 1:71, 2:141 See also Carcinogens; speciﬁc types of cancer Cancer Alley, Louisiana, 1:71, 1:209, 2:141 Cancer clusters, 1:69–70, 1:71, 2:187 CAP (Campaign Against Pollution), 1:204 Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, 2:310 Car emissions. See Vehicle emissions Carbamates, 2:96–97, 2:98 Carbaryl, 2:96–97 Carbofuran, 2:97 Carbon, in fossil fuels, 1:215–216 Carbon dioxide (CO2), 1:72–73, 1:73 chemical structure of, 1:72 from coal burning, 1:102 emissions trading of, 1:175 from fossil fuels, 1:216 global warming and, 1:242 IR spectroscopy for, 2:196–197 Kyoto Protocol on, 1:34–35 Persian Gulf War and, 2:239 from vehicle emissions, 1:182, 2:107, 2:274, 2:276 Carbon monoxide (CO), 1:73–75, 1:74 air quality standards on, 2:118, 2:195 catalytic converters and, 1:86–87, 2:198

358

controlling emissions of, 1:37 as criteria pollutant, 1:33, 1:35 emissions trading and, 1:174 IR spectroscopy for, 2:197 from petroleum, 2:106 from vehicle emissions, 1:182, 2:273, 2:275 Carbon sequestration, 1:106 Carbon tetrachloride, 1:67, 1:145 Carbon-14, 2:161 Carbonyl groups, 2:114 Carcinogens, 1:66–70, 2:251 from chemical accidents, 1:127 deﬁned, 1:45, 2:99 electromagnetic ﬁelds, 1:171–172 in groundwater, 2:309 PBT chemicals, 2:93 PCBs, 2:92 PERC, 1:145 tobacco smoke, 2:244 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:235 See also Hazardous air pollutants; speciﬁc chemicals and products Careers, in environmental protection, 1:75–82, 1:76, 1:78, 1:80 Caribou, 1:43 Carmody, Kevin, 2:35 Carpets, 1:269, 2:112 Carrying Capacity Network, 2:140 Cars. See Automobiles Carson, Rachel, 1:8, 1:9, 1:82–84, 1:83, 1:119, 1:202, 1:239–240, 1:252, 2:34, 2:228, 2:328, 2:330 Carter, Jimmy ANILCA and, 1:41 on Love Canal, 1:221–222 on nuclear reprocessing, 1:188 President’s Council on Environmental Quality and, 2:146 Carver, George Washington, 1:84–86, 1:85 Cascades, deﬁned, 2:242 Casings, well, deﬁned, 1:292 Catalysts, 1:189, 2:275 Catalytic, deﬁned, 2:91 Catalytic converters, 1:86, 1:86–87, 2:198, 2:233 See also Vehicle emissions Cataracts, 2:266

C-BA (Cost-beneﬁt analyses), 1:114–116 CCA (Chromated copper arsenate), 1:43 CCHW (Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes), 1:205, 1:222 CDC. See Centers for Disease Control CEC (Commission for Environmental Cooperation), 1:194, 2:21–22, 2:57 CEC (Council on Environmental Quality), 2:122, 2:146–147 Cellular phones, cancer and, 1:67, 1:171–172 Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), 1:220, 1:222, 2:61 See also Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, 2:323–324 Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 2:14, 2:38, 2:243, 2:309 Centrifugal scrubbers, 2:199 Centrifuges, 2:233 CEQ (Council on Environmental Quality), 2:122 CERCLA. See Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act Ceres Principles, 2:8 Cerrell Report, 2:143 Certiﬁcation, international, 1:286, 2:8 See also Laws and regulations Cesium-137, 1:134, 2:211 Cesspools, deﬁned, 1:292 CFCs (Chloroﬂuorocarbons), 1:87–88, 1:245 chemical structure of, 1:87 EPA on, 2:263 global warming and, 1:242 Montreal Protocol on, 1:34, 1:261, 2:257 nongovernmental organizations and, 2:71–72 ozone layer and, 2:87 replacements for, 1:280–281 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations), 2:12, 2:78, 2:166 Champion International Corporation, 2:227

Clean Water Act (CWA)

Chávez, César E., 1:88–89, 1:89, 1:202, 2:1–2 Chavis Jr., Benjamin F., 1:198 ChE (Cholinesterase), 2:96 Checks and balances, 1:231 CHEJ (Center for Health, Environment and Justice), 1:220, 1:222, 2:61 Chelating agents, 2:13, 2:211 Chelyabinsk-7, 2:286 Chemical accidents and spills, 1:124–129, 1:125, 1:127, 1:173, 1:206 See also Oil spills Chemical fertilizers, 1:26–27 Chemical oxidation, for chemical spills, 1:128 Chemical pollution, 1:263–265, 1:294–295, 2:22, 2:35 Chemical products, 1:122, 2:233 See also speciﬁc products and classes of products Chemical warfare, 2:281 Chemically active, deﬁned, 1:245 Chemicals household, 1:266 nontoxic, 1:236 in water treatment, 2:321 See also speciﬁc chemicals Chemistry environmental, 2:193–194 green, 1:235–237 Chemosynthesis, 2:106 Cher, 2:133 Cherney, Darryl, 1:161 Cherniak, Martin, 1:220 Chernobyl disaster, 1:40, 1:134–135, 1:187, 1:264 Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, 2:309, 2:312 Cheshire, Ohio, 1:183 Chicago, Illinois, 1:21–22, 2:202–203 Chicken manure, 1:29 Chicxulub crater, 1:132 Children cellular phones and, 1:172 environmental diseases in, 1:251, 1:253–254 heavy metals and, 1:257 lead poisoning in, 2:13–15, 2:49, 2:251–252 noise pollution and, 2:66–67 toxin sensitivity in, 2:251–252 See also Infants

China, birth control in, 2:137, 2:140 The China Syndrome, 1:40, 1:135, 2:133 Chisso chemical plant, 1:294 Chloramination, deﬁned, 1:255 Chlordane, 2:94, 2:96, 2:247 Chlorinated aromatic compounds, 2:209 Chlorination, 1:255, 2:270, 2:300, 2:316, 2:320–321 Chlorine, 2:87, 2:195 Chlorobornanes. See Toxaphene Chloroﬂuorocarbons. See CFCs Chloroform, as carcinogen, 1:67 Chloroparafﬁns, 2:93 Chlorophenol-based pesticides, 1:122 Chloropicrin, 2:97 Cholera, from water pollution, 1:259–260, 2:208–209, 2:310, 2:311, 2:316 Cholinesterase (ChE), 2:96–97 Chomophores, 2:114 CHP (Combined heat and power), 1:189 Christmas Day Bird Count, 1:90 Chromated copper arsenate (CCA), 1:43 Chromatography, 2:192, 2:193–194 Chromium, 2:134 health hazards of, 1:257 as priority pollutant, 2:117 Chronic, deﬁned, 1:134 Chronic toxicity, 1:127, 2:92, 2:250–251 Chrysotile, 1:45 Cigarette butts, 2:315 Cigarette smoke. See Tobacco smoke Circumstances, of life, 2:131 CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), 2:257 Citizen science, 1:89–90 Citizen suits, 1:90–91, 1:191 Citizens environmental responsibilities of, 1:290, 1:291 on hazardous material control, 2:184 Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes (CCHW), 1:205, 1:222

Citizens for the Environment, 2:324 Citric acid, 2:211 A Civil Action, 1:69, 1:90, 1:109, 2:133 Civil rights, 1:197–198 Civil rights movement, 2:154 Civil wars, 2:284, 2:286 Claims, deﬁned, 2:51 Clamshell Alliance, 1:40 Clariﬁers, deﬁned, 2:300 Clean Air Act (CAA), 1:91–92 acid rain and, 1:3, 1:5, 1:6 amendments to, 1:204 on chemical accidents, 1:126 Earth Day and, 1:149 on electric power plant emissions, 1:102 EPA and, 1:23 federal government power and, 1:33–34, 2:122–123 Forest Service and, 2:259 on HAPs, 1:103 incentives and, 2:158–159 incineration and, 1:271 lawsuits, 1:191 media coverage and, 2:35 medical wastes and, 2:39 Nader, Ralph and, 1:239 Nelson, Gaylord and, 2:62 New Left and, 2:63 passage of, 1:8, 1:261, 2:121 on point sources, 2:117–118 on scrubbers, 2:199 as single-medium approach, 2:125–126 smelting and, 2:206 state laws and, 1:231 wise-use movement on, 2:324 World Trade Organization and, 2:326 See also Air pollution Clean Air Act (England), 1:261, 1:285 Clean fuels, 1:183 Clean Water Act, 1:8 Clean Water Act (CWA), 1:92–93, 2:10, 2:121–123, 2:302–303, 2:304 amendments to, 1:204 on beneﬁcial use, 1:50, 1:149 EPA and, 1:23 Forest Service and, 2:259 history of, 2:302 mass media and, 2:35

359

Clean Water Act (CWA)

Clean Water Act (CWA) (continued) medical wastes and, 2:39 on mining, 2:49 Nader, Ralph and, 1:239 Natural Resource Damage Assessment and, 2:61 Nelson, Gaylord and, 2:62 on nonpoint source pollution, 2:75 on ocean dumping, 2:80 passage of, 1:260, 2:306–307 permits and, 2:9 on point sources, 2:116 vs. Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act, 2:191 as single-medium approach, 2:125–126 states and, 2:122 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and, 2:258 on wastewater and surface water, 2:316 on whistleblowing, 2:322–323 wise-use movement on, 2:324 See also Water pollution Cleaner technologies, 2:232, 2:275, 2:276 Cleaning coal, 1:102 Cleanup, 1:93–100, 1:94, 1:95 vs. abatement, 1:1 of brownﬁelds, 1:62 of chemical spills, 1:128 of dredged sediment, 1:143–144 of Love Canal, 1:221 of military bases, 2:286 of oil spills, 1:139–140, 2:314 of Superfund sites, 2:225–227 voluntary programs, 1:286 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:235–236 See also Abatement Clearwater, 1:201 Cleveland, Ohio, 1:253 Climate change, 1:18–19, 1:224–229, 2:6, 2:49, 2:254 See also Global warming Climate Change Convention (United Nations), 1:152, 2:6, 2:257 Clinical wastes. See Medical wastes Clinton, Bill CEQ and, 2:147 Chávez, César and, 1:89 ecoterrorism and, 1:160

360

on environmental justice, 1:199, 2:143 EPA reforms and, 2:159 on green products, 1:238 on World Trade Organization, 1:239 Clive, Utah, 2:166 Cloﬁbric acid, 1:112 Cloracne, 2:92 The Closing Circle: Man, Nature and Technology, 1:104–105, 1:204, 2:328, 2:330 Closures, mine, 2:47 Clothing, 2:181–182, 2:182, 2:183, 2:212 Club of Rome, 1:11, 1:14, 1:15, 2:228 Coagulation, in water treatment, 2:320 Coal, 1:100–103, 1:102, 1:215–216 air pollution from, 1:102–103, 1:261 ash, 1:168–169 cleaning, 1:102 electricity from, 1:166–167, 1:167 gasiﬁcation, 1:67, 1:167 mercury from, 2:43 mining, 1:101 power plants, 1:180, 1:180–185, 2:107 smog and, 2:206–207 states’ usage of, 1:224 worldwide resources of, 1:180 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, 2:55 Coal-bed methane, 2:49 Coast Guard. See U.S. Coast Guard Coastal Zone Management Act, 2:9 Coastal zones, 2:201 Cobalt, 1:256–257, 2:235 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), 2:12, 2:78, 2:166 Codes of conduct, corporate, 2:7–8 Codex Alimentarius Commission, 2:6 Codify, deﬁned, 2:146 Coffee, shade-grown, 1:238 Cogeneration, for energy efﬁciency, 1:189 Cohn, Gary, 2:36 COINTELPRO, 1:161 Coke, deﬁned, 1:102

Colborn, Theo, 1:103–104, 2:330 Cold War, 1:38–39, 1:187, 2:286–287 College students, 2:150–151 Colleges, environmental careers in See also speciﬁc colleges and universities Colonization, European, 2:142 Colorado River dams, 1:9–10 Columbia Journalism Review, 2:35, 2:36 Combined heat and power (CHP), 1:189 Combined sewer overﬂows (CSOs), 2:301 Combustion, 1:271–272, 2:129–130 deﬁned, 2:88 dioxin from, 1:122 indoor air pollution from, 1:275 mercury from, 2:43 for municipal solid wastes, 2:216 See also Incineration Commercialism, 2:135 See also Materialism Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), 1:194, 2:21–22, 2:57 Commission for Racial Justice (CRJ), 1:198, 2:288 Commission on Global Governance, 2:224 Commission on Human Settlements (United Nations), 2:15 Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), 1:24, 1:152–153, 2:228 Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), 1:39 Common Sense Initiative, 2:128 Commoner, Barry, 1:104–105, 1:105, 1:204, 2:328, 2:330 Communications specialists, 1:77–78 Community Service Organization (CSO), 1:88 Community Strategy on Waste (European Environment Agency), 2:217 Community water systems (CWS), 2:270 Competition, environmental regulations and, 1:183–184

Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)

Competitive and Green: Sustainable Performance in the Environmental Age, 2:135 Complex emergencies, deﬁned, 1:132 Compliance, deﬁned, 2:55 Composting, 1:55, 1:105–109, 1:107, 1:108, 2:173–174, 2:213, 2:215–216 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), 1:109–110, 2:10, 2:225 on brownﬁelds, 1:62 environmental justice and, 1:199 on friable asbestos, 1:47 heavy metals and, 1:258 Love Canal and, 1:220, 1:222, 1:263 on military base cleanup, 2:286 mining and, 2:48 Natural Resource Damage Assessment and, 2:61 passage of, 1:13–14, 1:206, 2:122, 2:123 Compression Ignition Direct Injection engines, 1:189 Computer models, deﬁned, 2:31 Computers lead in screens, 2:14 recycling, 2:172–173 Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), 1:26, 2:308 Concordance, deﬁned, 1:255 Concrete, pervious, 2:77 Condea Vista (Conoco), 1:71 Condensation scrubbers, 2:199 Condensers, deﬁned, 2:240 Confederation European, 1:231–232 in pre-Revolutionary U.S., 1:231 Conference on Environment and Development. See Earth Summit Conference on the Human Environment (United Nations), 1:13, 1:151, 1:205, 2:72, 2:80 Conferences. See Treaties and conferences Conﬂict resolution, 2:153–155 Congeners, deﬁned, 1:122, 2:91 Congress (U.S.), 2:16–18

Consensus, electoral, 1:239 Consensus building, 1:24, 1:110, 2:174–175 Consent orders, deﬁned, 2:286 Conservation careers in, 1:78–79 energy, 1:184, 2:170, 2:179 groundwater, 1:244 See also Recycling Conservation easements, deﬁned, 2:62 Conservationists, 1:78–79, 1:84 Consolidated Edison, 1:10 Constructed wetlands, 2:303 Consulting ﬁrms, environmental, 1:82 Consumer pollution, 1:111–114, 1:112 Consumerism, 2:19–23, 2:20 Consumers of electricity, 1:169 petroleum pollution and, 1:139, 1:141 plastic wastes and, 2:111, 2:111–113 Containment, 1:99 deﬁned, 1:95 double, 1:292 Contaminants, deﬁned, 2:205 Control rods, deﬁned, 1:135 Convent, Louisiana, 1:71, 1:209 Convention for the Application of Prior Informed Consent (PIC) Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, 2:6, 2:7, 2:257 Convention on Biological Diversity (1992), 1:152, 2:145, 2:257 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), 2:257 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, 2:6, 2:257 Convention on the Law of the Sea (United Nations), 2:6 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter. See London Convention

Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat, 2:257 Convention to Combat Desertiﬁcation in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertiﬁcation, 2:257 Conventions, 2:254 See also speciﬁc conventions Conversion, 1:98–99, 1:248–249 deﬁned, 1:95 of landﬁll gases to energy, 2:3–4 Conway, Gordon R., 1:241 Cooling ponds, 2:240–242, 2:241 Cooling towers, 2:242–243 Cooperative enforcement, 1:192–193 Copper, from smelting, 2:205 Copper oxide regenerative scrubbers, 2:199 Copper sulfate, 2:97 Coprecipitation, for arsenic removal, 1:44 Coral bleaching, 2:313 Coral reefs, 2:313, 2:314 Corona, California, 2:223 Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, 1:189–190, 1:218 Corporate codes of conduct, 2:7–8 Corporation for Public Access to Science and Technology (CPAST), 1:180 Corps of Engineers. See U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Corps of Engineers Modernization and Improvement Act of 2002, 2:258 CorpWatch, 1:237–238 Corrective justice, 1:210 Corrosion, of underground storage tanks, 2:266, 2:268 Corruption, political, 2:154 Costa Rica, 2:231–232 Cost-beneﬁt analyses (C-BA), 1:114–116 Costs environmental business, 1:285–286 of pollution, 1:157–159 pollution economics and, 1:154 Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), 2:122, 2:146–147

361

Counterculture

Counterculture deﬁned, 1:148, 2:63 environmental activism and, 1:202 Counterterrorism Division (FBI), 1:160–161 Court adjudication, 1:110 Cousins, Norman, 1:39 Cousteau, Jacques, 1:11, 1:116, 1:116, 2:132–133 Cousteau Society, 1:11 Cover crops, 1:27 CPAST (Corporation for Public Access to Science and Technology), 1:180 Creeping disasters, 1:132 Crime, environmental, 1:194–196, 1:195 Criminal law, in environmental cases, 1:192 Criteria pollutants, 1:33, 1:92, 2:106 air quality standards for, 2:118 deﬁned, 1:175 See also speciﬁc pollutants CRJ (Commission for Racial Justice), 1:198, 2:288 Cronkite, Walter, 2:34 Crop rotation, 1:25–26, 1:27–28 Carver, George Washington and, 1:84 deﬁned, 1:84 Crude oil, 2:101–107 See also Petroleum Cruel Tales of Japan: Modern Period, 1:294 Cryptosporidiosis, 1:117–118, 1:118, 2:310, 2:321 Cryptosporidium, 1:117, 1:118, 2:321 CSD. See Commission on Sustainable Development CSO (Community Service Organization), 1:88 CSOs (Combined sewer overﬂows), 2:301 Cultivars, deﬁned, 1:25 Curing stage, of humiﬁcation, 1:107 Customary international law, 2:5 Cuyahoga River, 1:7, 1:92, 1:203, 1:260, 2:304, 2:306, 2:307 CWA. See Clean Water Act CWS (Community water systems), 2:270 Cyanophenols, 2:98

362

Cyclodiene organochlorines, 2:96 Czech Republic light control policy, 2:31 postindustrial site development in, 1:63

D 2,4-D, 2:97 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 DBPs (Disinfection by-products), 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 estrogenic effects of, 1:176–177 ethics and, 1:211–212 health effects of, 1:252 in India, 1:28 Nelson, Gaylord and, 2:62 soil pollution and, 2:210 toxicology studies of, 2:252 water pollution and, 2:310 See also Carson, Rachel DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), 2:39 Deaths from air pollution, 1:142 excess, 1:30, 1:32 from natural disasters, 1:132 See also Health problems Decay of radionuclides, 2:161–162 of radon, 2:166–168 “Decision Making,” 2:26 Decision making, public policy, 2:157–160 Decomposition of biosolids, 1:106–107

in landﬁlls, 2:216–217 Decontamination. See Remediation Deep ecology, 1:150, 2:328–329 Defenders of Property Rights, 2:324 Defoliants, deﬁned, 1:122, 2:281 Defoliation deﬁned, 1:148 in Vietnam War, 2:283–284 Deforestation, carbon dioxide and, 1:72 Degradable plastics, 2:114 Dehumidiﬁcation, for indoor air pollution, 1:278 Deicers, aircraft, deﬁned, 1:53 Delaney clause. See Section 409 (Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act) Delaware Clean Air Coalition, 1:9 Delegated authority, 2:122 Dell Computer, 2:173 Deltamethrin, 2:97 Dematerialization, 1:279 Demeton, 2:96 Democracies, 1:230–234 market, 2:19–21 sustainable environmental, 1:239 Denitriﬁcation, deﬁned, 2:64 Dense nonaqueous phase chemicals (DNAPLs), 1:97, 1:99, 2:69 Denver, John, 2:132–133 Department of Agriculture. See U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Department of Energy. See U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Department of Health and Human Services. See U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Department of Homeland Security. See U.S. Department of Homeland Security Department of Justice. See U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Department of Labor. See U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Department of the Interior. See U.S. Department of the Interior Department of Transportation. See U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Depletion, of ozone layer, 2:86–87 Deposits, deﬁned, 2:51

Doyle, Jack

Deregulation, in electric power generation, 1:169–170 Derris, 2:97 DES (Diethylstilbestrol), 1:176 Desalinization, 2:139 Desertiﬁcation, 1:24, 1:132 Desiccants, deﬁned, 1:278 Design modiﬁcations, for abatement, 1:2 Despoliation, deﬁned, 1:159 Detectors, 1:74–75, 2:194–197 Detergents, pollution from, 2:209, 2:310 Deterrent enforcement, 1:192–193 Detjen, Jim, 2:35 Deuterium, deﬁned, 2:278 Developed countries agriculture in, 1:27 vs. developing countries, 2:141–143 Kyoto Protocol and, 1:229 natural disasters in, 1:132–133 See also European Union; speciﬁc countries Developing countries agriculture in, 1:27–28 compliance with international standards by, 2:7 vs. developed countries, 2:141–143 Earth Summit and, 1:152 eco-apartheid in, 2:25 energy sources in, 2:175 green revolution and, 1:240–241 injection wells in, 1:292 natural disasters in, 1:132 nonpoint source pollution in, 2:76 P2 technologies in, 2:234 poverty and environment in, 2:140–142 resource consumption in, 2:23, 2:24 trade disparities and, 2:24–25 use of DDT in, 1:120, 1:211–212 waste trade in, 1:263, 2:291–292, 2:293 water-contaminated diseases in, 2:311 See also Africa; speciﬁc countries Development, of mines, 2:47 Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, 1:40, 1:61

Diapers, 2:212 Diarrheal diseases, 1:251 Diatomaceous earth, deﬁned, 2:320 Diazinon, 2:96 Dichlopropene, 2:97 Dichlorodiphenyl dichloroethylene (DDE), 1:252 Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane. See DDT Dieldrin, 2:94, 2:96 Diesel, 1:120–121, 2:275 Diesel, Rudolf Christian Karl, 1:120 Diethylstilbestrol (DES), 1:176 Diffusers, deﬁned, 2:240 Dilution, 1:121, 2:318–320 Dimethoate, 2:96 Dinoﬂagellates, deﬁned, 2:313 Dinosaur National Monument, 1:61 Dintrophenols, 2:98 Dioxins, 1:121–124, 1:123, 2:94 bioaccumlation of, 1:51 in chemical accidents, 1:127 chemical structure of, 1:122 cleanup of, 1:95 deﬁned, 2:216 FDA on, 2:265–266 gas chromatography for, 2:194 from open trash burning, 1:65 as PBT chemicals, 2:93 as priority pollutant, 2:117 reporting requirements, 2:248 at Times Beach, Missouri, 2:243–244 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:235 Diquat, 2:194 Direct current, 1:165 Direct methanol fuel cells, 1:217 Direct push technologies, 1:98 Direct-action groups, 1:9, 1:204, 1:206, 2:71 See also names of speciﬁc groups Disaster cycle, deﬁned, 1:132 Disasters chemical accidents and spills, 1:124–129, 1:125, 1:127, 1:173, 1:206 environmental engineers and, 1:79 environmental mining accidents, 1:129–130 natural, 1:130–134, 1:131, 1:133

nuclear accidents, 1:40, 1:134–138, 1:137, 1:205–206, 1:264–265, 2:160–161 See also Industrial accidents; Oil spills; speciﬁc accidents Discrimination, environmental, 1:208–209 Disease clusters, 1:69–71, 1:89–90, 1:109, 2:187 Disinfection, in water treatment, 2:320–321 Disinfection by-products (DBPs), 2:270, 2:316, 2:320 Disposal. See Waste disposal Dispute resolution, by consensus building, 1:110 Dissolution into the oceans, deﬁned, 1:72 Dissolved oxygen (DO), deﬁned, 2:116 Distillation column reboilers, 1:2 in solvent recovery, 1:146 Distributive justice, 1:210, 1:212 Disulfoton, 2:96 DNA cancer cells and, 1:66 of molds, 2:54 UV radiation and, 2:266 DNAPLs (Dense nonaqueous phase chemicals), 1:97, 1:99, 2:69 DOE. See U.S. Department of Energy Doe Run Smelting, 2:15, 2:15–16 DOJ. See U.S. Department of Justice DOL. See U.S. Department of Labor Domestic wastewater. See Sanitary wastewater Donora, Pennsylvania, 1:30, 1:142, 1:143, 1:201–202, 1:251, 1:261, 2:207 Dose, of radiation, 2:161 Dose-response relationship, 2:186–187, 2:188, 2:250–251, 2:251 DOT. See U.S. Department of Transportation Double containment, deﬁned, 1:292 The Doubly Green Revolution, 1:241 Douglas, Michael, 2:133 Doyle, Jack, 1:284

363

Drake, Edwin L.

Drake, Edwin L., 2:101 Dredge spoils, 1:50, 2:83 Dredging, 1:142–145, 1:143, 2:81–82, 2:92, 2:258, 2:301 Driers, deﬁned, 2:14 Drilling wastes, deﬁned, 1:42 Drinking water arsenic in, 1:44 contaminants, 1:257 cryptosporidiosis from, 1:117 deﬁned, 2:266 disinfection by-products in, 2:270 heavy metals in, 1:258 injection wells and, 1:292 LUSTs and, 2:266, 2:268 movies about, 2:133 MTBE in, 2:270 PPCPs in, 1:112 treatment of, 2:316–317 trichloroethylene in, 1:247 watersheds and, 2:310–311 See also Groundwater; Water treatment Driveways, of pervious concrete, 2:77 Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), 2:39 Drugs. See Pharmaceuticals and personal care products Dry cleaning, 1:145–146 Dry deposition, 1:3 Dry rot, 2:52 Dry scrubbers, 1:274 DTPA, 2:211 Dumanoski, Dianne, 1:104 Dunlap, Riley, 2:132 Durable goods, 2:211–212 Dust, particulates from, 2:88–89 Dust mites, house. See House dust mites Duvall, Robert, 2:133

E Earth image from space, 1:10, 1:205, 2:29 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

364

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 the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, 2:329 Earth Island Institute, 1:62 Earth Liberation Front (ELF), 1:19, 1:160–161 Earth Summit, 1:151–153 Earth Day and, 1:149 on environmental justice, 2:143–144 Green movement and, 1:239 Greenpeace at, 1:242 integrated environmental policies, 2:158 nongovernmental organizations at, 1:206–207, 2:72 Strong, Maurice and, 2:224 on sustainable development, 1:286, 2:228 on transboundary pollution, 2:5 Earthquakes, 1:132–133, 2:265, 2:331–332 ECO (Environmental Careers Organization), 1:81 Eco-apartheid, 2:25–26 Ecocentric environmental ethics, 1:211–212 Eco-efﬁciency, 1:286 Ecofeminism, 1:19, 2:329 Eco-footprints (EFs), 2:23, 2:23–25 Ecological Consequences of Artiﬁcial Night Lighting, 2:30 Ecological footprint analysis (EFA), 2:23, 2:23–25 Ecologists, 1:77 Ecology, 1:9 deep, 1:150, 2:328–329 Earth Day and, 1:148 industrial, 1:279–281, 1:280, 2:294 Swallow, Ellen and, 2:230 See also Ecosystems Ecology Center, Michigan, 2:184

“Ecology of Images,” 2:134–135 Economic development environmentalism and, 1:19–20, 1:151, 2:154 pollution and, 1:7 See also Politics; Sustainable development Economics, 1:153–159, 1:156, 1:157, 1:158, 2:231–232 Eco-pornography, 2:135 Ecosystems deﬁned, 1:129, 2:281 industrial, 1:280 oil spills and, 1:139 systems science and, 2:230–231 Ecotage. See Ecoterrorism Ecoterrorism, 1:16, 1:150, 1:159–162, 1:161 See also Earth First! Ecotoxicity, from chemical accidents, 1:127–128 ED (Effective dose), 2:186–187 EDC (Ethylene dichloride), 1:71 EDTA, 2:211 Education, environmental, 1:77, 1:81, 1:90, 1:162–164, 2:141 Edward I (England), 1:30 EEA (European Environment Agency), 1:232, 2:217 EF!. See Earth First! EFA (Ecological footprint analysis), 2:23, 2:23–25 Effective dose (ED), 2:186–187 Efﬁciency (Economics), 1:154, 1:236 Efﬂuent limitations, 1:93 Efﬂuents Clean Water Act on, 2:116 deﬁned, 1:215, 2:242 Efﬂux pump inhibitors (EPIs), deﬁned, 1:112 E-FOIA (Electronic FOIA), 1:289 EFs (Eco-footprints), 2:23, 2:23–25 Ehrlich, Paul, 1:104, 1:164–165, 1:165, 1:202, 2:34, 2:328, 2:334 EIA (Energy Information Administration), 1:180 EIS. See Environmental impact statements Electoral consensus, deﬁned, 1:239 Electric currents, 1:165 Electric power, 1:165–170, 1:166, 1:167, 1:168, 1:170 from fuel cells, 1:216–217 from incinerators, 1:272

Environmental industry careers

from manure, 1:29 nuclear, global, 1:186, 1:187 renewable sources of, 2:175–179, 2:178, 2:179 See also Waste-to-energy Electric power plants sulfur dioxide removal, 1:102 waste heat from, 2:240 Electric vehicles, 2:276 Electrical currents, in human body, 1:171 Electrical resistance heating, 1:98 Electricity. See Electric power Electrodes, deﬁned, 1:98 Electromagnetic ﬁelds (EMFs), 1:67, 1:171–172 Electromagnetic spectrum, 2:192, 2:195, 2:196 Electro-Metallurgical Company, 1:219 Electron capture, 2:195 Electronic equipment, 2:212 Electronic FOIA (E-FOIA), 1:289 Electronic reading rooms, 1:289 Electrostatic precipitators, 2:205 ELF (Earth Liberation Front), 1:19, 1:160–161 ELF EMFs (Extremely lowfrequency electric and magnetic ﬁelds), 1:67, 1:171–172 Embargos, oil, 2:102 Emelle, Alabama, 1:209 Emergencies, complex, 1:132 See also Disasters Emergency personnel, 1:126, 1:128 Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA), 1:125, 1:172–173, 1:263, 1:290, 2:10, 2:184, 2:246 Emergency response in disaster cycle, 1:132 EPCRA and, 1:173, 2:184–185 by U.S. Coast Guard, 2:259 Emergency Response and Notiﬁcation System (EPA), 1:126 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 2:327 EMFs. See Electromagnetic ﬁelds Emission control systems incinerators, 1:273–274, 1:274 for vehicles, 2:208, 2:274–275 See also Vehicle emissions Emission spectra, 2:195 Emission spectroscopy, 2:195

Emissions, 1:32, 1:32, 1:34 deﬁned, 1:145 particles in, 2:89–90 recycling and, 2:170 zero, 2:295 See also Vehicle emissions Emissions trading, 1:102, 1:173–175, 1:175, 2:12, 2:119, 2:199, 2:257 Employees. See Workers The End of Nature, 2:329, 2:330 “End of product responsibility,” 2:173 Endangered species, 2:257 Endangered Species Act, 1:149, 2:324 Endocrine disruption, 1:176–179, 1:177, 1:178, 1:179, 2:110–111 Endocrine system, 1:103, 1:178, 2:99 End-of-the-pipe treatments, 2:124–125, 2:306–307 See also Industrial wastes; Municipal solid wastes Endosulfan, 2:96 Endrin, 2:94, 2:96 Energy, 1:179–185, 1:180, 1:181, 1:182, 1:183 cleaner sources of, 1:279 from landﬁll gases, 2:3–4 renewable, 2:175–180, 2:176, 2:177, 2:178, 2:179 See also speciﬁc energy sources Energy conservation, 1:184, 2:170, 2:179 Energy consumption, 1:158, 1:181, 1:182 Energy crisis, 1:184–185 Energy efﬁciency, 1:189, 1:189–190, 2:107, 2:126 Energy Information Administration (EIA), 1:180 Energy Star, 1:169, 1:190 EnergyGuide label, 1:189, 1:190 Enforcement, 1:190–193, 2:254 Engineers, environmental, 1:79–80 Engines diesel, 1:120 gasoline, 1:180–181, 1:189, 1:261, 2:107 heat, 2:240 steam, 1:282 England air pollution in, 1:285

Industrial Revolution pollution in, 1:282 population growth in, 2:138 See also London, England; United Kingdom Englund, Will, 2:36 Entertainment, environmental issues in, 2:132–135 EnviroMapper, 1:290 Environment and Business, 1:284 Environment and Public Works Committee (Senate), 1:126 Environment Canada, 1:121, 1:193–194 Environmental Action (Task force), 1:204 Environmental analysts, 1:81 Environmental Careers Organization (ECO), 1:81 Environmental Conservation Organization, 2:324 Environmental crime, 1:194–196, 1:195 Environmental Defense Fund, 1:10, 1:11, 1:205, 2:121 global presence of, 2:256 McDonald’s and, 1:19 on population growth, 2:140 Environmental destruction, in war, 1:139, 1:185, 2:239, 2:281, 2:283–284, 2:286 Environmental engineer careers, 1:79–80 Environmental equity, 1:196, 1:210 See also Environmental justice Environmental factors, carcinogenic. See Carcinogens Environmental groups, 1:204, 1:287, 2:120–121 1960s, 1:9–10 1970s, 1:11–13 1980s, 1:16, 1:18–19 See also names of speciﬁc groups Environmental health. See Health, human Environmental impact. See Impacts, environmental Environmental Impact Assessment Directive (EU), 2:49 Environmental impact statements (EIS), 1:10, 1:196, 2:49, 2:57–58, 2:146, 2:152–153 Environmental industry careers, 1:82

365

Environmental Intern Program

Environmental Intern Program. See Environmental Careers Organization Environmental journalists, 1:78 Environmental justice, 1:196–200, 1:197, 1:206, 1:210, 2:143 eco-apartheid and, 2:25–26 National Toxics Campaign and, 2:60–61 public participation and, 2:156 Toxic Release Inventory and, 2:184 Environmental law, 1:10, 1:11 Environmental mining accidents, 1:129–130 Environmental Modiﬁcation Convention (1976), 2:284 Environmental movement, 1:200–208, 1:201, 1:203, 1:205 effective group politics in, 2:120 industrial pollution and, 1:285 public participation and, 2:154 See also Activism Environmental outreach, 1:77–78 Environmental planners, 1:81 Environmental policies, 2:157–160 See also Laws and regulations; speciﬁc agencies and regulations Environmental protection careers in, 1:75–82, 1:76, 1:78, 1:80 U.S. government agencies, 1:230 Environmental Protection Act of 1969, 2:62 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 2:260–264, 2:261, 2:262 on air pollution prevalence, 2:272 on arsenic levels, 1:44 on asbestos, 1:45–47 on bioaccumulation, 1:121 on biosolids, 1:56, 1:58–59 on carbon monoxide, 1:73–74 on carcinogens, 1:67 careers at, 1:81 CERCLA and, 1:109 on chromated copper arsenate, 1:43 Clean Water Act and, 1:93 creation of, 1:12, 1:149, 2:302 databases of, 1:290–291 on dioxin, 1:122 on Doe Run Smelting, 2:16

366

on drinking water, 2:316 on education, 1:163 on electric appliances, 1:169 on electric power plant emissions, 1:102–103 on endocrine disruptors, 1:179 on energy efﬁciency, 1:190 on environmental justice, 1:199 GIS, 1:222 on green product labeling, 1:238 on HAPs, 1:37 on hazardous wastes, 1:247–248, 2:180 on haze and visibility, 2:278–279 on heavy metals, 1:258 on indoor air pollution, 1:278–279 on injection wells, 1:292 on landﬁlls, 2:3–4 legislative process and, 2:17 on Love Canal, 1:221–222 LUSTs and, 2:268–269 on medical wastes, 2:38 on mercury levels, 2:42 Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources and, 2:45 on mining, 2:48–49 on mixing zones, 2:52 on MTBE, 2:270 Multimedia Enforcement Division, 2:130–131 on municipal solid wastes, 2:211–217 National Park Service and, 2:59 on nitrogen oxides, 2:64 on noise pollution, 2:65 on nonpoint source pollution, 2:75 ocean dumping and, 2:33, 2:80, 2:81, 2:83 on ozone pollution, 2:87–88 on particulates, 2:90 on PBT chemicals, 2:93 on pesticides, 2:99–100 on petroleum pollution, 2:106–107 on point source pollution, 2:115–119 on pollution monitoring, 2:192 on pollution prevention, 2:128 radiation protection standards, 2:333 on radon, 2:168

responsibilities of, 1:22–23, 1:191–192, 1:195, 2:12, 2:122–123, 2:158–159 on sewage sludge, 2:189–190 sidescan sonars and, 2:198 on sulfur dioxide, 2:199, 2:224 Superfund sites, 1:129–130 on TCA, 1:99 on Times Beach, Missouri, 2:243 on tobacco smoke, 2:244–245 Toxic Substances Control Act and, 2:249 U.S. Department of the Interior and, 2:260 on vehicle emissions, 1:92 on waste reduction, 2:295 World Trade Center terrorist attack and, 2:237 See also Laws and regulations; Toxic Release Inventory Environmental racism, 1:196–198, 1:219–220, 2:143 consumerism and, 2:25–26 public participation and, 2:156 Warren County, North Carolina and, 2:287–288 Environmental research careers, 1:76–77 Environmental reviews, 2:57–58 Environmental rights, 1:9–10 Environmental science, 1:15, 1:18, 1:79–80 Environmental stewardship, deﬁned, 1:239 Environmental toxicology, 2:252 Environmentalism. See Environmental movement EnviroScape™, 1:163–164 Enzymes, environmental health and, 1:252 EPA. See Environmental Protection Agency EPCRA. See Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act of 1986 Epidemiology, deﬁned, 1:171, 2:53 EPIs (Efﬂux pump inhibitors), deﬁned, 1:112 EPR (Extended producer responsibility), 2:19 Epstein, Richard, 2:150 Equity (Economics), 1:154 Erin Brockovich, 1:257, 2:134 Erosion. See Soil erosion

Fetuses

Escherichia coli, 2:310 An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, 2:32–33, 2:138, 2:139, 2:333 Estrogen, 1:176 Estrogenic effects, 1:176–177 Estuaries deﬁned, 1:142, 2:79 petroleum pollution in, 2:106 Ethanol, 1:183, 1:236, 2:176, 2:276, 2:297 Ethics, 1:211–213 Ethyl lactate, 1:237 Ethylbenzene, 2:194, 2:281 Ethylene dichloride (EDC), 1:71 EU. See European Union Europe on biosolids, 1:60 on CFCs, 2:71–72 colonization, 2:142 drug environmental assessments, 1:113 Green Parliament, 1:239 Green parties, 1:12–13 Industrial Revolution pollution in, 1:282 Kyoto Protocol, 1:229 on lead-based paint, 2:14 on noise pollution, 2:65 ocean dumping restrictions, 1:57 postindustrial site development, 1:63 precautionary approach in, 2:5–6 resource consumption in, 2:23, 2:24 sewage sludge standards in, 2:190 on smoke-free environments, 2:245 spent radioactive fuels in, 2:165 testing of new chemicals in, 2:249 waste amounts in, 2:290 wastewater treatment in, 2:303 water treatment in, 2:316 See also European Union; speciﬁc countries European Economic Community, on acid rain, 1:5 European Environment Agency (EEA), 1:232, 2:217 European Green Parliament, 1:239

European Noise Directive, 2:65 European Union (EU) on automobile recycling, 2:173 on bioaccumulation, 1:52 emissions trading, 1:175 form of government, 1:231–232 ISO 14001 in, 1:296 mining regulations of, 2:49 on noise pollution, 2:68 pollution laws, 1:34 on pollution prevention, 2:233 precautionary principle and, 2:145–146 Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, 2:303 See also Europe; speciﬁc countries Euthenics: The Science of Controllable Environment, 2:230 Eutrophication, 2:108–109, 2:312–313 deﬁned, 1:27, 2:312 ﬁsh kills from, 1:215 Evaporation, deﬁned, 2:242 Excavation of contaminated soils, 1:96, 1:128, 2:268 deﬁned, 1:96 Excess deaths, 1:30–31 Executive Order 12898, 2:143 Exothermic processes, deﬁned, 1:107 Exploration, for mining, 2:46 Exports. See Imports and exports Exposure, to hazardous materials, 2:188, 2:250 Extended producer responsibility (EPR), 2:19 External recycling, 2:170–171 Extraction, of ores, 2:47 Extremely low-frequency electric and magnetic ﬁelds (ELF EMFs), 1:67, 1:171–172 Exxon Valdez, 1:128, 1:139, 1:140, 1:259, 1:263, 1:283, 2:35, 2:104–105, 2:263

F Factories. 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 LowIncome Populations,” 1:199 Federal agencies. See Regulatory agencies Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) anthrax scare and, 2:238 on ecoterrorism, 1:160–161 terrorism deﬁned, 2:234 Federal Environmental Pesticides Control Act of 1972, 2:122 Federal government Canada, 1:233 Mexico, 1:233 United States, 1:230, 1:231, 2:121–122, 2:182–183 See also Laws and regulations; speciﬁc countries and agencies Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), 1:213, 2:99–100 Federal Register, 2:12 See also Code of Federal Regulations Federal regulatory agencies. See Regulatory agencies Federal Sewage Sludge Standards, 1:57 Federal Trade Commission (FTC), on green product labeling, 1:238 Federal Water Pollution Control Act. See Clean Water Act Federal Water Pollution Prevention and Control Act. See Clean Water Act Federalism, regulatory, 2:122 Feedstock, alternative, 1:235–236 Fenvalerate, 2:97 Fertilizers, 1:26–27 in marine water, 2:312–313 in surface water, 2:307 See also speciﬁc chemicals Fetuses deﬁned, 1:176

367

Fetuses

Fetuses (continued) effect of endocrine disruptors on, 1:176–179 See also Infants Fibrowatt, 1:29 FIFRA (Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act), 1:213, 2:99–100 Films. See Movies Filtration in solvent recovery, 1:146 in water treatment, 2:320 Financial industry, environmental careers in, 1:82 Finney, Albert, 2:134 Fires from coal mining, 1:101 forest, 2:278–279 See also Cuyahoga River First party data, 1:290 Fish. See Aquatic species Fish and Wildlife Service. See U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Fish kills, 1:213–215, 1:214 Fish-chase procedure, 2:242 Fission, 1:185–186, 1:188 Fixed-hearth incinerators, 1:272 Flame ionization, 2:194 Flame retardants, brominated, 1:51, 2:93 Flammable, deﬁned, 1:145 Flash ﬂoods, 1:132 Flex-fuel vehicles, 1:189 Flocculation, in water treatment, 2:320 Floods, 1:132 Florida light pollution in, 2:30 MNA in, 1:100 Fluoxetine, in wastewater, 1:111, 2:195 Flux, deﬁned, 1:258 Fly ash, 1:103 Fog, 2:206–207 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), 1:289 Fonda, Jane, 2:133 Food in composts, 2:173–174 international regulations on, 2:6 pesticides and safety of, 2:100 plastic packaging of, 2:110 population and, 2:33, 2:139 Swallow, Ellen and, 2:230

368

See also Agriculture; U.S. Food and Drug Administration Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, 2:100 Food and Drug Act (Canada), 1:113 Food and Drug Administration. See U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Quality Protection Act, 1:179, 2:264 Ford Company, 1:205 Ford Foundation, 1:240 Foreign oil dependence, 2:102 Foreman, Dave, 1:16, 1:19, 1:150 Forest ﬁres, 2:278–279 Forest Principles, 1:152 Forest Service (U.S.), 2:133, 2:259 Foresters, 1:78–79 Forestry acid rain and, 1:5 DDT in, 1:118–119 sedimentation and, 2:201 Forestry Department. See U.S. Forestry Department Formaldehyde, 1:266, 1:276 Fossil fuels, 1:179–185, 1:215–216, 2:175, 2:179 acid rain and, 1:3 carbon dioxide and, 1:72 ozone pollution from, 2:88 sulfur dioxide and, 1:36 worldwide distribution of, 1:184–185 Fourier transform IR spectroscopy (FTIR), 2:197 Framework Convention on Climate Change. See Climate Change Convention (United Nations) France environmental protection agency in, 2:263 radioactive waste disposal in, 2:333–334 See also European Union Franklin, Benjamin, 1:239, 2:301 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 1:289 Free-market environmentalism, 2:324 French drains, deﬁned, 1:130 Freons. See CFCs (Chloroﬂuorocarbons) Frequency, of sound waves, 2:66

Fresh Kills Landﬁll, Staten Island, 2:4, 2:236 Freshwater pollution, 2:305, 2:305–311, 2:306, 2:307, 2:308, 2:309 See also names of speciﬁc rivers and lakes Friable asbestos, 1:45, 1:47 Friends of the Earth, 1:11, 1:61, 1:91, 1:206, 2:71, 2:121 Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, 1:91 FTC (Federal Trade Commission), on green product labeling, 1:238 FTIR (Fourier transform IR spectroscopy), 2:197 Fuel cells, 1:216–217, 1:217, 2:276 Fuel economy, 1:189–190, 1:218–219, 2:275, 2:275–276 Fuels cleaner, 2:276 hydrogen, 1:216 mining of, 2:45 MTBE in, 2:269–270 from petroleum, 2:101–102 refuse-derived, 2:297 vehicle, regulation of, 1:92, 2:274–275 See also Energy; Fossil fuels; Spent radioactive fuels Funding, for environmental education, 1:163 Fund-raisers, 1:78 Fungi, biodegradation by, 1:53 Fungi pollution. See Mold pollution Fungicides, deﬁned, 2:98 Furans, 2:92, 2:93, 2:94, 2:235 Furniture, used, 2:181–182, 2:183 Further Reduction of Sulphur Emissions. See Sulfur Protocol Fusion, 1:185–186 FWS. See U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

G Gaia hypothesis, 2:231 Galápagos 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

Government agencies

See also Landﬁlls; Municipal solid wastes Gas chromatography, 2:193–195, 2:194 Gas turbine generators, 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 See also Leaded gasoline; Vehicle emissions GASP (Group Against Smog and Pollution), 1:9, 1:204 GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), 1:286, 2:326 Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, 1:201, 1:206, 1:219–220 Gaye, Marvin, 2:133 GEF (Global Environmental Facility), 1:152 Gelling agents, deﬁned, 1:139 Gen. James M. Gavin generating plant, 1:183 Gene-engineering plants, 2:233 General Accounting Ofﬁce. See U.S. General Accounting Ofﬁce (USGAO) General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 1:286, 2:326 General and Systems Ecology, 2:231 General Mills/Henkel Superfund site, Minnesota, 2:226 General Mining Law of 1872, 2:51 General strike (Grape growers), 2:1 Genes, environmental response, 1:255, 1:256 Genetic diversity, deﬁned, 1:241 Genetic engineering, bioremediation and, 1:53–54 Genetic factors in asthma, 1:48 in cancer, 1:66 in diseases, 1:255 in toxin sensitivity, 2:252

Genetically modiﬁed organisms, 2:263 Geneva Convention on LongRange Transboundary Air Pollution, 1:205 Geneva Conventions, 1:205, 2:282, 2:284 Genomes, mold, 2:54 GEO (Geosynchronous Earth orbit) debris, 2:220, 2:220 Geographic Information Systems. See GIS Geological Survey. See U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Geometric, deﬁned, 2:33 Geopolitical stability, 2:25 Geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) debris, 2:220, 2:220 Geothermal energy, 2:176–177 Germany asthma studies in, 1:48–49 environmental protection agency in, 2:263 Green parties in, 1:239 incineration in, 1:270 PPCP studies, 1:112 precautionary principle in, 2:145 recycling in, 2:169 GHGs, 1:27–28 Giardia lamblia, 1:117 Gibbs, Lois, 1:205, 1:220–222, 1:221, 1:295 Gilbert, J.H., 1:26 GIS (Geographic Information Systems), 1:222–224, 1:223 databases and, 1:290–291 specialists, 1:79 Glass in marine environments, 2:314–315 recycling, 2:171 Global Compact (United Nations), 1:8 Global Environment Outlook 2000, 2:119 Global Environmental Facility (GEF), 1:152 Global environmental issues, 1:24, 1:207, 1:234 Brundtland, Gro and, 1:64–65 green revolution and, 1:241 international standards for, 1:295–296

light pollution, 2:28–31 mining, 2:45–46 nongovernmental organizations on, 2:71–72 nonpoint source pollution, 2:76–77 point source pollution, 2:119 solid waste management, 2:217–218, 2:218 terrorism and, 2:238–239 See also International laws and regulations; Treaties and conferences; speciﬁc agencies and events; speciﬁc topics Global Forum (1992), 2:72 Global Learning and Observations to Beneﬁt the Environment (GLOBE), 1:90 Global Telesis Corporation, 2:291 Global warming, 1:224, 1:224–229, 1:225, 1:226, 1:227, 1:228, 1:261 carbon dioxide and, 1:72 controversy, 1:15–16 coral reefs and, 2:313 deﬁned, 1:241 fuel economy and, 1:219 nitrogen oxides and, 2:64 petroleum and, 2:107 Union of Concerned Scientists and, 2:271 from vehicle emissions, 2:273–274 See also Greenhouse gases Global Warming Conference (United Nations), 2:255 Globalization, 1:19 GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Beneﬁt the Environment), 1:90 GMA (Grocery Manufacturers of America), 1:60 Golf courses, 2:75 Gomel, Belarus, 1:135 The good life, 2:131–132, 2:135 Gore, Al, 1:239, 2:329 Gottlieb, Alan, 2:323 Government agencies environmental careers in, 1:81 public participation and, 2:151–156 use of green products, 1:238 See also Regulatory agencies; speciﬁc agencies

369

Governments

Governments, 1:229–235, 1:230, 1:288–291 See also Politics; speciﬁc countries Grafﬁti, 2:279 Graham, Kevin, 2:150 Grand Canyon dam controversy, 1:9–10, 1:61, 2:71 Grand Canyon National Park, 2:278 Grape growers strikes, 2:1, 2:2 Grassroots, deﬁned, 1:148 Gravity, particulates and, 2:88–89 Great Lakes Auto Pollution Alliance, 2:184 Great Lakes Basin, 2:311 Great Lakes Basin 2020 Action Plan, 1:121 Great Lakes Initiative (EPA), 1:121, 2:52, 2:311 Great Lakes Programs (Environment Canada), 1:121 Great Lakes Towing Company, 2:307 Green chemistry, 1:235–237, 2:233 Green marketing, 1:237–238 Green parties, 1:12–13, 1:239–240, 2:3, 2:56, 2:120 Green permits, 2:127 Green products chemical accidents and, 1:128 deﬁned, 2:126 electric power generation, 1:169–170 household, 1:268–269, 1:270 plastics, 2:109–110 Green revolution, 1:26, 1:240–241 Greenhouse effect, 1:18–19, 1:28–29, 1:224–225 See also Global warming Greenhouse gases, 1:242 deﬁned, 1:35, 2:44 emissions trading and, 1:174 Kyoto Protocol on, 1:34–35, 1:261, 2:257 measurement of, 2:196–197 methane, 2:44 reduction in emissions, 1:190 Greenland, lead in ice core, 1:282–283 Greenpeace, 1:13, 1:242–243 antiviolence, 1:16 Bhopal, India disaster and, 1:127

370

direct action and, 1:204, 1:206, 2:71 ecoterrorism and, 1:160 formation of, 1:11–12 membership diversity, 1:19 on toxic dumping, 2:61 Green/Social Democrat coalition (Germany), 1:239 Greenwashing, 1:238, 2:135 Greenwire, 2:35 Griffen, Susan, 2:329 Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA), 1:60 Gross domestic product, energy use and, 1:158 Groundwater, 1:243–245, 1:244, 1:248–249 air stripping and, 2:226, 2:310 deﬁned, 1:62, 2:266 injection wells and, 1:292 at Libby, Montana site, 2:227 LUSTs and, 2:266, 2:268 MTBE and, 2:269–270 petroleum in, 2:106 physical removal of contaminants, 1:97–98 pollution abatement in, 2:310 pollution of, 2:309 protection and treatment of, 2:321 RCRA on, 2:180 Yucca Mountain site and, 2:331 See also Drinking water Groundwater mining, 1:244–245 Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP), 1:9, 1:204 Grove, Noel, 2:35 Growth (Economics), 1:155 Guadalcazar, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, 1:13 Guano, deﬁned, 2:53 Guerrilla warfare, 2:284, 2:286 Gulf War (1991). See Persian Gulf War (1991) Gwich’in Indians, 1:43

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, 2:330 Hanford, Washington, 1:99 Hanshin-Awaji earthquake (Kobe, Japan), 1:133 HAPs. See Hazardous air pollutants Hardin, Garrett, 1:202, 2:253 Harr, Jonathan, 1:90 Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, 2:143 Hassett, Eric, 2:176 Hawaii, ocean energy in, 2:175 The Hawk’s Nest Incident, 1:220 Hawk’s Nest Tunnel, 1:219 Hayes, Denis, 1:147–148, 1:149, 1:246–247, 1:247, 2:62 Hays, Samuel, 1:201 Hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), 1:33, 1:36–37, 1:92, 1:103, 2:118, 2:273 Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA) of 1984, 1:249, 1:271, 2:180 Hazardous Communication Standard Regulations, 2:184 Hazardous materials bioconcentration factor and, 1:52 EPCRA on, 1:173 NAPLs, 2:69 risks and, 2:185–191 transportation of, 1:126–127, 1:250, 2:163, 2:292–293, 2:332 Hazardous Waste Directive, 2:49 Hazardous waste disposal, 1:2, 1:13, 1:248–250, 2:41 consumer, 2:310 dry cleaning solvents, 1:146 illegal, 2:291 with injection wells, 1:292 in landﬁlls, 2:287–288 National Toxics Campaign and, 2:60–61

House dust mites, asthma and

of radioactive wastes, 2:163–166 Superfund and, 2:225–227 See also Love Canal, New York Hazardous wastes, 1:247–250, 1:249, 2:290 industrial societies and, 2:22 industrial trade of, 1:250, 1:263 minimization of, 1:248 pharmaceutical, 2:40 racism and, 1:197–198 RCRA and, 2:180 recycling, 2:171, 2:172 specialists in, 1:79 Superfund and, 1:13–14, 1:109–110 See also Radioactive wastes Hazards, 1:131–132, 1:235, 2:186 See also Hazardous materials Haze, 2:278 HAZMAT team, deﬁned, 2:292 Health, human, 1:251–256, 1:253, 1:254 population growth and, 2:139–140 Yucca Mountain and, 2:333 Health Canada, 1:113 Health care risk wastes. See Medical wastes Health problems from Agent Orange, 2:283–284, 2:284 from arsenic, 1:44 from asbestos, 1:45–47, 1:46, 2:50 from Chernobyl disaster, 1:135 from dioxins, 1:123 from endocrine disruptors, 1:176–179 from fallout, 2:161 of farm workers, 1:1–2 from fecal wastes in water, 2:310 Hamilton, Alice and, 1:245–246 hazards and, 2:186 from heavy metals, 1:247–248, 1:257–258 from household chemicals, 1:266, 1:267 from indoor environments, 1:276, 1:278 from lead, 1:246, 1:247–248, 1:253–254, 1:257, 2:13–15, 2:49 from light pollution, 2:30

Love Canal, 1:221–222, 1:262–263 from molds, 2:52–54 from noise pollution, 2:66–67 from ozone, 2:85 from PBT chemicals, 2:93 from PCBs, 2:92 from PERC, 1:145 from pesticides, 2:1–2, 2:99 from POPs, 2:94 population growth and, 2:139 poverty and, 2:141 from radiation, 2:163 from smelting, 2:205 from smog, 2:207–208 from soil pollution, 2:210 from sulfur dioxide, 2:224 Swallow, Ellen and, 2:230 from tobacco smoke, 2:244–245 from trichloroethylene, 1:247 from UV radiation, 2:266 vehicle emissions and, 2:272–273 from wastewater, 2:298 from water chlorination, 2:320 from water pollution, 1:251, 1:259–260, 2:309, 2:311 from World Trade Center terrorist attacks, 2:236–237 See also speciﬁc diseases and disasters Hearing impairment, 2:66–67 Heat engines, 2:240 Heavy metals, 1:256–258, 1:257, 2:163 biomonitoring of, 2:197 conversion for, 1:99 deﬁned, 1:96, 2:225 health problems from, 1:247–248 indoor pollution with, 1:276 soil pollution from, 2:210–211 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:235 Hemoglobin, deﬁned, 2:250 Henry House, New York, 2:203 Hepatocellular carcinomas, 2:92 Heptachlor, 2:94, 2:96, 2:248 Herbicides, 2:97–98, 2:285 deﬁned, 2:97 recycling, 2:172 Herculaneum, Missouri, 2:15–16 Heterotrophic phytoplankton, deﬁned, 1:140 Hexachlorobenzene, 2:93, 2:94

Hexavalent, deﬁned, 1:257 Heyerdahl, Thor, 2:314, 2:315 HFCs (Hydroﬂuorocarbons), 1:242 HGP. See Human Genome Project HHS. See U.S. Department of Health and Human Services HHW (Household hazardous waste), 1:248 High frequency electric and magnetic ﬁelds. See RF EMFs Highlander Center’s STP Schools, 2:61 High-level radioactive wastes, 2:290 High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), 2:194 High-rate water ﬁltration, 2:320 Highway Beautiﬁcation Act of 1965, 2:279 High-yielding varieties (HYVs), 1:240–241 Hill, Gladwin, 2:34, 2:35 Hill, Julia “Butterﬂy,” 1:14, 1:17 Hinkley, California, 2:134 Hippocrates, 1:251 Hiroshima, Japan, 1:186 History, 1:258–265, 1:259, 1:262, 1:264, 1:281–282, 1:284–285, 2:95–96, 2:316 Hitchcock, David, 1:284 Holistic environmental ethics, 1:212 Home care, medical wastes and, 2:40 Homeland Security Department. See U.S. Department of Homeland Security Homelessness, 2:139 Homer, on pesticides, 2:95 Honor the Earth Foundation, 2:3 Hooker Chemical Corporation, 1:220, 1:222, 1:262 Horizontal expansion, of cultivated land, 1:25 Hormonally active agents (HAA), 1:254 Hormone receptors, deﬁned, 1:176 Hormone-disrupting chemicals, 1:104 Hormones, deﬁned, 1:176, 2:146 Host organisms, deﬁned, 2:200 House dust mites, asthma and, 1:49

371

House of Representatives (U.S. Congress)

House of Representatives (U.S. Congress), 2:16–17 Household hazardous waste (HHW), 1:248 Household pollutants, 1:266–270, 1:267, 1:268, 1:276–277, 2:26–27, 2:27 See also speciﬁc pollutants Houston Post, 2:34 How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing It for Human Consumption, 1:85 Howard, Albert, 1:106 Howe, Sidney, 1:210 HPLC (High-performance liquid chromatography), 2:194 HSWA. See Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA) of 1984 Hudson River, New York, 2:92, 2:306 La huelga en general, 2:1 Huerta, Dolores, 2:1 Hull House, 1:21–22, 1:200, 1:246, 2:202 Human Genome Project (HGP), 1:255, 1:256 Human health. See Health, human Human rights violations, 2:25 Humanitarian rules, for wartime, 2:282 Humidity, indoor air quality and, 1:277–278 Humiﬁcation, 1:106–107 Humus, deﬁned, 1:106, 2:215 Hunger, green revolution for, 1:240–241 See also Poverty Hurricane Andrew, Florida, 1:133 Hybrid electric vehicles, 1:189, 1:218, 2:107, 2:276 Hybridization, deﬁned, 1:84 Hydraulic, deﬁned, 2:201 Hydraulic dredging, 1:143–144 Hydrocarbons catalytic converters and, 1:86–87, 2:198 as criteria pollutant, 1:33 deﬁned, 2:207 for dry cleaning, 1:145 from gasoline engines, 1:182 IR spectroscopy for, 2:197 in petroleum, 2:101, 2:103 smog and, 2:207–208 soil pollution from, 2:106, 2:209

372

See also speciﬁc hydrocarbons Hydrochloric acid, 2:211 Hydrodynamic condition, deﬁned, 2:200 Hydrodynamic dredging, 1:144 Hydroelectric dams, 1:9–10, 1:61 Hydroelectric power. See Hydropower Hydroﬂuorocarbons (HFCs), 1:242 Hydrogen in acid rain, 1:3 in fossil fuels, 1:215–216 fuel cells and, 1:216–217, 2:107, 2:276 Hydrogen bombs, 1:38–39 Hydrogen ﬂuoride, 2:196 Hydrogen fuels, 1:216 Hydrogen sulﬁde, 2:195 Hydrogen-3, 2:161 Hydrologic cycle. See Water cycle Hydrology, deﬁned, 1:130 Hydromodiﬁcation, deﬁned, 2:74 Hydropower, 1:170, 1:183, 2:175, 2:177 Hypoxia, 1:270 HYVs (High-yielding varieties), 1:240–241

I IADC (Interagency Space Debris Coordinating Committee), 2:222 IAP2 (International Association for Public Participation), 2:155 IARC. See International Agency for Research on Cancer IBI (Index of biotic integrity), 2:197 ICC (International Chamber of Commerce), 2:8 ICMESA chemical plant, 1:127 ICP-AES (Inductively coupled plasma emission spectra), 2:195 IDA (International Dark Sky Association), 2:29–30 IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development), 2:228 IMF. See International Monetary Fund Immigrants, 2:202–203 Immobility, deﬁned, 1:99 Immunocompromised, deﬁned, 1:117

Impacts, environmental of consumerism, 2:19–27, 2:27 deﬁned, 2:18 of mining, 2:47–48 of NAFTA, 2:56–57 of Persian Gulf War, 2:239 of population growth, 2:139–140 of poverty, 2:141–142 of thermal pollution, 2:241–242 of wars, 2:281–287 See also speciﬁc chemicals and products Impermeability, deﬁned, 1:54, 1:292 Imports and exports economic disparities in, 2:24–25 of oil, 2:101–102 of used products, 2:181 of wastes, 2:141, 2:292–293 In situ bioremediation, 1:55 deﬁned, 1:55 soil remediation, 2:210, 2:211 Incentives, environmental, 2:158–159 Incident solar, deﬁned, 2:266 Incineration, 1:270–274, 1:273, 1:274 of biosolids, 1:57 dioxins from, 1:123–124 environmental justice and, 2:143 of hazardous wastes, 1:249 of medical wastes, 2:40 of municipal solid wastes, 2:213, 2:216 of plastics, 2:114–115 recycling and, 2:170 soil pollution and, 2:210 at Superfund sites, 2:227 Income, equitable distribution of, 1:154 Index of biotic integrity (IBI), 2:197 Index of water indicators (IWI), 1:291 India, 1:106 cholera in, 2:311 fertilizers in, 1:28 population growth in, 2:138, 2:139, 2:140 Indonesia, forest ﬁres in, 2:279 Indoor air pollution, 1:274–279, 1:275, 1:276, 1:277

International Dark Sky Association

asthma and, 1:49 household, 1:266, 1:267 sources of, 1:275, 1:275–276 from tobacco smoke, 2:244–245 See also Air pollution Indore, India, 1:106 Inductively coupled plasma emission spectra (ICP-AES), 2:195 Industrial accidents. See Chemical accidents and spills; speciﬁc accidents Industrial chemicals dilution of, 1:121 POPs, 2:94 Industrial ecology, 1:279–281, 1:280, 2:294 Industrial metabolism, deﬁned, 1:279 Industrial Poisons in the United States, 1:246, 2:327, 2:330 Industrial Pretreatment Program, 2:301 Industrial Revolution, 1:261, 1:283, 1:284 Industrial Toxics Project, 1:248 Industrial trade, of hazardous wastes, 1:250, 1:263 Industrial warfare, 2:281 Industrial wastes EPA and, 2:263 incineration of, 1:272–273 mercury in, 2:43 point sources of water pollution, 2:116–117, 2:308 recycling of, 2:170 solid, 2:212 water pollution from, 2:313–314 in water supply, 1:259–260, 2:305–307 See also speciﬁc chemicals and products Industrial wastewater, 2:298, 2:301 Industrialized countries. See Developed countries Industry, 1:281–287, 1:283 developing nations and, 2:141–142 energy efﬁciency in, 1:189 environment and, 1:183–184 pollution prevention in, 2:126–127 reuse of products, 2:183 toxic releases by, 2:247

See also Hazardous wastes Inertness, deﬁned, 1:87 Infants effect of endocrine disruptors on, 1:176–179 environmental diseases in, 1:253 toxin sensitivity in, 2:251–252 Infectious wastes, 1:287–288, 2:38, 2:40 See also Medical wastes Information access to, 1:288–292, 1:289, 2:127 NGOs and, 2:70–72, 2:185–186 in public participation, 2:152 See also Environmental impact statements Infrared imaging, thermal, 2:242 Infrared (IR) spectra, 2:195–197 Infrastructure, deﬁned, 2:201 Ingest, deﬁned, 2:250 Ingestion, deﬁned, 1:44 Inhalation, deﬁned, 2:238 Inherited cancer susceptibility, 1:66 Injection wells, 1:248–249, 1:292–293, 1:293 Inorganic arsenic, 1:43–44 Inorganic chemicals, 1:124, 2:96 Inorganic contaminants See also speciﬁc contaminants Inorganic contaminants, in soil, 2:209 In-plant recycling, 1:2 INPO (Institute of Nuclear Power Operations), 1:265 In-process recycling, 1:1 Inquiry magazine, 2:328 Insecticide Act of 1910, 2:184 Insecticides. See DDT; Pesticides Institute, West Virginia, 1:125, 1:263 Institute for Sustainable Communities, 1:163 Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences, University of Florida, 1:44 Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), 1:265 Institute of the Environment (UCLA), 2:30 Insulation air quality and, 1:277 asbestos in, 1:45–47 urea-formaldehyde, 1:45–47

Insurance, for natural disasters, 1:133 Insurance industry, environmental careers in, 1:82 Intangible costs and beneﬁts, 1:114–115 Integrated pest management (IPM), 1:293–294, 2:100, 2:310 Integrative commons governance, deﬁned, 1:239 Integrity, deﬁned, 1:292 Intensity, of sound waves, 2:66 Intensive agriculture, 1:27–28 Intentional pollution shifting, 2:129 Interagency Space Debris Coordinating Committee (IADC), 2:222 Interest groups, deﬁned, 2:18 Intergenerational sustainability, deﬁned, 1:239 Intergovernmental Conference on the Dumping of Wastes at Sea. See London Convention Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 1:72, 1:227, 1:228, 2:254, 2:257 Internal combustion engines, 1:261 Internal conﬂicts, 2:284, 2:286 Internal recycling, 2:170 International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) on ELF, 1:67 on ELF EMFs, 1:171 on trichloroethylene, 1:69 International Association for Public Participation (IAP2), 2:155 International Atomic Energy Agency Convention on Nuclear Safety (1994), 2:6 International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), 2:8 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973 (MARPOL), 2:80–81, 2:314 International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Cooperation (1990), 2:6 International Criminal Court, 2:284 International Dark Sky Association (IDA), 2:29–30

373

International environmental issues

International environmental issues. See Global environmental issues International Forum of NGOs and Social Movements, 1:152 International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), 2:228 International Joint Commission on Great Lakes, 1:121 International laws and regulations, 2:5, 2:5–8 on mining, 2:49 on ocean dumping, 2:80–82, 2:81 on radioactive waste transportation, 2:163 on wartime, 2:282 See also Laws and regulations; Treaties and conferences; speciﬁc countries International Monetary Fund (IMF), 2:24 International Organization for Standardization (ISO), 1:295, 2:7–8, 2:229 International trade economic disparities in, 2:24–25 industrial environmental costs and, 1:286 laws and regulations on, 2:6–7 precautionary principle and, 2:146 of wastes, 2:291–292, 2:293 World Trade Organization and, 2:255 See also World Trade Organization International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 2:228 Internet hazardous material information on, 2:184–185 information access and, 1:290–291 public participation and, 2:156 Tox Town, 2:252 Inupiat Eskimos, 1:42 Iodine-131, 1:134 Ion exchange, for arsenic removal, 1:44 Ion exchange chromatography, 2:194 Ions, deﬁned, 1:99

374

IPCC. See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPM. See Integrated pest management IR (Infrared) spectra, 2:195–197 Iraq. See Persian Gulf War Ireland, plastic bag tax, 2:181 See also United Kingdom Iron Mountain Mine, California, 1:130 Iron sulﬁdes, from coal cleaning, 1:102 Iroquois Confederacy, 1:239 Irrigation, 1:26 Ishimure, Michiko, 1:294–295 ISO. See International Organization for Standardization ISO 14001, 1:295–296, 2:7–8, 2:229 Isobenzan, 2:96 Isoprene, 2:281 Isotopes, of radon, 2:166–168 Italy, light control policy, 2:31 See also European Union IWI (Index of water indicators), 1:291 Ix, Hanno, 2:321 IXTOC 1, 1:139, 2:104

J Japan environmental regulations in, 2:263–264 on noise pollution, 2:65 recycling in, 2:169 on smoke-free environments, 2:245 See also Minamata disease Jehl, Douglas, 2:36 Jödl, Alfred, 2:282 Johnson, Lady Bird, 2:279 Joliet 29, Illinois, 2:241 Journalists environmental, 1:78 environmental coverage by, 2:34–35 JT&A, Inc., 1:163–164 The Jungle, 2:148, 2:327 Jurisdiction, of U.S. pollutioncontrol laws, 2:12–13 See also speciﬁc laws and regulations Justice, environmental. See Environmental justice

Just-in-time manufacturing, 2:110

K Kalundborg, Denmark, 1:280, 1:280 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, Robert, 2:208 Koenig, Julian, 1:148 Koh, Tommy, 1:151 Kon-Tiki, 2:314, 2:315 Korean War, 2:282 Kosovo, 2:286 Kursk, 1:136–137 Kuwaiti oil ﬁelds, 1:185, 2:239, 2:283, 2:284 Kyo Maru 1, 1:203 Kyoto Protocol, 2:6 on carbon dioxide emissions, 1:34–35, 1:72 controversy over, 1:18–19, 2:257 Earth Day 2000 and, 1:149 emissions trading and, 1:174 on greenhouse gas emissions, 1:228–229, 1:242 on methane, 2:44 national vs. international policies, 1:234 Union of Concerned Scientists and, 2:271 U.S. position on, 1:35, 1:261

L Labeling

Lead (Pb)

of energy efﬁcient products, 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 Freshwater pollution Lambda-cyalothrin, 2:97 Lamm, Barney, 1:8 Lamm, Marion, 1:8 Land amount of cultivated, 1:25 damage to, from mining, 2:48 public, 2:323–324 sludge application to, 2:189–191 See also Soil pollution Land farming, bioremediation and, 1:54 See also Agriculture Land mines, 2:281 Land pollution, 1:262–263 See also Soil pollution Land rights. See Property rights Land rotation. See Crop rotation Land subsidence deﬁned, 1:244 from mining, 2:48 Land use, sedimentation and, 2:200–201 Landﬁll Directive, 2:49 Landﬁll Methane Outreach Program, 2:3–4 Landﬁlls, 2:3–4, 2:4 for biosolid disposal, 1:57 vs. composting, 2:174 for contaminated soils, 1:96 deﬁined, 2:295 for hazardous wastes, 1:248–249 methane in, 2:44

for municipal solid wastes, 2:213, 2:216–217 plastics in, 2:114 recycling and, 2:169–170 soil pollution and, 2:210 Warren County, North Carolina, 1:198, 1:209, 2:287–288 Landlsides, 1:132 Language, 2:134 Large-quantity generators (LQGs), 1:250 Lasers, 2:196 Late-onset, deﬁned, 1:255 Latest Findings on National Air Quality: 2000 Status and Trends, 2:118–119 Lava ﬂow, 1:131 Law enforcement, 1:190–193 ecoterrorism and, 1:160–161 international regulations, 2:7 of U.S. pollution-control laws, 2:12–13 See also Laws and regulations Law Enforcement and Defense Operations (U.S. Coast Guard), 2:259 Law ﬁrms, environmental careers at, 1:82 Lawes, J.B., 1:26 Laws and regulations, 1:10, 1:11, 2:121–123 1960s, 1:8–10 1970s, 1:12–13 1980s, 1:13–15 on acid rain, 1:5 on air pollution, 1:32–34 bottle deposit laws, 1:60–61, 1:61 British, 1:285 citizen suits, 1:90–91 costs of compliance, 1:286 electric power plants and, 1:169 environmental careers and, 1:75, 1:80–81 for farm labor, 2:2 on incineration, 1:270 information access and, 1:288–289, 2:184–185 on landﬁlls, 2:3–4 legislative process, 2:16–18 on light pollution, 2:31 on marine pollution, 2:315 on mercury levels, 2:42–43 mining, 1:101, 2:48–49, 2:51

on noise pollution, 2:67–68 on ocean dumping, 2:80–82, 2:81, 2:83 on PCBs, 2:91 on pollution prevention, 2:125–127, 2:128–129 property rights and, 2:149–150 public participation in, 2:151–156, 2:155 public policy and, 2:158–159 on radioactive waste disposal, 2:166 on smelting, 2:206 on smoke-free environments, 2:245 on terrorism, 2:238 United States, 2:9–13, 2:11 on used products, 2:183 on water quality, 2:316–317 on water treatment, 2:321–322 on whistleblowing, 2:322–323 See also International laws and regulations; Law enforcement; Regulatory agencies; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Lawsuits. See Litigation LCAs. See Life cycle analyses LD (Lethal dose), 2:186–187, 2:249 Leach, deﬁned, 2:14 Leach pads, deﬁned, 1:130 Leach solutions, deﬁned, 1:130 Leachate water, deﬁned, 1:96, 2:217 Lead carbonate, 2:14 Lead (Pb), 1:258, 2:13–16, 2:14, 2:15 air quality standards on, 2:118, 2:195 in contaminated soils, 1:59 controlling emissions of, 1:37 as criteria pollutant, 1:33, 1:36, 1:92 FDA and, 2:264–265 health hazards of, 1:13–15, 1:246, 1:247–248, 1:253–254, 1:257, 2:49, 2:251–252 historical levels of, 1:282–283 in household materials, 1:266, 1:268, 1:276 from mining, 2:49 phytoremediaton for, 1:97 as priority pollutant, 2:117 sampling air for, 2:192

375

Lead (Pb)

Lead (Pb) (continued) Toxic Substances Control Act and, 2:249 toxicity of, 2:250 water pollution from, 2:314 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:235 See also Leaded gasoline Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act, 2:14, 2:264 Leaded gasoline, 1:36, 1:87, 1:92, 1:258, 1:261, 2:14–15, 2:15, 2:106–107, 2:198, 2:250, 2:263 Leadville, Colorado, 1:59 League of Conservation Voters, 1:11, 1:61, 1:204 Leaking underground gasoline storage tanks (LUSTs), 1:97, 2:266, 2:267, 2:268–269, 2:309 Lear, Linda, 1:83 Lebow, Victor, 2:21 Legionella pneumophila, 1:278 Legionnaires’ disease, 1:278 Legislation. See Laws and regulations Legislative process, 2:16–18, 2:17 Leguminous crops, deﬁned, 1:27 Leistner, Marilyn, 2:243 Lemmon, Jack, 2:133 LEO (Low Earth orbit) debris, 2:220, 2:220 Leopold, Aldo, 1:200, 2:327–328 LEPCs (Local Emergency Planning Committees), 1:173 Lesser developed countries. See Developing countries Lethal dose (LD), 2:186–187, 2:249 Leukemia clusters, 1:69, 1:89–90, 1:109 electromagnetic ﬁelds and, 1:171–172 Liability with brownﬁelds, 1:62–63 criminal, 1:194–195 See also Laws and regulations Libby, Montana, 1:45–46, 2:50, 2:227 “Licensing Requirements for Land Disposal of Radioactive Wastes,” 2:166 Lieber Code, 2:282 Liebig, Justus von, 1:26 Life cycle analyses (LCAs), 2:18–19, 2:232, 2:294

376

Life cycles, of mining, 2:46–47 Life expectancy, poverty and, 2:143 Lifestyles, 2:19–28, 2:20, 2:23, 2:27 Light nonaqueous phase chemicals (LNAPLs), 1:97, 2:69 Light pollution, 2:28–31, 2:29 Light trucks, 1:218–219, 2:276 Lights, efﬁciency of, 1:168, 1:169, 2:31 Lignite, 1:167 The Limits to Growth, 1:11, 1:15, 2:31–32, 2:228 Limonene, 2:97 Lipophilicity, deﬁned, 2:94 Liquid chromatography, 2:193–194, 2:195 Liquid injection incineration, 1:272–273 Liquid wastes, 2:289, 2:305 incineration of, 1:272–274 injection wells for, 1:292 Liquids Nonaqueous Phase, 2:69 sampling for pollutants, 2:192 See also Liquid wastes Litigation, 2:32 Clean Air Act, 1:191 Greenpeace and, 1:243 on hazardous wastes, 2:180 on indoor air pollution, 1:278–279 against public participation, 2:156 See also Laws and regulations Litter, 2:310, 2:315 Livestock, 1:25–26, 2:44, 2:74 Living Downstream, 2:329 “Living Scared: Why Do the Media Make Life Seem So Risky?, 2:35–36 LNAPLs (Light nonaqueous phase chemicals), 1:97, 2:69 Lobbyist organizations, 1:82, 2:13 See also Nongovernmental organizations; speciﬁc organizations Local Emergency Planning Committees (LEPCs), 1:173 Local governments, 1:231 environmental laws and regulations, 2:9–10 environmental policy reform and, 2:159–160

National Toxics Campaign and, 2:60–61 on pollution prevention, 2:127 Locomotion, deﬁned, 2:315 Loess soils, deﬁned, 1:25 Loma Prieta, California earthquake, 1:132–133 Lombardy Law, 2:31 London, England air pollution in, 1:32, 1:202, 1:251, 1:261, 1:284–285 cholera in, 2:208–209 settlement houses in, 2:202 Thames River, 2:312 water pollution in, 1:260 London Convention, 1:80–81, 2:33, 2:80, 2:257 London smog, 2:206–207 Long Island Sound, 1:258 Longwall mining, 1:101 Los Angeles smog, 1:201, 2:207–208, 2:280 Los Angeles Times, 2:35–36 Losses, from natural disasters, 1:132–133 Loudness measurement, 2:66 Love, William T., 1:220, 1:262 Love Canal: My Story, 1:221 Love Canal, New York, 1:109, 1:205, 1:220–222, 1:262–263, 2:35 Lovelock, James, 2:231 Low Earth orbit (LEO) debris, 2:220, 2:220 Low exposure levels, 1:252–255 Low tillage, deﬁned, 2:201 Low-hanging fruit, 2:126 Low-input agriculture, 1:27–28, 1:29 Low-level radioactive wastes, 2:290 LQGs (Large-quantity generators), 1:250 Luna (redwood tree), 1:14 Lung cancer, 1:69 asbestos and, 1:45, 2:50, 2:244 causes of, 1:68–69, 2:251 from radon, 2:168 LUSTs. See Leaking underground gasoline storage tanks

M Macerals, deﬁned, 1:101 MacInnes, Scott, 1:161 Macroeconomics, 1:153 Macroscopic, deﬁned, 2:312

Metaldehyde

MACT. See Maximum Achievable 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, 2:33, 2:333 Mammals 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, 2:8–9 See also Laws and regulations Manatees, 2:243 Manhattan Project, 2:286 Manufacturing, 1:282–287, 1:283 benign, 1:236 of plastics, 2:109–111 recycling and, 2:170 textile, 1:282 See also Industrial wastes Manure. See Animal wastes Marginalism, 1:155 Margulis, Lynn, 2:231 Marine debris, 2:314–315 Marine environmental protection Cousteau, Jacques, 1:116 laws and regulations for, 2:80–82, 2:81 sedimentation control and, 2:200–202 U.S. Coast Guard and, 2:259 Marine mammals, 2:314–315 Marine pollution, 2:312–315, 2:313 from petroleum, 1:138–141, 2:105–106 from plastics, 2:111 Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972, 2:33–34, 2:80, 2:81 Marine Safety, Security, and Environmental Protection (U.S. Coast Guard), 2:259 Market democracies, 2:19–21

Marketing green, 1:237–238 of recylclables, 2:171 Markham, Adam, 1:282 MARPOL, 2:80–81, 2:314 Marsh, George Perkins, 2:228, 2:330 Mass burn system, 2:296–297 Mass media, 2:34–37 Mass spectrometry, 2:194 Mass transfer pollution shifting, 2:129, 2:130 Massachusetts General Hospital, 1:176 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) The Limits to Growth, 2:31–32 Union of Concerned Scientists, 2:271 women at, 2:230 Massachusetts Student Public Interest Research Group (MSPIRG), 2:151 Mass-market P2 technologies, 2:233–234 Material safety data sheets (MSDS), 2:78, 2:184–185 Materialism, 2:19–21, 2:132 Mauna Kea, Hawaii, 2:29 Mauna Loa Observatory, 2:196–197 Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT), 1:37, 1:271 Maximum concentration load (MCL), of sewage sludge, 2:189–190 Maximum contaminant levels (MCLs), 2:316–317 deﬁned, 2:268 Maximum tolerable dose (MTD), of pesticides, 2:100 McCall, Thomas Lawson, 1:60 McCay, Bonnie, 2:253 McCloskey, Pete, 1:147 McDonald’s restaurants packaging, 1:19 McDowell, Mary, 1:200 McGinty, Kathleen, 2:147 McKibben, Bill, 2:329, 2:330 MCL (Maximum concentration load), of sewage sludge, 2:189–190 MCLs. See Maximum contaminant levels

MCPA, 2:97 Meadowlands Plating and Finishing Inc., 1:192 Meadows, Dennis, 1:239 Meadows, Donella, 1:239 Measurement, of pollution, 1:157–159 Meat Inspection Act, 2:148 Mechanical dredges, 1:143 Meda, Italy, 1:127 Media deﬁned, 1:93 Mediated politics, 2:18 Mediation, 2:32, 2:37, 2:174–175 deﬁned, 1:110 Medical Waste Tracking Act (MWTA), 2:38 Medical wastes, 1:272, 1:287–288, 2:38–42, 2:39, 2:40, 2:41, 2:290 ocean dumping of, 2:33–34 Megawatts deﬁned, 2:240 Membrane ﬁltration, 2:320 for arsenic removal, 1:44 MEO (Middle Earth orbit) debris, 2:220, 2:220 Mercury, 2:42–43 bioremediation and, 1:53 from electric power generation, 1:168, 1:169 FDA and, 2:264–265 health problems from, 1:257 as PBT chemical, 2:93 as priority pollutant, 2:117 reporting requirements, 2:247 from smelting, 2:205 water contamination, 1:8, 2:308, 2:310, 2:313–314 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:235 “Mercy Mercy Me,” 2:133 Mesophilic stage of humiﬁcation, 1:107 Mesothelioma, 2:50 deﬁned, 1:45 Metabolism deﬁned, 1:176, 2:250 industrial, 1:279 Metabolites deﬁned, 1:111 Metalclad Corporation, 1:13 Metaldehyde, 2:97

377

Metals

Metals decontamination, 1:53 environmental toxicology and, 2:252 ﬁngerprints of, 2:195 as priority pollutant, 2:117 smelting of, 2:204–206 toxic, from incineration, 1:273–274 water pollution from, 2:313–315 See also Mining Metastasis, of cancer cells, 1:66 Meteorology. See Weather Metham sodium, 2:97 Methane (CH4), 2:43–44 chemical formula of, 2:44 from coal mining, 1:101 coal-bed, 2:49 from crude oil, 2:49 global warming and, 1:242 IR spectroscopy for, 2:196 from landﬁlls, 2:3–4 Methanogenesis deﬁned, 1:27 Methanogens, 2:44 Methanol, 2:276 Methiocarb, 2:97 Methomyl, 2:97 Methoxychlor, 2:248 Methyl bromide, 2:97 Methyl isocyanate, 1:125, 1:263, 2:97 Methyl mercury, 2:42 bioaccumlation of, 1:52 from electric power generation, 1:168 in Minamata Bay, 1:294–295 Methyl schradan, 2:96 Methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), 2:268, 2:269–270 phytoremediation of, 1:55 Methylene chloride, 1:247 Metropolitan Washington Coalition on Clean Air, 1:9 Meuse Valley, Belgium, 1:30 Mevinphos, 2:96 Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources, 2:44–45 Mexico, 1:233 environmental management in, 2:44–45 green revolution in, 1:240 NAFTA and, 2:56–57 Microbiologists, 1:77, 1:78

378

Microeconomics, 1:153 Microorganisms in bioremediation, 1:53–54, 1:54, 1:98–99 in biosolids, 1:56 deﬁned, 1:53, 2:52 for oil spill cleanup, 1:139 Middle classes Earth Day and, 1:148 Middle Earth orbit (MEO) debris, 2:220, 2:220 Middle East, 1:259 Middle East, oil from, 2:102 Mid-UV. See UV-B radiation Migration population growth from, 2:138–139 Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico City, 2:273 Miles per gallon (MPG), 1:189–190, 1:218 Milford Haven, Wales, 1:94 Military preparedness, 2:286 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2:310, 2:321 Milwaukee (WI) Journal, 2:36 Mina Ahmadi terminal, 2:239 Minamata disease, 1:8, 1:294–295, 2:42 Mine workings deﬁned, 1:101 Mineralization deﬁned, 1:52 Mining, 2:45–50, 2:46 accidents, 1:129–130 coal, 1:101 groundwater, 1:244–245 Mining Law of 1872, 2:51 Minorities. See Environmental racism Mirex, 2:94 Mississippi River, 2:312 Missouri, 2:15–16 Missouri Department of Natural Resources, 2:16 Mitchell, Joni, 2:133 Mitigation of climate changes, 1:227, 1:228 deﬁned, 2:58 in disaster cycle, 1:132 of space pollution, 2:222 Mixed plastics, 2:114 Mixed wastes disposal of, 1:99

Mixed-use site development, 1:63–64 Mixing zones, 2:51–52, 2:311 deﬁned, 2:311 MNA. See Monitored natural attenuation Mobil Oil Corporation, 2:180 Mobile phones. See Cellular phones Mobile source emissions, 1:92 Mobro garbage barge, 2:212, 2:293 Model Energy Code of 1993, 1:190 Mojave Desert, 2:177 Mold pollution, 2:52–54, 2:53 Molds asthma and, 1:49 biodegradation by, 1:52–53 Molecules deﬁned, 2:109 Moles (units of measurement) deﬁned, 1:52 Molten carbonate fuel cells, 1:217 Monitored natural attenuation (MNA), 1:99–100 Monitoring acid rain, 2:177 of pollution, 2:192–198 Monitors, computer, 2:14 The Monkey Wrench Gang, 1:159 Monkey-wrenching. See Ecoterrorism Monoculture deﬁned, 1:26 Montréal Protocol, 1:34, 1:88, 1:228, 1:245, 1:261, 2:54–55, 2:257 nongovernmental organizations and, 2:72 potential success of, 2:87 precautionary principle in, 2:145 Montréal Protocol Fund, 2:55 Moody-Stuart, Mark, 1:284 Mooney, John, 2:198 Morris, Illinois, 1:187 Mortality. See Deaths Mortality rates from cancer, 1:68 Moses, Marion, 2:1–2 Mosquitoes DDT and, 1:118–119 Motor oil recycling, 2:172 Mount Etna, Sicily, 1:131

National Resource Recovery Act of 1975

Mount Palomar, California, 2:29 Movies, 2:133–134 See also speciﬁc movies MPG. See Miles per gallon MSDS (Material safety data sheets), 2:78, 2:184–185 MSPIRG (Massachusetts Student Public Interest Research Group), 2:151 MSWLFs (Municipal solid-waste landﬁlls), 2:3 MSWs. See Municipal solid wastes MTBE. See Methyl tertiary butyl ether MTD (Maximum tolerable dose), of pesticides, 2:100 Mueller, P.H., 1:118 Muir, John, 1:200, 2:147–148, 2:228, 2:327 Mulluscicides, deﬁned, 2:97 Multilateral treaties, deﬁned, 2:145 Multimedia approach, 2:130–131 Multinational corporations, 1:239, 1:241, 2:7–8 Multisite, deﬁned, 1:123 Municipal point sources, 2:116, 2:117 Municipal sewage treatment, 2:116 Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 1999 Facts and Figures, 2:216 Municipal solid wastes (MSWs), 2:211–218, 2:214, 2:218 medical wastes, 2:38 transportation of, 2:293 waste-to-energy, 2:296–297 in water supply, 2:305–307 Municipal solid-waste landﬁlls (MSWLFs), 2:3 Municipal waste incineration dioxins from, 1:123–124 ﬁxed-hearth, 1:272 Municipal water systems, 1:244, 2:309 Music, 2:132–133 Muskie, Ed, 1:149 Mussels, blue, 2:197 Mutagens, 1:148, 2:251 MWTA (Medical Waste Tracking Act), 2:38 My Father, My Son, 2:283–284 Mycology, 2:54 Myers, John P., 1:104

N NAAEC (North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation), 1:233, 2:57 NAAEE (North American Association for Environmental Education), 1:163 NAAQS. See National Ambient Air Quality Standards Nader, Ralph, 1:11, 1:239, 2:3, 2:55–56, 2:56, 2:150 Naess, Arne, 2:328 NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), 1:233, 1:234, 2:56–57 Nagasaki, Japan, 1:186 Namche Bazar, Nepal, 2:175 Nanwan Bay, Taiwan, 2:242 NAPLs. See Nonaqueous Phase Liquids Napthelene, 2:198 NAS (National Academy of Sciences), 1:60 NASA. See National Aeronautics and Space Administration National Academy of Sciences (NAS), 1:60 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) fuel cells and, 1:217 groundwater cleanup site, 2:310 on orbital debris, 2:221 National Agricultural Workers Union, 2:1 National Air Quality Information Archive (United Kingdom), 1:291 National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), 1:33, 1:33–34, 1:35–36, 2:64, 2:195 National Audubon Society, 1:10, 1:90, 1:202, 2:121, 2:140 National Biosolids Partnership, 1:60 National Consumer’s League, 1:201 National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP), 1:33, 1:37 National Environmental Law Center, 1:126 National Environmental Performance Track, 2:128

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 1:8, 1:196, 1:203–204, 1:206, 1:290, 2:9, 2:10, 2:57–58 on beneﬁcial use, 1:50 on mining, 2:49 on ocean dumping, 2:80 See also President’s Council on Environmental Quality National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), 2:1 National Forest Management Act, 2:259 National Geographic, 2:35 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, 1:255 National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 1:277, 1:277, 2:78 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Genome Project, 1:256 Tox Town, 2:252 National Law Journal, 1:199 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2:12, 2:29, 2:58–59, 2:122 National Oil and Hazardous Pollution Plan, 2:259 National Park Service (NPS), 2:59, 2:260 National Park Service Organic Act of 1916, 2:59 National parks, 2:59, 2:278–279 National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, 1:198 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), 1:93, 1:121, 2:59–60, 2:116, 2:117, 2:301, 2:302 National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR), 1:164, 2:128–129 National Pollution Release Inventory (NPRI), 2:184–185 National Pretreatment Program, 2:116–117 National Priority List (NPL) of CERCLA, 1:62, 2:225 National Recycling Coalition, 2:295–296 National Research Council, 2:189 National Resource Recovery Act of 1975, 1:50

379

National Resources Defense Council

National Resources Defense Council, 2:121 National Survey of Lead and Allergens in Housing (19982000), 2:14 National Toxics Campaign (NTC), 2:60–61 National Water Carrier (Israel), 1:259 National Water Quality Inventory, 2:73–75, 2:117, 2:307, 2:308 National Water Resource Institute (Canada), 1:291 National Wetlands Coalition, 2:324 National Whistleblowers Center, 2:323 National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, 1:8 National Wilderness Preservation System, 1:61 National Wildlife Federation, 1:10, 2:26, 2:121, 2:140, 2:308 National Wildlife Refuge System, 1:8 Native Americans, 1:209, 2:2–3, 2:132, 2:133 Natural attenuation, 1:96, 1:99–100 Natural bioremediation, 1:54 Natural disasters, 1:130–134, 1:131, 1:133 See also Earthquakes Natural gas, 1:215–216 in car engines, 1:189, 2:276 methane in, 2:43–44 reserves of, 1:180 See also Oil Natural pollutants, 1:32 Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA), 2:61 Natural resources conservation. See Conservation Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), 2:259–260 Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), 1:205, 2:256 Natural Resources Inventory, 2:260 Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs), 2:77 Navajo Power Generating Station, 2:278 Navigation dredging for, 1:144, 2:81–82

380

Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act, 2:191–192 NCA (Noise Control Act) of 1972, 2:13, 2:65–66 Near-UV. See UV-A radiation Needle sticks. See Sharps (Medical supplies) Neem, 2:97 Negative population growth, 2:138 Negative Population Growth (organization), 2:140 Negotiated rule making. See Regulation negotiation Nelson, Gaylord, 1:11, 1:147, 1:204, 1:246, 2:62, 2:63 Nematocides, deﬁned, 2:97 Nematodes, deﬁned, 1:293 Neo-Malthusians, deﬁned, 2:32 Neonates, deﬁned, 2:251 See also Infants NEPA. See National Environmental Policy Act Nervous system, insecticides and, 2:96–97 NESHAP (National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants), 1:33, 1:37 Netherlands on automobile recycling, 2:173 climate change and, 1:227 recycling and, 2:174 See also European Union Neural, deﬁned, 1:171 Neurodegeneration, deﬁned, 1:255 Neurological damage, 2:92 Neurology, deﬁned, 2:92 Neurotoxic, deﬁned, 2:251 Neurotoxicants, deﬁned, 1:253 New Alchemy Institute, 2:245 New Guinea, 2:291 New Left, 2:62–63 New source review (NSR) process, 1:102–103 New York City air pollution, 1:31 ocean dumping and, 2:83 water pollution, 2:306 watershed protection in, 2:311 New York Times, 1:9, 2:34–36 Earth Day advertising in, 1:148 Grand Canyon controversy and, 2:71 New Zealand, 1:12 Newell’s shearwaters, 2:30

News & Observer (Raleigh, NC), 2:36 Newspaper recycling, 2:171 Newspaper reporting, 2:34–37 Newspapers, 2:212 Newton, Isaac, 1:282, 2:231 NFWA (National Farm Workers Association), 2:1 NGOs. See Nongovernmental organizations Niagara Falls Board of Education, 1:220–221, 1:262 Nickel, health hazards of, 1:257 Niclosamine, 2:97 Nicotine, 2:97, 2:281 Nieman Reports, 2:37 NIH. See National Institutes of Health NIMBY. See “Not in my backyard syndrome” NIOSH. See National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health Nitrate catch crops, deﬁned, 1:27 Nitrates, 1:3, 1:5, 2:194 Nitric acid, 2:64, 2:211 Nitric oxide (NO), 1:36, 1:87, 2:64 Nitriﬁcation, deﬁned, 2:64 Nitrogen in Chesapeake Bay, 2:309 from coal, 1:167 detection of, 2:194 marine water pollution from, 2:312 from soil pollution, 2:210 wetland removal of, 2:303 Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), 2:64 air quality standards on, 2:118, 2:195 controlling emissions of, 1:37 as criteria pollutant, 1:33, 1:36 detection of, 2:194–195 Nitrogen oxides (NOx), 2:64–65 catalytic converters and, 2:198 from coal burning, 1:102 from electricity generation, 1:168–169 emission patterns, 1:4 emissions trading and, 1:175 IR spectroscopy for, 2:197 ozone pollution from, 2:87–88, 2:119 from petroleum, 2:106 sampling air for, 2:192 smogs from, 2:207–208

Occupational health and safety

from vehicle emissions, 1:182, 2:272–273 Nitrogen/phosphorus detectors, 2:194 Nitrous oxide (N2O), 1:242, 2:196, 2:239 Nixon, Richard creation of EPA, 1:148–149, 2:261 NEPA and, 1:203–204 President’s Council on Environmental Quality, 2:146 Watergate scandal, 2:154 NOAA. See National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOEL (No-observable-effect level), 2:100 Noise Control Act (NCA) of 1972, 2:13, 2:65–66 Noise pollution, 2:66–69, 2:67, 2:68 indoor air quality and, 1:278 legislative control of, 2:65 Nonanthropocentric environmental ethics, 1:211–212 Nonaqueous Phase Liquids (NAPLs), 1:97–98, 2:69 Nonattainment areas, 1:92 Nonbinding arbitration, 1:41 Nondurable goods, 2:212 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 1:13, 2:69–73, 2:70, 2:120–121 at Earth Summit, 1:152, 1:206–207, 1:239, 1:287 international environmental issues and, 2:256 on pollution prevention, 2:128 See also speciﬁc organizations Nonhazardous solid wastes, 2:289 Nonmetallic minerals mining, 2:45 Nonpoint source pollution, 2:73–77, 2:74, 2:304 deﬁned, 2:302 petroleum, 2:105–106 of surface water, 2:307–309 water quality and, 2:302–303 Nonproﬁt organizations, environmental careers in, 1:82 See also speciﬁc organizations Nonregenerative wet scrubbers, 2:199 Nonrenewable resources. See speciﬁc resources

Nonspeciﬁc detectors, 2:194 Nontariff barriers, 2:146, 2:326 Nonylphenol, 1:176 No-observable-effect level (NOEL), 2:100 NORMs (Naturally occurring radioactive materials), 2:77 North America consumerism in, 2:19–21 nonpoint sources of petroleum, 2:106 resource consumption in, 2:23, 2:24 See also Canada; Mexico; NAFTA; United States North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), 1:233, 2:57 North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), 1:163 North American Free Trade Agreement. See NAFTA Northridge, California earthquake, 1:133 North-South divide, 2:142 Northwood Manor, Houston, Texas, 1:197–198 Norway Brundtland, Gro and, 1:64–65 ocean energy in, 2:175 See also European Union Norwegian Shipowners Organization, 2:315 “Not in my backyard syndrome” (NIMBY), 1:15, 1:270, 2:60 NPDES. See National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System NPL. See National Priority List (NPL) of CERCLA NPPR (National Pollution Prevention Roundtable), 2:128–129 NPRI (National Pollution Release Inventory), 2:184–185 NPS (National Park Service), 2:59, 2:260 NRC. See Nuclear Regulatory Commission NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service), 2:259–260 NRDA (Natural Resource Damage Assessment), 2:61

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), 1:205, 2:256 NSR (New source review) process, 1:102–103 NSRB (Nuclear Safety Regulatory Board), 2:12 NTC (National Toxics Campaign), 2:60–61 Nuclear accidents, 1:40, 1:134–138, 1:136, 1:137, 1:205–206, 1:264–265, 2:160–161 See also speciﬁc accidents Nuclear energy, 1:39–40, 1:170, 1:183, 1:185–188, 1:186, 1:187, 1:264, 2:56 See also Antinuclear movement Nuclear ﬁssion, 1:185–186, 1:188 Nuclear power plants, 1:40, 1:187, 2:133, 2:162, 2:240–242 Nuclear reactors, 1:134–135, 1:187, 1:188, 2:164–165 Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), 1:136, 2:39, 2:77 Nuclear Safety Regulatory Board (NSRB), 2:12 Nuclear submarines, 1:136–138, 1:188 Nuclear terrorism, 2:238 Nuclear test ban treaties, 1:39, 1:202 Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, 2:331 Nuclear wastes. See Radioactive wastes Nuclear weapons, 1:187, 2:160–161, 2:238 Nuclear weapons testing, 1:39 Greenpeace and, 1:11–12, 1:243 protests against, 1:202 Nuclear winter, 2:238 Nuremberg Trials, 2:282

O Oakland Bay Bridge, California, 2:274 Occult deposition, 1:3 Occupational health and safety in cleanup projects, 1:94–95 Hamilton, Alice and, 1:246 mercury and, 2:42 movies on, 2:133 in plastics manufacturing, 2:109 Workers Health Bureau, 2:325

381

Occupational Health and Safety Act of 1970

Occupational Health and Safety Act of 1970, 1:149, 2:55, 2:78 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 2:12, 2:78 on asbestos, 1:46 on hazardous materials labeling, 2:184 on health care workers, 2:38, 2:39 on mercury, 2:42–43 on whistleblowing, 2:323 Workers Health Bureau and, 2:325 World Trade Center terrorist attack and, 2:237 Ocean Arks International, 2:246 Ocean Conservancy, 2:315 Ocean dumping, 2:78–83, 2:79, 2:81 of biosolids, 1:57 of plastics, 2:111 See also London Convention; Marine pollution Ocean Dumping Act. See Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988, 1:57, 2:33, 2:83, 2:257, 2:304 Ocean energy, 2:175 Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plants, 2:175 O’Connor, John, 2:60 Octachlorostyrene, 2:93 ODA. See Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 Odum, Howard, 2:231 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), 1:8, 2:217 Off-gas control, deﬁned, 2:130 Ofﬁce of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, 2:165 Ofﬁce of Environmental Justice, 1:199 Ofﬁce of Environmental Protection (Mexico), 1:13 Ofﬁce of Noise Abatement and Control (ONAC), 2:65, 2:67 Ofﬁce of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, 2:260 Ofﬁce paper, 2:212 Off-site recycling, 1:2

382

Oil aggression and, 2:25 disposal of, 2:310 electricity from, 1:166 pollution from, 2:104–107 reserves of, 1:180 U.S. imports of, 2:101–102 from U.S.S. Arizona, 2:287 waste, 2:243 See also Oil spills; Petroleum Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, 2:133 Oil embargo (1973-1974), 2:102 Oil exploration, in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1:41–42 Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA), 1:139, 1:263, 2:61 Oil Pollution Control Act of 1924, 2:302 Oil Pollution Prevention Act (OPP), 2:10 Oil spills, 1:138–141, 1:140, 1:141, 1:202–203, 1:259, 1:263, 2:102, 2:103, 2:104–105, 2:314, 2:315 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and, 1:42 ectotoxicity from, 1:127–128 Milford Haven, Wales, 1:94 U.S. Coast Guard and, 2:259 Ojibway Indians, 1:8 Oki, Hiroshi, 2:255 Oklawaha River Canal, 1:115 Old Left, 2:62–63 1996 Olympics, 1:49 ONAC (Ofﬁce of Noise Abatement and Control), 2:65, 2:67 OPA. See Oil Pollution Act of 1990 OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), 2:102 Open access, to pollution information, 1:289–291 Open path monitors, 2:195, 2:196 Open trash burning, 1:65 OPP (Oil Pollution Prevention Act), 2:10 Oppenheimer, Robert, 1:38 Oral contraceptives, in wastewater, 1:111 Orbital debris, 2:219–222, 2:220, 2:221 Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG), 2:151

Ores, 2:45 Organic, deﬁned, 2:126 Organic acts (Legislation), 2:10–12, 2:128 Organic arsenic, 1:43–44 Organic chemicals, 1:124 Organic contaminants bioremediation of, 1:55 in soil, 2:209 See also speciﬁc contaminants Organic farming, 1:28, 1:29, 1:294 Organic phosphates, 2:108 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 1:8, 2:217 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 1:184–185, 2:102 Organized labor, 1:88–89 Organochlorines, 2:93, 2:94, 2:96 bioaccumlation of, 1:51–52 carcinogenicity of, 1:69–70 deﬁned, 2:96, 2:314 water pollution from, 2:314 Organohalide pesticides, 2:195 Organohalogens, 2:93 Organo-metal compounds, 1:52 Organophosphates, 2:96, 2:194 OSHA. See Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSPIRG (Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group), 2:151 Ostrom, Elinor, 2:253 OTEC (Ocean thermal energy conversion) plants, 2:175 Our Common Future, 1:65, 1:151, 2:227–228 Our Stolen Future, 1:104, 2:330 Outdoor air pollution. See Air pollution Outfall, deﬁned, 2:300 Outreach programs, 1:77–78, 1:163–164 Overburden, deﬁned, 1:101 Overexploitation, 2:253 Overpopulation, 1:164–165, 1:202, 2:33, 2:328 Ovoid, deﬁned, 2:52 Oxamyl, 2:97 Oxidize, deﬁned, 1:272 Oxygen carbon monoxide and, 1:74 for combustion, 1:271 dissolved, 2:116 ﬁsh suffocation and, 1:215

Pesticides

hypoxia and, 1:270 See also Eutrophication Oxygen demand, biochemical, 2:84 Oxygenate, deﬁned, 2:269 Ozonation, deﬁned, 1:255 Ozone hole, 1:15, 1:245, 1:261, 2:71–72, 2:85, 2:86–87 See also Montréal Protocol Ozone (O3), 2:84–88, 2:85, 2:86 air quality standards on, 2:118, 2:195 carbon monoxide and, 1:74 CFCs and, 1:87–88 control, 1:37 as criteria pollutant, 1:33, 1:36 ground-level, 2:119 nitrogen oxides and, 2:64 petroleum and, 2:106 smog from, 2:207–208 UV spectra and, 2:196, 2:266 from vehicle emissions, 2:272 from VOCs, 2:281 in water treatment, 2:320–321

P P2. See Pollution prevention PACCE (People Against a Chemically Contaminated Environment), 2:61 Packaging, plastic, 2:110–114, 2:113 PAHs. See Polycyclic aromatic 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, 1:255 Parks, national, 2:59, 2:278–279 Parliamentary governments, 1:232–233 Particulate matter (PM). See Particulates

Particulates, 2:88–91, 2:89 air quality standards on, 2:118, 2:195 from coal, 1:103 control of, 1:37 as criteria pollutant, 1:33, 1:35 deﬁned, 2:47 ground level, 2:119 from incineration, 1:274 from petroleum, 2:106 scrubbers for, 2:199 smog from, 2:207–208 sulfates, 1:36 from vehicle emissions, 2:272–273 Passive cleanup. See Natural attenuation Patents, deﬁned, 2:51 Pathogenic, deﬁned, 2:97 Pathways (Chemical), deﬁned, 2:16 Patterson, Clair, 1:281 PBT chemicals. See Persistent bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) chemicals PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls), 2:91–93, 2:92, 2:93, 2:94 bioaccumulation of, 1:50–51, 1:51 chemical structure of, 2:91 deﬁned, 2:209 detection of, 2:194 disposal of, 1:220, 2:287–288 PCDF in, 1:122 as priority pollutant, 2:117 reporting requirements, 2:248 sidescan sonars for, 2:198 soil pollution from, 2:209 thyroid hormones and, 1:177 Toxic Substances Control Act and, 2:249 water pollution from, 2:314 PCC (Primary combustion chamber), 1:272 PCDD. See Polychlorinated dibenzo[1,4]dioxins PCDF. See Polychlorinated dibenzofurans PCNs (Polychlorinated naphthalenes), 2:93 PCP. See Pentachlorophenol PCSD (President’s Council on Sustainable Development), 2:147, 2:158 Peace Corps, 1:163 Peanut industry, 1:84–85

Pearl Harbor National Monument, 2:287 Peat, coal from, 1:100–101 Peccei, Aurelio, 1:10 PEM (Proton exchange membrane) fuel cells, 1:216, 1:217 Pennsylvania Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring, 1:290 Pennsylvania Department of Health, 1:135–136 Pentachlorophenol (PCP), 1:122, 2:98, 2:227 People Against a Chemically Contaminated Environment (PACCE), 2:61 Per capita, deﬁned, 2:33 PERC (Perchloroethylene), 1:145–146 Perception, public. See Public perception Perchloroethylene (PERC), 1:145–146 Percolating, deﬁned, 1:243 Pereira, Fernando, 1:243 Performance Partnership Grants Program, 2:128 Permethrin, 2:97 Permits, 2:9, 2:124, 2:127, 2:191–192 Persian Gulf, oil from, 2:102 Persian Gulf War (1991), 2:284 Kuwaiti oil ﬁelds, 1:185, 2:239, 2:283, 2:284 oil spill, 1:139 Persistent bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) chemicals, 2:93–94, 2:126, 2:247–248 Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), 1:51, 1:122, 2:6, 2:93, 2:94 Personal care products. See Pharmaceuticals and personal care products Personal responsibility, 2:26–27 Personnel protective equipment (PPE), 1:95, 1:95 Pervious concrete, 2:77 Pesticide Education Center, 1:2 Pesticides, 2:95, 2:95–101, 2:96 in agriculture, 1:25, 1:26–27 Chávez, César and, 1:88–89, 2:1–2 dioxin in, 1:122 electron capture for, 2:195

383

Pesticides

Pesticides (continued) FIFRA and, 1:213 in freshwater, 2:307, 2:310 gas chromatography for, 2:194 green chemistry for, 1:237 integrated pest management and, 1:293–294 nitrogen/phosphorus detectors for, 2:194 organochlorine, 2:93 POPs, 2:94 as priority pollutant, 2:117 risk factors, 2:188 water pollution from, 2:307, 2:314 See also Carson, Rachel; speciﬁc pesticides PET (Polyethylene terephthalate), 2:112 Petroleum, 1:216, 2:101–108, 2:102, 2:103, 2:104, 2:105 Petroleum products, 1:124 acid rain and, 1:3 bioremediation and, 1:54, 1:55, 1:98–99 leaking underground storage tanks and, 2:266, 2:267, 2:268–269 See also Oil spills Petroleum transportation, 1:138, 1:141 Pﬁesteria, 1:26, 1:214, 2:313 pH, deﬁned, 2:321 Pharmaceutical wastes, 2:40 See also Medical wastes Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), 1:111–113, 1:112, 2:308–309 Philadelphia Inquirer, 2:35 Philippines, green revolution in, 1:240 Phorate, 2:96 Phosgene, 2:109–110 Phosphates, 2:108–109, 2:308 Phosphoric acid, 2:211 Phosphoric acid fuel cells, 1:216–217 Phosphorus, 2:194, 2:312 Phosphorus cycle, 2:108 Photochemical, deﬁned, 2:86 Photochemical oxidants as criteria pollutant, 1:33 particulates from, 2:89 Photochemical smog, 1:201, 2:86, 2:207–208, 2:280–281

384

Photodissociation, 2:64 Photovoltaic (PV) systems, 2:178 Phthalates, 2:93, 2:146, 2:195 Phyllis Cormack, 1:243 Physical removal, 1:95, 1:96–98 Phytoextraction, 1:96 Phytoplankton, 2:312–313 deﬁned, 2:312 heterotrophic, 1:140 Phytoremediation, 1:53–55, 1:96–97 for arsenic removal, 1:44 of hazardous wastes, 1:249–250 with petroleum products, 1:55 for soil pollution, 2:211 PIC. See Prior informed consent Pinchot, Gifford, 2:147–148, 2:228, 2:324 Pinene, 2:281 Pipelines in hydraulic dredging, 1:143–144 oil spills from, 1:138, 1:141, 2:104–105 PIRGs. See Public interest research groups Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1:251 Planktonic, deﬁned, 2:242 Planned Parenthood, 2:140 Planning, environmental, careers in, 1:81 Plant nutrients soil fertility and, 1:25–27 water pollution and, 2:310 Plants biomonitoring of, 2:197 eutrophication and, 2:108–109, 2:310, 2:312–313 green chemicals from, 1:236 hazards to, 2:187 See also Aquatic species; Phytoremediation Plastic bag tax, 2:181 Plasticizers. See Phthalates Plastics, 2:109–115, 2:110, 2:111, 2:113 in marine environments, 2:314–315 recycling, 2:171–172, 2:215 Plumes, deﬁned, 1:55 Pluralist society, 1:234 PM. See Particulates PM-10, deﬁned, 1:103 Point sources, 2:115–119, 2:118, 2:304

National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and, 2:59–60 of surface water pollution, 2:308 Poison gases, in war, 2:281 Poisoning arsenic, 1:43–44 carbon monoxide, 1:35, 1:74 ﬁsh kills from, 1:214 mercury, 2:42 See also Lead (Pb); Toxicology Poland, cleanup in, 1:94 Policy dialogue. See Regulation negotiation Political corruption, 2:154 Political culture, 1:234 “Political Difﬁculties Facing Waste-to-Energy Conversion Plant Siting,” 2:143 Political Economy Research Center, 2:324 Politics, 2:119–124, 2:120 anti-environmental, 1:206 Earth Day and, 1:148–149 of energy, 1:184–185 Green Party, 1:239–240 mediated, 2:18 Progressive Party, 1:200–201 Pollutants household, 1:266–270, 1:267, 1:268 persistent organic, 1:51 priority, 2:116–117 See also Pollution; speciﬁc pollutants Pollution agricultural, 1:27–28 attitudes about, 2:132 consumer, 1:111–114, 1:112, 2:21–27 economics of, 1:153–158 from electric power generation, 1:168–169 energy and, 1:182–183 images of in popular culture, 2:132–134 light, 2:28–31, 2:29 mold, 2:52–54, 2:53 monitoring, 2:192–198 poverty and, 2:141–142 See also Laws and regulations; speciﬁc types of pollution Pollution control for health reasons, 1:251–252, 1:251–256

Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21

oil spills, 1:141 public policy decision making and, 2:158–159 regulatory agencies, 1:22–24 state vs. federal laws, 1:231 USDA on, 2:259–260 See also Laws and regulations Pollution prevention (P2), 2:124–129, 2:125, 2:232–234 for freshwater contamination, 2:310–311 See also Abatement Pollution Prevention Act (PPA), 2:10, 2:124, 2:128, 2:263 Pollution removal. See Remediation Pollution shifting, 2:129–131 Polonium-214, 2:168 Polonium-218, 2:168 Polyacrylonitrile, 2:110 Polyactic acid, 2:114 Polyalkonates, 2:114 Polychlorinated biphenyls. See PCBs Polychlorinated dibenzo[1,4]dioxins (PCDD), 1:122, 1:122–123 See also Dioxins Polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDF), 1:122, 1:122–123 Polychlorinated naphthalenes (PCNs), 2:93 Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), 2:93 carcinogenicity of, 1:69–70 deﬁned, 2:90 at Libby, Montana site, 2:227 Persian Gulf War and, 2:239 reporting requirements, 2:248 soil pollution from, 2:209 Polyethylene, 2:114 Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), 2:112 Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. See Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells Polymerization, 2:109 Polymers, 2:109, 2:197 Polystyrene (PS), 2:112–113 Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), 2:110–111, 2:146 POPs. See Persistent organic pollutants Popular culture, 2:131–136, 2:132, 2:133

Population, 2:136–140, 2:137, 2:138 hazards, 2:186 overexploitation and, 2:253 variability of hazard responses, 2:187–188 zero growth in, 2:333–334 The Population Bomb, 1:104, 1:164–165, 1:202, 2:34, 2:328, 2:334 Porcupine caribou, 1:43 Pore waters, deﬁned, 2:200 Pornography, eco-, 2:135 Porosity, deﬁned, 1:292 Portsmouth Recycling Center, 2:170 Postal Service, anthrax scare and, 2:238 Postindustrial site development, 1:62–63 Postindustrialization, environmental health and, 1:251–252 Postwar society (World War II), 1:201, 1:251, 1:258–259, 1:260 Potassium iodide (KI) pills, 1:134 Potassium permanganate, 1:99 POTWs (Publicly owned treatment works), 1:2, 1:93 Poverty, 1:265, 2:140–145 environmental hazards and, 1:210, 2:25–26 green revolution for, 1:240 population growth and, 2:139 See also Environmental justice; Settlement House Movement Power plants energy and, 1:181–183 solar parabolic trough, 2:178 See also speciﬁc types of power plants PPA. See Pollution Prevention Act PPCPs. See Pharmaceuticals and personal care products PPE (Personnel protective equipment), 1:95, 1:95 Precautionary principle, 1:172, 1:212, 2:5–6, 2:145–146 Precursor gases, 2:207–208 Preindustrialization, environmental health and, 1:251 Prejudices, racial, 1:208–209

Preparation, for natural disasters, 1:132 Preparatory committee (PrepCom), 1:151–152 Prepared bed systems, for bioremediation, 1:54 Presidential vetoes, 2:17 President’s Climate Change Action Plan (1993), 2:49 President’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), 2:122, 2:146–147 President’s Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD), 2:147, 2:158 President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), 1:84 Pressure group-politics, 2:119–121 Price theory. See Microeconomics Prices oil, 2:102, 2:105 of pollution, 1:158–159 Primary combustion chamber (PCC), 1:272 Primary industries, 1:282–283 Primary particulates, 2:89 Primary pollutants, 1:32 controlling, 1:37 from vehicles, 2:272 See also speciﬁc pollutants Primary recycling, 2:171 Primary treatment, of wastewater, 1:56, 2:300 Prime ministers, 1:233 Prince William Sound, 1:128, 1:263–264, 1:283, 2:104–105 Prior informed consent (PIC), in international trade, 2:6, 2:7, 2:257 Priority pollutants, 2:116–117 Private property, 2:149–150 Process controls, 2:233 Products life cycle analyses of, 2:18–19, 2:232, 2:294 recylclables, 2:171 used, 2:181–183 See also speciﬁc products Proﬁt-principle balance, 1:284 Progestins, as carcinogen, 1:67 Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21 (United Nations), 2:144

385

Progressive movement

Progressive movement, 1:200–201, 2:147–148 See also Environmental movement; Settlement House Movement Project XL, 2:128 Property rights, of Native Americans, 2:3 Property rights movement, 2:149–150 Proteins, deﬁned, 2:242 Protest movements, 1:8–10 See also Activism; Environmental movement Protocol Additional I, Geneva Convention, 2:284 Protocol of 1978, 2:314 Protocols, 2:54, 2:254 Proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells, 1:216, 1:217 Provinces, Canadian, 1:194, 1:233 See also speciﬁc towns and provinces PS (Polystyrene), 2:112–113 PSAC (President’s Science Advisory Committee), 1:84 Pteris vittata, 1:44 Puberty, environmental health and, 1:253–254 Public Citizen, 2:56 Public Employees for Professional Responsibility, 2:323 Public health, 1:255–256 See also Health problems Public Health and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, 2:238 Public Health Service. See U.S. Public Health Service Public information access, 1:289, 2:127, 2:183–185 Public interest research groups (PIRGs), 1:11, 2:55, 2:150–151 Public lands, 2:323–324 Public Lands Council, 2:324 Public opinion polls, 1:159, 2:121, 2:132 Public participation, 2:151–157, 2:155 Public perception environmental business costs and, 1:286 of industrial polluters, 1:283–284 opinion polls, 1:159

386

political shaping of, 2:121 of risks, 2:185–186 Public policy decision making, 2:157–160 Public service announcements, 2:132 Publicly owned treatment works (POTWs), 1:2, 1:93 Pulitzer Prizes, 2:36 Pulp and paper industry, 1:236 “Pump and treat,” for groundwater contamination, 1:97–98 Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, 2:148, 2:184 PV (Photovoltaic) systems, 2:178 PVC. See Polyvinyl chloride Pyrethroid insecticides, 2:97, 2:99, 2:310 Pyrethrum, 2:97 Pyrite, 2:48

Q Quality management, environmental, 1:295–296 Quiet Communities Act of 1978, 2:65 Quist, Gregory, 2:321

R Ra, 2:314 Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature, 1:83 Racial discrimination, 1:208–209, 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 wastes Radiofrequency electric and magnetic ﬁelds (RF EMFs), 1:171, 1:172 Radionuclides

containment of, 1:99 deﬁned, 1:93, 2:160 in radioactive wastes, 2:161–163 soil pollution from, 2:209, 2:211 Radium isotopes, 2:166–167 Radon, 1:67, 1:69, 1:276, 2:166–169, 2:167, 2:249 Radon-222, 2:167 Railroads, spread of pollution and, 1:284–285 Rainbow Warrior, 1:243 Ralph Nader: Battling for Democracy, 2:150 Ramsar Convention, 2:257 Rance River, France, 2:175 RAND study, 2:286 Ratiﬁcation, deﬁned, 2:56 Raw water, deﬁned, 2:320 Raymond, R.L., 1:54 Rays of Hope, 1:246 RBMK-type reactors, 1:134–135 RCRA. See Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Reactive barriers, 1:99 Reactive chemicals, deﬁned, 1:98 Reading rooms, electronic, 1:289 Reagan, Ronald, 1:14–15, 1:206 CEQ and, 2:147 New Left and, 2:63 on property rights, 2:150 Reboilers, distillation column, 1:2 Recharge, deﬁned, 1:244, 2:311 RECLAIM market, 1:175 Reclamation deﬁned, 1:101 mine, 1:129, 2:47, 2:49–50 Recommended agricultural practices (RMPs), 1:28, 1:29 Reconstruction, after natural disasters, 1:132 Recovery, of recyclables, 2:170–171, 2:215–216 Recycling, 1:50, 2:125, 2:169–174, 2:170, 2:172, 2:173 bottle deposit laws and, 1:60–61 by composting, 1:106 European Union on, 2:233 of hazardous materials, 1:248 in-plant, 1:2 in-process, 1:1 of municipal solid wastes, 2:213, 2:215–216 off-site, 1:2 of plastics, 2:111–113 pollution prevention and, 2:233

Rural Abandoned Mines

of PPCPs, 1:113 symbol, 2:132, 2:133 Red tides, 2:312–313 Reevaporation, deﬁned, 2:92 Refractories, deﬁned, 1:272 Refrigerants, deﬁned, 1:87 Refuse Act. See Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899 Refuse-derived fuels, 2:297 “Reg neg.” See Regulation negotiation Regenerative, deﬁned, 2:175 Regenerative fuel cells, 1:217 Regenerative scrubbers, 2:199 Regional Seas activities (United Nations), 2:201 Regulated medical wastes. See Infectious wastes Regulation negotiation, 2:174–175 Regulations. See Laws and regulations Regulatory agencies, 1:22–24, 2:10–12, 2:44–45, 2:122–123 See also Laws and regulations; speciﬁc agencies and countries Regulatory federalism, 2:122 Remediation, 2:261 vs. abatement, 1:1, 1:94 of brownﬁelds, 1:62–63 of contaminated soil, 2:210–211 deﬁned, 1:94, 2:16 of dioxin-contamination, 1:124 of groundwater, 1:243–244, 2:268 of PCB sites, 2:92 of space pollution, 2:221–222 of Superfund mines, 1:130 See also Superfund Remodeling, household, 1:266, 1:269 Rendulic, Lothar, 2:282 Renewable energy, 2:175–180, 2:176, 2:177, 2:178, 2:179, 2:228 See also speciﬁc energy sources Reorganization Plan No. 3, 2:261 Replacement fertility, 2:333–334 Replacement parts, 2:183 Representative governments, 1:230 Reprocessing, 1:188, 2:171 Reproductive problems ﬁsh, from water pollution, 2:310 from PCBs, 2:92 See also Health problems

Republican governments. See Representative governments Research, environmental, 1:76–77 Residence time, for combustion, 1:271–273 Residue, deﬁned, 1:177 Resmethrin, 2:97 Resolution 687 (UN Security Council), 2:284 Resource competition, terrorism and, 2:238–239 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976, 1:23, 1:149, 1:247–248, 1:250, 2:10, 2:180–181 incineration and, 1:271 on injection wells, 1:292 on medical wastes, 2:39 on mining, 2:49 as single-medium approach, 2:125–126 Resource Recovery Act (RRA), 1:271 Respiratory problems acute infections, 1:251 haze and, 2:278 from nitrogen oxides, 2:272–273 from smog, 2:206–207 from sulfur dioxide, 2:224 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:235–236 See also Health problems Responsibility, personal, 2:26–27 Restoration and recovery, from natural disasters, 1:132 Reuse, 2:181–183, 2:182, 2:214, 2:215–216, 2:294–295 Revenue Marine Service. See U.S. Coast Guard RF. See Radio frequency RF EMFs (Radiofrequency electric and magnetic ﬁelds), 1:171, 1:172 RIASON system, 1:291 Richards, Ellen Swallow. See Swallow, Ellen Rickover, Hyman G., 1:187 Riding the Dragon: Royal Dutch Shell and the Fossil Fire, 1:284 Right to know (RTK), 2:183–185 See also Information Riis, Jacob, 2:148 Rinehart and Dennis, 1:219 Rio + 5, 1:24, 1:206–207, 1:261

Rio + 10, 1:24 Rio Declaration, 1:152, 2:5–6 Risk, 2:185–191, 2:186, 2:188, 2:190 Risk assessments, 2:123, 2:186–191, 2:198, 2:252 of biosolid hazards, 1:58, 1:60 of pesticides, 1:213 Risk-based cleanup standards, 1:62–63, 1:95–96 Risser, James, 2:36 River mile, deﬁned, 2:117 River Watch Program, 1:90 Rivers, polluted. See Freshwater pollution Rivers and Harbor Act of 1890, 1:92, 2:80, 2:258 Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899, 2:191–192, 2:301 Rivers of Colorado Water Watch, 1:290 RMPs (Recommended agricultural practices), 1:28, 1:29 Roberts, Julia, 2:134 Rockefeller Foundation, 1:240–241 Rodrigo de Freitas lake, 1:214 Romero, Pablo, 2:1–2 Room-and-pillar mining, 1:101 Roosevelt, Theodore, 1:200 Roselle, Mike, 1:150 Ross, Andrew, 2:134–135 Ross, Donald, 2:150 Rotary kiln incineration, 1:272, 1:273 Rotenone, 2:97 Rothamsted agricultural experiment station, 1:26 Rotterdam Convention, 2:257 Royal Dutch Shell, 1:284, 2:25 Royalties, deﬁned, 2:51 RRA (Resource Recovery Act), 1:271 RTK (Right to know), 2:183–185 Ruby Hill Mine, Nevada, 1:129, 2:50 Ruckelshaus, William D., 2:263 Rugs. See Carpets Rummage sales, 2:183 Runoff, 2:307–308, 2:312 nonpoint source pollution in, 2:74–75, 2:76–77, 2:106 storm-water, 2:116 See also Water pollution Rural Abandoned Mines, 2:260

387

Rural areas

Rural areas groundwater in, 1:244 septic tanks in, 2:299 urban waste disposal in, 2:293 Russell, Kurt, 2:133 Rwanda, 2:286 Ryan, Teya, 2:35 Ryania, 2:97

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 Cristóbal Island, 1:141 San Francisco Bay, 1:258 San Joaquin Valley, California, 2:252 San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, California, 2:240 A Sand County Almanac, 2:327–328 Sand water ﬁltration, 2:320 SANE (Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), 1:39 Sanitary engineering, 2:230 Sanitary wastewater, 2:298 Santa Barbara, California, 1:203 Santiago, Chile, 2:207 SARA. See Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act SARA Title III. See Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act of 1986 Satellite measurements, 2:196 Saturated zone, 1:55 Saturday Review, 2:34 SB (Styrene-butadiene), 1:269 Scarce, Rik, 2:132 Scarlett, Harold, 2:34 SCC (Secondary combustion chamber), 1:272 Schlichtmann, Jan, 2:133 Schools AHERA and, 1:46 Love Canal, 1:221, 1:261

388

See also Education Science, 2:192–199, 2:193, 2:194, 2:196 Science, 1:281 Scientiﬁc materialism, 2:20 Scorched earth war tactics, 2:282 U.S.S. Scorpion, 1:137 Scrubbers, 1:274, 2:199, 2:199–200 air, deﬁned, 2:129, 2:130 deﬁned, 1:102, 1:273 Scuba diving, 1:116 SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), 2:63 Sea Empress, 1:94 Sea grasses, 2:312 Sea level, rise in, 1:227 Sea salt particulates, 2:88–89 Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, 1:16, 1:160 Sea Shepherd (ship), 1:16 Sea turtles, light pollution and, 2:30 Seabrook nuclear power plant, 1:40 Seattle, Washington, WTO meeting, 2:326 Second party data, 1:290 Secondary combustion chamber (SCC), 1:272 Secondary industries. See Manufacturing Secondary particulates, 2:89–90 Secondary pollutants, 1:32 controlling, 1:37 from vehicles, 2:272 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:236–237 See also speciﬁc pollutants Secondary recycling, 2:171 Secondary treatment, of wastewater, 1:56, 2:300 Second-hand markets, 2:181–183 Secondhand smoke, 2:244–245 La Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales. See Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources Section 409 (Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act), 2:100 Sedatives, deﬁned, 2:251 Sediment impoverishment. deﬁned, 2:201 Sedimentary, deﬁned, 1:292 Sedimentation, 2:200–202 Sediments

dredging, 1:142–144, 2:81–82, 2:92 nonpoint source pollution in, 2:74–75, 2:76 remediation of, 1:97 Seeps, 1:138–139, 2:106 Segregation, 2:154 SEJ (Society of Environmental Journalists), 2:34, 2:35 SEJournal, 2:34 Selenium bioremediation and, 1:53 environmental toxicology and, 2:252 from smelting, 2:205 Self-design, 2:231 “Self-Implementing Alternate Dilution Water Guidance,” 1:121 Self-regulating economic systems, 1:155–157 Sellaﬁeld, United Kingdom, 2:165 SEMARNAT. See Mexican Secretariat for Natural Resources Semple Jr., Robert B., 2:36 Sen, Amartya, 1:240 Senate (U.S. Congress), 2:16–17 Sensitivities, to toxins, 2:251–252 Separation, of plastics, 2:111–112 SEPs (Supplemental Environmental Projects), 2:127 Septage, 2:299 Septic tanks, 1:292, 2:298, 2:299 SERC (State Emergency Response Commission), 1:173 Serre de la Fare dam, demonstration against building of, 2:120 Service industries, 1:279, 1:282–283 Sessions, George, 2:329 Settlement House Movement, 1:21–22, 1:200, 2:148, 2:202–203 Settling ponds, 2:301, 2:317, 2:320 Seveso, Italy, 1:122, 1:127 Sewage, water pollution from, 1:259–260, 2:305–307, 2:312–313 Sewage sludge heavy metals in, 2:210 ocean dumping and, 2:83 risks from, 2:189–191 See also Biosolids Sewage treatment EPA and, 2:263

Sorting, of plastics

Hull House and, 1:200 point sources of water pollution from, 2:116 PPCPs and, 1:111–112 risks and, 2:189–191 Sewers, 2:301 Shabecoff, Phil, 2:35 SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty), 1:160–161 Shantora, Victor, 2:22 Shared decision making. See Regulation negotiation Sharps (Medical supplies), 2:38, 2:39 Shaw, David, 2:35–36 Shearwaters, 2:30 Shell Oil, 1:286 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 2:281–282 Sherman landslide, Alaska, 1:132 Shifting cultivation. See Crop rotation Shintech, 1:71 Shiva, Vandana, 1:240 Sick building syndrome, 1:269, 1:278–279, 2:52 Sidescan sonars, 2:198 Sierra Club, 1:202, 2:121 Brower, David and, 1:61–62 global presence of, 2:256 Grand Canyon controversy, 1:9–10, 2:71 Greenpeace and, 1:11–12 on population growth, 2:140 “The Sierra in Peril,” 2:36 Sikes Disposal Pits, Texas, 2:227 Silent Spring, 1:8, 1:82–84, 1:119, 1:202, 1:252, 1:260–261, 2:228, 2:328, 2:330 The Silent World, 1:116 Silicosis, 1:219–220 Silkwood, 2:133 Silkwood, Karen, 2:133, 2:323 Sill, Melanie, 2:36 Silt, 2:308 Silverman, Harriet, 2:325 Simplicity voluntary, 1:20 as way of life, 2:132 Sinclair, Upton, 2:148, 2:327 Singapore, on smoke-free environments, 2:245 Single-medium approaches, 2:125–126, 2:128 Sinks, deﬁned, 2:240

SIPs. See State Implementation Plans Six-Day War, 1:259 Skin cancer, 2:266 Skyglow, 2:28 Slade, Mrs. F. Louis, 1:246 Slag, 2:204–205 SLAPP (Strategic Litigation against Public Participation), 1:91, 2:156 Slash and burn agriculture, 1:25 Slow sand water ﬁltration, 2:320 Sludges, 1:247–248, 2:289, 2:299–300 Small-quantity generators (SQGs), 1:250 Smart growth, 2:201 Smelting, 1:43, 2:204–206, 2:205 Smith, J.W., 2:24 Smith, Robert Angus, 1:3 Smog, 1:201, 2:64, 2:119, 2:206–208, 2:207 photochemical, 1:201, 2:86, 2:207–208, 2:280–281 from vehicle emissions, 2:272–275, 2:273 See also Air pollution Smoke pollution, 2:148, 2:206–207, 2:278 Smoke-free environments, 2:245 Smokey the Bear, 2:133 Smoking. See Tobacco smoke Snow, John, 1:251, 1:260, 2:208–209, 2:316 Snowplowing, 1:231 Snyder, Gary, 2:329 SOC. See Soil organic carbon SOC (Soil organic carbon), 1:26, 1:27 Social reform, 1:21–22, 1:265, 2:202–203 environmental health and, 1:256 Union of Concerned Scientists, 2:271 Social treaties, 1:239 Social values, 2:132, 2:157–158 Society role of government in, 1:233–234 Society for General Systems, 2:231 Society for Risk Analysis, 2:189 Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), 2:34, 2:35 Sodium carbonate, 2:211

Sodium hydroxide, 2:211 Sodium pentachlorophenate, 2:97 Sodium-26, 2:161 Soil acidity, 1:3, 1:5 Soil erosion, 1:28–29, 1:132, 2:141, 2:200–201 Soil fertility, 1:25–28 composting for, 1:105–108 Soil organic carbon (SOC), 1:26, 1:27 Soil pollution, 2:209–211, 2:210 bioremediation and, 1:53–54 cleanup of, 1:93–100 at Libby, Montana site, 2:227 from metals, 1:59 moisture and, 1:225 from petroleum, 2:106 at Times Beach, Missouri, 2:243–244 Soil vapor extraction, 2:226 Soil washing, 1:96 Solar energy, 2:176, 2:177–178 Solar Energy Research Institute, 1:246–247 Solar parabolic trough power plants, 2:178 Solid oxide fuel cells, 1:217 The Solid Waste Dilemma: An Agenda for Action, 2:213 Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965, 1:8 See also Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976 Solid wastes, 2:211–219, 2:212, 2:214, 2:218, 2:289, 2:317 incineration of, 1:271–274 landﬁlls for, 2:3–4 managers of, 1:79 radioactive, 2:331 See also Municipal solid wastes Solids, sampling for pollutants, 2:192 Solubility, deﬁned, 1:87, 2:91 Solvents deﬁned, 1:87 in dry cleaning, 1:145–146 green chemistry for, 1:237 hazardous, 1:247 as priority pollutant, 2:117 recycling, 2:172 Sonars, sidescan, 2:198 Songs, 2:132–133 Sorbents, deﬁned, 1:97 Sorting, of plastics, 2:112

389

Sound

Sound, 2:66–67, 2:67 Source control, for indoor air pollution, 1:278 Source reduction, 1:1, 2:213–214, 2:215 South, poverty in, 2:142 South Africa, on smoke-free environments, 2:245 South America, waste to energy in, 2:297 South (U.S.), 1:84–85 Southeast Asia fertilizers in, 1:28 forest ﬁres in, 2:279 Southern California Edison, 2:242 Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1:220 Soviet Union Cold War and, 1:38–39 radioactive pollution in, 2:286 Space exploration, 1:10 Space pollution, 2:219–222, 2:220, 2:221 Space salvage, 2:222 Space Shuttle, 2:220 Spacecraft, 2:219–222 Spatial, deﬁned, 1:222 SPDES (State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System), 1:93 Special interest groups. See Environmental groups; Interest groups Spectroscopic detection, 2:195 Spent radioactive fuels, 2:162, 2:164–165, 2:290 deﬁned, 1:134 reprocessing, 2:332–333 storage of, 2:330–331 Sperm count, 1:179 Spinosad, 1:237 Spock, Benjamin, 1:39 Spores, mold, 2:52 Sports utility vehicles (SUVs), 1:190, 1:218, 2:276 Sprawl, 2:222, 2:223 Spray dryers, deﬁned, 1:274 Springﬁeld, Vermont, 2:29 Sputnik I, 2:221 SQGs (Small-quantity generators), 1:250 Stability (Economics), 1:154–155 Stakeholders, 2:152 Standard recyclables, 2:171 Standards, environmental, 1:295–296, 2:7–8, 2:229

390

See also Laws and regulations Standing, deﬁned, 2:123 Standing committees, Congressional, 2:16–17 Starr, Ellen, 1:21 Stars, light pollution and, 2:28–30 State Emergency Response Commission (SERC), 1:173 State Implementation Plans (SIPs), 1:92, 2:64, 2:117–118 State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (SPDES), 1:93 Staten Island, New York, 2:180 States bottle deposit laws, 1:61 coal producing, 1:102 coal usage in, 1:224 delegated authority of, 2:122 environmental laws and regulations, 1:191, 2:9–10 environmental policy reform and, 2:159–160 environmental reviews in, 2:57 EPA and, 2:262, 2:263 governments of, 1:231 hazardous waste production in, 1:250 on infectious wastes, 1:288 LUSTs and, 2:268–269 on mercury levels, 2:42 on nitrogen oxides, 2:64 on nonpoint source pollution, 2:76 on point sources of air pollution, 2:117–118 on pollution prevention, 2:125, 2:126–128 in pre-Revolutionary U.S., 1:231 recycling in, 2:169 regional EPA ofﬁces, 2:262 regulatory agencies, 1:22–23 sewage treatment plants, 2:302 on smoke-free environments, 2:245 Stationary air pollution sources, 1:91–92 Steam engine, 1:282 Steam injection, for groundwater contamination, 1:98 Steam turbine power plants, 1:165–166, 1:189 Steel mills, 2:306 Steel recycling, 2:171

Steel underground storage tanks, 2:266, 2:268 Steingrabber, Sandra, 2:329 Stenothermic, deﬁned, 2:241 Stewardship, deﬁned, 1:279 Stith, Pat, 2:36 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (2001), 2:6, 2:7, 2:93 Stockholm Declaration (1972), 2:5 Stop Eco-Violence, 1:161 Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), 1:160–161 Storage, of hazardous wastes. See Hazardous waste disposal Storm King, 1:204–206 Stossel, John, 2:35 Strategic Litigation against Public Participation (SLAPP), 1:91, 2:156 Strategic Petroleum Reserve, 2:102 “Strategy for a Future Chemicals Policy,” 2:249 Stratosphere, deﬁned, 2:64 Stratospheric ozone, 2:86, 2:86–87, 2:266 Streams, polluted. See Freshwater pollution Streep, Meryl, 2:133 Streeter Phelps model, 2:231 Strikes, labor, 2:1, 2:2 Strip mining, 2:46 Strong, Maurice, 1:151, 2:223–224, 2:224 Strontium-90, 1:134, 2:162 Students, college, 2:150–151 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 2:63 Styrene-butadiene (SB), 1:269 Styrofoam, 2:112 Subbituminous coal, 1:167 Submarines, nuclear, 1:136–138, 1:188 Subsets, deﬁned, 1:245 Subsidence, deﬁned, 1:101 Substrates, deﬁned, 2:52, 2:200 Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, 2:205, 2:206 Suffocation, ﬁsh kills from, 1:215 Sulfates, in acid rain, 1:3, 1:5, 1:5, 2:224 Sulﬁde minerals, 2:48 Sulfur dioxide (SO2), 2:224–225 air quality standards on, 2:118, 2:195

Thermal pollution

from coal burning, 1:102 controlling emissions of, 1:37, 2:199 as criteria pollutant, 1:33, 1:36 emission patterns, 1:4 Persian Gulf War and, 2:239 from petroleum, 2:106 from smelting, 2:205, 2:205, 2:205–206 from soil pollution, 2:210 from vehicle emissions, 2:273 Sulfur hexaﬂuoride (SF6), 1:242, 2:195 Sulfur oxides from coal, 1:167, 1:182–183 from electricity generation, 1:168–169 Sulfur Protocol, 2:257 Sulphurous smog, 2:206–207 Summerset at Frick Park, 1:63–64 Summitville Mine, Colorado, 1:129–130 Sunlight, smog and, 2:206–208 Superfund, 2:166, 2:225–227, 2:226, 2:263 See also Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA), 1:109, 2:184, 2:225, 2:227, 2:246 Supersonic, deﬁned, 1:148 Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEPs), 2:127 Supply and demand, energy efﬁciency and, 1:189–190 Suppression, deﬁned, 2:266 “Surf Your Watershed,” 1:291 Surface air warming, 1:227 Surface mining, 1:101 Surface Mining and Control Act of 1977, 2:47 Surface waters deﬁned, 1:62 pollution control of, 1:93, 2:59–60 pollution of, 2:307–309 See also Water pollution Suspected carcinogens. See Hazardous air pollutants Sustainable, deﬁned, 2:158 Sustainable agriculture, 1:28–29, 2:100

Sustainable development, 2:227–229 deﬁned, 1:241, 2:142 Earth Day and, 1:148 green revolution and, 1:241 industrial costs and, 1:286 poverty and, 2:142, 2:143–144 precautionary principle and, 2:145–146 SUVs. See Sports utility vehicles Swallow, Ellen, 2:229–230, 2:230 SWDA. See Safe Drinking Water Act (SWDA) of 1974 Sweden, air pollution and, 1:205 See also European Union Synergistic, deﬁned, 2:251 Syntex Agribusiness, 2:243–244 Syringes. See Sharps (Medical supplies) Systemic, deﬁned, 2:96 Systemic pollution prevention, 2:126–127 Systems science, 2:230–232

T 2,4,5-T, 2:97 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 Trichloroethylene Teaching, environmental, 1:77 Teach-ins, 1:147, 1:204, 1:246, 2:62 Technology, pollution prevention, 2:232–234 Teenagers. See Adolescents TEF (Toxicity equivalency factors), 2:92

Telecommunications industry, 2:196 Television, 2:34, 2:35, 2:36, 2:134 Temperature biodegradation and, 1:52 changes in, 1:224, 1:225, 1:228 for combustion, 1:271–273 indoor air quality and, 1:277–278 for PCB destruction, 2:92 See also Global warming Temperature inversions, deﬁned, 1:142 TEPP (Tetraethyl pyrophosphate), 2:96 Teratogens, 1:123, 2:33, 2:251 Terrestrial environment, 2:98 See also Land Terrorism, 2:234–240, 2:235, 2:236, 2:237 chemical plants and, 1:126 nuclear power plants and, 1:40, 1:134 spent fuels and, 2:165 See also Ecoterrorism Terrorist attacks, September 11, 2001, 1:70, 2:234–237, 2:236, 2:237 Tertiary industries. See Service industries Tertiary recycling, 2:171 Tertiary treatment, of wastewater, 2:300 Testing, of new pesticides, 2:99–100 Testosterone, 1:176 2,3,7,8-tetrachloro dibenzo[1,4]dioxin (TCDD), 1:122–123 See also Dioxins Tetrachloroethylene. See Perchloroethylene Tetraethyl lead, 1:14–15, 2:250 Tetraethyl pyrophosphate (TEPP), 2:96 Tetramethrin, 2:97 Textile manufacturing, 1:283 Thalidomide, 2:251 Thames River, London, England, 2:312 Thermal conductivity, 2:194 Thermal infrared imaging, deﬁned, 2:242 Thermal pollution, 2:240–243, 2:241, 2:308

391

Index

Thermal shock, deﬁned, 2:241 Thermal treatment for groundwater contamination, 1:98, 2:310 for PCBs, 2:92 Thermionic ionization detectors, 2:194–195 Thermodynamic limitations, 1:1 Thermometers, mercury, 2:42 Thermophilic stage, of humiﬁcation, 1:107 Thermoplastics, 2:112 Thermosets, 2:112 Thermotolerance, deﬁned, 2:242 Third party data, 1:290 THM (Trihalomethanes), 2:270, 2:320 Thor Heyerdahl International Maritime Environmental Award, 2:315 Thoreau, Henry David, 1:7, 1:20, 2:327 Thorium-234, 2:162 Three Mile Canyon Farm, Oregon, 2:317 Three Mile Island (TMI) disaster, 1:40, 1:135–136, 1:136, 1:137, 1:205–206, 1:264–265 3M Corporation. Product Responsibility Program, 1:283 U.S.S. Thresher, 1:137–138 Thrift shops, 2:183 Thyroid cancer, 1:135 Thyroid hormones, 1:176, 1:177 Tiber River, 1:259 Time, 2:34 Times Beach, Missouri, 1:122, 1:124, 1:206, 2:35, 2:243–244 Tires, 2:112, 2:212, 2:215 Titleholders, deﬁned, 2:149 TMI disaster. See Three Mile Island (TMI) disaster TNC. See Multinational corporations Tobacco smoke, 2:244–245 asthma and, 1:49 cancer and, 1:66–69, 1:69 indoor pollution from, 1:275 Todd, John, 2:245–246, 2:246 Todes, Charlotte, 2:325 Toluene, deﬁned, 2:184 TOMS/EP (Total ozone mapping spectrometer on the Earth probe satellite), 2:196 Topography, deﬁned, 1:129

392

Total ozone mapping spectrometer on the Earth probe satellite (TOMS/EP), 2:196 Total suspended particulate matter (TSP), 1:33, 1:35 “Towards Sustainable Development,” 2:228 Tox Town, 2:252 Toxaphene, 2:94, 2:96, 2:248 Toxic air pollutants. See Hazardous air pollutants Toxic chemicals, from mining, 1:129 See also speciﬁc chemicals Toxic organics, as priority pollutant, 2:117 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), 1:125–126, 1:173, 1:248, 1:281, 1:290, 2:61, 2:184–185, 2:246–249, 2:247, 2:248, 2:263 AK Steel Corporation, 2:308 in Louisiana, 1:71 Toxic Release Report, 2:184 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976, 2:10, 2:122, 2:123, 2:249–250, 2:322–323 Toxic waste disposal. See Hazardous waste disposal Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, 1:198 Toxicants, 2:250 Toxicity equivalency factors (TEF), 2:92 Toxicology, 2:250–253, 2:251 See also Poisoning Toxins, 2:250 Trade, international. See International trade Trafﬁc noise, 2:66–68 Tragedy of the commons, 1:202, 2:253–254 Transboundary pollution. See Global environmental issues Transient, deﬁned, 2:97 Transnational corporations (TNC). See Multinational corporations Transportation alternatives to cars, 2:277 energy efﬁciency in, 1:189 fuel cells in, 1:216–217 of hazardous materials, 1:126–127, 1:250, 2:163, 2:292–293, 2:332 of nuclear wastes, 1:40

petroleum and, 1:138, 1:141, 2:101–102, 2:104–107 of wastes, 2:292–294 water, 2:258 See also Vehicle emissions Transuranic wastes, 2:163, 2:165, 2:290 Trash. See Garbage Trash-to-energy. See Waste-toenergy Trash-to-steam plants. See Wasteto-energy Travolta, John, 1:90, 2:133 Treaties and conferences, 2:5, 2:254–258, 2:255 on environmental issues, 1:13, 1:34–35 Green Party, 1:239 multilateral, 2:145 nuclear test ban, 1:39, 1:202 on ocean dumping, 2:80–82 on wartime activities, 2:282, 2:286 See also speciﬁc treaties and conferences Treatment techniques (TT), for water, 2:316–317 Treaty of Amsterdam, 2:145 Tree-spiking, 1:16, 1:150, 1:160 TRI. See Toxic Release Inventory Triana, Alabama, 1:209 Triazines, 2:98 Tribunals, deﬁned, 2:284 Tributyltin (TBT) bioaccumlation of, 1:52 marine pollution from, 2:314 Trichloroethane (TCA), 1:99 Trichloroethylene (TCE), 1:247 as carcinogen, 1:69 phytoremediation of, 1:55 2,4,5-Trichlorophenol, 1:127 Trichlorophon, 2:96 Trickling ﬁlters, 2:300 Triclosan, 1:122 Trihalomethanes (THM), 2:270, 2:320 Tritium, 2:163 N-trityl morpholine, 2:97 Trophic, deﬁned, 1:128, 2:96 Tropospheric ozone, 2:85–86, 2:86 Trucks, light, 1:218–219, 2:276 Truth in advertising, 1:237–238 TSCA. See Toxic Substances Control Act

United States

TSP (Total suspended particulate matter), 1:33, 1:35 Tucson, Arizona, 2:29 Tufts Medical Center, 1:176 Tuna, dolphin-safe, 1:62 Turbidity, deﬁned, 2:201 Turbines, deﬁned, 2:177 Turbulence, for combustion, 1:271 Turner Broadcasting, 2:35 Tuskegee Institute, 1:84 Tyndall Report, 2:35, 2:36 Tyson, Rae, 2:35

U UCC. See United Church of Christ UCLA Institute of the Environment, 2:30 UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists), 1:11, 2:271 UFW (United Farm Workers of America), 1:88–89, 2:1–2 Ultraviolet (UV) radiation, 2:266 cancer and, 1:66–67 CFCs and, 1:87–88 deﬁned, 2:85 ozone and, 2:85 for water treatment, 2:320–321 UNCED. See Earth Summit UNCHE (United Nations Conference on the Human Environment), 1:151 Underground mining, 1:101 Underground storage tanks (USTs), 1:243, 2:180, 2:266–269, 2:267 The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, 1:116 UNEP. See United Nations Environment Programme Unintended circumstances, 2:269–270 Union Carbide, 1:125, 1:127, 1:206, 1:219, 1:263, 1:264 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), 1:11, 2:271 Union Oil Company, 1:203 Unions, labor. See Labor unions Unitary governments, deﬁned, 1:232–233 United Church of Christ (UCC), 1:198, 1:209–210, 2:288 United Farm Workers of America (UFW), 1:88–89, 2:1–2 United Kingdom air pollution control in, 1:261

bioluminescent reporter technology in, 2:197–198 emissions trading, 1:175 environmental protection agency in, 2:263 Friends of the Earth branch in, 2:71–72 Green parties, 1:12 Industrial Revolution pollution in, 1:282 National Air Quality Information Archive, 1:291 nuclear electricity in, 1:187 oil spills in, 1:202–203 radioactive waste disposal in, 2:333–334 unitary government in, 1:232–233 See also speciﬁc countries United Mexican States. See Mexico United Nations Climate Change Convention, 1:152, 2:6 Commission on Human Settlements, 2:15 Compensation Commission, 2:284 Conference on the Human Environment, 1:151, 1:205, 2:72, 2:80, 2:224 Convention on the Law of the Sea, 2:6 on global air and water pollution levels, 2:119 Global Compact, 2:8 Global Warming Conference, 2:255 population projections, 2:138–139 Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21, 2:144 Strong, Maurice and, 2:224 on sustainable development, 2:229 on water pollution, 2:311 World Commission on Environment and Development, 1:64–65, 2:142 See also Earth Summit United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 2:6 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 1:13, 1:228, 1:291, 2:76

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2:254 on PBT chemicals, 2:93 on POPs, 2:94 on sedimentation abatement, 2:201 Strong, Maurice and, 2:224 United Nations Group of Experts on the Scientiﬁc Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection, 2:201 United Parcel Service, 1:216 United States acid rain and, 1:4, 1:5, 1:6 asthma in, 1:48 biosolids management, 1:57, 1:58–59 carbon dioxide emissions in, 1:72 carbon dioxide poisoning in, 1:74 Cold War and, 1:38–39 compliance with international treaties, 2:7 consumerism in, 2:19–22 on DDT, 1:119–120 dredging in, 1:144 eco-apartheid in, 2:25–26 emissions trading in, 1:175 energy sources and consumption, 2:179 energy statistics, 1:183 environmental damage in Vietnam, 2:283–284 ethanol in, 2:176 government of, 1:230, 1:230–231, 1:234 Green parties in, 1:239–240 history of water pollution in, 1:260 hydropower in, 2:175 injection wells in, 1:292 ISO 14001 in, 1:296 Kyoto Protocol, 1:174, 1:229 landﬁlls in, 2:3 laws and regulations, 2:9–13, 2:11 on lead-based paint, 2:14 on leaded gasoline, 1:36, 2:15 light pollution in, 2:30–31 mercury levels in, 2:42–43 mining laws in, 2:48–49 mold pollution in, 2:52 municipal solid wastes in, 2:212–213, 2:216

393

Thermal shock, defined

United States (continued) NAFTA and, 2:56–57 on nitrogen oxides, 2:64 on noise pollution, 2:67–68 on nonpoint source pollution, 2:75–76 nuclear power in, 1:187 oil spills and, 1:140 on PCBs, 2:91 pesticides in, 1:27, 2:96 petroleum use in, 2:101–102, 2:106–107 point source pollution in, 2:118–119 pollutant emissions, 1:32, 1:34 pollution laws, 1:34 popular culture in, 2:131–135 population growth in, 2:138–140 PPCP studies, 1:112–113 precautionary principle and, 2:5, 2:146 radioactive pollution in, 2:286 recycling in, 2:169–170 role in international environmental issues, 2:256–257 secondhand market in, 2:181 solar energy in, 2:178 spent radioactive fuels in, 2:164–165 waste amounts in, 2:290 waste to energy in, 2:297 water quality in, 2:316–317 World Trade Organization and, 2:255 See also cities and states; speciﬁc federal agencies and laws; speciﬁc topics United States Department of Energy 1996 Annual Energy Review, 1:180 U.S. Army, 1:220 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2:258 404 permits, 2:9 asbestos identiﬁcation surveys, 1:47 cost-beneﬁt analyses by, 1:115 ocean dumping and, 2:33, 2:80, 2:81, 2:83 Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act, 2:191–192, 2:301 wetlands permits, 1:93

394

U.S. Bureau of Land Management, 1:81, 2:260 U.S. Bureau of Mines, 2:260 U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, 1:9, 2:260 U.S. Civil War, 2:281–282 U.S. Coast Guard, 2:33, 2:259 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 2:12, 2:259–260 APHIS, 2:100 on biosolids, 1:58 extension program, 1:84–85 on organic farming, 1:28 on phytoremediation of soil, 2:211 sedimentation abatement and, 2:201 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on alternative fuel vehicles, 1:189 on energy efﬁcient products, 1:190 Energy Information Administration, 1:180 on environmental justice, 1:199 Human Genome Project, 1:256 nuclear waste disposal, 1:188 petroleum bioremediation, 1:99 on phytoremediation of soil, 2:211 on radioactive waste disposal, 2:165 radionuclide containment and, 1:99 solar energy and, 2:178 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Human Genome Project, 1:255 on trichloroethylene, 1:69 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 1:161 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), 1:192, 1:195, 2:12, 2:263 U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), 2:323 U.S. Department of the Interior, 2:106, 2:260 U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) on fuel economy, 1:218 hazardous materials placard system, 1:126–127, 2:292–293 medical wastes, 2:39

U.S. Environmental Genome Project, 1:255, 1:256 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), 2:12, 2:260 on 1002 Area, 1:42 on bald eagle endangerment, 1:82 environmental careers at, 1:81 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 2:12, 2:264–165 drug environmental assessments, 1:113 on pesticides in food, 2:100 U.S. Forest Service, 2:133, 2:259 U.S. Forestry Department, 1:81 U.S. General Accounting Ofﬁce (USGAO), 1:209, 2:143, 2:288 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 1:111–113, 2:76, 2:260, 2:265, 2:270 U.S. Institute for Environmental Conﬂict Resolution, 2:155 U.S. Navy, 2:286 U.S. Public Health Service APCA and, 1:38 on drinking water, 2:316 Universities, environmental careers in, 1:81 See also speciﬁc colleges and universities University of Florida. Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences, 1:44 University of Michigan. School of Natural Resources, 1:210 University of Padua, Italy, 2:29 Unreactivity, deﬁned, 1:87 Unsaturated, deﬁned, 2:268 Upper Silesia, Poland, 1:59 Upstream emissions, 1:219 Uranium, 1:185, 1:187–188, 1:276, 2:163 Uranium 235, 1:183 Uranium 238, 1:183, 2:161, 2:162 Urban areas brownﬁeld development in, 1:62–64 pollution from runoff in, 2:75, 2:76, 2:106 poverty in, 2:25–26 in Progressive Era, 2:148 rural waste disposal from, 2:293 smart growth and, 2:204 sprawl, 2:222, 2:223

Wastes

See also speciﬁc cities Urban Ore, Berkeley, California, 2:183 Urban sprawl. See Sprawl Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (EU), 2:303 Urban Wildlands Group, 2:30 Urea-formaldehyde foam insulation, 1:276 USA Today, 2:35 USDA. See U.S. Department of Agriculture Used automobiles, 2:171, 2:173 Used products, 2:181–183 USGAO. See U.S. General Accounting Ofﬁce USGS. See U.S. Geological Survey U-shaped hypothesis, 1:156, 1:156–157 U.S.S. Arizona, 2:287 U.S.S. Scorpion, 1:137 U.S.S. Thresher, 1:137–138 USTs. See Underground storage tanks Utility boilers, 2:278 Utility lines, 2:279 Utilization, coal, 1:102–103 UV radiation. See Ultraviolet (UV) radiation UV spectra, 2:195–197 UV-A radiation, 2:266 UV-B radiation, 2:85, 2:266 UV-C radiation, 2:266

V Vadose zone, 1:55 Vail, Colorado ski resort, 1:160, 1:161 Values, social, 2:132, 2:153–154 Variable vale control, deﬁned, 1:218 Vectors, deﬁned, 2:96 Vehicle emissions, 1:35, 1:73, 1:219, 1:261, 2:272 catalytic converters and, 1:86–87 haze from, 2:278 IR spectroscopy for, 2:197 petroleum in, 2:106–107 regulation of, 1:92 smog from, 2:208 water pollution from, 2:312 Vehicles fuel cell-powered, 1:216–217 fuel economy, 1:218–219

Vehicular pollution, 2:272–278, 2:273, 2:274, 2:275 Velsicol, 1:83–84 Ventilation, indoor air quality and, 1:277, 1:278 Venturi scrubbers, 2:199 VEPCO (Virginia Electric Power Co.), 1:191 Vermiculite, asbestos in, 1:45–46, 2:50 Vermont Southern State Correctional Facility, 2:29 Vertical expansion, of cultivated land, 1:25 Vetos, presidential, 2:17 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, 2:54 Vieques Island, 2:286 Vietnam War, 1:122, 1:123, 2:154, 2:282, 2:283–284, 2:284, 2:285 Violence ecoterrorism, 1:159–162 in environmental activism, 1:16, 1:18 New Left and, 2:63 Virginia Electric Power Co. (VEPCO), 1:191 Viruses in bioterrorism, 2:238 chlorination for, 2:320–321 Visibility, particulate matter and, 1:35 Visual blight, 2:279–280 Visual pollution, 2:278, 2:278–280, 2:279, 2:280 VOCs. See Volatile organic compounds Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), 1:36, 1:266, 1:269, 2:280–281 air stripping with, 2:130, 2:226 controlling, 1:37 detection of, 2:194, 2:197 incineration and, 1:272 ozone pollution from, 2:87–88 from petroleum, 2:106 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:235 Volatility, deﬁned, 1:97, 2:91 Volatilization, deﬁned, 1:97 Volcanoes, 1:131 Voluntary cleanup programs, 1:286 Voluntary corporate codes of conduct, 2:7–8

Voluntary simplicity, 1:20

W Waechter, Antoine, 2:120 Wald, Lillian, 2:203 Walden, 2:327 Walden Pond, 1:7 Wales, Industrial Revolution pollution in, 1:282 See also United Kingdom Wall Street Journal, 1:9, 2:198 Ward, Bud, 2:36, 2:37 Warren County, North Carolina, 1:198, 1:209, 2:287–288 Warrick, Joby, 2:36 Wars, 2:281–287, 2:282, 2:283, 2:284, 2:285 Warsaw Pact, deﬁned, 1:94 Washington Post, 2:36 Waste disposal garbage collection, 1:21–22, 1:200, 1:231 of medical wastes, 2:39–40 of radioactive wastes, 2:163–166 See also Hazardous waste disposal; Incineration; Ocean dumping Waste exchanges, 1:2, 1:248 Waste Framework Directive, 2:49 Waste Isolation Pilot Project, New Mexico, 2:165 Waste management, radioactive, 2:163 Waste oil, 2:243 Waste treatment, for abatement, 1:2 Wastes, 2:288–291, 2:289 agricultural, 1:235–236 consumerism and, 2:21–22 dilution of, 1:121 drilling, 1:42 from food production, 2:246 infectious, 1:287–288 international trade in, 2:291–292, 2:293 inventories of, 1:1 plastic, 2:111, 2:111–113 reduction, 1:1–2, 2:294–296 reuse of, 1:279–280 transportation of, 2:292–294 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:236 See also speciﬁc types of wastes

395

Waste-to-energy (WTE)

Waste-to-energy (WTE), 1:272, 2:114–115, 2:216, 2:217, 2:295, 2:296–297 Wastewater treatment, 2:297–304, 2:298, 2:306–307 biosolids from, 1:56–57 hazardous materials from, 1:247–248 point sources of pollution from, 2:116 Wastewater treatment plants bioluminescent reporter technology in, 2:197–198 mercury from, 2:43 recycling from, 1:50 Todd, John and, 2:245–246 WasteWise program, 2:295 Watchdog agencies, 1:11 Water acidiﬁcation, 1:3, 1:5 raw, 2:320 scarcity of, 2:139 terrorism and, 2:238 See also Drinking water; Groundwater; Surface waters Water cycle, 2:317–318, 2:318 Water Environmental Federation, 1:60 Water Framework Directive, 2:49 Water pollution, 2:304, 2:305 agriculture and, 1:27–29, 2:73–74 biological oxygen demand and, 2:84 biomonitoring and, 2:197 cholera from, 1:259–260, 2:208–209 cleanup of, 1:93–100 diseases from, 1:251 freshwater, 2:305, 2:305–311, 2:306, 2:307, 2:308, 2:309 history of, 1:259–261 Lake Erie, 1:7–8 marine, 2:312–315, 2:313 from mining, 2:48 movies about, 2:134 from NAPLs, 2:69 nonpoint sources, 2:73–77, 2:105–106 Persian Gulf War and, 2:239 from petroleum, 2:105–106 point sources of, 2:116–117 from radioactive waste disposal, 2:165 from soil pollution, 2:210

396

thermal, 2:240–243 from wastewater, 2:298, 2:301–302 from World Trade Center terrorist attack, 2:236 See also Clean Water Act; speciﬁc pollutants Water Pollution Control Act of 1956, 2:302 Water quality earthquakes and, 2:265 international standards, 2:316 managers of, 1:80 NOAA and, 2:58 See also Water pollution Water Quality Act of 1965, 2:302 Water Quality Act of 1987, 2:302, 2:309 Water Quality Improvement Act, 1:92 Water table, deﬁned, 2:268 Water testing, 2:230 Water treatment, 2:316–322, 2:317, 2:318, 2:319 for cryptosporidiosis prevention, 1:117 disinfection by-products from, 2:270 Watergate scandal, 2:154 Watersheds Buzzard Bay, 2:76 deﬁned, 1:130, 2:76 drinking water and, 2:310–311 Green Party and, 1:239 for nonpoint source pollution, 2:76 for point source pollution, 2:117 protection of, 2:318 for sedimentation control, 2:201 Waterways, U.S., 2:258 Watson, Paul, 1:16 Watts riots, 2:154 Weapons, nuclear. See Nuclear weapons Weather fallout and, 2:160–161 haze and, 2:278 smog and, 2:206–208 Weathermen, 2:63 Webster, Pennsylvania, 1:142 The Weight of Nations, 2:22–23 Welch, Jim, 2:150 Wellhead protection, 2:321 Wells, injection, 1:292–293, 1:293

West Germany, Green parties, 1:12 See also European Union; Germany Western society, consumerism in, 2:19–23 Wet deposition, 1:3, 1:5, 1:6 Wet scrubbers, 1:273–274, 2:199 Wet weather point sources, 2:117 WET (Whole Efﬂuent Toxicity), 1:121 Wetlands constructed, 2:303 deﬁned, 2:149 pollution control in, 1:93, 2:9 sedimentation and, 2:201 Wetlands Reserve Program, 2:260 Whaling, 1:203 Greenpeace and, 1:12, 1:243 Sea Shepherds and, 1:16 WHB (Workers Health Bureau of America), 2:325 When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle against Pollution, 2:330 Where on Earth Are We Going?, 2:224 Whistleblowing, 2:322–323 White Earth Land Recovery Project, 2:3 White House Conservation Conference (1962), 1:8 White lead. See Lead carbonate WHO. See World Health Organization Whole Efﬂuent Toxicity (WET), 1:121 Wilderness Act, 1:8 Wilderness Society, 1:10, 2:71, 2:121, 2:140 Wildlands Project, 1:19 Wildlife DDT and, 1:252 endocrine disruptors and, 1:176–177 light pollution and, 2:30 mining and, 1:129 noise pollution and, 2:68 plastics and, 2:110, 2:110 See also Animals Willets, Peter, 2:71 Wilson, Pete, 1:89 Wind energy, 2:178–179 Wind turbines, 1:166, 2:178–179 Winston-Salem (NC) Journal and Sentinel, 2:36

Zumwalt, Sr., Elmo

Wise-use movement, 2:323–325 Woburn, Massachusetts CERCLA and, 1:109 leukemia clusters in, 1:69, 1:89–90 movies about, 2:133 Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, 2:329 Women in antinuclear movement, 1:39 education and, 2:230 environmental activists, 1:19, 1:200–201 in Progressive movement, 2:148 See also names of speciﬁc women; Settlement House Movement Women Strike for Peace (WSP), 1:39 Wood as energy source, 2:175, 2:176 mold and, 2:52 Wood pallets, 2:212 Workers compensation, 1:220 exposure to asbestos, 1:46 whistleblowing and, 2:322–323 See also Labor, farm; Occupational safety and health Workers Health Bureau of America (WHB), 2:325 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 1:114 World Atlas of Artiﬁcial Night Sky Brightness, 2:29 World Bank development loans from, 2:24 Global Environmental Facility, 1:152 on green revolution, 1:240

on leaded gasoline, 1:36, 2:15, 2:107 nongovernmental organizations and, 2:72 on poverty, 2:144 on sustainable development, 2:229 World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2:228 World Commission on Environment and Development, 1:64–65, 2:142, 2:227–228 World Conservation Strategy, 2:228 World Environment Day 2003, 2:311 World Health Organization (WHO) on arsenic levels, 1:44 on childhood diseases, 1:251 on cholera, 2:311 on EMF, 1:67 on medical wastes, 2:38 water quality standards, 2:316 World Meteorological Organization, 1:228, 2:254 World population, 2:136–137, 2:138 See also Population World Resources Institute (WRI), 2:22–23 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,” 2:271 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, 1:24, 1:153, 2:144 World Trade Center, terrorist attacks and disease clusters, 1:70, 2:234–237, 2:236, 2:237 World Trade Organization (WTO), 1:239, 2:255, 2:326–327

World War I, 2:281–282 World War II, 1:186, 2:281–282 Worldwatch Institute, 1:11, 1:246 WPA (Works Progress Administration), 1:114 W.R. Grace & Co., 1:69 WRI (World Resources Institute), 2:22–23 Writers, 2:327–330 WSP. See Women Strike for Peace WTE. See Waste-to-energy WTO. See World Trade Organization

X X factor, in risk assessment, 2:189

Y Yard wastes, 2:215–216 Yeast biodegradation, 1:53 “Yellowboy,” 2:48 Yucatan Peninsula, 1:132 Yucca Mountain, 1:40, 1:188, 2:165, 2:330–333, 2:332

Z Zahniser, Howard, 1:61 Zell, M., 2:91 Zero emissions, 2:295 Zero Population Growth (organization), 2:140, 2:334 Zero population growth (ZPG), 2:333–334 Zero-emission vehicles, 2:276 ZID (Zone of initial dilution), 2:51 Zinc (Zn), 1:59, 1:256, 2:313–314 Zone of initial dilution (ZID), 2:51 Zoologists, 1:77 ZPG (Zero population growth), 2:333–334 Zumwalt, Sr., Elmo, 2:283–284

397