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,...
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....
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...
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 Arson damage at a ski resort in Vail, Colorado. Affleck Jack Corbis Sygma. Reproduced by permission. 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...
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 par-ticulates that can be breathed, and other toxic chemicals. Tobacco products also release a mixture of over 4,000 compounds. HEALTH SYMPTOMS ASSOCIATED WITH DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS Shortness of breath or bronchial asthma Irritation and infection of respiratory...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
Bibliography Oln
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 amp Sons. U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazards Investigation Board Chemical Incidents Report Center Web site. Available from http www.csb.gov circ post.cfm. Working Group on Community-Right-to-Know Accident Data Web site. Available from http www.rtk.net wcs. Hazmat...
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...
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...
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...
EmissionControl Systems
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. scrubber an air pollution control device that uses...
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...
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 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. The Kursk was the sixth nuclear submarine to have sunk since 1963. The others all came to rest on the ocean...
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...
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...
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 refractory resistant to heat difficult to melt also to authority 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,...
Biosolids Remediate Metalcontaminated 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...
Dioxin
Dioxin, formed by burning chlorine-based chemical compounds with hydrocarbons, is one of the most toxic chemicals known. Dioxin is a general term defoliant an herbicide that removes leaves from trees and growing plants congener a member of a class of chemicals having a of similar structure antimicrobial an agent that kills microbes 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...
Selfregulating Economic System
Another concept that affects pollution is the self-regulating economic system. Under ideal conditions all the information necessary for making the best 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...
Profitprinciple 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...
Emergency Planning and Community RighttoKnow
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Environmental Health in the Twentyfirst 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...
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...
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...
Passive Cleanup
Passive remediation technologies are increasingly common in some applications, and take advantage of naturally occurring chemical or biological 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...
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....
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...
Iso
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...
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....
N
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...
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...
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...
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...
Bibliography Ugg
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 Cross-Florida Barge Canal with Special Emphasis on the Oklawaha Regional Ecosystem. Gainesville, FL. 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....