Diagram Of A Properly Closed Landfill
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 . 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 . about the benefits of recovering and burning methane as an energy source. By 2002 the program had...
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...
Major US PollutionControl 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...
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 mining-related 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,...
Acknowledgements
There are so many people to thank for their commitment, encouragement, and patience along the way. First, the editorial team at Macmillan Reference Clean-up efforts underway at Love Canal, May 22, 1980. Bettmann Corbis. Reproduced by permission. See Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act CERCLA Environmental Movement Gibbs, Lois History Laws and Regulations, United States Mass Media Politics Boats approaching the oil-covered beach of Green Island, Alaska,...
Bibliography Wij
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....
The WaterTreatment 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...
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...
Mass Media
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. 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...
Vietnam War Pollution
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...
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...
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 Billboard promoting birth control, China, 1984. UPI Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission. 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...
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...
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...
MassMarket P 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...
US 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...
Jurisdiction and Enforcement of US 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....
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...
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...
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...
Comparison of US 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Regulations Role of the Agency in US 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 Clean Air Act 1970 42 USC...
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 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 A U.S. Air Force jet...
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...
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 oil-coated 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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
US 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,...
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 materials are currently stored in thirty-nine states at 131 temporary above-ground facilities, requiring constant monitoring and maintenance. Worldwide, scientific consensus holds that deep geologic disposal, with robust engineered barriers, can best contain and isolate...
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. Pulverized concrete, building materials, heavy metals, and human remains were inhaled by residents and rescue workers in...
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...
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 gt 0.3 . 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...
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...
Relationship between Resource Competition and Terrorism
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...
Background
For centuries, fecal waste and other pollutants were dumped in rivers, with dilution the solution to pollution. In the mid-twentieth century, many Liquid waste pouring from pipe into flowing river. United States Environmental Protection Agency. Reproduced by permission. 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...
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 twenty-five-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....
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...
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...
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...
Sources
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...
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...