This volume offers an overview of the occurrence of emerging organic contaminants in Mediterranean rivers and their relevance to their chemical and ecological quality under water scarcity. With chapters covering the effects under multiple stress conditions of pharmaceuticals, polar pesticides, personal care products, and industrial chemicals, the observations presented can be applicable to other parts of the world where water scarcity is an issue . It is of interest to environmental chemists, ecologists, environmental engineers, and ecotoxicologists, as well as water managers and decision-makers.

The socio-economic activities due to world development are promoting increasing pressures on land, creating competition and conflicts, resulting in suboptimal use of resources. Integrated planning and management of land resources is a top subject of Agenda 21 (managed by FAO), which deals with the cross-sectoral aspects of decision-making for the sustainable use and development of natural resources. This is essential for life-support systems and its productive capacity. In this context, there is a need to find new strategies for sustainable development that links social and economic progress with environmental protection and enhancement. Electrokinetic transport processes (EK) uses a low-level direct current as the "cleaning agent". EK has been applied to the remediation of polluted soils and other contaminated matrices. It also shows a great potential to be used in different fields, as in saline soil restoration, nutrients recovery from wastes or repair and maintenance of building structures. EK may be an integrated approach for new strategies aiming at sustainable development and to support waste strategies, with worldwide interest. EK can also be coupled with phytoremediation and integrated with nanotechnology, enlarging the scope of its application. The conciliation of the EK in the recovery of secondary resources, remediation and conservation is a multidisciplinary novel approach that opens new technical possibilities for waste minimization, through upgrading of particulate waste products and the recovery of secondary resources for industrial, agricultural or social use.

Situated within the richest oil area in the world, the Arabian Gulf represents a stressed ecosystem with scarce published data and environmental studies.

The oil-related activities cause significant damages to different ecosystem components such as coral reefs, algal mats, mangrove and other habitats. In addition to the increasing potential of pollution and its adverse effect on the ecosystem, oil spills and relevant implications can severely affect the main source of desalinated water for the Gulf countries due to their limited water resources. Interest in pollution issues associated with Arabian Gulf has been growing in the last few years. These issues include identification and documentation of the major sources of oil pollution in the Gulf region, evaluation of the analytical methods used to identify the different types of pollutants, review of the recent advances in oil pollution impact treatment and prevention, develop stronger cooperation ties between interested members of the community, and encourage awareness of the oil pollution as a serious environmental problem in the region.

This book compiles recent studies addressing the above issues grouped in four categories; monitoring and characterizing oil spills, modeling the fate of pollutants and oil slicks in marine water, environmental effects of oil pollution on the ecosystem components, and combating, prevention and treatment of oil pollution.
* Studies oil pollution issues in association with the Arabian Gulf
* Compiles recent case studies conducted in the Arabian Gulf
* Addresses diverse topics related to pollution issues in the marine water in general and in the Arabian Gulf in particular

This book presents a detailed history of chemical warfare development during the First World War and discusses design approaches to gas masks and the performance of new filter materials that decontaminate chemical warfare agents (CWA) when applied in the vapor phase. It describes multifunctional nanocomposites containing zinc and zirconium (hydr)oxides, graphite oxide and silver or gold nanoparticles as reactive adsorbents for the degradation of the CWAs vapors. In addition it examines in detail the surface properties that are most important in the mineralization performance.

This volume presents up-to-date information on the status and assessment of water resources in Slovakia and methods for their development. The major themes include key facts about Slovakian water resources, their assessment and development; water supply and demand; irrigation water; groundwater; water and sediment quality with a focus on mining water; wastewater management in Slovakia; and rainwater management. The book closes with general conclusions and recommendations for future research. It is a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers as well as for decision makers involved in sustainable development.

This proceedings volume gathers selected papers presented at the Chinese Materials Conference 2017 (CMC2017), held in Yinchuan City, Ningxia, China, on July 06-12, 2017. This book covers a wide range of energy conversion and storage materials, thermoelectric materials and devices, nuclear materials, solar energy materials and solar cells, minerals and oil and gas materials, photocatalytic materials for energy production, eco-materials, and environmental engineering materials. The Chinese Materials Conference (CMC) is the most important serial conference of the Chinese Materials Research Society (C-MRS) and has been held each year since the early 1990s. The 2017 installment included 37 Symposia covering four fields: Advances in energy and environmental materials; High performance structural materials; Fundamental research on materials; and Advanced functional materials. More than 5500 participants attended the congress, and the organizers received more than 700 technical papers. Based on the recommendations of symposium organizers and after peer reviewing, 490 papers have been included in the present proceedings, which showcase the latest original research results in the field of materials, achieved by more than 300 research groups at various universities and research institutes.

"Transformation and Utilization of Carbon Dioxide"shows the various organic, polymeric and inorganic compounds which result from the transformation of carbon dioxide through chemical, photocatalytic, electrochemical, inorganic and biological processes. The book consists of twelve chapters demonstrating interesting examples of these reactions, depending on the types of reaction and catalyst. It also includes two chapters dealing with the utilization of carbon dioxide as a reaction promoter and presents a wide range of examples of chemistry and chemical engineering with carbon dioxide. "Transformation and Utilization of Carbon Dioxide"is a collective work of reviews illustrative of recent advances in the transformation and utilization of carbon dioxide. This book is interesting and useful to a wide readership in the various fields of chemical science and engineering.

Bhalchandra Bhanage is a professor of industrial and engineering chemistry at Institute of Chemical Technology, India.

Masahiko Arai is a professor of chemical engineering at Hokkaido University, Japan."

Industrial Disasters, Toxic Waste, and Community Impact focuses on hazardous and toxic wastes releases, industrial disasters, the consequent contamination of communities and the environment, and the subsequent social impacts, including adverse health effects, deaths and property destruction, psychosocial problems, and community disruption. This book explains the emergence of a sociological study of risk and of natural, technological, and hybrid disasters, along with a review of the accumulated body of knowledge in the field. It is unique in its integration of sociological perspectives with perspectives from other disciplines when discussing the problems posed by technological hazards both in advanced industrialized societies and in the underdeveloped world. Francis O. Adeola extends the field through an innovative presentation of topics which up to now have had sparse treatment in sociology texts. This book starts by presenting the sociology of hazardous waste, risk, and disasters as a relatively new development, engendering both a growing passion and an increasing volume of empirical research among scholars. Next, it describes how hazardous and toxic wastes disposal, exposure, remediation, and proximate adverse health consequences have risen to the level of endemic social problem both in the United States and around the world. After discussing these cases in relation to contemporary theories of industrial and organizational disasters, Adeola delves into classifying of hazardous wastes, indicating the characteristics of each type of waste, and identifying what makes them especially dangerous to people and the environment. Other major topics addressed in the rest of the book include electronic waste (e-waste) as a new species of trouble in terms of the volume and toxicity of global e-waste generation and management, the environmental and health risks of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), case studies of contaminated communities within the United States and across the globe, the international flows of toxic waste, analysis of risk and environmental contamination by race and ethnicity in the United States, and the juxtaposition of the issues of environmental justice and human rights. With its many contributions to environmental sociology, Industrial Disasters, Toxic Waste, and Community Impact will be a valuable addition to the libraries of students, scholars, and practitioners interested in the intersection of toxic waste releases, human exposure to contaminants, and public health.

This text details the plant-assisted remediation method, "phytoremediation", which involves the interaction of plant roots and associated rhizospheric microorganisms for the remediation of soil contaminated with high levels of metals, metalloids, fuel and oil hydrocarbons, nano particles, pesticides, solvents, organic compounds and various other contaminants. Many chapters highlight and compare the efficiency and economic advantages of phytoremediation and nano-phytoremediation to currently practiced soil and water treatment practices. Volume 6 of Phytoremediation: Management of Environmental Contaminants continues the series. Taken together, the six volumes provide a broad-based global synopsis of the current applications of phytoremediation using plants and the microbial communities associated with their roots to decontaminate terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

This book is a systematic compilation of the most recent body of knowledge in the rapidly developing research area of greenhouse gas interaction with clay systems. Unexpected results of the most recent studies - such as unusually high sorption capacity and sorption hysteresis of swelling clays -stimulated theoretical activity in this fascinating field. Classical molecular dynamics (MD) explains swelling caused by intercalation of water molecules and to a certain degree of CO2 molecules in clay interlayer. However, unusual frequency shifts in the transient infrared fingerprints of the intercalated molecules and the following accelerated carbonation can be tackled only via quantum mechanical modeling. This book provides a streamlined (from simple to complex) guide to the most advanced research efforts in this field.

Pollution has no borders. This popular 70's saying from early ecologists is surprisingly still true nowadays despite overwhelming scientific evidence and public awareness of the occurrence of artificial toxic substances in water, food, air, living organisms and the environment. This book presents advanced reviews on pollutant occurrence, transfer, toxicity and remediation. The chapter on school air quality by Dambruoso et al. highlights the overlooked health issue of airborne pollutants in buildings. Children are particularly threatened because they spend 90% of their time indoors, even in summer. The chapter on industrial wastewater pollutants by Dsikowitzky and Schwarzbauer reviews pollutants from textile, petrochemical, paper, tire, chemical and pharmaceutical plants. The authors describe advanced analytical methods and ecotoxicity tests. Industrial pollutants include dioxins and furans that are also reviewed in the chapter by Mudhoo et al. The chapter on fly ash by Gianoncelli et al. presents many techniques to treat fly ash and, in turn, decrease pollutant concentrations. The authors also explain that fly ash can be recycled in agriculture, buildings and geopolymers. The chapter on antifouling paints used for ship protection, by Sousa et al., highlights the occurrence of toxic organotins in human organs such as heart, liver and breast milk. The chapter on surfactants by Rebello et al. focuses on safety concerns for humans and the ecosystems. Remediation techniques and green surfactants are presented. The chapters on toxic metals by Nava-Ruiz and Mendez-Armenta, Abarikwu and Ristic et al. describe sources, monitoring and diseases induced by lead, mercury, cadmium and thallium. The chapter on carcinogenic nitrosamines by Li et al. presents techniques and materials such as zeolites to remediate liquids and smoke containing nitrosamines.

This practical reference examines the structure and properties of the atmosphere, including listings of compounds in clouds, fog, rain, snow, and ice; a listing of compounds detected in the stratosphere; and a compendium of compounds in indoor air. An introduction to carcinogenicity and bioassay of atmospheric compounds is also presented. Readers will find the extensive cross-referencing especially useful--compounds can be located by chemical type, name, CAS registry number, or source.

The handbook Global Environmental Change is intended to serve as a reliable and comprehensive resource to attend the needs of researchers, teachers, students, and professionals working in science and policy aspects relevant to environment and sustainability. Entries in the handbook are arranged by major section, and are extensively cross-referenced to allow users to find related titles in a user-friendly way. The handbook is available as a printed volume and as an on-line reference work.

The book deals primarily with the aspects like energy resources and its proper utilization, disposal of various forms of wastes and its effects and effects of major catastrophic events like nuclear disasters, global warming, etc. It also deals with the choice of suitable disposal sites for solid and hazardous waste, which is growing at an extremely rapid pace due to rapid industrialization, population growth (primarily in countries like India and China) and urbanization. In addition groundwater contamination due to various causes and its effect on the food chain is also amply discussed. The book is specifically aimed with the state-of-art information regarding research and development in these areas of study, coupled to extensive modelling and case based results obtained, both from India as well as other countries. The book is extremely instructive for the students, research workers, scientists, faculty members in Applied Physics, Solid Earth Geophysics, Radiometric Methods and Exploration, Ground Water Geochemistry, Mathematical Modeling Techniques in Earth Sciences, Near Surface Geophysics and Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Who gets to breathe clean air? Who benefits from the cheaper products produced with dirty air? The answers, as the contributors to Smoke and Mirrors tell us, are sometimes as gray as the air itself.

From the coal factory chimneys in Manchester in the late nineteenth century to the smog hanging over Los Angeles in the late twentieth century, air pollution has long been one of the greatest threats to our environment. In this important collection of original essays, the leading environmental scientists and social scientists examine the politics of air pollution policies and help us to understand the ways these policies have led to, idiosyncratic, effective, ineffective, and even disastrous choices about what we choose to put into and take out of the air. Offering historical, contemporary and cross-national perspectives, this volume provides a refreshing new approach to understanding how air pollution policies have evolved over time.

This work examines the waters of marine ports as unique integrated aquatic ecosystems. It regards marine ports as entities comprising components of natural and anthropogenic origin, including pelagic, periphytal and benthal subsystems. Using selected Black and Azov Sea ports as examples, the book discusses the hydrodynamics and water exchange, which are weakened in ports compared with open coastal zones. It reflects consequences of the presence of hydrobionts and the accumulation of organic matter, which are promoted by the variety of hard substrata and the absence of fishery. The book is divided into five main chapters. The first chapter describes the general characteristics of the marine ports at the northern coast of the Black and Azov Seas and their shipping channels. Chapters 2 to 4 discuss the main abiotic and biotic peculiarities of the pelagial, periphytal and benthal subsystems of those marine ports, and chapter 5 deals with tropho-dynamic processes in their ecosystems. A concluding section reflects recommendations how the ecosystems of ports in non-tidal seas may be ameliorated.

Bioremediation is the use of microorganisms' metabolism to degrade waste contaminants (sewage, domestic, and industrial effluents) into non-toxic or less toxic materials by natural biological processes. Remediation through fungi-or mycoremediation-has multifarious possibilities in applied remediation engineering and the future of environmental sustainability. Fungi have the biochemical and ecological capability to degrade environmental organic chemicals and to decrease the risk associated with metals, semi-metals, noble metals, and radionuclides, either by chemical modification or by manipulating chemical bioavailability. Additionally, the capability of these fungi to form extended mycelia networks, the low specificity of their catabolic enzymes, and their using pollutants as a growth substrate make these fungi well suited for bioremediation processes. Their mycelia exhibit the robustness of adapting to highly limiting environmental conditions often experienced in the presence of persistent pollutants, which makes them more useful compared to other microbes. However, despite dominating the living biomass in soil and being abundant in aquatic ecosystems, fungi have not been exploited for the bioremediation of such environments. This book covers the various types of fungi and associated fungal processes used to clean up waste and wastewaters in contaminated environments and discusses future potential applications.

The series Topics in Current Chemistry Collections presents critical reviews from the journal Topics in Current Chemistry organized in topical volumes. The scope of coverage is all areas of chemical science including the interfaces with related disciplines such as biology, medicine and materials science. The goal of each thematic volume is to give the non-specialist reader, whether in academia or industry, a comprehensive insight into an area where new research is emerging which is of interest to a larger scientific audience. Each review within the volume critically surveys one aspect of that topic and places it within the context of the volume as a whole. The most significant developments of the last 5 to 10 years are presented using selected examples to illustrate the principles discussed. The coverage is not intended to be an exhaustive summary of the field or include large quantities of data, but should rather be conceptual, concentrating on the methodological thinking that will allow the non-specialist reader to understand the information presented. Contributions also offer an outlook on potential future developments in the field. Chapters "Sonocatalysis: A Potential Sustainable Pathway for the Valorization of Lignocellulosic Biomass and Derivatives", "Valorisation of Biowastes for the Production of Green Materials Using Chemical Methods" and "Green and Sustainable Separation of Natural Products from Agro-Industrial Waste: Challenges, Potentialities, and Perspectives on Emerging Approaches" are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Written by an award-winning historian of science and technology, Planet in Peril describes the top four mega-dangers facing humankind - climate change, nukes, pandemics, and artificial intelligence. It outlines the solutions that have been tried, and analyzes why they have thus far fallen short. These four existential dangers present a special kind of challenge that urgently requires planet-level responses, yet today's international institutions have so far failed to meet this need. The book lays out a realistic pathway for gradually modifying the United Nations over the coming century so that it can become more effective at coordinating global solutions to humanity's problems. Neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but pragmatic and constructive, the book explores how to move past ideological polarization and global political fragmentation. Unafraid to take intellectual risks, Planet in Peril sketches a plausible roadmap toward a safer, more democratic future for us all.

The use of water for industrial purposes is of foremost importance. It is used as a coolant and industrial activities dealing with power generation, steel and iron, paper and pulp and oil require very large amounts of water. The industry, therefore, resorts to large scale abstraction of water from natural water bodies. This water is often treated with chemicals to combat operational problems like biofouling and corrosion. Such withdrawal and subsequent discharge of large amounts of water have the potential to impart significant impact on the recipient water body. The organisms drawn along with the cooling water, as well as those residing at the discharge zone, are subjected to a combination of mechanical, thermal and chemical stress on a continuous basis.

This book is the final installation in a three-volume series synthesizing 30 years of mercury research in the Florida Everglades. The first part of this book evaluates the occurrence of trends in both biota mercury concentrations and atmospheric mercury deposition. Through both empirical and deterministic analyses, the likely drivers of biota trends are identified. These analyses help lay the predicate for devising an overall strategy to mitigate and manage the Everglades mercury problem. The book concludes with a model analysis of the likely benefits and uncertainty attendant with implementing the leading candidate strategy for best reducing the Everglades mercury problem.

This book offers an overview of the recent studies and advances in environmental catalysis by nanomaterials, considering both the fundamental and the technological aspects. It offers contributions in different areas of environmental catalysis, including the catalytic and photocatalytic abatement of environmentally hazardous effluents from stationary or mobile sources, the valorization of waste and the production of sustainable energy. In other words, this monograph provides an overview of modern environmental and energy related applications with a particular emphasis to nano-sized catalytic materials. Recent concepts, experimental data and advanced theories are reported in this book to give evidence of the environmental and sustainable applications that can be found in the highly interdisciplinary field of catalysis.

Monitoring of Harmful Algae Blooms is a timely guide to the research techniques in use to monitor visible algae blooms and through remote sensing, including infrared techniques, predict them through mathematical modeling. Drawing on current and future satellite data, the book presents visible perspectives on a more efficient HAB monitoring system for the future. It also emphasizes practical applications, impacting on marine ecology, national economy, health, food and safety and quality assurance.

The studies in this dissertation aim at advancing our scientific understandings about physical processes involved in the aerosol-cloud-precipitation interaction and quantitatively assessing the impacts of aerosols on the cloud systems with diverse scales over the globe on the basis of the observational data analysis and various modeling studies. As recognized in the Fifth Assessment Report by the Inter-government Panel on Climate Change, the magnitude of radiative forcing by atmospheric aerosols is highly uncertain, representing the largest uncertainty in projections of future climate by anthropogenic activities. By using a newly implemented cloud microphysical scheme in the cloud-resolving model, the thesis assesses aerosol-cloud interaction for distinct weather systems, ranging from individual cumulus to mesoscale convective systems. This thesis also introduces a novel hierarchical modeling approach that solves a long outstanding mismatch between simulations by regional weather models and global climate models in the climate modeling community. More importantly, the thesis provides key scientific solutions to several challenging questions in climate science, including the global impacts of the Asian pollution. As scientists wrestle with the complexities of climate change in response to varied anthropogenic forcing, perhaps no problem is more challenging than the understanding of the impacts of atmospheric aerosols from air pollution on clouds and the global circulation.