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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Waste management
Although present day politics seems to be preoccupied with questions of economic growth and full employment, the basic environmental problems stemming from the interactions of the economic sphere with global, regional and local environments persist and will have an even greater impact in the future. If economy and ecology are not reconciled in the years to come, mankind will not have a sustainable future on Earth. The typical negation of environmental problems in times of economic crisis is partially due to the fact that environmental and health damages of economic activities are neither priced nor included in our market price system. This allows politicians to focus their attention on insufficient economic indicators which do not reflect the actual development of the welfare of society. If economic lead indicators like GDP or balance of trade figures were better integrated with information on the environmental and health costs caused by the seemingly beneficial economic development, politicians might have better guidance as to what policy choices would benefit society most.
The use of biotechnical processes in control of environmental pollution and in haz ardous waste treatment is viewed as an advantageous alternative or adduct to phys ical chemical treatment technologies. Yet, the development and implementation of both conventional and advanced biotechnologies in predictable and efficacious field applications suffer from numerous technical, regulatory, and societal uncertainties. With the application of modern molecular biology and genetic engineering, there is clear potential for biotechnical developments that will lead to breakthroughs in controlled and optimized hazardous waste treatment for in situ and unit process use. There is, however, great concern that the development of these technologies may be needlessly hindered in their applications and that the fundamental research base may not be able to sustain continued technology development. Some of these issues have been discussed in a fragmented fashion within the research and development community. A basic research agenda has been established to promote a sustainable cross-disciplinary technology base. This agenda includes developing new and improved strains for biodegradation, improving bioanalytical methods to measure strain and biodegradation performance, and providing an in tegrated environmental and reactor systems analysis approach for process control and optimization."
The volume contains the main papers presented at the 1994 EUROTOX Congress, Basel, Switzerland, August 21-24, 1994. Toxicology has become a less descriptive science because more importance has been placed on the mechanisms underlying toxic effects. This is reflected in symposia and workshops devoted to species differences in organ toxicity, receptor-mediated toxicity and stereochemical effects of xenobiotics. Recent progress in the fields of immunotoxicology, ecotoxicology, and neurotoxicology is highlighted and documented together with the present discussion on harmonized regulatory guidelines.
Solid waste is one of the newest fields to achieve recognition as a sub-discipline in environmental engineering. As such, one is hard-pressed to find thorough coverage of related topics in academic curricula. Many graduate programs in environmental engineering have one introductory course in waste control. A handful of texts, some excellent, exist to serve this need. Recent purported crises in solid waste management have forced the understanding that something beyond the traditional control methods may be appropriate. Resource recovery is the correct nomenclature for the longest standing alternative approach seeking to extract materials from the waste stream for eventual re-use in one or another beneficial fashion. Several books have evolved, covering various approaches. Design approaches therein have borrowed heavily from other disciplines, ceasing where solid waste differs from the feeds to be processed. These books were oriented towards knowledgeable practitioners. This work attempts to present waste processing as a study in unit operations appropriate to university study at the graduate level. The study of unit operations is typical in environmental engineering. These unit operations are different. A variety of student backgrounds are suitable. However, a familiarity with the basics of waste control, such as would be gained from one of the introductory courses mentioned above, is assumed, as is a sound quantitative background. It is hoped that this work fills an empty niche. Contents 1 Waste as a Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . 1 . . . . ."
This book provides a basis by which instruments and transducers can be selected, assembled and integrated with a computer to measure and control physical processes in an accurate and predictable manner. It consists of two parts, the first of which lays the theoretical foundation for the second. First the Fourier analysis of signals are summarized. Then, from a systems point of view, the following chapters introduce the important aspects of filters, amplifiers and analog-to-digital converters. The second half of the book first discusses in depth the importance of the timing of the computer with its instruments, transducers and actuators. It then summarizes the physical and functional aspects of transducers and actuators and gives numerous detailed examples of how they can be integrated into computer controlled experiments and processes.
Applied geophysics were developed to explore the raw materials
needed by civilization. Today it is used to investigate the extent
and nature of buried contaminated waste and leachates.
In the USA, Western and Central Europe, there are many large-scale polluted sites that are too large to be cleaned up economically with available technologies. The pollution is caused by heavy industries to soils and sediments in waterways and reservoirs. Since these areas are expected to remain polluted for many years, it is necessary to take a long-term view to insure that the capacity to retain the contaminants is not diminished and to understand the potential for large-scale contaminant mobilization at these sites triggered by changing environmental conditions. This book provides information for predicting long-term changes and making risk assessments and describes the approach of geochemical engineering to handling large-scale polluted sites.
Contributors from twenty-two nations address various projects in their native countries to either develop, demonstrate, or facilitate the adoption of cleaner technologies and cleaner products. Reviewing the environmental situation in their respective countries and discussing the development and adoption of pollution prevention technologies, the authors provide thought-provoking and incisive treatments of the subject. An extremely comprehensive index enables the reader to retrieve focus on the information of interest quickly and efficiently.
There is a growing need for cooperation between disciplines, not only to deal with the burning problems of the present, but to study the interaction of societies and their ecosystems in the past. In the 1970s studies in Environmental History were largely confined to North America. Recent years have brought about a vast increase in the "amount, the quality and the scope of scholarship on historical interactions between human (social and economic) de velopment and the biosphere in Europe, both East and West. This broad interest in environmental history may have been heightened and sharpened by the dangers of unbridled technology and unlimited growth, which are becoming more and more manifest. However, for several reasons it is still difficult to become familiar with the different approaches to this new and interdisciplinary of study. Many fields of thought - biology, anthropology, field geography, sociology and history - are involved; the relevant books and articles are hard to find and a coherent theoretical framework is still lacking, because the key issues have yet to be submitted to a thorough scholarly debate. It is hoped that the pre sent volume will make a contribution towards overcoming those shortcomings."
Sustainable development and pollution control are the key factors in the development of strategies for the solution of environmental problems. This book offers an integrated treatment of all aspects of environmental protection and remediation. The presentation encompasses physical and chemical fundamentals, technological approaches as well as ecological, economic, and ethical aspects. The discussion of regulatory issues includes a comparison of environmental legislation in the US, Japan and Europe. The book addresses students as a comprehensive text and serves as a handy reference for environmental professionals in industry, consulting services, administration, and environmental agencies and associations.
This series is dedicated to serving the growing community of scholars and practitioners concerned with the principles and applications of environmental management. Each volume is a thorough treatment of a specific topic of importance for proper management practices. A fundamental objective of these books is to help the reader discern and implement man's stewardship of our environment and the world's renewable resources. For we must strive to understand the relation ship between man and nature, act to bring harmony to it, and nurture an environment that is both stable and productive. These objectives have often eluded us because the pursuit of other individual and societal goals has diverted us from a course of living in balance with the environment. At times, therefore, the environmental manager may have to exert restrictive control, which is usually best applied to man, not nature. Attempts to alter or harness nature have often failed or backfired, as exemplified by the results of imprudent use of herbicides, fertilizers, water, and other agents. Each book in this series will shed light on the fundamental and applied aspects of environmental management. It is hoped that each will help solve a practical and serious environmental problem."
I am pleased to be able to introduce this book by Monsieur lean-Claude Gall, firstly because it is a book, secondly because its author has been a colleague for 15 years, and finally because it is a book which demonstrates the growing importance of Palaeobiology. "Because it is a book." I have already commented else where on the value which the Earth Science community places on a book. And here I am speaking, not of a thesis or a specialised memoir, which are always precious, but of a manual or text, which draws on the experts in the service of all. In the years preceding and following the Second World War, the number of "books" written by French geologists could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Today I am happy to see that the number of geological "books" is increas ing in France, taking the word "geology" in its broadest sense. This I see as a sign of the growth of the Earth Sciences."
Acidification is a universal problem at all mining sites in which oxygenated water comes in contact with sulfide minerals or other reduced sulfur compounds. An International Workshop was held in September 1995 at the Department for Inland Water Research of the UFZ-Centre for Environmental Research in Magdeburg on the limnology of lakes created by open-cast lignite mining, emphasizing the often observed geogenic acidification after oxidation of pyrite. The volume has 25 chapters including a chapter with results of group discussions about the topics mentioned above and further problems that were identified during the meeting. The monograph gives a baseline of the state of science on the worldwide problem of geogenic acidification of lakes following human mining activities.
It is not long ago that scientists realized, our study and understanding of most environmental problems call for a cross-sectional, more holistic view. In fact, environmental geochemistry became one of the legs to stand on for such a required interdisciplinary approach. Geochemists do not only describe the elemental composition and pro cesses of natural systems, such as soils, ground or surface waters, but they also establish the methodology to quantify material rates and turnover. Today, geochemical expertise has become indispensable when monitoring the fate of noxious chemicals, like-metallic pollu tants released to the environment. To know how trace metals will be have and react in complex systems under changing conditions, might provide us with a more realistic estimate of what is really acceptable in terms of quality standards. This would ease the formulation of ade quate environmental objectives, strategies and criteria to handle emerging pollution situations. Moreover, to take notice of geochemi cal principles will support our endeavor to improve the way we deal with limited and nonrenewable resources. It is exactly here, i. e. at the interface between natural elemental processes and the way we use them, that geochemical approaches meet the demand of technical at tempts to minimize the impact of environmentally relevant activities, like mining, waste handling, or manufacturing. The consideration to include geochemically derived concepts into the search for technical solutions is not really new, but has a long tradition during the evolution of modern societies."
Protection of coastal waters from direct pollution by coastal cities is a vital task in preserving marine ecosystems and promoting human health. This book, edited by two leading experts on wastewater management for coastal cities, delves deeply into the ecological and oceanographic fundamentals that are essential for understanding of what happens to wastes discharged into the nearshore marine environment. It explains the requirements for rational engineering design and operation of the physical and institutional components of coastal city wastewater management, and it provides guidelines for hydraulic design, ocean outfall construction, monitoring, cost recovery, and other economic aspects. Case studies are included, drawn from the editors' worldwide field experience.
Metals in the hydrological cycle represent a very broad subject covering all parts of the geological cycle. The present version of this book, therefore, would not have been possible without the comments and suggestions for improvement on draft ver- sions of the various chapters by a large number of colleagues. We wish to express our gratitude to: P.A. Cawse (AERE, UK), J.N. Galloway (University of Virginia, USA) and S.E. Lindberg (Oak Ridge National Labo- ratory, USA) for reviewing the chapter on atmospheric trace metals. G. Batley (CSIRO, Australia) and B.T. Hart (Chisholm In- stitute of Technology, Australia) for reviewing the chapter on speciation of dissolved metals. E.K. Duursma (Delta Institute, The Netherlands), J.M. Bewers and P.H. Yeats (Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Canada) and D. Eisma (Netherlands Institute for Sea Re- search, the Netherlands) for reviewing the chapter on estuaries. P. Baccini (EAWAG, Switzerland) and W. Davison (Fresh- water Biological Association, UK) for reviewing the chapter on lakes. E.T. Degens (University of Hamburg, W-Germany) for re- viewing the chapter on the oceans, and J.P. Al (Public Works Department, The Netherlands) for reviewing most of the indi- vidual chapters. Without the collaboration of these colleagues this book would not have been possible in its present form.
Supercomputing is an important science and technology that enables the scientist or the engineer to simulate numerically very complex physical phenomena related to large-scale scientific, industrial and military applications. It has made considerable progress since the first NATO Workshop on High-Speed Computation in 1983 (Vol. 7 of the same series). This book is a collection of papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in Trondheim, Norway, in June 1989. It presents key research issues related to: - hardware systems, architecture and performance; - compilers and programming tools; - user environments and visualization; - algorithms and applications. Contributions include critical evaluations of the state-of-the-art and many original research results.
of metal interactions with subcellular biochemical systems usually either are metabolites of the system affected (porphyrinurias) or represent some specific function of a cellular system being impaired (proteinurias). One typically finds a continuum of symptoms, from the subtle or so-called "no effect" bio chemical and physiological indicators of exposure to severe clinical disease and death. This continuum is the basis of much of the controversy since many health officials follow the traditional practice of applying the "threshold health-effect" concept in evaluating the problems of environmental exposure to metals. The past decade or so, however, has seen a vast increase in our understanding of the effects of elevated concentrations of toxic metals in local populations and ecosystems. At the same time, there is a growing awareness that the effects of the metals which occur naturally in the environment must be distinguished from those imposed by the pollutant fraction. This point was amply document ed in a recent study of cadmium intake and cadmium in a number of human tissues in Sweden, Japan, and the United States, which showed fairly conclu sively that the background exposure in Japan was about threefold higher than in the other two countries (2). One immediate implication is that any health ef fect studies of cadmium in Japan using control groups within that country are liable to underestimate the difference between the exposed and the control groups simply because of the the high "background" intake."
For old and new studies in decision making and risk analysis, this book should stand at tlle watershed. Studies of conflict resolution and public policy will surely now have to take account of the model investigation provided by the IIASA team, and many things will not be the same again. This is a report of inquiries into the siting of liquefied energy gas (LEG) facilities in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The risks of transporting this highly combustible stuff, and the economic benefits of being able to bring a natural energy source from one side of the globe to the other, holding it, and piping it out as needed, make LEG a model case for studying the public response to dangerous technology. The dangers of LEG are differ ent from those of nuclear power, for instance, where the response too often becomes entangled with the fear of nuclear war. The dangers of LEG include unco trollable explosions, rather than insidious contami nation. But the degree of dangerousness is very much of the same order as that of nuclear power, and is at least as difficult to assess. In four different countries the constitutional procedures involved in obtaining approval of nuclear or LEG facilities are on record. The four case histories here are a model for comparative study of conflict resolu tion. The period over which the negotiations developed is much the same."
For the first time a state-of-the-art of present metal pollution along the coastline of Latin America is provided. This collection of papers from a conference held in August 1986 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is designed to inform readers of recent advances in an important, interdisciplinary field. Primary focus is on: - Metal Surveys, Metals in Sediments, Metals in Biota, Metal Transport and Cycles, Metal Monitoring. A final chapter combines conclusion, outlook and recommendations of how to master the critical situation of metal concentrations in coastal environments of Latin America. This book fills a long-standing gap in the literature and will be of prime interest to researchers, students and professionals in geology, biology and chemistry.
For a long time, lactic acid bacteria have played an indispensable
role in food production.
Experts in soil and environmental sciences as well as in the theory of wave propagation and numerical modeling methods provide a comprehensive account of different aspects of pollutant migration in soils, aquifers, and other geological formations. Emphasis is laid on the analysis of contributing phenomena and their interactions, modeling, and the practical use of such knowledge and models for guidance in disposal operations, preventive measures to minimize ecological damage, prediction of consequences of seepage, and design of remedial actions. Topics covered include the chemical behavior of soils, sorption and retardation, biochemistry of pollutants, ion exchange and kinetics of reactions in soils, measurement of adsorption and desorption, multiphase hydrodynamics, multicomponent wave theory and the coherence concept, nonlinear wave propagation in geological formations, multiphase convective transport, diffusion and fast reaction, modeling pollutant transport, numerical methods, dispersion of contaminants from landfills, risk analysis, water reuse, and radioactive soil contamination at Chernobyl.
Marine debris is a global pollution problem affecting marine life, maritime commerce and environmental quality. Scientists, policymakers and the public must be knowledgeable about the source, impact and control efforts if effective solutions are to be developed. Marine Debris addresses the origin of persistent solid waste in the ocean, from urban and rural discharges to waste from ships and the recreational use of oceans. The book identifies key issues from biological, technological, economic and legal perspectives, and gives a framework for controlling each of the main sources of marine debris.
Case Studies in Control presents a framework to facilitate the use of advanced control concepts in real systems based on two decades of research and over 150 successful applications for industrial end-users from various backgrounds. In successive parts the text approaches the problem of putting the theory to work from both ends, theoretical and practical. The first part begins with a stress on solid control theory and the shaping of that theory to solve particular instances of practical problems. It emphasizes the need to establish by experiment whether a model-derived solution will perform properly in reality. The second part focuses on real industrial applications based on the needs and requirements of end-users. Here, the engineering approach is dominant but with theoretical input of varying degree depending on the particular process involved. Following the illustrations of the progress that can be made from either extreme of the well-known theory-practice divide, the text proceeds to a third part related to the development of tools that enable simpler use of advanced methods, a need only partially met by available commercial products. Each case study represents a self-contained unit that shows an experimental application of a particular method, a practical solution to an industrial problem or a toolkit that makes control design and implementation easier or more efficient. Among the applications presented are: wastewater treatment; manufacturing of electrical motors ; temperature control of blow moulding; burn-protective garments quality assessment; and rapid prototyping. Written by contributors with a considerable record of industrially-applied research, Case Studies in Control will encourage interaction between industrial practitioners and academic researchers and be of benefit to both, helping to make theory realistic and practical implementation more thorough and efficacious. Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage the transfer of technology in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of new work in all aspects of industrial control.
The first summer study at IIASA brought together a cross-section of individ uals from different disciplines and nationalities. All the participants have had an interest in the role of risk analysis given the institutional arrangements which guide decision making for new technologies. This book contains edited versions of the papers presented at the meeting as well as a transcript of the discussions which took place. It provides the ingredients for a broader framework fcr studying the problems associated with technology and society where risk is representative of a much wider set of concerns than simply the probability and consequences of a hazardous accident. The Bundesministerium fuer Forschung und Technologie has an interest in promoting risk and safety research because of these new developments in society over the past ten years. In particular, there has been a diminished confidence in experts' statements on risk and a realization that many of the events which are being examined are not subject to detailed scientific analysis. There has also been an increasing recognition that distinctions must be made between analysis of the risk associated with an event and people's values and preferences. Another important development is the concern by the public that they participate more fully in the decision process on these issues. These concerns were articulated in both the papers and the open discussions at the summer study." |
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