How the US Environmental Protection Agency designed the governance of risk and forged its legitimacy over the course of four decades.
The open access edition of this book was made possible by ...generous funding from the MIT Libraries.
The US Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970 to protect the public health and environment, administering and enforcing a range of statutes and programs. Over four decades, the EPA has been a risk bureaucracy, formalizing many of the methods of the scientific governance of risk, from quantitative risk assessment to risk ranking.
Demortain traces the creation of these methods for the governance of risk, the controversies to which they responded, and the controversies that they aroused in turn. He discusses the professional networks in which they were conceived; how they were used; and how they served to legitimize the EPA. Demortain argues that the EPA is structurally embedded in controversy, resulting in constant reevaluation of its credibility and fueling the evolution of the knowledge and technologies it uses to produce decisions and to create a legitimate image of how and why it acts on the environment. He describes the emergence and institutionalization of the risk assessment–risk management framework codified in the National Research Council's Red Book, and its subsequent unraveling as the agency's mission evolved toward environmental justice, ecological restoration, and sustainability, and as controversies over determining risk gained vigor in the 1990s.
Through its rise and fall at the EPA, risk decision-making enshrines the science of a bureaucracy that learns how to make credible decisions and to reform itself, amid constant conflicts about the environment, risk, and its own legitimacy.
De Vleeschauwer K., Weustenraad J., Nolf C., Wolfs V., De Meulder B., Shannon K., Willems P. 2014 Green-blue water in the city: quantification of impact of source control versus end-of-pipe solutions ...on sewer and river floods. Gersonius B., Nasruddin F., Ashley R., Jeuken A., Pathirana A., Zevenbergen C. 2012 Developing the evidence base for mainstreaming adaptation of stormwater systems to climate change. National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Office of Research and Development, US Environmental Protection Agency.
Concerns for arsenic exposure are not limited to toxic waste sites and massive poisoning events. Chronic exposure continues to be a major public health problem worldwide, affecting hundreds of ...millions of persons.
We reviewed recent information on worldwide concerns for arsenic exposures and public health to heighten awareness of the current scope of arsenic exposure and health outcomes and the importance of reducing exposure, particularly during pregnancy and early life.
We synthesized the large body of current research pertaining to arsenic exposure and health outcomes with an emphasis on recent publications.
Locations of high arsenic exposure via drinking water span from Bangladesh, Chile, and Taiwan to the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maximum contaminant level (MCL) in drinking water is 10 µg/L; however, concentrations of > 3,000 µg/L have been found in wells in the United States. In addition, exposure through diet is of growing concern. Knowledge of the scope of arsenic-associated health effects has broadened; arsenic leaves essentially no bodily system untouched. Arsenic is a known carcinogen associated with skin, lung, bladder, kidney, and liver cancer. Dermatological, developmental, neurological, respiratory, cardiovascular, immunological, and endocrine effects are also evident. Most remarkably, early-life exposure may be related to increased risks for several types of cancer and other diseases during adulthood.
These data call for heightened awareness of arsenic-related pathologies in broader contexts than previously perceived. Testing foods and drinking water for arsenic, including individual private wells, should be a top priority to reduce exposure, particularly for pregnant women and children, given the potential for life-long effects of developmental exposure.
Short-term exposure to ambient air pollution has been associated with lower lung function. Few studies have examined whether these associations are detectable at relatively low levels of pollution ...within current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards.
To examine exposure to ambient air pollutants within EPA standards and lung function in a large cohort study.
We included 3,262 participants of the Framingham Offspring and Third Generation cohorts living within 40 km of the Harvard Supersite monitor in Boston, Massachusetts (5,358 examinations, 1995-2011) who were not current smokers, with previous-day pollutant levels in compliance with EPA standards. We compared lung function (FEV1 and FVC) after previous-day exposure to particulate matter less than 2.5 μm in diameter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and ozone (O3) in the "moderate" range of the EPA Air Quality Index to exposure in the "good" range. We also examined linear relationships between moving averages of pollutant concentrations 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 days before spirometry and lung function.
Exposure to pollutant concentrations in the "moderate" range of the EPA Air Quality Index was associated with a 20.1-ml lower FEV1 for PM2.5 (95% confidence interval CI, -33.4, -6.9), a 30.6-ml lower FEV1 for NO2 (95% CI, -60.9, -0.2), and a 55.7-ml lower FEV1 for O3 (95% CI, -100.7, -10.8) compared with the "good" range. The 1- and 2-day moving averages of PM2.5, NO2, and O3 before testing were negatively associated with FEV1 and FVC.
Short-term exposure to PM2.5, NO2, and O3 within current EPA standards was associated with lower lung function in this cohort of adults.
•Co2+-laddered-heterojunction solar photocatalyst synthesized by microwave synthesis.•Nanospheres of ∼20–40 nm core coated with ZnO shell in a controlled manner.•This heterojunction photocatalyst ...harvests full-solar-spectrum.•Scavenger-free photodegradation of dyes, pharmaceuticals and microplastics.•Reliable new generation solar-photocatalyst for degradation of hazardous pollutants.
Novel and versatile photocatalysts that can work under direct sunlight are in high demand especially for mitigating water contamination. Some of the burgeoning pollutants in water are textile dyes, organic molecules, pharmaceutical products etc. In view of their extensive use, polymer wastes such as microplastics in water bodies are a new cause of concern. Using direct sunlight for the degradation of such pollutants needs the development of solar photocatalysts. We report on a novel next-generation solar-photocatalyst, consisting laddered-heterojunction formed between Co2+- substituted zinc-ferrite core & zinc-oxide shell, to harvest full-solar-spectrum in scavenger-free photodegradation of dyes, pharmaceuticals and microplastics. Using in-house developed protocols and Microwave-assisted-solvothermal-technique (MAST), nanospheres of ∼20–40 nm were synthesized first followed by ZnO shell growth in a controlled manner (∼80–180 nm) to obtain the core-shell photocatalyst nanospheres using another microwave approach. The absorption of the photocatalyst could be extended upto 852 nm by judiciously doping with Co2+- enabling the utilization of UV–Vis-NIR region of sunlight. As evident from the valence band spectra, the Co2+ substitution introduced free electrons in the conduction band of ZnFe2O4 that resulted in the formation of laddered type-1 heterojunction. With the optimized Co2+content and ZnO-shell thickness, solar-photocatalytic degradation of Methyl-Orange enhanced 6-&12-times respectively. Complete degradation of antibiotics like Ciprofloxacin (CF), Norfloxacin (NF), and Ofloxacin (OF) under direct sunlight was achieved within an hour. This unusual enhanced activity was attributed to the inclusion of Co2+, conducive band positions leading to higher absorption and reduced recombination. We also showed the degradation of polypropylene microfibers used in face masks to combat the COVID-19 outbreak could also be degraded., indicating their potential to combat microplastic pollution. Our novel photocatalyst holds promise for sunlight-assisted degradation of a wide range of hazardous pollutants.
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Being Together in Placeexplores the landscapes that convene Native and non-Native people into sustained and difficult negotiations over their radically different interests and concerns. Grounded in ...three sites-the Cheslatta-Carrier traditional territory in British Columbia; the Wakarusa Wetlands in northeastern Kansas; and the Waitangi Treaty Grounds in Aotearoa/New Zealand-this book highlights the challenging, tentative, and provisional work of coexistence around such contested spaces as wetlands, treaty grounds, fishing spots, recreation areas, cemeteries, heritage trails, and traditional village sites. At these sites, activists learn how to articulate and defend their intrinsic and life-supportive ways of being, particularly to those who are intent on damaging or destroying these places.
Using ethnographic research and a geographic perspective, Soren C. Larsen and Jay T. Johnson show how the communities in these regions challenge the power relations that structure the ongoing (post)colonial encounter in liberal democratic settler-states. Emerging from their conversations with activists was a distinctive sense that the places for which they cared had agency, a "call" that pulled them into dialogue, relationships, and action with human and nonhuman others. This being-together-in-place, they find, speaks in a powerful way to the vitalities of coexistence: where humans and nonhumans are working to decolonize their relationships; where reciprocal guardianship is being stitched back together in new and unanticipated ways; and where a new kind of "place thinking" is emerging on the borders of colonial power.
A significant challenge in toxicology is the ‘too many chemicals’ problem. Human beings and environmental species are exposed to tens of thousands of chemicals, only a small percentage of which have ...been tested thoroughly using standard in vivo test methods. This study reviews several approaches that are being developed to deal with this problem by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under the umbrella of the ToxCast programme (http://epa.gov/ncct/toxcast/). The overall approach is broken into seven tasks: (i) identifying biological pathways that, when perturbed, can lead to toxicity; (ii) developing high‐throughput in vitro assays to test chemical perturbations of these pathways; (iii) identifying the universe of chemicals with likely human or ecological exposure; (iv) testing as many of these chemicals as possible in the relevant in vitro assays; (v) developing hazard models that take the results of these tests and identify chemicals as being potential toxicants; (vi) generating toxicokinetics data on these chemicals to predict the doses at which these hazard pathways would be activated; and (vii) developing exposure models to identify chemicals for which these hazardous dose levels could be achieved. This overall strategy is described and briefly illustrated with recent examples from the ToxCast programme.
Energy supply and environmental protection by reducing pollutants are among the main challenges these days. As a clean and sustainable source, solar energy is capable of generating thermal and ...electrical power. In this regard, Iraq is one of the regions with high solar energy harvesting potential. A numerical model was developed and validated by experimental findings in MATLAB software. This model, which also included geometrical and optical characteristics, was developed using information from four cities representative of different climates in Iraq: Baghdad, Samawa, Mosul, and Al-Qa'im. This study examined the effects of climate on the performance of direct absorption parabolic solar collectors used for energy production in Iraq. According to the results, solar collectors in Samaveh provide the highest thermal energy efficiency (up to 66.5%). Even thoth, the highest exergy efficiency is found in Al-Qa'im (36.21%). From an environmental point of view, the collector in Al-Qa'im has the highest CO2 mitigation (2.73 kg per m2 of collector) every year. As compared to other cities, Al-Qa'im and Samawah have a high thermal efficiency and solar intensity, which can lead to more water and energy savings.
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