Understanding environmental pollution [electronic resource] / Marquita K. Hill, Formerly of the University of Maine, Department of Chemical Engineering, and of Virginia Polytechnic Institute's Department of Biochemistry.

"Understanding Environmental Pollution examines pollution problems that range from the global to the personal for undergraduate students. The text contains well over 50% new material. Non-technical language is used, whenever possible to assist in understanding the subject matter. Students see that the responsibility for pollution is widely spread among individuals, themselves included, corporations and governments at all levels. To provide a background to better understand pollution, early chapters look at nature's services, toxicology and risk assessment. Sources of, and impacts of pollution are addressed along with means to reduce it. The text introduce the sometimes daunting pollution problems that confront us including air, water, global warming, energy, solid and hazardous waste, persistent chemicals, pesticides and pollution at home. International issues are often introduced and the inter-relationships between the local and international are seen. Although pollution prevention is emphasized in solving problems, students begin to see that more is needed. By the book's end we examine a circular economy with its closed-loop systems, where wastes and byproducts become raw materials, where water is recycled and energy used with increasing efficiency. We examine the tools available to work toward a CE, and become 2 aware of whole nations that, after strategizing begin to take steps toward a CE. Marquita Hill holds a PhD in Comparative Biochemistry from the University of California, Davis. She was, subsequently Assistant and then Associate Professor in the Biochemistry Department at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Later, at the University of Maine's Department of Chemical Engineering she conducted research funded by the US Department of Energy and the US EPA. Then, after educating herself as an environmental scientist, she taught courses in environmental pollution, which led to the text Understanding Environmental Pollution. She was co-founder of the Green Campus Consortium of Maine, an organization working toward sustainable environmental management in Maine's higher-education institutions. For nine years she served on an Advisory Committee for International Paper's Mill in Skowhegan, Maine. During those same years she was a visiting scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health"-- Provided by publisher.