Crisis Management of Chronic Pollution: Contaminated Soil and Human Health deals with a long term pollution problem, generated by the former use of organochlorine pesticides. Through a case study of the chlordecone pollution in the French West Indies, the authors illustrate a global and systemic mobilization of research institutions and public services. This "management model", together with its major results, the approach and lessons to be learned, could be useful to other situations. This book gathers all the works that have been carried out over the last ten years or more and links them to decision makers’ actions and stakeholders’ expectations. This reference fills a gap in the literature on chronic pollution.

Chronic pollution is permanent pollution produced either by repeated or continuous emissions of pollutants, or the presence of determined pollutants. Today, we all acknowledge the significance of pollutants in the air or in water contributing to poor health. Measures of air quality are often reported along with our daily weather, and the impacts of a lack of access to safe drinking water, or of industry discharging pollution into rivers and lakes, are well documented. Since the industrial revolution of the 19th century, health hazards associated to release of toxic chemicals and heavy metals from manufacturing plants has also become a more serious health issue. However, until recently, the effects of soil pollution on our health have had a much lower profile. Soil contaminants may be responsible for health effects costing millions of dollars, but studies to quantify the true cost are in their infancy. Health problems from cancers (arsenic, asbestos, dioxins), to neurological damage and lower IQ (lead, arsenic), kidney disease (lead, mercury, cadmium), and skeletal and bone diseases (lead, fluoride, cadmium) are serious issues. Crisis Management of Chronic Pollution gathers all the works that have been carried out over the last decade or more and links them to decision makers actions and stakeholders scenarios. This text bridges a gap in the literature on chronic pollution. The intention of the text is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to focus on development of advanced technologies is a critical component in overcoming the chronic pollution. It highlights emerging technologies and strategies that facilitate safe environment for future generations. Heavy metals and persistent organic chemicals are of particular concern. Human activity introduces heavy metals (such as cadmium, arsenic and mercury) to our soils through mining, smelting, industry, agriculture and burning fossil fuels. Our disposal of materials containing heavy metals, such as paint, electronic waste, and sewage also contributes to the burden of heavy metal contamination.

In 1975 workers at Life Science Products, a small makeshift pesticide factory in Hopewell, Virginia, became ill after exposure to Kepone, the brand name for the pesticide chlordecone. They made the poison under contract for a much larger Hopewell company, Allied Chemical. Life Science workers had been breathing in the dust for more than a year. Ingestion of the chemical made their bodies seize and shake. News of ill workers eventually led to the discovery of widespread environmental contamination of the nearby James River and the landscape of the small, working-class city. Not only had Life Science dumped the chemical, but so had Allied when the company manufactured it in the 1960s and early 1970s. The resulting toxic impact was not only on the city of Hopewell but also on the faraway fields where Kepone was used as an insecticide. Aspects of this environmental tragedy are all too common: corporate avarice, ignorance, and regulatory failure combined with race and geography to determine toxicity and shape the response. But the Kepone story also contains some surprising medical, legal, and political moments amid the disaster. With Poison Powder, Gregory S. Wilson explores the conditions that put the Kepone factory and the workers there in the first place and the effects of the poison on the people and natural world long after 1975. Although the manufacture and use of Kepone is now banned by the Environmental Protection Agency, organochlorines have long half-lives, and these toxic compounds and their residues still remain in the environment.

Incineration has been used widely for waste disposal, including household, hazardous, and medical wasteâ€"but there is increasing public concern over the benefits of combusting the waste versus the health risk from pollutants emitted during combustion. Waste Incineration and Public Health informs the emerging debate with the most up-to-date information available on incineration, pollution, and human healthâ€"along with expert conclusions and recommendations for further research and improvement of such areas as risk communication. The committee provides details on: Processes involved in incineration and how contaminants are released. Environmental dynamics of contaminants and routes of human exposure. Tools and approaches for assessing possible human health effects. Scientific concerns pertinent to future regulatory actions. The book also examines some of the social, psychological, and economic factors that affect the communities where incineration takes place and addresses the problem of uncertainty and variation in predicting the health effects of incineration processes.

Our societies have become very crisis-prone. This book explores crises and the methods of anticipation, management and reconstruction, and considers a risk-crisis-territorial development continuum. The aim is to better understand a widely used concept and clarify the methods of action in the field of crisis management. The different forms of learning proposed to better face future crises are also questioned. This book invites us to analyze the resources available to support crisis management and reconstruction, and consider the unequal access to these resources in different territories in order to design future territorial strategies. This often results in a form of territorial inertia after the crises. However, some innovate, imagine renewed territories, prepare for reconstruction, or even recompose territories now in order to make them more resilient. The crisis can then be the driving force or the accelerator of these changes and contribute to the emergence of new practices, or even new urban and territorial utopias.

In a world of earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes, it is evident that emergency response plans are crucial to solve problems, overcome challenges, and restore and improve communities affected by such negative events. Although the necessity for quick and efficient aid is understood, researchers and professionals continue to strive for the best practices and methodologies to properly handle these significant events. The Handbook of Research on Environmental Policies for Emergency Management and Public Safety is a pivotal reference source for the latest research findings on the examination of environmental policies and its interface with management and public safety from various country's perspectives, its local impacts and global lessons. Featuring extensive coverage on relevant areas, such as public-private partnership, disaster management, and natural resource management, this publication is an ideal resource for academicians, practitioners, and researchers interested in understanding the effects of environmental policies on emergency management.

The main objective of these updated global guidelines is to offer health-based air quality guideline levels, expressed as long-term or short-term concentrations for six key air pollutants: PM2.5, PM10, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide. In addition, the guidelines provide interim targets to guide reduction efforts of these pollutants, as well as good practice statements for the management of certain types of PM (i.e., black carbon/elemental carbon, ultrafine particles, particles originating from sand and duststorms). These guidelines are not legally binding standards; however, they provide WHO Member States with an evidence-informed tool, which they can use to inform legislation and policy. Ultimately, the goal of these guidelines is to help reduce levels of air pollutants in order to decrease the enormous health burden resulting from the exposure to air pollution worldwide.