Pollution and threats to the environment

The warming of the Earth has been the subject of intense debate and concern for many scientists, policy-makers, and citizens for at least the past decade.

Toxicogenomics, the study of how genomes respond to exposure to toxicants, may ultimately hold the promise of detecting changes in the expression of a person's genes if he or she is exposed to these toxicants.

The city of Pittsburgh and surrounding area of southwestern Pennsylvania face complex water quality problems, due in large part to aging wastewater infrastructures that cannot handle sewer overflows and stormwater runoff, especially during wet weather.

At hundreds of thousands of commercial, industrial, and military sites across the country, subsurface materials including groundwater are contaminated with chemical waste.

Houston is struggling with many of the environmental problems that most of the nation's major metropolitan areas are struggling with - transportation, water and air pollution, flooding, and major demographic changes.

In October 2003, a group of experts met in Beijing under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Engineering, and National Academy of Engineering (NAE)/National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies to continue a dialogue and eventually chart a rational course of energy use in China.

The Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine was established in 1988 as a mechanism for bringing the various stakeholders together to discuss environmental health issues in a neutral setting.

The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (EM) directs the massive cleanup of more than 100 sites that were involved in the production of nuclear weapons materials during the Manhattan Project and the Cold War.

In December 2002, a group of specialists on water resources from the United States and Iran met in Tunis, Tunisia, for an interacademy workshop on water resources management, conservation, and recycling.

The site of a proposed repository for high-level radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear power plants is not at risk of ground water infiltration, concludes this important book.

Nanotechnology is often described as an emerging technology - one that not only holds promise for society, but also is capable of revolutionizing our approaches to common problems.

The U.

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In response to a request from Congress, the U.

This book recommends research priorities and scientific approaches for global change research.

Most people in the United States spend far more time indoors than outdoors.

Global Change and Our Common Future includes 22 edited presentations from the Forum on Global Change and Our Common Future.

This volume explores the scientific frontiers and leading edges of research across the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, history, business, education, geography, law, and psychiatry, as well as the newer, more specialized areas of artificial intelligence, child development, cognitive science, communications, demography, linguistics, and management and decision science.

Each year Americans take more than 300 million plane trips staffed by a total of some 70,000 flight attendants.

This volume explores how the scientific tools of ecology can be used more effectively in dealing with a variety of complex environmental problems.

This report reviews documents on acute exposure guideline levels (AEGLs) for nerve agents GA (tabun), GB (sarin), GD (soman), GD, and VX, sulfur mustard, diborane, and methyl isocyanate.

Are variations in the energy generated by the Sun sufficient to modify the Earth's global environment at levels comparable to expected anthropogenic changes?

Close to one-half of all Americans live in coastal counties.

The amount of hazardous waste in the United States has been estimated at 275 million metric tons in licensed sites alone.

Ozone depletion in the stratosphere and increases in greenhouse gases in the troposphere are both subjects of growing concerneven alarmamong scientists, policymakers, and the public.

In order to confront the increasingly severe water problems faced by all parts of the country, the United States needs to make a new commitment to research on water resources.

In recent years, there has been concern about security and operations management at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LANL and LLNL).

To guide mission planning, military decision makers need information on the health risks of potential exposures to individual soldiers and their potential impact on mission operations.

In the aftermath of catastrophes, it is common to find prior indicators, missed signals, and dismissed alerts that, had they been recognized and appropriately managed before the event, could have resulted in the undesired event being averted.

In 1997, the U.

The report reviews a draft strategic plan from the U.

To protect space crews from contaminants in potable and hygiene water, NASA requested that the National Research Council (NRC) provide guidance on how to develop water exposure guidelines and subsequently review NASA's development of exposure guidelines for specific chemicals.

Estimates of groundwater recharge and discharge rates are needed at many differentscales for many different purposes.

Radioactive iodines are produced during the operation of nuclear power plants andduring the detonation of nuclear weapons.

The book endorses the National Science Foundation's concept of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) for providing a nationwide network of facilities and infrastructure for ecological and environmental research that is impossible with existing infrastructure.

During the past decade, scientists have learned much about the complex naturalprocesses that influence climate variability and change, and our ability to modelclimate has increased significantly.

When the Medicare program was established in 1965, it was viewed as a form of financial protection for the elderly against catastrophic medical expenses, primarily those related to hospitalization for unexpected illnesses.

Dioxin and dioxin-like compounds, or DLCs, are found throughout the environment, in soil, water, and air.

Determining the health risks to humans of exposure to toxic substances in the environment is made difficult by problems such as measuring the degree to which people have been exposed and determining causationwhether observed health effects are due to exposure to a suspected toxicant.

Scientists and policy-makers alike are concerned that operation of a fleet of high-speed civil transport (HSCT) aircraft could significantly affect the global atmosphere.

Small communities violate federal requirements for safe drinking water as much as three times more often than cities.

The fiscal and technological limitations associated with cleaning up hazardous waste sites to background conditions have prompted responsible parties to turn to risk-based methods for environmental rememdiation.

The United States produces 25% of the world's wood output, and wood supports a major segment of the U.

In the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 1996, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) was directed to assess the risk of spills for oils that may sink or be negatively buoyant, to examine and evaluate existing cleanup technologies, and to identify and appraise technological and financial barriers that could impede a prompt response to such spills.

This book presents a comprehensive, up-to-date review of technologies for cleaning up contaminants in groundwater and soil.

The passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90) by Congress and subsequent modifications of international maritime regulations resulted in a far-reaching change in the design of tank vessels.

Emergence of a toxic organism like pfisteria in tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay has focused public attention on potential hazards in our water.

This book describes the development of ocean sciences over the past 50 years, highlighting the contributions of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the field's progress.

Since Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, Gulf War veterans have expressed concerns about health effects that could be associated with their deployment and service during the war.