Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
HOW ARE TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION, PUBLIC
HEALTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT RELATED?
Whether we live in the city, the country, or somewhere in between, the
quality of our water and air are critical to our existence.The historian Mar-
tin Melosi points out that one of the primary ways in which cities have
addressed this concern is by taking direct responsibility for it through the
construction of systems. Even before the true cause of disease was under-
stood, he points out, people made a connection between filth, or “mias-
mas,” and epidemics. That connection led to schemes for the delivery of
clean water and the elimination of wastes. Melosi focuses on the supply of
clean water to city dwellers through the construction of municipal water-
works and water filtration systems.Today's water and wastewater infrastruc-
ture, he argues, is the legacy of the “Age of Miasmas.”
But what if one doesn't live in a city or town where that infrastructure
is already in place? This is the concern of the inventor Ashok Gadgil, whose
childhood in India provided opportunities to witness the effects of unclean
water on people's health. Though trained as a physicist, Gadgil nurtured a
growing interest in the problem of how to disinfect drinking water in poor
communities. As a result, he created the UVWaterworks, a portable device
that uses ultraviolet radiation from fluorescent light to rid water of disease-
causing bacteria and viruses. The UVWaterworks is designed to be inex-
pensive, to require little maintenance, and to be made primarily of
off-the-shelf components.
The epidemiologist Devra Davis also understands the costs of pollution
to personal health. She was a child in the Pennsylvania coal-mining town
of Donora when a “killer smog” struck there in 1948, causing illness in
about one-third of the town's residents. Davis's later academic interests in
environmental policy, toxicology, and epidemiology came together in her
ground-breaking work on identifying environmental causes of cancer. Her
