Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER ONE
Consequences of living
in an industrial world
LESLEY C. BATTY AND KEVIN B. HALLBERG
Introduction
One of the first questions that faced us when preparing this introductory chapter
was 'what do we mean by industry?' In modern terms, one often refers to the
industrial revolution that began in the latter half of the eighteenth century,
which circumscribes the change from an agriculturally based economy to one
dominated by manufacturing. However, industrial processes have a history far
longer than this, and can be traced back to the Bronze Age and even before,
particularly the extraction of minerals. We could also consider agriculture to
be an industry as it is the extraction of raw resources albeit in a rather different
form. Therefore when we refer to industry, we are actually considering a very
wide range of processes and activities. Common to all these, however, is the fact
that the production of goods from raw resources creates by-products that can
pollute the environment and adversely affect ecosystems.
The industrial pollutants produced and their impacts are potentially as varied
as the sources fromwhich they derive, and there has been extensive research into
specific effects of individual contaminants on specific organisms or communities.
The problemwith this approach is that the resulting view is one that can be rather
blinkered. It is becoming increasingly clear that, rather than simply causing
deterioration of ecosystems, contaminated sites may well be sources of biodiver-
sity. Organisms living on such sites can show great genetic adaptation and may
prove useful in the remediation of other contaminated sites. In addition, the
limitations of ecological monitoring have potentially caused problems in the
assessment of impacts, and the detachment of research into remediation from
that of ecotoxicology has resulted in inappropriate application of technologies
and poor results in terms of restoration or remediation. Within this volume, we
have tried to select a number of different types of industry in order to illustrate
these general themes. It should be noted that, althoughmany industrial processes
release(d) carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we
