Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
goods, the interactions among these industries and the geoenvironment are limited to the
operational or fugitive discard of liquid and solid items associated with the service and the
“tools of the trade.” Military services, for example, present an added dimension to the compo-
sition of waste streams. This relates to waste products associated with munitions and the
storage and use of ammunitions. A major feature of the decommissioning of military sites
is the decontamination of sites contaminated by all of these. The bulk of the discards and
wastes generated by the large service industries can be classiied as “institutional” wastes.
This category includes the paper discards and general housekeeping items. The exception
to the preceding will be the health service industry. The problem arises from services asso-
ciated with the care of patients in hospitals.
4.7.1 Hospital Wastes and the Geoenvironment
Outside of the regular “housekeeping type” of waste products such as paper consumables
and kitchen waste, hospitals generate wastes that classify under the category of hazardous,
toxic, and infectious wastes. The contributors to these are the biomedical, radioactive, and
chemical-pharmaceutical wastes. The sources for biomedical wastes include biological,
medical, and pathological. Contributors to these are services associated with surgery,
pathology, biopsy, laboratories, and autopsy. For the radioactive wastes, the sources include
X-ray discards, liquid scintillation vials, and all other treatment procedures and equip-
ment utilizing radioactive materials. Sources of chemical-pharmaceutical wastes include
research laboratories, pathology, and histology.
The record shows that among hospital wastes, infectious biomedical wastes pose the
greatest threat to human health. Management and disposal of these wastes to the land
environment are critical issues. Special regulations have recently been structured by most
State Regulatory Agencies concerning hospital wastes in general and infectious wastes in
particular. Sorting, storage, transportation, treatment, disinfection, and incineration are
some of the principal steps in the handling and disposal of these infectious wastes. Liquid
infectious wastes are required to be treated before discharge and only noninfectious and
nonanatomical wastes are permitted to be disposed of in landills. Unhappily, technical
and economic constraints may deny full and safe-secure disposal of these wastes.
4.8 Energy Production and the Geoenvironment
The sources of energy are of two distinct types: (1) nonrenewable and (2) renewable. The
main nonrenewable source of energy is fossil fuels (hydrocarbons and coal). Another nota-
ble source of nonrenewable energy is uranium, used in the production of nuclear energy.
Renewable energy sources, by deinition, refer to those sources that are sustainable such
as solar, wind, ocean (tidal and wave), geothermal, osmosis, and biomass. The discussion
in this section deals with the impacts arising from stressors generated by the use of the
nonrenewable and renewable resources in energy production.
4.8.1 Fossil Fuel Energy Production
The primary sets of concerns associated with energy production industries relying on
fossil fuels can be grouped into three categories: (1) mining, drilling for extraction of the
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