Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
1 Introduction
Pollution is an inevitable consequence of advances in human endeavors to improve
the quality of life on this planet. As civilized societies learned to organize, humans
realized methods to purify water for drinking purposes, dispose of excrement, build
sanitary sewers, and perform municipal wastewater treatment to prevent communica-
ble diseases. They also realized how air pollution can adversely affect human health
and the necessity to control the same. Thus, the history of pollution is as old as the
human species itself.
The twentieth century has been a period of rapid technological advances, which
has helped us to harness the available natural resources. Along with these advance-
ments, we have also created myriad environmental pollution problems. Pollution is
undesirable and expensive, but it is an inevitable consequence of modern life. The
reality is that we cannot eliminate pollution altogether, but we can certainly mitigate
it through recycle, reuse, and reclamation.
1.1 ENERGY, POPULATION, AND POLLUTION
Energy consumption has increased dramatically as the population has exploded.
Increased utilization of natural resources is necessary to sustain the various industries
that drive the economy of industrialized nations. Unfortunately, increased industrial
activity has also produced anthropogenic pollutants. The harnessing of nuclear power
has left us the legacy of radioactive waste. Increased agricultural activity in both
developed and developing nations has been necessitated in order to sustain the bour-
geoning world population. Intensive agricultural uses of pesticides and herbicides
havecontributedtothepollutionofourenvironment.Someofthemajorenvironmental
problems that one can cite as examples of anthropogenic origin are (a) increased car-
bon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, (b) depletion of the earth's
protective ozone layer due to man-made chlorofluorocarbons, (c) acid rain due to
increased sulfur dioxide as a result of fossil fuel utilization, (d) atmospheric haze and
smog, polluted lakes, waterways, rivers, and coastal sediments, (e) contaminated
groundwater, and (f) industrial and municipal wastes.
The environmental stress (impact) due to the needs of the population and the better
standard of living is given by the master equation (Graedel and Allenby, 1996)
GDP
Person ×
EI
GDP unit per capita ,
EI
=
P
×
(1.1)
where EI is the environmental impact, P is the population, and GDP is the gross
domestic product.
P intheaboveequationisunarguablyincreasingwithtimeandthattooingeometric
progression. The second term on the right-hand side denotes the general aspiration
1
 
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