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Chapter 6 Environmental Risk
6.1 What is the regulatory difference in the RCRA between a hazardous and toxic
substance?
Solution:
6.2 Identify several types of risk during your commute to school? Which of these risks
would classify as environmental risk?
Solution:
Students’ responses will vary. For example, Colleen Naughton is a graduate student at the
6.3 Rank these scenarios in order of their environmental risk (low to highest). (a) a
factory worker has been provided no protective breathing equipment, and the chemical
being emitted has been judged to have zero hazard, (b) a factory worker has been
provided protective breathing equipment that removes 99% of a hazardous chemical, (c)
a factory worker has been provided protective breathing equipment that removes 100% of
a hazardous chemical. (d) a factory worker has been provided protective breathing
equipment that removes 100% of a chemical that has been judged to have zero hazard (e)
a toxic chemical was identified in a factory’s drinking water supply. The worker you are
evaluating has a desk job and is not exposed to any of a toxic chemical emitted in the air
of the factory manufacturing area. This worker also brings all her water and other
beverages from home in reusable containers.
Solution:
6.4 Rank these three scenarios in order of their environmental risk (low to highest). (a)
Customers visit a bar 6 hours per week in a location where the state has passed
regulations that prevent customers from smoking inside restaurants and bars. (b) Wait
staff are exposed to second hand tobacco smoke 8 hours per day during work. (c)
Customers are exposed to second hand tobacco smoke 2 hours per week while dining at
the same restaurant as the wait staff in part (b). (d) Wait staff work 8 hours per day in an
establishment located in a state that has passed regulations that prevent customers from
smoking in restaurants and bars.
Solution:
6.5 What are three considerations besides toxicity that contribute to a chemical being
labeled “hazardous”?
Solution:
6.6 Identify the top three chemical releases in your hometown or university community
using the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory database. What information can you find about
the toxicity of these chemicals? Is it easy or difficult to find this information? Is the
information consistent, or is it conflicting? Does it vary with source (government versus
industry)?
Solution:
Students’ responses will vary.
6.7 The EPA released the 2011 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) National Analysis in
January of 2013. Locate this information and fill in Table 6.18 below for toxic chemical
disposal and releases (in the year 2011) for the following three large aquatic ecosystems:
Long Island Sound, the Gulf of Mexico, and the San Francisco Bay Delta Estuary. All
these water bodies of water are recognized as being important for ecological, economic,
and social reasons.
Solution:
San Francisco Bay
Delta Estuary
Gulf of Mexico
Long Island
Sound
Number of TRI
Facilities
437
1,315
47
Area (square miles)
60,000 (watershed)
86,800
17,000
Total On-site and
Off-site Disposal or
Other Releases
20.6 million lbs
334.7 million lbs
3 million lbs
Total on-site releases
to air
3.6 million lbs
104.0 million lbs
1.4 million lbs
Total on-site releases
to water
1.3 million lbs
22.3 million lbs
247 thousand lbs
Total on-site releases
to land
14.0 million lbs
27.9 million lbs
38 thousand lbs
Underground
Injection
9 thousand lbs
151.4 million lbs
None
Top Five Industrial
Sectors Contributing
to the TRI
Hazardous waste
management,
petroleum,
chemicals,
food/beverages/tob
acco, primary
metals
Chemicals,
petroleum,
electric utilities,
paper, hazardous
waste
management
Fabricated
metals,
chemicals,
primary metals,
plastics and
rubber,
miscellaneous
manufacturing
6.8 Define Pollution Prevention and describe why it is the preferred approach to
addressing the challenge of waste.
Solution:
6.9 What is the difference between pollution prevention and sustainability?
Solution:
6.10 Use the pollution prevention hierarchy to rank the following scenarios from least to
most preferred. In addition, label each scenario as an example of source reduction,
recycling, treatment, or disposal. (a) ammonia nitrogen is transformed to less toxic
nitrate nitrogen at the wastewater treatment plant and then discharged to a receiving
water body, (b) urine (which contains 75% of the nitrogen excreted by the human body)
is collected in the household and applied to a backyard garden as a fertilizer, (c) a
homeowner decides to no long place food scraps in a garbage disposal connected to the
sink and instead sets up a backyard composting machine, (d) nitrogen in the wastewater
is precipitated out and recovered for fertilizer at a centralized treatment plant, as struvite
(magnesium ammonium phosphate, NH4MgPO4·6H2O).
Solution:
6.11 Label each scenario as an example of source reduction, recycling, treatment, or
disposal. (a) the community collects household solid waste and disposes all the waste in
a sanitary landfill. (b) the community implements a yard waste collection program to
address this component of the wastestream (assume it makes up 14% of the total
wastestream). The yard waste is then composted and reused in the community. (c) the
community changes its billing plan from one flat rate charged per household to a new
plan that charges households for each bag (or trash can) of solid waste placed on the curb
for pickup. Their idea is this will cause homeowners to reduce the amount of waste they
produce and discard. (d) a national policy is instituted to reduce the amount of packaging
associated with consumer products. (e) households begin to purchase locally grown food
from local outlets so the packaging associated with food distribution is reduced. (f) the
community solid waste authority requires separation of glass, paper/cardboard, and metal
by households in a new curbside recycling program. (g) the community burns solid waste
at a high temperature to recover energy, releasing some toxic chemicals into the air and
producing an ash product, but reducing the volume of waste that needs to be disposed of
in a landfill.
Solution:
6.12 (a) List a different environmental risk associated with an indoor environment in the
developed world and developing world. (b) What particular building occupants are at the
greatest risk for the items you have identified?
Solution:
Developed World
Developing World
Environmental risk is from exposure to
chemicals emitting from building materials,
paints, floor coverings, and furniture.
Environmental risk is from
exposure to smoke associated
with burning of solid fuels such
as wood.
Group that accepts most of this risk are
individuals who occupy the building for a
longer period of time. At the home this
could be children and a parent or adult who
stays home watching the child. At work,
this would be employees.
Group that accepts most of this
risk are women and children.
6.13 Go to the Web site of the World Health Organization (www.who.org). Based on the
information there, write a referenced two-page essay on global environmental risk. How
much environmental risk is from factors such as unsafe water and sanitation, indoor air,
urban air, and climate?
Solution:
6.14 Recalling that the Environmental Protection Agency defines environmental justice
as the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color,
national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and
enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies,” research an issue of
environmental justice in your hometown or state. What is the environmental issue? What
groups of society are being harmed by the environmental issue? What injustice is taking
place?
Solution:
Students’ responses will vary.
6.15 Online at www.scorecard.org, you can search for the location and number of
hazardous-waste sites by location. Use it to search for hazardous-waste sites in your
hometown or a city close to your university. Comment on whether the number and
location of hazardous-waste sites pose any environmental injustice to residents of the
community you are investigating.
Solution:
Students’ responses will vary based on their university’s location. Below is a screen shot
