Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Recommended reading
Journals which publish articles on environmental management of difficult and
vulnerable environments
Arctic and Alpine Research
Desertification Control Bulletin
Journal of Arid Environments
Journal of Range Management
Journal of Tropical Geography (Singapore)
Land Degradation & Development
Mountain Research & Development
Savannah
Society & Natural Resources

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205
C h a p t e r 1 1
Pollution and
waste management
♦ A brief history of pollution and waste
problems
208
♦ Pollution and waste associated with
urbanization
210
♦ Industrial waste and pollution
(non-radioactive)
216
♦ Radioactive waste and pollution
220
♦ Electromagnetic radiation (non-ionizing)
221
♦ Coping with pollution and waste
222
♦ Agricultural pollution and waste
224
♦ Recycling and re-use of pollution and waste
231
♦ Recommended reading
233

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206
This chapter gives a broad introduction to pollution and waste management. The
following Routledge Environmental Management Series text offers further coverage:
A.Farmer (1998) Managing Environmental Pollution
Pollution can be defined as the introduction by humans, deliberately or
inadvertently, of substances or energy (heat, radiation, noise) into the environment—
resulting in a deleterious effect (O’Riordan, 1995). Contamination is the presence of
elevated concentrations of substances in the environment, food, etc., which may not
necessarily be harmful or a nuisance. Pollution involves contamination, but
contamination need not constitute pollution. Nature can generate toxic or nuisance
compounds (e.g. volcanic ash). Waste can be defined as movable material that is
perceived, often erroneously, to be of no further value. Once discarded, it may be no
problem, or a nuisance or a hazard (Hill, 1998).
As waste may indirectly give rise to pollution, it is necessary to view both
together. Pollution and waste management can focus on (1) prevention, or (after
escape or release), (2) collection and disposal, or (3) treatment/mitigation (which
sometimes may be difficult and costly or impossible). There are thus three pollution
and waste management strategies:
1
Prevention
2
Reclamation
3
Disposal
In an ideal situation, where environmental management has full support, one might
add a fourth:
Avoidance (elimination at source, by using longer-lasting construction
materials; avoiding dangerous and problematic materials; better processes and
machines) — prevention may involve catching waste or pollution before release
while avoidance seeks elimination from the outset. Ideally, environmental
management seeks a shift from (2) and (3) to (1) (Young, 1990; Bradshaw et al.,
1992). A hierarchy of desirability can be agreed. The following is that favoured in
the USA (Middleton, 1995:217):
(a)
reuse;
(b)
waste reduction;
(c)
recycling;
(d)
resource recovery;
(e)
incineration;
(f)
landfill.

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POLLUTION AND WASTE MANAGEMENT
207
Pollution can be ‘primary’, having an effect immediately on release to the
environment, or ‘secondary’, the product of interaction after release with moisture, other
pollutants, sunlight, etc. Pollution may be local, regional, transboundary, or global. The
effects may be direct, indirect or cumulative, felt intermittently or constantly, immediately
or after a delay; affecting the atmosphere, soil, oceans, water bodies, groundwater or be
restricted to certain organisms, produce or localities. The effects of pollution may be
short term or longer term; pose a hazard or a nuisance; be toxic or non-toxic; take the
form of a chemical, biological, radiation, heat, light, noise, dust, or smell problem.
The environment may render pollution and waste harmless until a threshold
(the absorptive capacity) is exceeded, after which, if there is no effective control,
there will be gradual or sudden problems. Loss of absorptive capacity may be very
difficult to recover from, so it is important that environmental managers model or
monitor to avoid exceeding thresholds.
The risks from pollution and wastes are far from fully understood, and available
standards and monitoring techniques need improvement. What was considered safe
twenty years ago is often no longer accepted, and what is acceptable today may not
be in the future. A ‘safe’ background level of a pollutant may become dangerous to
organisms near the top of a food web (through bioaccumulation or biomagnification),
as food organisms concentrate it by feeding or absorption. Some pollutants become
concentrated in certain tissues of higher organisms: e.g. DDT and polychlorinated
biphyenyls (PCBs) in the fat; radioisotopes like strontium-90 in the bone and
radioiodine in the thyroid. This can damage the affected and surrounding tissues
(Odum, 1975:103). Wastes and pollutants can also be concentrated by tidal action,
sudden rain-out by storms, chemical bonding to certain soil compounds, localized
interception of contaminated rainfall, etc., to form hot spots. Some pollutants change
little after release, some decay or disperse and become harmless, others are unstable
and may be converted into harmful compounds.
Pollutants or wastes initially discharged into water or the atmosphere may
exchange between these two systems, for example airborne dust may settle on water
and sink or polluted water may form aerosols or contaminate groundwater which
surfaces at a different time and place. Monitoring and modelling can consequently
be difficult and costly. Pollution sources may be: a point (e.g. an explosion), linear
(e.g. a road) or extensive (e.g. dust from a desert). Releases can be: continuous,
single, brief, random events, or periodic emissions.
The distance pollution and waste disperses depends on its qualities and how it
is released. Gases or dust are affected by the height of the release, their temperature
relative to the air, weather conditions (especially windspeed), and their density or
particle size, presence of inversion layers, whether any obstacle is encountered and
the texture of that obstacle, and many other factors. Dispersal in water is affected by
an equally diverse set of factors. Larger particles may be scattered by natural or
artificial explosions, especially if material is projected into a jet-stream, storm or
ocean current. It is not uncommon for a temperature inversion in the atmosphere
effectively to put a lid over an area, trapping pollution. Water bodies (the sea, lakes,
etc.) may also be stratified, with only the upper few metres mixing. Generalization is
unwise so environmental managers must model and check each situation.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN
208