Linking Science and Technology to Society's Environmental Goals (1996) / Chapter Skim
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Reduce the Adverse Impacts of Chemicals in the Environment
Reduce the Adverse Impacts of Chemicals in the Environment
Pages 51-60
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From page 51... ...
One of the many land-use and economic changes resulting from human expansion that generally cause impacts on ecosystems is the introduction of new products. New products that foster new desires or satisfy old needs are sometimes discovered to have environmental impacts that are unacceptable or become unacceptable relative to a continually raised environmental standard.
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From page 52... ...
The search to replace those without further environmental effects has become a strong driving force in industry, in the scientific community, and in the general public. The focus has been mostly on testing for acute human toxicity with surrogates and on estimating long-term chronic effects in humans, primarily emphasizing cancer, again with surrogates.
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From page 53... ...
That required the development of new formulations for gasoline, new designs for engines, and substitutes for paint pigments. Creating safe indoor environments is emerging as an endeavor in need of much basic research, in that there appears to be very little known, at least to a layperson like me about the cumulative effects of the many materials, products, and other environmental impacts of working in office buildings and living in homes constructed of relatively new materials.
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From page 54... ...
Modifications of water-treatment operations that reduce trihalomethane formation and alternatives to chlorination are therefore being sought. How do we determine what adverse environmental impacts the byproducts of new technologies -- whatever they might be -- can cause?
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From page 55... ...
International standardization of testing and international sharing of testing responsibilities and data would reduce costs and speed the availability of reliable and reproducible assessments. ANTHROPOGENIC CHEMICAL BYPRODUCTS Many anthropogenic chemicals end up in incinerators or wastewater treatment facilities.
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From page 56... ...
Predictive modeling for chronic effects in general is poor. The quality of toxicity testing and modeling is assessed more fully in previous National Research Council reports (NRC 1994a)
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From page 57... ...
There has been consideration of greater testing of chemicals covered only by premanufacturing notices, and it seems logical that a staged approach to testing similar to that required by FIFRA and based, incrementally, on exposure potential will be increasingly worthy of consideration. For both the byproducts of various waste-treatment processes and the degradation products of intended products or processes that find their way into the environment, there will be the same need to assess potential ecological damage as there is to assess damage caused by specific intentional chemicals.
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From page 58... ...
However, there is a need for better tests to assess ecological damage potentially caused by single compound chemicals, the byproducts of various wastetreatment processes, and the degradation products of intentional products or unintentional process emissions that find their way into the environment. Better understanding of the basic biochemical processes occurring in the environment is necessary to decide where to look, what to look for, what to measure and how to measure it.
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From page 59... ...
For more information and guidance, the reader should refer to the following: NRC (National Research Council) , Opportunities in Applied Environmental Research and Develop ment (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1991)
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