Lessons learned concerning impact assessment: pollution prevention technical assistance in Nebraska

After five years of assisting Nebraska businesses, the Partners in Pollution Prevention program at the University of Nebraska contracted with an independent third-party to conduct a survey to determine clients' perceptions on the value of the technical assistance. A second assessment method, reassessment interviews, consisting of site visits by interns, supported many of the findings of the initial survey, allowed for exploration to better understand some initial responses, and collected metrics related to implementation of specific pollution prevention suggestions. A combined approach using more than one evaluation tool may be helpful to other environmental service providers in assessing impact of their programs.     

Socio-cultural characteristics of high versus low risk societies regarding road traffic safety

In this study, 15 Western European countries were compared for two periods, 1989–1991, and 1997–1999. The aim was to better understand the relation between different socio-cultural factors, regulations related to traffic safety, and fatal traffic deaths. The question is also posed whether such factors are functional in the search for a safety typology aimed to characterize nations with regard to safety.Despite increased similarity regarding traffic regulation, the differences regarding fatal deaths in motor vehicle road accidents remain among the countries studied. The only studied factor that has changed its relation to motor traffic accidents during the two periods is number of cars which has lost its importance.The conclusion of the study is that type of religion and wealth of the country seem to be the most important factors. Type of religion in the country seems to have an impact on values related to safety. Being a Catholic country or not seems to be as important as being a wealthy country or not. Being a non-wealthy Catholic country leads to more traffic accidents than being a wealthy Catholic country. Being a wealthy Catholic country, however, does seem to lead to more traffic accidents than being a similar wealthy but non-Catholic country.A safety typology with three to five categories is found. The most outspoken categories are Catholic, Protestant and Mixed. The five categories should be Non-wealthy Catholic, Wealthy Catholic, Anglo-Saxon, Safe Protestant and Continental Protestant. The typology have similarities to typologies which have been developed in welfare research.     

Disturbance by ice and life-history adaptations of the seagrassZostera marina

The formation of winter ice, and its movement with the tides, has had a major influence on the life-history parameters of shallow-water populations of the rhizomatous marine angiosperm eelgrass (Zostera marina) in Nova Scotia, Canada. In this region, and annual form of eelgrass inhabits intertidal and shallow subtidal mudflats and a perennial form is common in subtidal areas. Where lowtide water depth was greater than winter ice thickness (25 cm), ice movement removed much of the aboveground biomass from perennial ramets, but did not influence the density of ramets. Measurements of primary production showed that perennial plants allocated a greater proportion of their total production to below-ground structures than measured in all previous studies on eelgrass. Thus perennials are well anchored in the sediment, are more able to withstand removal by ice, and have reserves available for production of new leaves when ice melts. In the spring, seed germination was greatest in areas where ice had removed whole plants (or their aboveground parts) than among mature ramets which had survived winter intact. Survival of seedlings (new genets) was not affected by shading from the adult canopy, but a shading experiment showed that competition for light with mature ramets had a significant negative effect on morphology, growth and the allocation of seedling biomass to below-ground parts, thus reducing the ability of new genets to survive ice disturbance in the next winter. The annual form ofZ. marina was restricted to areas where low tide water depth was much less than winter ice thickness. Annual plants did not survive winter, had small investment in below-ground parts and high reproductive effort, and overwintered as seeds. The genetic status of the two forms and the restriction of the annual to very shallow water are discussed in the light of previous work on eelgrass     

An index of ecosystem integrity for Northern Chesapeake Bay

We propose a theoretical approach to evaluating the quality of large ecosystems under anthropogenic stress, and present a partial application of these ideas. We synthesized data from a variety of Chesapeake Bay monitoring programs into composite variables expressing ecosystem integrity. The analysis spanned most of the larger Maryland tributaries to the Bay (tidal fresh to mesohaline areas) for nine years (1986–1994). An index modeled on the Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI) and a multivariate ordination and ranking method combined information on aquatic plant, plankton, benthic and fish assemblages with water quality-based habitat goals. The multivariate method proved superior to the IBI approach in discriminating ecosystem integrity. A logistic regression model with watershed land use characteristics and water depth as independent variables explained a significant amount of variation in the multivariate rank index. Urban land use had the most negative effect on the index, whereas forested land had the most positive effect.     

Cushioning the impact of toxic release from runaway industrial accidents with greenbelts

The three aspects of accidents in chemical process industries which cause most serious damage—explosions, fires, and toxic releases—can all be controlled to some extent if greenbelts are present around the affected industry. We have recently developed and validated a system of methodologies for greenbelt design. In this paper we present the application of these models in designing greenbelts and forecasting their role in cushioning the impact of accidental release of toxic gases. With properly located and designed greenbelts as much as 33% of the accidental release of SO₂, 43% of H₂S, and 51% of NH₃ under stable atmospheric conditions (in which the dispersion is very slow and the release thus has maximum toxic impact) can be absorbed.     

DeepBlow – a Lagrangian Plume Model for Deep Water Blowouts

This paper presents a sub-sea blowout model designed with special emphasis on deep-water conditions. The model is an integral plume model based on a Lagrangian concept. This concept is applied to multiphase discharges in the formation of water, oil and gas in a stratified water column with variable currents. The gas may be converted to hydrate in combination with seawater, dissolved into the plume water, or leaking out of the plume due to the slip between rising gas bubbles and the plume trajectory. Non-ideal behaviour of the gas is accounted for by the introduction of pressure- and temperature-dependent compressibility z-factor in the equation of state. A number of case studies are presented in the paper. One of the cases (blowout from 100 m depth) is compared with observations from a field experiment conducted in Norwegian waters in June 1996. The model results are found to compare favourably with the field observations when dissolution of gas into seawater is accounted in the model. For discharges at intermediate to shallow depths (100–250 m), the two major processes limiting plume rise will be: (a) dissolution of gas into ambient water, or (b) bubbles rising out of the inclined plume. These processes tend to be self-enforcing, i.e., when a gas is lost by either of these processes, plume rise tends to slow down and more time will be available for dissolution. For discharges in deep waters (700–1500 m depth), hydrate formation is found to be a dominating process in limiting plume rise.     

VOC concentrations measured in personal samples and residential indoor,outdoor and workplace microenvironments in EXPOLIS-Helsinki,Finland

Thirty target volatile organic compounds (VOC) were analyzed in personal 48-h exposure samples and residential indoor, residential outdoor and workplace indoor microenvironment samples as a component of EXPOLIS-Helsinki, Finland. Geometric mean residential indoor concentrations were higher than geometric mean residential outdoor concentrations for all target compounds except hexane, which was detected in 40% of residential outdoor samples and 11% of residential indoor samples, respectively. Geometric mean residential indoor concentrations were significantly higher than personal exposure concentrations, which in turn were significantly higher than workplace concentrations for compounds that had strong residential indoor sources (d-limonene, alpha pinene, 3-carene, hexanal, 2-methyl-1-propanol and 1-butanol). 40% of participants in EXPOLIS-Helsinki reported personal exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Participants in Helsinki that were exposed to ETS at any time during the 48-h sampling period had significantly higher personal exposures to benzene, toluene, styrene, m,p-xylene, o-xylene, ethylbenzene and trimethylbenzene. Geometric mean ETS-free workplace concentrations were higher than ETS-free personal exposure concentrations for styrene, hexane and cyclohexane. Geometric mean personal exposures of participants not exposed to ETS were approximately equivalent to time weighted ETS-free indoor and workplace concentrations, except for octanal and compounds associated with traffic, which showed higher geometric mean personal exposure concentrations than any microenvironment (o-xylene, ethylbenzene,benzene, undecane, nonane, decane, m,p-xylene, and trimethylbenzene). Considerable differences in personal exposure concentrations and residential levels of compounds with mainly indoor sources suggested differences in product types or the frequency of product use between Helsinki, Germany and the United States.     

Characterization of Naturally-occurring and Anthropogenic PAHs in Urban Sediments—Wycoff/Eagle Harbor Superfund Site

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) are ubiquitous constituents in urban sedimentary environments. The accurate characterization of their source(s) in sediments influences decisions regarding the liability for clean-up and remedial options. In this study, an extensive PAH dataset that included 50 non-alkylated (parent) and alkylated PAH groups and isomers was acquired using a modified EPA Method 8270 for the study of 5 cm intervals from 10 sediment cores (28–78 cm) obtained from the Eagle Harbor Superfund Site on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Conventional hydrocarbon “fingerprinting” and the PAH profiles in the Pb²¹⁰ age-dated cores revealed three primary PAH sources to the sediments over the past 220 years, namely (1) naturally occurring background; (2) urban runoff, and (3) creosote, the latter resulting from prior operations at the former Wyckoff wood-processing facility located on the Harbor. Naturally occurring background PAH in the pre-industrial (<1900) sediments were dominated by perylene, 1,7-dimethylphenanthrene (derived from the oxidation of abietic acid resins), and pyrogenic PAH most likely derived from historic forest fires. The concentration of PAH_total in these pre-industrial sediments was consistently less than 1 mg/kg (dry). Urban runoff in the post-industrial (>1930) sediments was dominated by low but consistent concentrations (10–20 mg/kg dry) of pyrogenic PAH derived primarily from the combustion of fossil fuel(s). The creosote-impacted sediments in the post-industrialized sediments contained high concentrations (1000–140,000 mg/kg dry) of pyrogenic PAH associated with distilled, coal-derived liquids.