Science for Environmental Protection The Road Ahead (2012) / Chapter Skim
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2 Challenges of the 21st Century
2 Challenges of the 21st Century
Pages 27-53
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From page 27... ...
Those disasters can arise from natural events such as storms, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions; from accidents at major industrial facilities, such as pipelines, large bulk-storage facilities, mines and wells, and power and chemical plants; or as the direct or indirect consequence of terrorism events. EPA is and will continue to be responsible for monitoring and addressing the environmental changes resulting from disasters (whether natural or humancaused)
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From page 28... ...
Instead, the chapter is meant to provide some illustrative examples of the types of problems facing EPA today and some of the factors that create and influence those problems. MAJOR FACTORS LEADING TO ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE Major socioeconomic factors are directly and indirectly driving environmental changes and are increasing the imperative for EPA to maintain and strengthen its environmental research efforts.
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From page 29... ...
Changes in Land Use Land use is a major factor driving environmental quality. Land use strongly influences water quality through runoff, water quantity through influence on the hydrologic cycle, air quality through emissions and deposition and carbon storage in terrestrial landscapes, and biologic diversity through habitat loss, disturbance, and resource availability.
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From page 30... ...
Energy Choices Energy choices in the United States -- including bioenergy, conventional and unconventional oil and gas production, coal, and nuclear power -- all have important implications for the environment through the effects of resource extraction or production, fuel combustion, and waste discharge or disposal. The April 2010 blowout of British Petroleum's Macondo deepwater oil well illustrated how devastating the unintended consequences of energy development can be; the accident killed 11 workers and led to the largest oil spill in US history and the closure of some fisheries in more than 80,000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico (NOAA 2012a)
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From page 31... ...
Systems-level analyses that take account of these ripple effects and determine the net implications for ecologic and human populations are crucial. Technologic Change and Changing Consumption Technologic innovation creates a large challenge to acquiring the environmental data required to inform policy in a timely way.
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From page 32... ...
ENVIRONMENTAL AND HUMAN HEALTH CHALLENGES The patterns of change briefly described above have resulted in a suite of current and emerging environmental and human health challenges for EPA, such as Human and environmental exposure to increasing numbers, concentrations, and types of chemicals. Factors contributing to human and environmental exposures include energy choices, technologic change, and changing energy consumption.
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From page 33... ...
. Factors contributing to deteriorating air quality include population growth, energy choices, changing consumption, and climate change.
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From page 34... ...
A new class of hormonally active substances receiving increased attention are obesogens, which target lipid metabolism and may interfere with natural hormone signaling (Kirchner et al.
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From page 35... ...
The role of the built environment in community health is analogous to the role of habitat change in ecologic quality. Effective environmental protection takes into consideration all environments that are valuable to humans and natural systems, and EPA can continue to have significant impacts in this area of research.
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From page 36... ...
The Clean Air Act and other statutory mandates give rise to the need for improved scientific and technical information on health effects, human exposures, ecologic exposures and effects, ambient and emission monitoring techniques, atmospheric chemistry and physics, and pollutionprevention and emission-control methods for hundreds of pollutants. Beyond the outdoor air-quality focus under the Clean Air Act, some programs are designed to address indoor air quality.
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From page 37... ...
. Furthermore, there is strong scientific consensus that in coming decades climate change is likely to increase the frequency of heat waves, exacerbate problems with water supply and water quality, increase the severity of storms, and disrupt ecosystems, habi 1 Stationarity is the term used when statistics (such as mean, median, variance)
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From page 38... ...
The structure of the Clean Air Act has also encouraged heavier emphasis on criteria pollutants over other hazardous air pollutants, human health over ecosystem effects, and industrial sources over agricultural sources of pollutants. EPA faces a challenge in trying to balance its own research portfolio between issues that arise out of its regulatory mandate and issues that warrant attention from the perspective of human health and welfare but for which there is no legislative mandate.
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From page 39... ...
Water Quality During the 1970s, key legislation that focused on developing sound policies for protection of surface water and groundwater was passed, including the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Both concentrated on water quality and public health, but the presence of different goals, approaches, and targets led to fragmented water science and research agendas (Table 2-1)
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From page 40... ...
TABLE 2-1 Some Contrasts between the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act ISSUE Clean Water Act of 1972 Safe Drinking Water Act of 1976 Goals • Swimmable, fishable water • "Safe" drinking water as defined • Ecologic quality addressing by maximum contaminant levels ambient waters and discharges for final drinking-water or • Standards developed at the performance standards state level • Nationally consistent standards Technology • Little advancement in routine • New monitoring tools wastewater treatment or monitoring • New treatment technology to address • Technologic advances associated new contaminants with state efforts in wastewater • Sensor technology associated with reclamation distribution systems and water security Science • Impaired waters and development • Advancement of risk-assessment of hydrologic models frameworks and methods • Predictive modeling • Groundwater models • Source tracking methods using • National databases molecular tools Policies • Beaches Environmental Assessment • Contaminant Candidate List and Coastal Health Act • Nutrient criteria
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From page 41... ...
Although the health effects of some contaminants are clear, in most cases there are a host of reasons why the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act have resulted in a limited record of accomplishments. Some of those reasons include, low concentrations found in water, specific limitations of the methods for pathogen recovery and viability assessment, failure to understand whether ingestion or inhalation pathways are important, and inability to reconcile ecologic risks and human health risks.
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From page 42... ...
Water-quality conditions reported by states under the Clean Water Act indicate that at least 100,000 miles of rivers and streams; nearly 2.5 million acres of lakes, reservoirs, and ponds; and over 800 square miles of bays and estuaries across the United States are listed as impaired and not meeting state waterquality goals as a result of nitrogen and phosphorus enrichment (EPA 2012a)
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From page 43... ...
(Nutrient sources for the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico are shown in Figure 2-1.) Addressing the nutrient loading will require increased scientific understanding, including new information on pollution sources, on emerging technologies that could be used in agriculture and in wastewater treatment, on water quality conditions, and on the response of ecosystems to increasing nutrient loads and shifting stochiometry.
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From page 44... ...
. The volume of nutrients reaching surface water and groundwater has increased substantially since the middle of the 20th century as a result of a complex of factors, including population growth, changes in land cover, increased fossil fuel combustion, and changes in the structure of agricultural production (Selman et al.
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From page 45... ...
Acid rain and photochemical air pollution are regional problems, and monitoring, modeling, and control activities have shifted accordingly. EPA's long-standing involvement in regional-scale air quality monitoring and modeling research includes the multi-agency National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP 1991)
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From page 46... ...
Regional long-term approaches for assessment and problem-solving have also been implemented in the water quality arena, including for the Chesapeake Bay, the Florida Everglades, and the Great Lakes Basin (Table 2-2)
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From page 47... ...
provided a • Nitrogen-removal technology at • Stressed by pressures of growing framework for additional research wastewater-treatment plants populations, industrial pollution, and policy initiatives based on the • Computer model built to simulate atmospheric deposition of air pollutants, Chesapeake Bay Program, which was how the massive 64,000-mi2 watershed and conversion of forests to farms and established in 1983 as a partnership of processes nutrient and sediment urban areas the EPA, Maryland, and Virginia allocations Everglades, a sub-tropical wetlands • Altered hydrology • EPA, Region 4 • Aquifer storage and recovery watershed Florida, which houses the • Mercury • The Comprehensive Everglades • Ecosystem restoration Everglades National Park (EPA 2007) • Phosphorus Restoration Plan is an ambitious, • One of the strongest aspects of • Soil erosion multi-billion-dollar and multi-decadal the Comprehensive Everglades • One of the most threatened restoration program involving federal Restoration Plan science program is subtropical preserves in the United and state governments its monitoring and assessment program States • EPA developed the Everglades (see, for example, NRC 2003)
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From page 48... ...
As illustrated by the degradation of the Chesapeake Bay, multiple overlapping factors, such as land use and changing land-use patterns, population growth, the agricultural use of fertilizers and pesticides, and direct and non-point chemical exposures may result in human and environmental effects. The complexity of these interacting factors in environmental degradation creates great challenges for environmental science and decision-making.
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From page 49... ...
2009. Fourth National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals.
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From page 50... ...
2011d. The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act from 1990 to 2020.
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From page 51... ...
:573-574. NAPAP (US National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program)
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From page 52... ...
2007. Nitrogen Loading from Wastewater Treatment Plants to Upper Narragansett Bay.
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From page 53... ...
US Department of Agriculture, National Invasive Species Information Center (NISIC) [online]
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