Legislation, environmental control

Air pollution control legislation is aimed at protecting human health and the overall environment. It also provides a means of reducing economic losses and a decline in environmental amenity as a consequence of air pollution. ... 

It is not feasible to review the growing body of legislation covering environmental control in this short chapter. 

South Carolina DHEC, Reduction of Hazardous Waste Legislative Summary 2004 Report, South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, Columbia, SC, February 2005. 

The 1970 amendments represent landmark legislation (5). Not only did the law create the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) as a separate agency reporting directly to the President, but it established schedules and a regulatory mechanism to treat air quality on a national basis. No longer could an industry find pockets of laxity from state environmental controls. Air quality was defined in legal tests and emerged as a new concept,... 

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), passed by Congress on December 24, 1969, and signed into law by President Nixon on January 1,1970, mandated the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality. Congressional environmental protection legislation subsequent to NEPA included the Clean Air Act (1970), the Resource Recovery Act (1970), the Water Pollution Control Act (1972), the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act Amendments (1972), and others. 

Pollution Handbook The Essential Guide to UK and European Pollution Control Legislation, National Society for Clean Air and Environmental protection, Brighton, UK, 1997, p.5. 

It is not feasible to review the growing body of legislation covering environmental control in this short chapter. All that can be done is to give a brief resume of the principal legislation current in the United Kingdom. Legislation and control procedures in other countries are likely to be similar in scope and practice. 

Recent legislation in many developed countries classifies almost all fine particulate solids that were separated from fluids in environmental control devices as hazardous. Since, due to their large specific surface, toxic components may leach out and end up in the ground water, they cannot be stored in unprotected landfills. Furthermore, because of their fineness, such powders easily become air-borne and cause a renewed threat to the environment as well as to human and animal or plant life. 

Current legislation in most developed countries classifies as hazardous most fine and all ultrafine particulate solids separated and collected from fluids with environmental control devices of any kind. In many cases, the mere fact that solids are micron or submicron sized, constitutes a reason for this classification. Owing to their fineness, dusts and slurries or moist residues from pollution abatement that are or become dry particulate matter easily become airborne causing a renewed threat to the environment and to human and animal or plant life (secondary pollution). Also, the large surface area of fine particulate solids results in high solubility so that toxic or otherwise undesirable substances may leach out and spill into surface water or end-up in aquifers if such fines are stored outside or deposited in unprotected landfills. 

Environmental exposure controls. These are the measures necessary to fulfil the existing Community environmental protection legislation. 

Today the USA has a strong regulatory framework for environmental control (Table 3.1). However, questions can still be raised as to the effectiveness of the present regime. Has this complex set of legislative controls actually improved environmental standards Any possible answers to this... 

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