Pollutant dissemination

Conceim over the dissemination of confidential product information. If a pollution-prevention assessment reveals confidential data pertinent to a company s product, fear may exist that the organization will lose a competitive edge with other businesses in the indust ly. 

During the wastewater treatment, an oxidative conversion of the surfactant molecules leads predominantly to the formation of polar compounds. They display a particularly high solubility and mobility in the aqueous medium and, therefore, transportation over relatively long distances can occur if they are not further degraded, resulting in the wide dissemination of these pollutants in riverine systems and thus also to estuaries, coastal regions and ultimately the marine environment (see Chapters 6.2 and 6.3). In the latter, the final levels will mainly be influenced by dilution effects and physical removal by precipitation or adsorption [63] because of relatively low microbial activity in this ecosystem compared with fresh water environments [64]. 

This acclimation phase may be of considerable public health or ecological significance because the compound is not destroyed. Hence, the period of exposure of humans, animals, or plants is prolonged, and the possibility of an undesirable effect increased. Furthermore, if the pollutant is present in flowing waters above or below ground, it may be widely disseminated laterally or vertically because of the lag of detectable biodegradation. In the case of toxicants, such increased dispersal may result in the exposure of susceptible species at distant sites before the harmful substance is destroyed. 

The generalized evidences on the increase of antibiotic resistance, allied with the development of analytical methods and genome exploring tools, motivated numerous studies on the environmental pollution produced by antimicrobials and other anthropogenic substances or on the diversity and distribution of antibiotic resistance genes (e.g. [3, 10, 26, 32]). Overall, these studies showed the complexity of antibiotic resistance dissemination in the environment. For instance, it was revealed that (1) not only bacterial pathogens but, very often environmental bacteria are important reservoirs of antibiotic resistance (2) antibiotic resistance may have a... 

Although it is still difficult to establish clear cause effect relationships, it is widely accepted that chemical pollution contributes for antibiotic resistance dissemination [10, 33, 34]. There are evidences that antibiotic resistance increase is related with environmental pollution and anthropic pressures. In this respect, antibiotics seem to be a major, although not the unique, form of pollution, mainly because it is estimated that about 75% of the antibiotics consumed by humans and animals are eliminated as active substances [35, 36]. In the environment, antibiotics can suffer adsorption, photolysis or biodegradation, reaching very low concentrations [37]. Nevertheless, at sub-inhibitory levels, as they are found in the environment, antibiotics can promote several alterations on housekeeping functions of the cells. Apparently, some of these alterations are not associated with antibiotic resistance. Even though, they contribute for the perturbation of the microbial community, leading, eventually, to an overall resistance increase [1, 34, 38]. 

Municipal waste water treatment plants receive daily considerable amounts of non-metabolized antibiotics and metabolites thereof, as well as other environmental pollutants. Moreover, domestic waste water is a complex mixture of human commensal and environmental bacteria, which get in contact with considerable amounts of antimicrobial agents and other substances with unknown effects on bacterial metabolism and microbial communities [38,54-57]. The free movement of bacteria between different environmental niches and the easiness with which bacteria become adapted to new conditions contribute to a rapid dissemination of antibiotic... 

The European Pollutant Emission Register (EPER) is the establishment of a European register with comparable data on die emissions from individual activities covered by die Council Directive 96/61/EC, known as die IPPC Directive. It is a useful monitoring tool and a suitable instrument for public dissemination of emission data and its effectiveness could be seen in die European effort to achieve die goals set in Agenda 21 of die UNECE Conference in Rio de Janeiro (1992), in the IPPC Directive (1996), and in die UNECE Aarhus Convention (1998). 

On January 25, 2000, die committee referred to in Article 19 of IPPC Directive gave a favorable opinion of a draft Commission Decision on die implementation of a European Pollutant Emission Register. The Commission Decision (2000/479/EC), to be referred to as die EPER Decision, was adopted on July 17, 2000. According to the EPER Decision, member states shall report to the Commission on emissions into ah and water from all individual facilities widi one or more activities as mentioned in Annex I to the IPPC Directive. The provided data will be made publicly accessible and disseminated on the Internet. Specifically, EPER is a publicly accessible register with emission data diat enables the Commission and national governments to monitor the trends in annual emissions of large industrial activities covered by Annex I of the IPPC Directive (Commission Decision, 2000). 

Interest in trace element emissions received impetus from published reports of widespread atmospheric dissemination of these substances (1), especially mercury (2, 3), as a consequence of fossil fuel use. More current information indicates that the original mercury discharge estimates were overstated, since they were based on nonrepresentative, ore-associated coal samples (4). Of the fossil fuels, coal is considered the major source of atmospheric pollution (5) and, compared with oil and... 

Measurements using sampling techniques and subsequent laboratory analysis are labour intensive, costly and do not meet the need for timely dissemination of air pollution information to the public. 

In addition to public concern, international conventions to reduce or eliminate emissions of POPs in South Korea took effect in May 2004. The South Korean Government, as a signatory participant of the Stockholm Convention on POPs, plans to ratify the convention. Then the government is obliged to submit a National Implementation Plant (NIP) to minimize POPs emission and update the plan and provide a status report every two years from the time of ratification (Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, 2001). Therefore, it is inevitable that a scientific assessment and review of the domestic status and history of the POPs pollution including emissions, contamination levels (or distribution), exposures, and risks will be needed. This information will be disseminated to the public and also used to develop efficient control... 

The Pollution Prevention Act was passed to encourage waste minimization and reduction of pollution at the source, through more efficient processing and raw materials use. The EPA was authorized to promote source reduction and recycling through grants, technical assistance, and dissemination of information. 

The objectives of the EPER are (1) collection of comparable emission data from 20000 individual polluting industrial sources and activities as specified in the IPPC Directive (2) storage of the reported data in a database or register (EPER), which is publicly accessible the register relates to emissions to air and water for 50 major pollutants and (3) dissemination... 

In recent years dissemination of indoor environmental knowledge and expertise has been greatly promoted in China. The general public has been educated about the causes and effects of pollution, especially health hazards from certain decorating and refurbishing materials, combustion products, furnishings, construction and maintenance, pesticides, home and office products. 

A manufacturing facility will continue to strive to optimize cost and delivery time. It will require sophisticated instrumentation, automation and data dissemination. To the greatest extent possible it will streamline the design and control of the flow of people, materials, and data. It will include zero loss, zero hazard and zero pollution as targets of operation. All this will require innovations at all operational levels. 

For analyzing water pollution it is necessary to know the area where the sample(s) were harvested. Among the primary water pollutants are pesticides, since they are slowly degraded and require dissemination. The chlorinated pesticides are lipophilic and are slowly accumulated in animals. The effect is due to metabolic system perturbation. Other water pollution sources are heavy metals, which are determined by the highly sensitive and selective analytical method ICP-AES.29 The sampling process, in this case, consists of chromatographic separation techniques for pesticide separation.30... 

This Act formally declares the national policy of the United States that pollution should be prevented or reduced at the source [10]. Previous environmental programs were considered to emphasize clean-up, rather than technology which would abate pollution in the frrst place. Iii contrast, much of the substance (tf the Pollution Prevention Act concerns development and dissemination of pollution-reduction technology. 

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