Pollution havens

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) that took place at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 tried to help redress the balance (with mixed results) by encouraging states to take responsibility for policing their own environmental issues. This proved very effective in industrialised countries, which continue to tighten their control, and chemical industry associations played their part through initiatives such as the Voluntary Energy Efficiency Programme (VEEP). Even so, economic considerations have perpetuated the concept of pollution havens elsewhere, and the export of low added value processes to less effectively policed economies continues. 

Pollution Prevention. Procedures haven been developed for recovery of composite ammonium perchlorate propellant from rocket motors, and the treatment of scrap and recovered propellant to reclaim ingredients. These include the use of high pressure water jets or compounds such as ammonia, which form fluids under pressure at elevated temperature, to remove the propellant from the motor, extraction of the ammonium perchlorate with solvents such as water or ammonia as a critical fluid, recrystalli2ation of the perchlorate and reuse in composite propellant or in slurry explosives or conversion to perchloric acid (166,167). 

Havens, K.E. 1994. An experimental comparison of the effects of two chemical stressors on a freshwater zooplankton assemblage. Environ. Pollut. 84 245-251. 

Jann P.R. 1988. Evaluation of Temporary Safe Havens. Paper presented at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Air Pollution Control Association, June 19-24, Dallas, TX. 

MacKenzie, J.J., and M.T. El-Ashry, Air Pollution s Toll on Forests and Crops. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT 1989. 

Baker JM. 1986. Ecological changes in Milford Haven during its history as an oil port. In Baher JM, ed. Marine ecology and oil pollution. New York, NY John Wiley and Sons, 55-66. 

Defects in the control system were easy to see. Three small municipalities, Vernon, El Segundo, and Torrance, had been incorporated in the early part of the century as low-tax havens for heavy industry. Vernon, where 10% of the entire metropolitan area s factory workers labored but only 417 residents were housed, bore the words Exclusively Industrial on its city seal. These cities harbored many of the most polluting factories, but they were outside the jurisdiction of the county ordinance and refused to enact rules of their own. To overcome the area s administrative fragmentation, a state... 

About 15 km to the west of New Haven Harbor the Housatonic River with its heavily polluted tributary, the Naugatuck River, empties into the Sound. (The confluence occurs below the last dam on the Housatonic.) This river supplies a significant amount of trace metals to the adjacent part of Long Island Sound, mainly in particulate form (Turekian, 1971). This contrasts sharply with the Quinniapiac River and demonstrates that the construction of dams is certainly one important factor in inhibiting transfer of metal-polluted sediments to the estuarine zone. 

DeLouise, E. R. (1968). Air pollution in New Haven, Connecticut. Status Report on the Problem and the Program. New Haven Health Department. 

Under the water pollution laws, there are regional planning agencies and there are basin plans for rivers. In these basin plans for rivers, you can take into account the interstate impacts from various pollution sources. So theoretically the interstate problem should be under better control. Whether in fact they are, I don t know. I haven t really looked in depth at that. 

Since the Torrey Canyon spiU, the spate of accidents that have occurred shows that the threat from accidental marine pollution remains (Amoco Cadiz, 1978, off Brittany, France Kark V, 1989, off the Atlantic coast of Morocco Exxon Valdez, 1989, Prince William Sound, Alaska, U.S.A. Haven, 1991, Genoa, Italy Braer, 1993, Shetland Islands, U.K. Sea Empress, 1996, Milford Haven, Wales, U.K. and Erika, 1999, off Brittany, France). 

Spicer, T. O., J. A. Havens, and L. E. Key, Evaluation of the DEGADIS Dispersion Model Using Data Erom Field Releases of Rressurized Ammonia, in Proceedings, Air Pollution Control Association 80th Annual Meeting, vol. 7, 1987. 

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