Description
Environmental Chemistry, ninth edition, maintains much the same organizational structure, level, and emphasis that have been developed through preceding editions, with updates in keeping with the emerging face of the dynamic science of environmental chemistry. Therefore, rather than entering into an immediate discussion of a specifi c environmental problem, such as stratospheric ozone depletion, the book systematically develops the concept of environmental chemistry so that, when specifi c pollution problems are discussed, the reader has the background to understand such problems. Chapters 1 and 2 have been signifi cantly changed from the eighth edition to provide a better perspective on sustainability, environmental science as a whole, chemical fate and transport, cycles of matter, the nature of environmental chemistry, and green chemistry. The chapter on terrorism in the eighth edition has been removed, but specifi c aspects of this topic, such as the potential role of toxic substances in terrorist attacks, have been placed in other chapters. Because of the importance of energy to the environment and sustainability, an extensive new chapter on this topic has been added to the book. Separate chapters on basic chemistry and organic chemistry that were in the seventh and earlier editions have not been included, but may be obtained from the author or publisher in pdf format upon request.
The book views the environment as consisting of fi ve spheres: (1) hydrosphere, (2) atmosphere, (3) geosphere, (4) biosphere, and (5) anthrosphere. It emphasizes the importance of the anthrosphere— that part of the environment made and operated by humans and their technologies. This environmental sphere has so much infl uence on the Earth and its environmental systems that, according to Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen, the Earth is leaving the Holocene epoch, throughout which humankind has existed on Earth until now and is entering the Anthropocene epoch, in which human infl uences, such as emissions of gases that signifi cantly affect the warming and protective functions of the atmosphere, will have a dominant infl uence on conditions under which humankind exists on Earth. Since technology will in fact be used to attempt to support humankind on the planet, it is important that the anthrosphere be designed and operated in a manner that is compatible with sustainability and interacts constructively with the other environmental spheres. In this endeavor, environmental chemistry has a key role to play.