Category: Assessment And Management Of Health And Environmental Risks

Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas Oil and natural gas infrastructure is vulnerable to the effects of climate change and the increased risk of disasters such as storm, cyclones, flooding, and long‐term increases in sea level. Minimizing these risks by building in less disaster prone areas can be expensive and impossible in countries with coastal locations…

Health Climate change poses a wide range of risks to population health – risks that will increase in future decades, often to critical levels, if global climate change continues on its current trajectory (McMichael et al. 2003). The three main categories of health risks include (i) direct‐acting effects (e.g. due to heat waves, amplified air pollution,…

Short answer: Yes. Even a seemingly slight average temperature rise is enough to cause a dramatic transformation of our planet. Eight degrees Fahrenheit – it may not sound like much, perhaps the difference between wearing a sweater and not wearing one on an early‐spring day. But for the world in which we live, which climate…

Roughly 40 years ago, a small group of scientists and policy makers began to realize that humanity was on a dramatic collision course, as the rapidly growing world economy and population threatened to collide with the planet’s finite resources and fragile ecosystems. The danger was first highlighted globally at the 1972 UN Conference on the Human…

Radioactive materials is taken into the body are removed by two mechanisms: physical decay and biological processes, each with its own characteristic half‐life. The combined removal by these two mechanisms is known as the effective half‐life, Teff, which is determined by (5.18) The effective half‐life is always smaller than either the biological or radiological half‐life. Or the…

Definition Radiation is defined as the propagation of energy through a vacuum or matter. Any electromagnetic or particulate radiation capable of producing ions, directly or indirectly, by interaction with matter is referred to as ionization radiation. Medical uses generally involve X‐rays and gamma rays as well as high‐energy electrons and low‐energy beta particles. The corpuscular…

Noise control is affected in a number of ways. Machinery can be redesigned to reduce noise. The basic principle is similar to controlling indoor air pollution: eliminating the source of the noise. This can be accomplished through improved machinery design and maintenance or by damping vibrations by increasing stiffness or using rubber or plastic bumpers…

The importance of proper safety training cannot be emphasized enough. If an emergency should arise, sampling personnel must be able to determine the cause of the accident and be prepared to act accordingly. Far too often, the rescuer, because of inadequate preparation, becomes another victim. Safety procedures should become routine, and the best way to…

Any entry into a confined space must always be performed by a team consisting of at least two people. A standby person must be stationed outside of the confined space. OSHA says that the duty of the attendant is to “maintain communication with and keep an accurate account of those workers entering the permit space.”…

Few confined spaces have adequate natural or mechanically induced air movement, and in most spaces, it is necessary to remove harmful gases or vapors by ventilation with a blower, fan, and capturing hoods. The most common method of ventilation uses a large flexible hose attached at one end to a blower with the other end…