Environmental-Health Books

The relationship between human health and the environment is often overlooked. The reality is that we our impacting upon our own health in a huge way with our environmental destruction. Shearman explores this concept in a clear and interesting manner, fit for the general audience and scientist alike. Chapters cover areas such as global warming, biodiversity and vegetation and over-population and their impact upon human health. something lacks to make it a GREAT book, but recommended nonetheless.

I needed this book for a Hazardous Materials Technician Course that I am taking. Having read several firefighting textbooks over the years, I expected this one to be boring and uninteresting. I was pleasantly suprised that it was fairly easy reading and it kept my attention pretty well. I did not dread reading it...which I think is pretty good for a book like this.
I would recommend this book for anyone in the emergency services or anyone else that might need to deal with hazardous materials.

A quite interesting book for people who are interested by hazardous materials response. It presents in detail the HAZMAT procedure to manage an incident after a rapid presentation of the "hazmat team" and his equipment. Gives also a large presentation of each class of hazardous substances and the adapted "HAZMAT" procedure to respond at several type of incident. In his appendix, it describes a large pannel of common hazardous substances and presents for each class of substance a sort of checklist to apply the correct procedure without forgetting any important point. It could be a good support for teaching specialised firefighters (or others) giving a good operationnal approach. But it must be completed by a bit of chemical theory.

Steve's Hazwoper book is amoung the best in the field. I highly recommend it for teaching high level hazwoper OSHA 40 hour course. I'm considering using it to teach at the State Univeristy of New York at Stony Brook.

Research today does not come cheaply - especially when projects have involved extensive and prolonged data collection and analysis around substances which are difficult to identify, costly to quantify and whose behaviour is poorly understood. This Report on Disinfection By-Products (DBPs) is a good example. Furthermore, it talks about carcinogenicity, it concerns drinking water and it looks at an ever increasing number of familiar and newly identified DBPs.

To quote directly from the Report: Risks projected from epidemiological studies of chlorinated drinking water and risks projected from toxicological studies in animals are quite different, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Results of epidemiological studies identify a high level of risk from bladder cancer and to a lesser extent, colon cancer in humans consuming chlorinated drinking water (as many as 10,000 cases per year). In contrast, among the DBPs that have been selected for toxicological studies, risk has been identified for liver, kidney and colon cancer, but collectively at much lower levels of estimated risk than for epidemiological studies.

The difficulty arises because the epidemiological studies available cannot establish causality, in part because no bladder carcinogen has been found in toxicological studies of chlorination by-products. On the other hand, only a handful of the by-products produced in chlorination have been studied toxicologically. Thus, the basis of this difference is the critical question related to whether or not chlorination of drinking water needs to be substantially modified or discontinued as a method of disinfecting drinking water.

Included in this Report is a new updated review of DBPs, a synopsis of occurrence and available toxicological data with a notable increase in the sophistication of the available data over material previously published. To assist readers, a chapter is provided to facilitate a better understanding of how the decision-making process for establishing safe levels for chemicals has changed in recent years, especially with regard to carcinogens and of the use of epidemiological data. Also included are chapters devoted to both practical considerations for water treatment plant operators and ways to communicate effectively with the water consuming public about drinking water issues. - Reviewer - Australian Water Association

Really well-written history of what at first appears to be a very small slice of 19th-century America. This book takes a seemingly straightforward idea that settlers moved to get to better--and literally healthier--land and uses the idea as a lens through which to understand much of 19th-century America. And, amazingly, her strategy works. Her arguments are convincing and I definitely felt like I was learning new ideas and fascinating tidbits all along the way.

I used this book to receive suggestions on building materials for a house that we are building. It was a good reference on paints, HVAC, carpeting, etc that would be less toxic with info on specific products. It also contains lots of information on household chemicals and other issues that affect people with allergies, asthma, and chemical sensitivity.

This book contains an list of abbreviations that lacks a few entries, but doesn't have a glossary. It is therefore an excellent supplement to "Going Higher: Oxygen Man and Mountains," since it contains some medical terms that are explained in "Going Higher," along with some that aren't. This is understandable since "High Altitude Medecine..." is designed for medical students. Nonetheless once past the medical terminology, it can be grasped by a any bright literate person. Best of all it is half the price of any comparable book.

While Dr. Godish's book is informative and well-written, he does not mention the contribution to indoor air pollution made by the plethora of fragranced products worn by building occupants. Some of these products contain over 100 different chemicals, formulated to be long-lasting. Perfume is an acknowledged trigger for migraine headaches and asthma in some individuals, and should be included in any evaluation of indoor air quality.

The function of an IAQ primer is to give a reader a sense of the field, without losing any of the depth of the various topic areas. This book does that. Only reason that it does not rate a 5 star rating is that it is now 12 years old, and some of the data is now, well, dated.
The contributors include a few of the current well-respected researchers (besides the editiors Samet and Spengler) including Harriet Burge in Chapter 12 (Indoor Air Pollution and Infectious Diseases) and Bill Cain in Chapter 6(Environmental Tobacco Smoke).
This is still a valuable basic text that helps to give one a nice overview of the complexities of indoor air quality investigation, without as I mentioned above, sacrificing the detail.