The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides access to information on a variety of topics related to the environment and strives to inform citizens of health risks. The EPA also has an extensive library network that consists of 26 libraries throughout the United States, which provide access to a plethora of information to EPA employees, scientists, and researchers. The EPA implemented a reorganization project to digitize their materials so they would be more accessible to a wider range of users, but this plan was drastically accelerated when the EPA was threatened with a budget cut. It chose to close and reduce the hours and services of some of their libraries. As a result, the agency was accused of denying users the “right to know” by making information unavailable, not providing an adequate strategic plan, and discarding vital materials. This case study explores the background of the digitization project, the practices implemented, and the critiques of the project.

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The Environmental Protection Agency

https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/2299/1986/901994.pdf?sequence=1

Atmospheric polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: Source attribution, emission factors and regulation

 Many atmospheric chemicals occur in the gas phase as well as in liquid cloud droplets and aerosol particles Therefore, it is necessary to understand the distribution between the phases According to Henry's law, the equilibrium ratio between the abundances in the gas phase and in the aqueous phase is constant for a dilute solution Henry's law constants of trace gases of potential importance in environmental chemistry have been collected and converted into a uniform format The compilation contains 17 350 values of Henry's law constants for 4632 species, collected from 689 references It is also available at http://wwwhenrys-laworg 

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Compilation of Henry's law constants (version 4.0) for water as solvent

Nature And Properties Of Soils

Plastic litter is widely acknowledged as a global environmental threat, and poor management and disposal lead to increasing levels in the environment. Of recent concern is the degradation of plastics from macro- to micro- and even to nanosized particles smaller than 100 nm in size. At the nanoscale, plastics are difficult to detect and can be transported in air, soil, and water compartments. While the impact of plastic debris on marine and fresh waters and organisms has been studied, the loads, transformations, transport, and fate of plastics in terrestrial and subsurface environments are largely overlooked. In this Critical Review, we first present estimated loads of plastics in different environmental compartments. We also provide a critical review of the current knowledge vis-a-vis nanoplastic (NP) and microplastic (MP) aggregation, deposition, and contaminant cotransport in the environment. Important factors that affect aggregation and deposition in natural subsurface environments are identified and c...

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Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Aquatic Environments: Aggregation, Deposition, and Enhanced Contaminant Transport

Local pressure variations of the order of 100–1000 N/m2 can be observed between the upstream and downstream faces of the typically triangular-shaped dunelike sediment structures that form at the sediment-water interface of rivers. Laboratory experiments were conducted examining the influence of this localized pressure variation on contaminant transport processes within the sediment. Numerical modeling of the in-bed flow via boundary element methods was also undertaken in order to predict convective transport under typical field conditions. The laboratory experiments and numerical simulation of the in-bed flow in several rivers verified that the pressure distribution observed on the sediment surface and the resulting interstitial fluid convection can control transport of chemically inert, nonsorbed contaminants in stable sediments. In-bed Peclet numbers were of the order of 100–1000, indicating the negligible influence of diffusion under the conditions examined.

Convective transport within stable river sediments

Hurricane Katrina, rated as a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, made landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast near New Orleans, Louisiana on Monday, August 29, 2005. The storm brought heavy winds and rain to the city, and several levees intended to protect New Orleans from the water of Lake Pontchartrain were breached. Consequently, up to 80% of the city was flooded with water reaching depths in excess of three meters in some locations. Research described in this paper was conducted to provide an initial assessment of contaminants present in floodwaters shortly after the storm and to characterize water pumped out of the city into Lake Pontchartrain once dewatering operations began several days after the storm. Data are presented which demonstrate that during the weeks following the storm, floodwater was brackish and well-buffered with very low concentrations of volatile and semivolatile organic pollutants. Dissolved oxygen was depleted in surface floodwater, averaging 1.6 mg/L in the Lakeview district and 4.8 mg/L in the Mid-City district. Dissolved oxygen was absent (< 0.02 mg/L) at the bottom of the floodwater column in the Mid-City district 9 days afterthe storm. Chemical oxygen demand (Mid-City average = 79.9 mg/L) and fecal coliform bacteria (Mid-City average = 1.4 x 10(5) MPN/100 mL) were elevated in surface floodwater but typical of stormwater runoff in the region. Lead, arsenic, and in some cases, chromium, exceeded drinking water standards but with the exception of some elevated Pb concentrations generally were typical of stormwater. Data suggest that what distinguishes Hurricane Katrina floodwater is the large volume and the human exposure to these pollutants that accompanied the flood, rather than very elevated concentrations of toxic pollutants.

Chemical and microbiological parameters in New Orleans floodwater following Hurricane Katrina.

Contaminant fluxes from sediment due to tubificid oligochaete bioturbation

Relationships between micelle-water and octanol-water partition constants for hydrophobic organics of environmental interest

Equilibrium at Environmental Interfaces. Transport Fundamentals. Chemical Exchange Between Air and Water. Chemical Exchange Between Water and the Adjoining Earthen Material. Chemical Exchange Between Air and Soil. Intraphase Chemical Transport and Fate. Appendices. Index.

Louis J. Thibodeaux

Papers

Convective transport within stable river sediments

Chemical and microbiological parameters in New Orleans floodwater following Hurricane Katrina.

Contaminant fluxes from sediment due to tubificid oligochaete bioturbation

Relationships between micelle-water and octanol-water partition constants for hydrophobic organics of environmental interest

Environmental chemodynamics : movement of chemicals in air, water, and soil