Greenlist(tm) Bulletin 8/06/04
THE GREENLIST(tm) BULLETIN 8/6/04
This is the weekly bulletin of the TURI Library, reporting a selection of recently published titles we have acquired. We hope this is a welcome message. Our pledge to you is to keep the bulletin relevant to your work and brief -- no more than 10 titles. (usually)
Titles here, abstracts below them:
- Does Secrecy Equal Security? - Limiting Aces to Environmental Information, February 2004
- TOXMAP, March 2004
- Integrated Chain Management and Supply Chain Management Comparative Analysis and Illustrative Cases, 2004
- How EH&S Departments Can Add Business Value - An Integrated Approach, May 2004
- Environmental Tools for Success: Iowa's EMS Service Center, Summer 2004
- A Laser-Catalyzed Route to Polyethylene, June 2004
- The Sticky Subject of Mussels, May 2004
- Electron Transfer Mediator Systems for Bleaching of Pulp Paper, January 2004
- Inept But At Your Service: Can You Trust Your Hardware Store?, 2004
- SEC to Improve Tracking of Environmental Liabilities, July 2004
1. TITLE Does Secrecy Equal Security? - Limiting Aces to Environmental InformationAUTHOR Dahl, Richard
SOURCE Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 112, No. 2, February,
2004, pp. A104 - A107
ABSTRACT After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the response by governmental agencies frightened by prospect of more terrorist action was swift. Agencies that routinely provided information about the environment, public health, and physical infrastructure on their websites removed those resources in the belief that terrorists might learn where the nation is most vulnerable merely by surfing the Internet. While some of the information has been restored to websites, much remains unavailable. And not only is there less governmental information on the Internet, but the threat of terrorism also has strengthened a pre-existing movement to place greater restrictions on public access to information that industry and government once had been required to make available. Some critics of such policies are wondering whether secrecy actually equals security.
2. TITLE TOXMAP
AUTHOR Dooley, Erin E.
SOURCE Environmental Health Perspectives, March 2004, vol. 112, no. 3,
p. A161
ABSTRACT As more information makes its way into the popular media on the potentially toxic chemicals that are released into the nation's soil, water, and air, consumers want to find out how news reports and feature stories about chemical releases relate to their own neighborhoods and workplaces. Now they have a new tool to help them understand the data: the National Library of Medicine TOXMAP pilot program, located online at http://toxmap.aquilent.com/toxmap/index.jsp
3. TITLE Integrated Chain Management and Supply Chain Management
Comparative Analysis and Illustrative Cases
AUTHOR Seuring, Stefan
SOURCE Journal of Cleaner Production, volume 12, number 8-10, 2004, pp.1059-1071
ABSTRACT Within industrial ecology, the life cycle or chain of activities forms an important basis for analyzing and reducing environmental impacts. This has led to the development of integrated chain management. A comprehensive analysis must take the actors and their interaction in chain management into account. By assessing integrated and supply chain management, this paper is designed to contribute to future development of industrial ecology, in that it addresses the importance of actors along the chain as well as their interaction. Five case studies form the textile industry are used to illustrate the differences between the objectives of the single actors in the chain and the overall chain. This illustrates that co-operation is the only way for companies to improve the competitiveness of the chain while reducing environmental burdens.
4. TITLE How EH&S Departments Can Add Business Value - An Integrated Approach
AUTHOR Rice, Steve
SOURCE Corporate Environmental Strategy, May 2004, vol. 11, no. 5, pp. 2-101 - 2-118
ABSTRACT Despite many years of calls for companies' environmental, health and safety departments to add business value, few if any have produced substantial, sustained results beyond incremental reductions in facility and departmental operating costs. While reducing costs is important, that sole approach merely reduces incremental financial negatives; it doesn't create the substantial, sustained financial positives that business executives crave and admire. As a result, most EH&S departments' budgets and staffs have shrunk due to wave after wave of cutbacks. This article explores the present situation, provides an assessment of its root causes and presents an alternative approach that is beginning to provide the results that so many departments have been striving to achieve. It concludes with an outlook for the future.
5. TITLE Environmental Tools for Success: Iowa's EMS Service Center
AUTHOR Hurban, Lisa
SOURCE Environmental Quality Management, Summer 2004, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 17-26
ABSTRACT An environmental management system (EMS) is a vital tool that can provide any business with an effective approach to managing all of its environmentally related activities. The Iowa Waste Reduction Center (IWRC) at the University of Iowa has established an EMS Service Center that helps small businesses develop and implement EMSs. The Service Center was created as part of the US EPA's strategic plan to promote the use of EMSs. Through the EMS implementation process, companies not only gain an understanding of ISO 14001, but also learn to identify how the company's operation, products, and services affect the environment. In addition, they learn to identify applicable legal requirements and develop methods for prioritizing environmental issues. This article begins by describing the development of IWRC's EMS Service Center. It then describes the EMS implementation model used by the IWRC and explains how small businesses can use the model to create and implement effective environmental management systems.
6. TITLE A Laser-Catalyzed Route to Polyethylene
AUTHOR Wood, Andrew
SOURCE Chemical Week, Vol. 166, No. 20, June 16, 2004, p. 24
ABSTRACT Scientists from the University of Florence's (Florence, Italy) European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy say they have developed a high-pressure process to produce crystalline polyethylene (PE) using only laser light as the catalyst. The high yield and crystallinity of the resulting polymer, as well as the simplicity of the process, should make it appealing for the large-scale applications, say the researchers, who detailed the work recently in Nature Materials. Olefins can be made to polymerize at extremely high pressures, but the procedure usually results in amorphous materials consisting of highly branched polymers, the researchers say. The use of laser light catalyst requires much lower pressure, and results in the formation of perfectly crystalline PE, they say. The reaction proceeds via a proton absorption process that results in a change in molecular geometry, favoring the production of linear polymer chains. Besides providing material with improved properties, the process also avoids the problem of dealing with catalyst use and disposal, experts say. "The complete transformation of the monomer into a high-quality crystalline polymer, and the simple reaction conditions of high pressure and optical catalysis make this method extremely appealing for a chemistry with reduced environmental impact," the researchers say. (full text)
7. TITLE The Sticky Subject of Mussels
AUTHOR Boswell, Clay
SOURCE Chemical Market Reporter, Vol. 265, No. 18, May 3, 2004, p. FR8
ABSTRACT It is not easy to make glue work underwater, but the blue mussel can, and several researchers are trying to figure out how. Earlier this year, one team announced that it had discovered a key element in the process, iron. Other teams have explored the topic from different directions. In the long term, these scientists hope to use their discoveries to design new adhesives, materials and protective coatings.
8. TITLE Electron Transfer Mediator Systems for Bleaching of Pulp Paper
AUTHOR Rochefort, D.; Leech, D.; Bourbonnais, R.
SOURCE Green Chemistry, January 2004, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 14-24
ABSTRACT The participation of biological agents in pulp bleaching systems has received a lot of attention from research teams around the world, driven by the environmental benefits that biobleaching could bring. Nature showed us the ability of some of its agents, such as wood-decaying fungi, to delignify and bleach wood and wood pulp. what we need to do is to enhance the efficiency of such agents to make them cope with the fast pace of our modern pulp mills. To do so, a profound understanding of the biobleaching system is required. Our efforts to discover new efficient mediators for the laccase-mediator system (LMS) brought us to use several techniques to analyze the reactions involved in mediated enzymatic delignification. Mostly based on electrochemistry, these techniques are reviewed in this paper, along with key results,. Cyclic voltammetry was used to characterize electron transfer rates between each element of the LMS. We found, along with other authors, that the mediator redox potential has a great influence on its efficiency. We used bulk electrolysis to simulate the oxidative action of laccase on mediators and model compounds of lignin. Such electrolysis techniques allowed us to study mediated lignin oxidation outside of normal laccase working conditions. Finally, an electrolysis-based method for mediated pulp delignification that we developed, based upon our research on biobleaching, is presented.
9. TITLE Inept But At Your Service: Can You Trust Your Hardware Store?
AUTHOR Neltner, Thomas G.; Jones, January E.; Smeltzer, Linda
'CORP AU OR PUBLISHER' Improving Kids' Environment
DATE 2004
ABSTRACT From September 2003 to March 2004, Improving Kids' Environment (IKE) staff visited 39 retail hardware stores serving Indianapolis posing as a customer. IKE made a total of 45 stores visits. IKE's goal was to assess how "kid friendly" the stores were based on the advice provided about lead safety and pesticides and the products sold. The results are disturbing. They reflect a broad disregard for the health and safety of the store's customers - whether a contractor or a do-it-yourselfer.
10. TITLE SEC to Improve Tracking of Environmental Liabilities
AUTHOR Sissell, Kara
SOURCE Chemical Week, Vol. 166, No. 24, July 21/28, 2004, p. 9
ABSTRACT SEC says it has agreed to set up a means for investors to track a company's environmental liabilities, including actual and potential cleanup costs, product liability exposure, and fines and penalties imposed by federal agencies. The SEC decision is included in a July 15 General Accounting Office (GAO; Washington) report which recommends that SEC "take steps to improve the tracking and transparency of information," and to "work with EPA to take better advantage of EPA data relevant to environmental disclosure."; Under current requirements, "SEC does not systematically track the issues raised in its reviews of companies' filings, and thus, does not have the information it needs to analyze the frequency of problems involving environmental disclosure, compared with other types of disclosure," the report says. ACC says the report is unlikely to result in any significant changes to actual disclosure requirements, however.
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