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How many American’s believe air quality is better than it was in 1970 when the Clean Air Act was enacted?
29%
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How many American’s believe air quality is worse than it was in 1970 when the Clean Air Act was enacted?
38%
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How many American’s believe air quality is about the same than it was in 1970 when the Clean Air Act was enacted?
31%
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Since the Clean Air Act was enact, between 1970 and 2003, how much has nitrogen oxide emissions declined?
17%
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Since the Clean Air Act was enact, between 1970 and 2003, how much has sulfer dioxide emissions declined?
49%
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Since the Clean Air Act was enact, between 1970 and 2003, how much has lead emissions declined?
98%
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Since the Clean Air Act was enact, between 1970 and 2003, how much has carbon monoxide emissions declined?
41%
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Since the Clean Air Act was enact, between 1970 and 2003, how much has volatile organic emissions declined?
48%
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Since the Clean Air Act was enact, between 1970 and 2003, how much has particulate emissions declined?
82%
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How much has the US population grown by between 1970 and 2003?
42%
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How much has overall energy consumption grown by between 1970 and 2003?
43% to 97.351 trillion btu
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How much has the number of registered vehicles grown by between 1970 and 2003?
By 111% to 235 million
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How much has the annual vehicle miles traveled (VMT) grown by between 1970 and 2003?
151% to 2.8 trillion miles
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How much has “real” gross domestic product (gdp) grown by between 1970 and 2003?
175% to $10.381 trillion
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What causes more annual deaths in America asbestos or food-borne illness?
Asbestos
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How many people die from asbestos related deaths (asbestosis, mesothelioma, and lung cancer) annually?
~10,000 dies from diseases related to asbestos
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Which cases more cancer deaths each year: nuclear radiation or the sun?
The sun
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What is the incidence rate of skin cancer each year?
1.3 million cases
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How many people die from melanoma each year?
7,800
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In the sixty years since Hiroshima and Nagaski, how many died of cancer due to radiation?
500
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What is responsible for a greater proportion of human cancer: alcohol consumption or environmental pollution?
Alcohol consumption
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According to the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention, how much of cancer is due to alcohol?
3%
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How much of cancer is due to pollution?
2%
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How should sound scientific communicate risk?
- Size of risk
- Sources of a risk
- Possible risk management options
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What are biases and heuristics that influence decisions under uncertainty?
- Representativeness
- Availability
- Anchoring and adjustment
- (these are the qualitative aspects of risk)
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What is representativeness in risk assessment including cons?
- Part of qualitative decision making in the face of uncertainty
- Places likelihood of object in general class
- Cons: leads people to pay too much attention to specific details (engineer example)
- Cons 2: people are insensitive to sample size (hospital female baby births)
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What is availability in risk assessment?
- Part of qualitative assessment includes:
- -Ease of recall similar events (old people and heat attacks; young people car accidents;
- - Retrievability (list of men and women if have more famous men ppl think there are more men in the list)
- - Salience – stonger memory or recent events found more available (common R as first letter or third letter in word)
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What is anchoring and adjustment in risk assessment?
- - Def: ppl form quantitative judgements starting with a first value that is adjusted with supplementary info
- - Con: anchors are biased
- - Con: adjustments are too small
- - Examples: estimating UN Membership, multiplication math problems
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What is the perceived risk model?
Combines familiarity and dread
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Where does public outrage usually fall within the perceived risk model?
public familiarity with the threat is low and public dread of threat is high
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What influences dread?
- - fatal
- - Global impact
- - Involuntary
- - Uncontrollable
- - Unfair
- - Catastrophic
- - Future generations
- - Increasing
- - Not easily reduced
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What influences Familiarity?
- - observable
- - known to exposed
- - immediate effect
- - old risk
- - known to science
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What are other factors in precieved risk model?
- - man made v. natural
- - children v. adults at risk
- - Untrustworthy institutions v. trustworthy institutions
- - Media focus v. neglect
- - Identifiable victims v statistical victims
- - Suppressed data v. accessible data
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What is the biological basis of irrational risk perception?
- - only organisms that could recognize and respond to danger survived and evolved
- - our brain is designed for fear first and then think
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What are some general rules to risk perception?
- - perception factors are like seesaws
- - several factors are usually involved; importance varies over time
- - factors are universal across cultures, ages, and gender
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In risk perception, what is control and what makes people more or less afraid?
- - Control is imposed or voluntary risk factors – CHOICE
- - More afraid: driver on cell phone; nuclear waste repository – no control; air plane (physical)
- - Less afraid: using a cell phone ourselves while driving; inviting a nuclear waste repository into your town; driving a car (physical)
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In risk perception, what is trust and what makes us more or less afraid?
- - the more we trust the institutions which are supposed to protect = less afraid
- - the less we trust institutions = more afraid we will be
- - More Afraid: industry (only out for own good); when govt says something is okay and then turns out not okay; closed decision making
- - Less Afraid: consumer groups; risk govt warned us about; open decision making process
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In risk perception, what makes us more or less afraid in natural vs. man made events?
- - more afraid: industrial chemicals; air/water pollution; hazardous waste; technology
- - less afraid: solar radiation; organic food; herbal remedies
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What lessons do quantitative decision making teach us in risk perception?
people have difficulty making judgements under uncertainty and use heuristics to help
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What lessons do qualitive decision making teach us in risk perception?
- Many factors have been suggested to influence perception but prediction is difficult
-
Why does most risk communication fail?
- - doesn’t account for the psychological basis for perception of risk
- - refuses to accept irrational behavior is how ppl are programmed
- - has counterproductive goal of making everyone see the risk as communicator sees it
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How can risk communication be more successful?
- - accept that people react emotionally
- - provide info about risk based on psychological/emotional factors
-
Why does risk perception matter?
- - we make decisions about risk every day
- - public views on risk influence social risk mgmt. decisions
- - real public health consequences for “risk perception gap”
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What is the EPA’s influence over municipal solid waste?
- - EPA does not manage at household level
- - EPA does regulate landfills
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Why is Times Beach MO important?
- - 1970s Russell Bliss hired to spray oil onto dusty roads
- - oil contained dioxin
- - EPA declares health emergency - town evac and 265,000 tons of soil burned
- - Lead to RCRA “resource conservation and recovery act”
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What is RCRA and what does it regulate?
- - RCRA – Resource Conservation and recovery act
- - Solid and hazardous waste
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What does RCRA exclude in its oversight?
domestic waste, fossil fuels, mining wastes, oil, and gas refining waste; hydrofracking
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What is solid waste under RCRA?
- - Solid waste – any discarded material from industrial, commercial, govt, mining & agriculture
- - Includes: solid, liquid, semi-solid, or contained gaseous materials
-
What is hazardous waste under RCRA?
- - listed or characteristic solid waster
- - listed includes non specific sources (toluene, MEK, Etc) and specific sources (toxicity, reactive, ignitable, corrosive)
- - charactertistic: toxicity, reactive, ignitable, corrosive
- - subtitle C: “cradle to grave” tracking
-
What is excluded from RCRA’s hazardous waste definition?
- - domestic waste
- - fossil fuels
- - mining wastes
- - oil and gas refining waste
- - hydrofracking
-
What is RCRA’s Subtitle C grant authority over?
Hazardous Waste “cradle to grave” tracking
-
What is RCRA’s Subtitle D grant authority over?
non-hazardous wastes (municipal landfills, etc)
-
What is RCRA’s Subtitle F grant authority over?
fed responsibilities (waived sovereign immunity)
-
What is RCRA’s Subtitle I grant authority over?
underground storage tanks
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What is RCRA’s Subtitle J grant authority over?
medical waste (now its Medical Waster Mgt Act)
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What is the flow of products under RCRA?
- 1. Use
- 2. Recycled in Process (if recycled goes back to use)
- 3. Solid Waste
- 4. After no longer being used, becomes either hazardous or non-hazardous waste
- 5. If deemed a RCRA hazardous waste, waste must go to RCRA landfill
- 6. If deemed a RCRA non-hazardous waste, waste goes to other landfill
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How is RCRA Hazardous waste tracked?
- a.manifest tracking begins with waste generators
- b.then manifest goes to waste transporter
- c. then manifest tracks treatment, stoarage, and disposal facility (TSDF)
- d. manifest with tracking to grave returns to waste generator
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Who keeps hazardous waste manifests under RCRA?
Waste generator must keep manifests forever and is forever liable for payout (think Times Beach oil spraying incident)
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How much hazardous waste needs to be in a barrel for it to count as HW?
One drop
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How must a RCRA landfill be constructed?
- - Must have double liner with welded seams,
- - packed clay layers,
- - leachate collection
-
How do municipal landfills handle methane?
as waste breaks down without oxygen releaseing methane, we generally collect landfill gas and flare it or use for energy
-
In 1984 how many underground storage tanks were leadking?
1 million or 30% of storage tanks were leaking
-
In 1988 how did the law change how gas stations handle storage tanks?
- Gas stations required to have:
- - spill and overflow protection
- - corrosion protection
- - double walled tanks with leak detection btw
- - exluded home heating oil, famrs, and residential tanks
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When was (CERCLA) passed?
1980
-
Why was CERCLA Passed?
- because of love canal and valley of drums which were poorly managed or abandoned waste sites
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What happened at Love Canal (Niagara falls)?
- - b/w 1930s-1950s Hooker Chemical dumped 21000 tons of toxic waste
- - 1953 land is sold to the city for $1
- - 1960s deed restriction reversed and 100s homes built on site
- - 1978 waste found oozing from the site
-
What happened at the Valley of Drums?
- -17,000 openly dumped drums were removed from 13 acres
- -1986 several barrels burned for weeks – still ignored
- -1979 EPA issues an emergency cleanup
- -1980 CERCLA legislation passed
-
What does CERCLA stand for?
CERCLA stands for Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act aka SUPERFUND
-
What does CERCLA do?
- -for abandoned or uncontrolled waste sites
- - National Priorities List (NPL) hazardous waste sites (based on health hazard ranking system)
- - 1600 NPL sites in country
- - government or responsible party mus clean up
- -very tough law (retroactive, strict, joint and several)
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Under CERCLA, when are owners liable?
- If they are a past or current owner (Retroactive)
- Owners are liable regardless of the laws of the day (strict)
- Even one small waste generator can be liable for all (strict)
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How many national priorities lists (NPL) or superfund sites are in VA?
30 NPL sites in VA
-
In 2004 how many NPL sites and how many construction completions?
- ~1500 sites in 2004
- ~800 construction completions
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What was the cost recovery of the Superfund at its highest?
~325 million between 1997 – 2000
-
What was the cost recovery of the Superfund in 2006?
~50 million
-
What was the Bhopal Disaster?
- Union carbide pesticide plant (now Dow Chemical)
- Worst industrial accident in history
- 42 million tons of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) reacts with water overpressurizes
- killing 3000 immediately
-
How many died in Bhopal Disaster?
- 3000 immediately
- 1000s more in weeks later
- 20,000+ with long term health effects
-
When was the Bhopal Disaster?
Dec 3, 1984
-
What was the Hungarian Aluminum Plant Reservoir Dam Burst? When?
- released red sludge 700,000 cubic meters (185 million gallons)
- 4 killed
- 120+ burned
-
How many found guilty of Bhopal gas disaster?
8 people
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What inspired the 1986 Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA)?
- Created Emergency Planning and Community “Right to Know” Act (EPCRA)
- Citizens right to know about chemicals in their community
- Req emergency planning for spills and releases
- Established Toxic Release Inventory (TRI)
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What is Toxic Release Inventory (TRI)
- must report all chemical releases, storage, usage, disposal (above threshold)
- publically available
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What did the 1990 Pollution Prevention Act (P2) do?
Shift thinking from end of pipe to up the pip
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What is most desirable in pollution?
a. source reduction
b. recycling
c. waste treatment
d. disposal
Source reduction
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What is the least desirable in pollution?
a. source reduction
b. recycling
c. waste treatment
d. disposal
disposal
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How many pounds of trash does each person toss out each day?
4.5 pounds
-
How much has the number of pounds of trash per day per person increased since 1970
double
-
How much of our waste is packaging material?
about 1/3
-
How much of the packaging material is paper and card board?
33%
-
What region has the most landfill and how much?
Rocky Mountain and ~85%
-
What region incinerates the most and how much?
Northeast ~35%
-
What region recycle the most and how much?
The west ~38%
-
How much does the US landfill, incinerate, and recycle?
~65% landfill, ~7% incinerated, ~18% recycled
-
How many cell phone subscribers are there?
In 2006 ~2.5 billion
-
How many new cell phones were introduced between 2005 and 2006?
~1/2 billion
-
How many americans own cell phones?
72%
-
How frequently does the average user replace their cell?
~1.5 years
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