Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security
Incineration has been used widely for waste disposal, including household, hazardous, and medical wasteâ€"but there is increasing public concern over the benefits of combusting the waste versus the health risk from pollutants emitted during combustion. Waste Incineration and Public Health informs the emerging debate with the most up-to-date information available on incineration, pollution, and human healthâ€"along with expert conclusions and recommendations for further research and improvement of such areas as risk communication. The committee provides details on: Processes involved in incineration and how contaminants are released. Environmental dynamics of contaminants and routes of human exposure. Tools and approaches for assessing possible human health effects. Scientific concerns pertinent to future regulatory actions. The book also examines some of the social, psychological, and economic factors that affect the communities where incineration takes place and addresses the problem of uncertainty and variation in predicting the health effects of incineration processes.
Conflicting budget priorities of the Pres. and Congress accentuate the tensions between the exec. and legis. branches inherent in the fed. budget process. Impoundment, whereby a Pres. withholds or delays the spending of funds appropriated by Congress, provides a mechanism for budgetary control during budget implementation in the exec. branch; but Congress retains oversight responsibilities. Many Pres. have called for an item veto, or expanded impoundment authority, to provide them with greater control over fed. spending. Contents of this report: Brief History of Impoundment: Controversies Increase; Impoundment Control Act of 1974; Alternative to an Item Veto; Evolution of Expanded Rescission Proposals; Line Item Veto Act of 1996.
Sustainable Resource Recovery and Zero Waste Approaches covers waste reduction, biological, thermal and recycling methods of waste recovery, and their conversion into a variety of products. In addition, the social, economic and environmental aspects are also explored, making this a useful textbook for environmental courses and a reference book for both universities and companies. - Provides a novel approach on how to achieve zero wastes in a society - Shows the roadmap on achieving Sustainable Development Goals - Considers critical aspects of municipal waste management - Covers recent developments in waste biorefinery, thermal processes, anaerobic digestion, material recycling and landfill mining
Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.