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.
This is the second edition of the WHO handbook on the safe, sustainable and affordable management of health-care waste--commonly known as "the Blue Book". The original Blue Book was a comprehensive publication used widely in health-care centers and government agencies to assist in the adoption of national guidance. It also provided support to committed medical directors and managers to make improvements and presented practical information on waste-management techniques for medical staff and waste workers. It has been more than ten years since the first edition of the Blue Book. During the intervening period, the requirements on generators of health-care wastes have evolved and new methods have become available. Consequently, WHO recognized that it was an appropriate time to update the original text. The purpose of the second edition is to expand and update the practical information in the original Blue Book. The new Blue Book is designed to continue to be a source of impartial health-care information and guidance on safe waste-management practices. The editors' intention has been to keep the best of the original publication and supplement it with the latest relevant information. The audience for the Blue Book has expanded. Initially, the publication was intended for those directly involved in the creation and handling of health-care wastes: medical staff, health-care facility directors, ancillary health workers, infection-control officers and waste workers. This is no longer the situation. A wider range of people and organizations now have an active interest in the safe management of health-care wastes: regulators, policy-makers, development organizations, voluntary groups, environmental bodies, environmental health practitioners, advisers, researchers and students. They should also find the new Blue Book of benefit to their activities. Chapters 2 and 3 explain the various types of waste produced from health-care facilities, their typical characteristics and the hazards these wastes pose to patients, staff and the general environment. Chapters 4 and 5 introduce the guiding regulatory principles for developing local or national approaches to tackling health-care waste management and transposing these into practical plans for regions and individual health-care facilities. Specific methods and technologies are described for waste minimization, segregation and treatment of health-care wastes in Chapters 6, 7 and 8. These chapters introduce the basic features of each technology and the operational and environmental characteristics required to be achieved, followed by information on the potential advantages and disadvantages of each system. To reflect concerns about the difficulties of handling health-care wastewaters, Chapter 9 is an expanded chapter with new guidance on the various sources of wastewater and wastewater treatment options for places not connected to central sewerage systems. Further chapters address issues on economics (Chapter 10), occupational safety (Chapter 11), hygiene and infection control (Chapter 12), and staff training and public awareness (Chapter 13). A wider range of information has been incorporated into this edition of the Blue Book, with the addition of two new chapters on health-care waste management in emergencies (Chapter 14) and an overview of the emerging issues of pandemics, drug-resistant pathogens, climate change and technology advances in medical techniques that will have to be accommodated by health-care waste systems in the future (Chapter 15).
Expanding water reuse-the use of treated wastewater for beneficial purposes including irrigation, industrial uses, and drinking water augmentation-could significantly increase the nation's total available water resources. Water Reuse presents a portfolio of treatment options available to mitigate water quality issues in reclaimed water along with new analysis suggesting that the risk of exposure to certain microbial and chemical contaminants from drinking reclaimed water does not appear to be any higher than the risk experienced in at least some current drinking water treatment systems, and may be orders of magnitude lower. This report recommends adjustments to the federal regulatory framework that could enhance public health protection for both planned and unplanned (or de facto) reuse and increase public confidence in water reuse.
"Sanitation Safety Planning (SSP) is a step-by-step risk based approach to assist in the implementation of the 2006 WHO Guidelines for Safe Use of Wastewater, Excreta and Greywater in Agriculture and Aquaculture. The approach can be applied to all sanitary systems to ensure the system is managed to meet health objectives. SSP assists users to: systematically identify and manage health risk along the sanitation chain; guide investment based on actual risks, to promote health benefits and minimize adverse health impacts; provide assurance to authorities and the public on the safety of sanitation-related products and services. The SSP manual is targeted at a variety of users at different levels including; health authorities and regulators, local authorities, wastewater utility managers, sanitation enterprises and farmers, community based organizations, farmers associations and NGOs. SSP brings together actors from different sectors to identify health risks in the sanitation system and agree on improvements and regular monitoring and underscores the leadership role of the health sector."--Publisher's description.
A practical guide to wastewater pathogens The fourth volume in Wiley's Wastewater Microbiology series, Wastewater Pathogens offers wastewater personnel a practical guide that is free of overly technical jargon. Designed especially for operators, the text provides straight facts on the biology of treatment as well as appropriate protective measures. Coverage includes: * An overview of relevant history, hazards, and organisms * Viruses, bacteria, and fungi * Protozoa and helminthes * Ectoparasites and rodents * Aerosols, foam, and sludge * Disease transmission and the body's defenses * Removal, inactivation, and destruction of pathogens * Hygiene measures, protective equipment, and immunizations
High-Risk Pollutants in Wastewater presents the basic knowledge regarding the diversity, concentrations, and health and environmental impacts of HRPs in municipal wastewater. The book summarizes information on the types (e.g. heavy metals, toxic organics and pathogens) and toxicities of HRPs in wastewater. In addition, it describes ecological and health hazards arising from the living things' direct/indirect contacts with the HRPs during their full lifecycles (generation, disposal, discharge and reuse) in wastewater or water environments. Sections cover the concepts of appropriate technology for HRP hazard/risk assessment and wastewater treatment/reuse and the issues of strategy and policy for increasing risk control coverage. Finally, the book focuses on the resolution of water quality monitoring, wastewater treatment and disposal problems in both developed and developing countries. - Presents information on HRPs and their risk assessment and control technologies - Provides basic knowledge regarding the diversity, concentrations, and health and environmental impacts of HRPs in municipal wastewater - Summarizes information on the types (e.g. heavy metals, toxic organics and pathogens) and toxicities of HRPs in wastewater
Biological Treatment of Industrial Wastewater presents a comprehensive overview of the latest advances and trends in the use of bioreactors for treating industrial wastewater.
Solid waste was already a problem long before water and air pollution issues attracted public attention. Historically the problem associated with solid waste can be dated back to prehistoric days. Due to the invention of new products, technologies and services the quantity and quality of the waste have changed over the years. Waste characteristics not only depend on income, culture and geography but also on a society's economy and, situations like disasters that affect that economy. There was tremendous industrial activity in Europe during the industrial revolution. The twentieth century is recognized as the American Century and the twenty-first century is recognized as the Asian Century in which everyone wants to earn ‘as much as possible’. After Asia the currently developing Africa could next take the center stage. With transitions in their economies many countries have also witnessed an explosion of waste quantities. Solid waste problems and approaches to tackling them vary from country to country. For example, while efforts are made to collect and dispose hospital waste through separate mechanisms in India it is burnt together with municipal solid waste in Sweden. While trans-boundary movement of waste has been addressed in numerous international agreements, it still reaches developing countries in many forms. While thousands of people depend on waste for their livelihood throughout the world, many others face problems due to poor waste management. In this context solid waste has not remained an issue to be tackled by the local urban bodies alone. It has become a subject of importance for engineers as well as doctors, psychologist, economists, and climate scientists and any others. There are huge changes in waste management in different parts of the world at different times in history. To address these issues, an effort has been made by the authors to combine their experience and bring together a new text book on the theory and practice of the subject covering the important relevant literature at the same time.
The UNEP Governing Council of February 2013 requested the United Nations Environment Programme "to develop a global outlook of challenges, trends and policies in relation to waste prevention, minimization and management, taking into account the materials life cycle, subject to the availability of extra-budgetary resources and in consultation with Governments and stakeholders, building on available data, best practices and success stories, taking into account the Global Chemicals Outlook and any other relevant initiatives and taking care not to duplicate existing information, to provide guidance for national policy planning." UNEP's International Environmental Technology Centre (IETC), in collaboration with the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), has taken the lead on this initiative; aiming to develop the Global Waste Management Outlook as a tool to provide an authoritative overview, analysis and recommendations for action of policy instruments and financing models for waste management. The GWMO is the result of two year's work and provides the first comprehensive global overview of the state of waste management around the world in the 21st century.
