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Environmental Laws

Environmental Laws. Ehringer. DDT. D ichloro- D iphenyl- T richloroethane

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Environmental Laws

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  1. Environmental Laws Ehringer

  2. DDT • Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane • DDT was first synthesized in 1874, but its insecticidal properties were not discovered until 1939. In the early years of World War II, DDT was used with great effect to combat mosquitoes spreading malaria, typhus, and other insect-borne diseases among both military and civilian populations. The Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller of Geigy Pharmaceutical was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods

  3. DDT Continued • In 1962, Silent Spring by American biologist Rachel Carson was published. The book catalogued the environmental impacts of the indiscriminate spraying of DDT in the US and questioned the logic of releasing large amounts of chemicals into the environment without fully understanding their effects on ecology or human health. • The book suggested that DDT and other pesticides may cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds.[4] Its publication was one of the signature events in the birth of the environmental movement.

  4. DDT continued • In the summer of 1972, the government announced a ban on most uses of DDT in the U.S., where it was classified as an EPA Toxicity Class II substance. • It’s use was banned, but not the manufacturing of the chemical. DDT was used in many countries late into the 1990’s.

  5. The Clean Air Act • EPA has been developing programs to cut emissions of these commonly found air pollutants since the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970. • Some regulated pollutants are: ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and lead. • Today, motor vehicles are responsible for nearly one half of smog-forming volatile organic compounds (VOCs), more than half of the nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, and about half of the toxic air pollutant emissions in the United States. Motor vehicles, including non-road vehicles, now account for 75 percent of carbon monoxide emissions nationwide.

  6. Clean Air • The Clean Air Act takes a comprehensive approach to reducing pollution from these sources by requiring manufacturers to build cleaner engines; refiners to produce cleaner fuels; and certain areas with air pollution problems to adopt and run passenger vehicle inspection and maintenance programs. • Sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) are the principal pollutants that cause acid precipitation. SO2 and NOx emissions released to the air react with water vapor and other chemicals to form acids that fall back to Earth. Power plants burning coal and heavy oil produce over two-thirds of the annual SO2 emissions in the United States. The majority of NOx (about 50 percent) comes from cars, buses, trucks, and other forms of transportation.

  7. Clean Air • The 1990 changes to the Clean Air Act introduced a nationwide approach to reducing acid pollution. The law is designed to reduce acid rain and improve public health by dramatically reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx). • Toxic air pollutants, or air toxics, are known to cause or are suspected of causing cancer, birth defects, reproduction problems, and other serious illnesses. Exposure to certain levels of some toxic air pollutants can cause difficulty in breathing, nausea or other illnesses. Exposure to certain toxic pollutants can even cause death. EPA to identify categories of industrial sources for 187 listed toxic air pollutants and to take steps to reduce pollution by requiring sources to install controls or change production processes

  8. Clean Air • Ozone can be good or bad depending on where it is located. Close to the Earth's surface, ground-level ozone is a harmful air pollutant. Ozone in the stratosphere, high above the Earth, protects human health and the environment from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. This natural shield has been gradually depleted by manmade chemicals. So in 1990, Congress added provisions to the Clean Air Act for protecting the stratospheric ozone layer.

  9. The Clean Water Act • Growing public awareness and concern for controlling water pollution led to enactment of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. As amended in 1977, this law became commonly known as the Clean Water Act. The Act established the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States.

  10. Clean water • The 1972 act introduced a permit system for regulating point sources of pollution. Point sources include: • industrial facilities (including manufacturing, mining, oil and gas extraction, and service industries) • municipal governments and other government facilities (such as military bases), and • some agricultural facilities, such as animal feedlots.

  11. Clean Water • Under the 1972 act EPA began to issue technology-based standards for municipal and industrial sources. • Municipal sewage treatment plants, also called publicly-ownedtreatment works (POTW) are required to meet secondary treatment standards.[10] • Effluent guidelines (for existing sources) and New Source Performance Standards are issued for categories of industrial facilities discharging directly to surface waters.[11] • Categorical Pretreatment Standards are issued to industrial users (also called "indirect dischargers") contributing wastes to POTW.[12] These standards are developed in conjunction with the effluent guidelines program.

  12. The Super Fund • Superfund is the name given to the environmental program established to address abandoned hazardous waste sites. It is also the name of the fund established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980. • This law was enacted in the wake of the discovery of toxic waste dumps such as Love Canal and Times Beach in the 1970s. It allows the EPA to clean up such sites and to compel responsible parties to perform cleanups or reimburse the government for EPA-lead cleanups.

  13. Endangered Species Act • The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the most wide-ranging of the dozens of United States environmental laws passed in the 1970s. This act was designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction due to "the consequences of economic growth and development untendered by adequate concern and conservation". • The ESA only protects species which are officially listed as "threatened" or "endangered".

  14. ESA • Species which increased in population size since being placed on the endangered list include: • Bald Eagle (increased from 417 to 11,040 pairs between 1963 and 2007); removed from list 2007 • Whooping Crane (increased from 54 to 436 birds between 1967 and 2003) • Kirtland's Warbler (increased from 210 to 1,415 pairs between 1971 and 2005) • Peregrine Falcon (increased from 324 to 1,700 pairs between 1975 and 2000); removed from list • Gray Wolf (populations increased dramatically in the Northern Rockies, Southwest, and Great Lakes) • Gray Whale (increased from 13,095 to 26,635 whales between 1968 and 1998); removed from list • Grizzly bear (increased from about 271 to over 580 bears in the Yellowstone area between 1975 and 2005); removed from list 3/22/07 • California’s Southern Sea Otter (increased from 1,789 in 1976 to 2,735 in 2005) • San Clemente Indian Paintbrush (increased from 500 plants in 1979 to more than 3,500 in 1997) • Red Wolf (increased from 17 in 1980 to 257 in 2003) • Florida's Key Deer (increased from 200 in 1971 to 750 in 2001) • Big Bend Gambusia (increased from for a couple dozen to a population of over 50,000) • Hawaiian Goose (increased from 400 birds in 1980 to 1,275 in 2003)

  15. Marine Mammal protection Act • In 1972, the United States Congress passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The Act makes it illegal for any person residing in the United States to kill, hunt, injure or harass all species of marine mammals, regardless of their population status. In addition, the MMPA also makes it illegal for anyone to import marine mammals or products made from them into the United States.

  16. Montreal Protocol • The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of a number of substances believed to be responsible for ozone depletion. • The treaty is structured around several groups of halogenatedhydrocarbons that have been shown to play a role in ozone depletion. All of these ozone depleting substances contain either chlorine or bromine (substances containing fluorine-only do not harm the ozone layer).

  17. Montreal cont • There is a slower phase-out (to zero by 2010) of other substances (halon 1211, 1301, 2402; CFCs 13, 111, 112, etc) and some chemicals (Carbon tetrachloride; 1,1,1-trichloroethane). • The substances in Group I of Annex A are: • CFCl3 (CFC-11) • CF2Cl2 (CFC-12) • C2F3Cl3 (CFC-113) • C2F4Cl2(CFC-114) • C2F5Cl (CFC-115)

  18. Kyoto protocol • The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the international Framework Convention on Climate Change with the objective of reducing Greenhouse gases that cause climate change. It was agreed on 11 December1997 at the 3rd Conference of the Parties to the treaty when they met in Kyoto, and entered into force on 16 February2005. • As of November 2007, 175 parties have ratified the protocol. Of these, 36 developed countries (plus the EU as a party in its own right) are required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the levels specified for each of them in the treaty

  19. Oil Pollution Act • The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) of 1990 streamlined and strengthened EPA’s ability to prevent and respond to catastrophic oil spills.  A trust fund financed by a tax on oil is available to clean up spills when the responsible party is incapable or unwilling to do so.  The OPA requires oil storage facilities and vessels to submit to the Federal government  plans detailing how they will respond to large discharges.

  20. Toxic Substances Act • The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 -- otherwise known as TSCA was enacted by Congress to give EPA the ability to track the 75,000 industrial chemicals currently produced or imported into the United States. EPA repeatedly screens these chemicals and can require reporting or testing of those that may pose an environmental or human-health hazard. EPA can ban the manufacture and import of those chemicals that pose an unreasonable risk.

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