Exposure Analysis

Book Description

Written by experts, Exposure Analysis is the first complete resource in the emerging scientific discipline of exposure analysis. A comprehensive source on the environmental pollutants that affect human health, the book discusses human exposure through pathways including air, food, water, dermal absorption, and, for children, non-food ingestion. The book summarizes existing definitions of exposure, dose, and related concepts and provides the mathematical framework at the heart of these conceptual definitions. Using secondhand smoke as an example, the book illustrates how exposure analysis studies can change human behavior and improve public health. An extensive section on air pollutants considers volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbon monoxide (CO), fine and ultrafine particles, and the latest personal air quality monitors for measuring individual exposure. Another detailed section examines exposures to pesticides, metals such as lead, and dioxin that may occur through multiple routes such as air, food, and dust ingestion. The book explores important aspects of dermal exposure such as the absorption of volatile organic compounds while showering or bathing and exposure through multiple carrier media. The authors describe quantitative methods that have been validated for predicting the concentrations in enclosed everyday locations, such as automobiles and rooms of the home. They also discuss existing laws and examine the relationship between exposure and national policies. Defining the new field of exposure analysis, this book provides the basic tools needed to identify sources, understand causes, measure exposures, and develop strategies for improving public health.

Enhancing Biological Control: Habitat Management to Promote Natural Enemies of Agricultural Pests

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Enhancing Biological Control: Habitat Management to Promote Natural Enemies of Agricultural Pests

Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0520213629

Book Description

Over the past ten years an increasing number of field entomologists and farmers have recognized that conservation of natural enemies is important to effective biological control in many agricultural systems. This collection addresses an important gap in the biological control literature by providing the first comprehensive summary of recent findings on habitat manipulation to control pests. Enhancing Biological Control includes contributions from experts around the world: the United States, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, People's Republic of China, and Switzerland. Chapters cover habitat modification in such areas as fields, orchards, or vineyards, and along or near the perimeters of fields, including hedges or other uncultivated areas. Generalist and specialist natural enemies are described in full, as are theoretical and practical issues. Experimental designs for studying enhancement come into play, and the editors include a modeling study that explores how the dispersal of natural enemies interacts with the positioning of refuges. This volume is an invaluable source of information to researchers, progressive farmers, and agricultural consultants.

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Advocates Pest Management via Biological Control
Good introduction to basics of attempts to control pests

Nature Wars: People vs. Pests
Mark L. Winston
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0674605411

Book Description

On our side, a vast arsenal of chemical pesticides. On their side? They don't have a side, the pests who must do nature's bidding. This is our war, and should we win it, ours would be a sorry planet. With disturbing news from the front, Nature Wars sounds the alarm against our dangerous tactics for controlling the pests that are an annoying but integral part of our world.

Thirty years after Silent Spring woke us to the devastation wrought by DDT, chemical pesticides are as pervasive as ever, deployed at a rate of 4 pounds a year for every man, woman, and child in this country. This ongoing commitment to pesticides, Mark Winston argues, reflects our sense of place in nature: embattled, beleaguered, driven to aggression. His book, as sensible as it is wise, seeks to change this mindset, to show how a more measured and discriminating approach to pests, one based on management rather than eradication, might serve us and the natural world far better than our ill-fated all-out war.

Winston backs up this approach with a full battery of case studies that take us from lawns and kitchens to farms and orchards, from insects and weeds to rats and coyotes. Here we see the complex political, biological, economic, social, and personal interactions that lie behind each pest management decision. Against this background Winston considers diverse instances of past pest management that reveal a consistent pattern of mistakes and problems--and lead to realistic, workable proposals for reducing pesticide use.

A compelling book about ethics and choices, Nature Wars shows us the difference between protecting ourselves from real pests and poisoning ourselves and the planet. It turns us from our war on nature to our task as stewards of the environment.

Customer Reviews:

Advocates Pest Management via Biological Control.......2000-09-24

Since 1962, when Rachel Carson published her seminal work, Silent Spring, nothing much has changed in our practice of pest control. Carson had advocated that the methods we employ for pest control must be such that they do not destroy us along with the insects. Yet today, despite the lip service we pay to Silent Spring, and in spite of considerable environmental protest, public outcry and the availability of viable alternatives, we still choose to spray chemical pesticides at an alarming rate. In fact, chemical pesticides still remain our pest control method of choice.

Our attitude is to approach pests as organisms to control rather than manage; we exterminate instead of reduce; we dominate rather than learn to accommodate. Why this sad state of affairs remains so is a central theme of this book, which introduces the concept of pest management (as opposed to pest control). Pest management forces us to look beyond the immediate benefits and disadvantages, costs and side effects, of pest control methods towards choosing alternatives that are more environmentally compatible and less harmful to our own health. The author explores scientifically exciting alternative technologies such as biological control, yet admits, as the 1990 gypsy moth invasion of Vancouver has shown, that the public needs more education and assurance on its safety and environmental correctness.

This book provides such an education and forms the basis for novel biologically based strategies involving pheromones, parasitic insects, bio-engineered crops and pest diseases to become standard practice.

Mark L. Winston is professor of biological sciences at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of two previous books, The Biology of the Honey Bee and Killer Bees.

Good introduction to basics of attempts to control pests.......1998-12-31

I found this book to be a very good introduction to the issues surrounding control of pests. It uses cases histories such as attempts to control the gypsy and codling moths to introduce not only the biological and environmental issues but also the political influences on decisions to control pests. It's quite readable. Anyone familiar with Silent Spring will enjoy this book.

Invasive Species: Vectors And Management Strategies

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Invasive Species: Vectors And Management Strategies

Manufacturer: Island Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1559639032

Book Description

Recent years have seen a steep rise in invasions of non-native species in virtually all major ecoregions on Earth. Along with this rise has come a realization that a rigorous scientific understanding of why, how, when, and where species are transported is the necessary foundation for managing biological invasions.

Invasive Species presents extensive information and new analyses on mechanisms of species transfer, or vectors, as the latest contribution from the Global Invasive Species Programme (GISP). Contributors assess invasion vectors and vector management in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems for major taxonomic groups in a variety of regions around the world. The book:

examines invasion causes, routes, and vectors in space and time
highlights current approaches and challenges to preventing new invasions, both from a geographic and taxonomic point of view
explores strategies, benefits, and limitations of risk assessment
offers a synthesis of many facets of vector science and management
presents recommendations for action

Chapter authors review fungi, plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates, with geographic assessments covering New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and the United States.

Book Description

This volume is a comprehensive treatment of how the principles of ecology and conservation biology can be used to maximize biological control. Conservation Biological Control presents various means to modify or manipulate the environment to enhance the activities of natural enemies of pests. It establishes a conceptual link between ecology and the agricultural use of agents for biological control, and discusses both theoretical issues as well as practical management concerns. Certain to be interesting to ecologists and entomologists, this volume will also appeal to scientists, faculty, researchers and students interested in pest management, horticulture, plant sciences, and agriculture.

Key Features
* Contains chapters by an international team of leading authorities
* Establishes a conceptual link between ecology and the agricultural use of agents for biological control
* Discusses both theoretical issues as well as practical management concerns
* Provides specific examples of how conservation principles are used to maximize the biological control of pests

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The Facts!!
Important but boring
A Classic Read
last minute purchase
Al Gore surely loves this

Silent Spring
Rachel Carson
Manufacturer: Fawcett Crest
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: B0007DX3TU

Amazon.com

Silent Spring, released in 1962, offered the first shattering look at widespread ecological degradation and touched off an environmental awareness that still exists. Rachel Carson's book focused on the poisons from insecticides, weed killers, and other common products as well as the use of sprays in agriculture, a practice that led to dangerous chemicals to the food source. Carson argued that those chemicals were more dangerous than radiation and that for the first time in history, humans were exposed to chemicals that stayed in their systems from birth to death. Presented with thorough documentation, the book opened more than a few eyes about the dangers of the modern world and stands today as a landmark work.

Book Description

First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water."Silent Spring became a runaway bestseller, with international reverberations . . . [It is] well crafted, fearless and succinct . . . Even if she had not inspired a generation of activists, Carson would prevail as one of the greatest nature writers in American letters" (Peter Matthiessen, forTime's 100 Most Influential People of the Century). This fortieth anniversary edition celebrates Rachel Carson's watershed book with a new introduction by the author and activist Terry Tempest Williams and a new afterword by the acclaimed Rachel Carson biographer Linda Lear, who tells the story of Carson's courageous defense of her truths in the face of ruthless assault from the chemical industry in the year following the publication of Silent Spring and before her untimely death in 1964.

Customer Reviews:

The Facts!!.......2007-08-07

Perhaps her cause was just in writing this book, but her short-sighted ignorance of the repercussions was inexcusable. Because of the ban on DDT which largely resulted from Silent Spring, the WHO has estimated that around 20 MILLION children have died of malaria.

DDT was, & still is, one of the very best insecticides to control mosquitoes, the sole transporter of this deadly disease. Best of all, DDT is very NON-toxic to humans.

The need for DDT is so urgent that even the Sierra Club is justifying it's use inside houses in malaria stricken locations of Africa, South America, & Asia.

Way to go Rachel. Save the Birds, Kill the Children...Wake Up People!!

Important but boring.......2007-06-13

I thought that "Silent Spring" would be an interesting book to read. After all, is supposedly launched the modern environmental movement. However, after reading about 80 pages into the book I started to feel like I was reading the same thing over and over again: pesticides and herbicides are bad and should not be applied to the side of the road. OK, I get the point. I then flipped to page 250 or so, and do you know what I saw? More discussion of how pesticides and herbicides are bad!

Maybe back at that time it was not a self-evident truth that it is a bad thing to go around spraying shit all over the side of the road. But even then, you would think that a disucssion of this matter could be confined to 100 pages or less. A final issue is that the book does not seem to possess a modern understanding of certain subjects (since when do hydrologists refer to groundwater as "underground rivers"?). Although this is not the fault of the book, I do not know why anyone other than a science historian would want to spend much time on it.

Oh Yeah, this book also killed millions of people. The banning of DDT probably led to millions of deaths from malaria. Even today, about 2 million people die from it every year.

A Classic Read.......2007-05-11

Joni Mitchell perhaps most aptly summarizes the driving idea of Silent Spring in her song "Big Yellow Taxi": "Hey farmer farmer / Put away that DDT now / Give me spots on my apples / But leave me the birds and the bees. Please!" While both the book and the song are a bit outdated in the United States as DDT was banned in 1972, it's still an interesting analysis of insecticides/herbicides, societies relationship with science, and the effects a capitalistic driven culture has on the environment. Likewise, the interaction of the natural web and human's impact on it is greatly emphasized. Something I've always found interesting about Carson and her book was the publics (often misogynistic) reaction to her as being "hysterical" and my favorite quote from a board member of the Federal Pest Control Review Board: "I thought she was a spinster. What's she so worried about genetics for?"

last minute purchase.......2007-04-04

My daughter had to have this for English and of course she waited till the last minute. To her surprise, she enjoyed the book and the author's writing very much. As usual Amazon saved the day with a huge selection and fast shipping.

Al Gore surely loves this.......2007-03-26

Hurrah for "sustainability" and "biodiversity"! Down with the human race!

Arthropod Biological Control Agents and Pesticides (Environmental Science and Technology)

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Arthropod Biological Control Agents and Pesticides (Environmental Science and Technology)
B. A. Croft
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Biological Control in the Tropics: Towards Efficient Biodiversity and Bioresource Management for Effective Biological Control (Cabi Publishing)

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Biological Control in the Tropics: Towards Efficient Biodiversity and Bioresource Management for Effective Biological Control (Cabi Publishing)

Manufacturer: CABI
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0851994628

Book Description

Biological control has been central to many recent successful integrated pest management programs. It is also the natural choice where protection of the environment is particularly important. This book reviews current knowledge of biocontrol programs in the tropics, particularly in developing countries. It is based on papers presented at a symposium held in Malaysia in March 1999. Contributors include authorities from Europe, North America and Australia, as well as from SouthEast Asia.

Biological Control: A Global Perspective (Cabi International)

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Biological Control: A Global Perspective (Cabi International)
C Vincent , M S Goettel , and G Lazarovits
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

Biological control, the management of pests by the use of living organisms, has a long history of application to agriculture around the world. However, the effective use of beneficial organisms is constrained by environmental, legal, and economic restrictions, forcing researchers to adopt
increasingly multi-disciplinary techniques in order to deploy successful biological control programs. It is this complex process, including the mindset and the social environment of the researcher as well as the science being pursued, that this book seeks to capture. Chapters reveal the personal
experiences of scientists from the initial search for suitable control agents, to their release into ecosystems and finally to the beneficial outcomes which demonstrate the great success of biological control across diverse agro-ecosystems.

Drawing together historical perspectives and approaches used in the development of biological control as well as outlining current debates surrounding terminology and differential techniques, Biological Control: A Global Perspective will be a valuable resource.

By Fire and Ice: Dismantling Chemical Weapons while Preserving the Environment (Science & Global Security Monograph Series, V. 3)

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By Fire and Ice: Dismantling Chemical Weapons while Preserving the Environment (Science & Global Security Monograph Series, V. 3)
David Koplow
Manufacturer: Taylor & Francis
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

The Chemical Weapons Convention is a recently signed treaty that requires the dismantling and destruction of the massive stockpiles that many countries (most notably the United States and Russia) have built over the years. However, no simple or agreed-upon means exist to accomplish this admirable goal of the removal of chemical weapons. National security experts assert that the country, and the world as a whole, will be better off if chemical weapons are eliminated, while environmental experts assert that there is no way to accomplish this ambitious plan while conforming to existing national and community health and safety standards.
Koplow examines the forced merger between the national security and the environmental policy makers, recognizing the necessity but warning of potential and actual conflicts in missions. Environmentalism and arms control are two crucial sectors of American and international public life that have long existed in segregated "parallel universes." Now these groups must

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