Book▼ Review
Environmental Organic Chemistry, Second Edition Rene P. Schwarzenbach, Philip M. Gschwend, and Dieter M. Imboden Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, N.J. 2003, 1313 pp, $125 ISBN 0-471-35750-2 The presence of toxic organic compounds in the environment is now an international problem: The Arctic is contaminated with toxaphene, the Great Lakes are contaminated with PCBs, and people all over the world are contaminated with polybrominated flame retardants. These and other compounds spread throughout the global environment by various mechanisms, which depend on the compounds’ physical properties and chemical and biochemical reactivities. Thus, organic environmental chemists strive to quantitatively understand these processes such that the environmental distribution in time and space of a given organic compound can be predicted with at least modest certainty. Schwarzenbach et al.’s book provides the intellectual background for
making these predictions. The first edition of this book developed quantitative tools and applied them to selected environmental situations in a way that was palatable to both student and researcher. Starting with a compound’s structure and a few measured parameters, one could predict the environmental fate of the compound. The second edition of this book continues this approach but expands the coverage with considerable new material and with numerous “illustrative examples”. With more than 1300 oversized pages, this new edition is so massive that it requires special shipping from Amazon.com. Unlike the first edition, this book is broken into five parts. The first is an overview of the book and an introduction to organic chemical nomenclature. The second and longest part begins with an overview on the use of partition coefficients in organic environmental chemistry and then discusses equilibrium partitioning between gaseous, liquid, and solid phases. The remainder of this part covers intrinsic physical properties that control a compound’s fate in the environment, such as vapor pressure; water solubility; air–organic, air– water, and organic–water partitioning; and sorption, including bioaccumulation and “baseline toxicity”. The authors cover hydrolysis, redox, photolysis, and biological transformation processes in the third part. The fourth part presents some modeling tools; I especially liked the chapter on box models. The lessons learned from the first 1000 pages are applied to some case studies that include lakes, rivers, and groundwater in the last part. Extensive appendixes with useful chemical and mathematical facts and a 42-page, up-to-date bibliography round out the book. This book is replete with numerous real-world examples, and these
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pedagogical aids are certainly welcomed. Almost every chapter ends with several qualitative questions and quantitative problems. Unfortunately, no solutions manual—or even answers to selected problems—is available or even in the planning stages. Although illustrative examples and problems help students, I believe too many are the “plug and chug” variety; that is, some problems often boil down to finding the correct data in an appendix, selecting the correct equation from the text, substituting the former into the latter, and calculating an answer. I would rather have seen at least some of these problems worked out from logical first principles. I have mixed feelings about recommending this book. On the one hand, it covers a vast amount of useful material with clarity and intellectual rigor, and thus, it will help research scientists. On the other hand, this book is just too big to be attractive as a textbook. I would guess that an instructor could cover about one-third of this book in a one-semester course. Should the instructor of such a course select the first third of each chapter (probably not), or should she or he select one-third of all the chapters? I suspect that most instructors will select Parts I and II for detailed coverage and dip lightly into the other parts for applications, but some guidance from the authors on how to organize a onesemester course would have been helpful. Despite my qualms about using this book as a student textbook, I do believe it is an important reference source for everyone working on organic compounds in the environment. It continues to define the field. Reviewed by Ronald A. Hites of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University.
© 2003 American Chemical Society
Books Drinking Water Regulation and Health, F. W. Pontius, Ed. (Wiley, 2003, 1029 pp, $150). This reference text provides water scientists and engineers with guidance on how to stay in compliance. Environmental Impact Assessment: Practical Assessment to Current Problems, D. P. Lawrence (Wiley, 2003, 562 pp, $107). The authors challenge the notion that every EIA can be handled the same way, and they provide potential solutions to eight common EIA problems. Geochemical and Hydrological Reactivity of Heavy Metals in Soils, H. M. Selim, W. L. Kingery, Eds. (Lewis, 2003, 360 pp, $199.95). This practical guide for soil and groundwater scientists, ecologists, and government regulators presents mechanisms and analytical tools to study complex chemistry in real systems.
Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice, A. Light, A. de-Shalit, Eds. (MIT Press, 2003, 357 pp, $27.95). Environmental philosophy may refocus public policy efforts, as this book shows by presenting case studies from all over the world. Nature By Design, E. Higgs (MIT Press, 2003, 342 pp, $27.95). Thousands of ecological restoration projects are undertaken in the United States every year. This book examines the philosophical and cultural shifts that accompany many of these projects. Phytoremediation: Transformation and Control of Contaminants, S. C. McCutcheon, J. L. Schnoor, Eds. (Wiley, 2003, 990 pp, $115). This book provides a detailed look at the history, current practice, and potential in this emerging field. Population Ecology: First Principles, J. H. Vandermeer; D. E. Goldberg (Princeton University Press, 2003, 280 pp, $75). Today, differential equations
are used as commonly as life histories for predicting population dynamics. This book describes the “mathematical backbone” of ecology. Scaling Methods in Soil Physics, Y. Pachepsky, D. E. Radcliffe, H. M. Selim, Eds. (CRC Press, 2003, 434 pp, $119.95). The first single-source reference in this developing field includes novel approaches based on geostatistics, fractal theory, soil–landscape relationships, and advances in theories of scale. VOC Emissions from Wastewater Treatment Plants: Characterization, Control, and Compliance, P. Tata, J. Witherspoon, C. Lue-Hing, Eds. (Lewis, 2003, 415 pp, $149.95). Publicly owned water treatment works in the United States are required to comply with Clean Air Act Amendments, including controlling emissions of volatile organic compounds. This book provides examples of how to develop a strategy to deal with these compliance issues.
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