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reating a certification program for environmental scientists, akin to established programs for engineers and proposed programs for chemists, may not be possible because of the breadth of environmental issues and the many scientific methods necessary to address them. In part, this is a reflection of the youthfulness of the field and the diversity of people who entered it when there were hardly any environmental scientists. Chemists, engineers from several specialties, geologists, physicists, and biologists were recruited by government agencies and private industry to address environmental problems, and in many C3S6S they learned on the job. Or more accurately, they helped to develop the field through their work. As they pushed the envelope of environmental science and technology, they helped define new 3.rc3.s such as the fate of chemicals in the environment how nature is affected by human civilization, the health effects of environmental hazards on homo sapiens, and how industry C3.X1 be more environ_ mentally benign. Their partners in this journey were academic scientists many also from fundamental disciplines but others from a growing number of new environmental programs at colleges and universities As this evolution proceeded, the field we now call environmental science and technology slowly took shape. It is an unusual multidimensional place. To its inhabitants it is in sharper focus at its center than at its boundaries. There in the center are interconnected rooms where people work on the human-natural world interaction in all of its complexity. Each room seems to border on regions that link the center to the blurred edges of the structure. At the periphery lie fundamental disciplines that seem to feed information into the core. Thus, as one leaves a microdomain in the center labeled bioremediation one can proceed in several directions toward the periphery, passing through areas that look increasingly like the pure sciences of microbiology, chemical kinetics, genetics, or the mathematics of transport processes. From the microdomain of atmospheric ozone one irisv eventually reach meteorology with its connections to basic physics, reaction mechanisms rooted in molecular theory, and computer modeling with its links to fundamental mathematics. Occasionally, as we walk these virtual halls, we encounter people from very "un-environmental" disciplines such as philosophy, pediatrics, education, sociology, and business administration working their way toward the center. Sometimes tliese interlopers bring new approaches and perspectives that lead to solutions unanticipated by those in the inner sanctum. It is difficult to describe this complex structure to a layperson or even to a colleague from a basic science. Unfortunately, it is also difficult to communicate from room to room within the structure. It is, therefore, no surprise that we are unable to define how to certify expertise in environmental science and technology; indeed, as we push further, we are not sure we should do so. Perhaps that means we will have to deal with more specialization and some chaos, but for environmental scientists it comes with the territory.
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0013-936X/97/0931-113A$14.00/0 © 1997 American Chemical Society
William H. Glaze Editor
VOL. 31, NO. 3, 1997 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS • 1 1 3 A
