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Every branch of science, every profession, and every engineering process has its own language for communication. Environmental health and environmental science are no different. To work within these major environmental fields, you must acquire a fundamental but wide-ranging vocabulary and knowledge of the components that make them up. An understanding of the tools, techniques, and key terms and concepts in the interrelated fields of environmental health and science is necessary for effective practice.

In Environmental Health and Science Desk Reference, authors Frank R. Spellman and Revonna M. Bieber define and explain the terms and concepts used by environmental professionals, environmental science professionals, safety practitioners and engineers, and non-science professionals.

Environmental science and health and occupational health and safety are not single topics, but rather a complex, colorful, and diversified array of interrelated subjects including all of the basic sciences, computer science, government, engineering, measurement, physics, health and disease, energy, security, disease, injury identification prevention and control, and much more. The practicing environmental specialist or student of environmental science, technology, health and safety engineering should know these topics. Without some knowledge of these topics it is difficult (if not impossible) to practice in any of the environmental fields.

The authors of this comprehensive reference work have more than 35 years of practical experience in environmental health and science. They have selected and explained more than 6,000 terms in this authoritative reference. The entries range from single-sentence definitions for the simplest terms, to explanations of over 1,000 words for the most complex or important concepts. The authors demonstrate many of the entries with examples or case studies, and the reference includes more than 100 drawings and diagrams, which illustrate the most important principles of these fields.

Spellman and Bieber provide an accessible guide to the language and background knowledge necessary for work in environmental fields, writing in straightforward English and avoiding technical jargon wherever possible. This is an essential reference for anyone working in environmental health, environmental science, and related fields.

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CHOICE Review

This massive encyclopedia features about 6,000 entries (the authors' estimate), alphabetically arranged and ranging in length from one line to several pages. Spellman (environmental health, Old Dominion Univ.) and Bieber (Naval Medical Center, Portsmouth), a practicing industrial hygienist, appear to aim this volume at a general audience, judging by its very broad range. It perhaps was initiated many years before web searches became commonplace. The authors suggest that it will be useful for "the practicing environmental specialist." The numerous one-line entries are similar to what one would find with a web dictionary search (and are sometimes silly). The longer articles--unpredictable as to subject--are often quite in-depth and useful, but require guesswork as to which offer the most detail, given the lack of a table of contents or index to lead one to the meatier and most useful entries.One of this volume's strengths is the great variety of topics it encompasses. Industrial hygiene and some exposure topics are well covered, but toxicology is not. Mercury and cadmium get one line only. Dioxin gets three lines, and lead gets two-thirds of a page. Conversely, controlled substance testing (vis-a- vis drivers' licenses) gets 20 pages--very interesting and detailed, if one only had a clue that this is a place to look for such detail. Additionally, the volume lacks cross-referencing. Some figures are well done and useful. The writing style varies from dry and straightforward to chatty and engaging. Overall the lack of an index (understandable because so many entries are one-liners) makes access to the potentially most useful entries difficult. For a person with no Internet access, this book would be a useful combination of dictionary and encyclopedia. But for those who know what to look for, a web search would be more fruitful. Summing Up: Optional. General readers. M. Gochfeld Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Frank R. Spellman is assistant professor of Environmental Health at Old Dominion University and the author of more than 50 books, including Biology for Nonbiologists , Ecology for Nonecologists , and In Defense of Science: Why Scientific Literacy Matters .

Revonna M. Bieber works for the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth in the field of industrial hygiene. She is coauthor, with Frank Spellman, of Chemical Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security .