Environmental Chemodynamics

Book excerpt: What happens to a chemical once it enters the natural environment?How do its physical and chemical properties influence itstransport, persistence, and partitioning in the biosphere? How donatural forces influence its distribution? How are the answers tothese questions useful in making toxicological and epidemiologicalforecasts? Environmental Chemodynamics, Second Edition introduces readers tothe concepts, tools, and techniques currently used to answer theseand other critical questions about the fate and transport ofchemicals in the natural environment. Like its critically acclaimedpredecessor, its main focus is on the mechanisms and rates ofmovement of chemicals across the air/soil, soil/water, andwater/air interfaces, and on how natural processes work to mobilizechemicals near and across interfaces--information vital toperforming human and ecological risk assessments. Also consistent with the first edition, EnvironmentalChemodynamics, Second Edition is organized to accommodate readersof every level of experience. The first section is devoted totheoretical underpinnings and includes discussions of mass balance,thermodynamics, transport science concepts, and more. The secondsection concentrates on practical aspects, including the movementbetween bed-sediment and water, movement between soil and air, andintraphase chemical behavior. This revised and updated edition of Louis J. Thibodeaux's 1979classic features new or expanded coverage of: * Equilibrium models for environmental compartments * Dry deposition of particles and vapors onto water and soilsurfaces * Chemical profiles in rivers and estuaries, particles and porousmedia * Fate and transport in the atmospheric boundary layer and withinsubterranean media * Chemical exchange between water column and bed-sediment * Intraphase chemical transport and fate This Second Edition of Environmental Chemodynamics also includestwice as many references and 50% more exercises and practiceproblems.