Customer Reviews

Chemistry of the Environment

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Chemistry of the Environment is a great overview of the chemical processes of environmental change. There is a lot of in-depth discussion of air pollution and ozone depletion, as well as water pollution. The book covers virtually every topic in environmental sciences, even going into detail in some ares that are usually classified as environmental geology. The book is written clearly and is accessible for most people who have taken general chemistry courses. A background in organic chemistry would be helpful but is not necessary. This is one of those textbooks that I kept at the end of the semester, to have as a reference guide.

I found the first edition of this book very useful for myself and my students as a reference and the second edition is even more useful. The book is excellent in covering thoroughly the chemical aspects of energy and environmental problems. The book is divided into four parts: Energy, Atmosphere, Hydrosphere/Lithosphere, Biosphere.

The authors discuss the advantages and disadvantages of petroleum, natural gas, coal and the ways of handling the emission of CO2. They include chapters on nuclear, renewable energy, and energy utilization.

I'm particularly impressed with the use of figures which show the many aspects of a system being discussed,with the different contributions from different sources happening at the same time. For instance what happens to the energy annually on earth, organic carbon changing to fossil fuels, energy storage in photosynthesis, maximum work, and systems efficiency, etc. These are great for understanding how many aspects there are to a process.

The section on the atmosphere has chapters that covers air pollution, ozone, climate changes, nitrogen and oxygen chemistry. The section on the hydrosphere covers water resources from a global perspective, properties of water, the importance of acids-bases, solubility, redox reactions, the chemistry of nitrogen and phosphorous. Water quality pollution and its treatment are covered in detail. The section on the biosphere covers toxic materials, the nitrogen cycle in food production use of fertilizers and insecticides.

Dimensional analysis is used extensively throughout and in assigned problems. For instance they calculate an estimate of the energy in a moderate rainstorm to be over a million tons of TNT. They actually show the calculations for other interesting problems such as the increase in energy used in the future with even a small 2.5% annual increase.

You won't find a better or more even-handed exposition of the natural cycles on the Earth emphasizing the importance of understanding the chemistry involved, and our options to keep us and the Earth healthy.

Well, this book is a boring read. However, if you need practical knowledge on environmental chemistry then this is a good book to start with. You need to have a decently strong chemistry background to be able to understand it.