Pollution in the Urban Environment, POLMET 85

Amwphertc

Ewronuunr

Vol

21. No

5. pp. 1255-1256.

ocw4981/87

1987.

Perpmon

F’rinmd I” Great Bnum

The Earth’s Studies in Geophysics, National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Avenue, N. W., Washington, DC 20418, 1986. xiv +263 pp. Price: U.S., Canada & Mexico, S28.95; export 534.75. When you get to be my age. one of the things you read in the newspapers and news magazines is the obituary column. In doing this, I have become very aware of an interesting phenomenon. Tbcre is a great deal of space devoted to the departures from this Earth of figures in politics, the arts and the media, and virtually none to even major figures in science. Probably the deaths, when they occur, of Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould will rate a few lines, but that is not because they are scientists, but because they have become media personalities and/or figures in the political scene. Consider the relatively teoent past. Certainly three people who have changed the way we regard the environment were A. J. Haagen-Smit. N. A. Fuchsand K. T. Whitby. 1learned of their deaths because I was asked to write objtuary notices for the scientific/technical press. Not one appeared in the local newspapers or the general news magaxmes. A totally undistinguished congressmanfrom the hills ofTennessee, a rock singer who popularixed a single song he did not write, or the editor of a small newspaper in California, that’s a different matter! It ISmuch the same with news of sciencegenerally. We have just witnessed the collapse of two of the major magazines devoted to science news for the general public, with real questions about the ultimate survival of the one remainrng mence news mapzine. However, even at then best, these magazines were constrained to report some sorts of science news to the exclusion of others. Many areas were never covered for the simple reason that bringing the general reader up to the point where he could understand what was written would take too many pages;that the actual news would be a tony fraction of the total account. It can never be assumed that. once a reader had been taught the Importance of, for example, molecular chirality, he would stay taught until the next month. In addition, there is no guarantee that prectsely the people who ought to learn something about sciencewill do so. 1 oncelearned that a recent pohtical appointee had studied briefly under one of my colleagues and peers. Since n seemedpossible I might need to interact with the man, 1called the colleague and asked about him. The colleague summed him up in a very few words: “Jtm, that man is a fugitive from quantitative thinkings This all too often characterizes the sort of people whom we elect to high o&e, and who, directly or Indirectly, control the nature of the science that we can afford to do. One of the results IS that the disciplines, and the subdisciplines and the su~su~i~iplln~, all need to publish periodic accounts of then status. their recent findings, and their hopes, carefully geared to the non-spectaltst,if not to the Iay person. I have been involved myself in the writing of several of them. Copies are then sent IO all major government figures, and, with luck, these figures will deiegate some staff member with a baccalaureate m science IO read them and perhaps report back whether there is anythmg that ought IO be noted. From the potnt of view of the sctenttstII is a discouraging business. If such a report is not written, tt is almost certatn that his parttcular field will lose fundmg. If the report IS written, the same thing may happen; I have never seen any figures on the actual percent egecttvenessof these reports.

t3.00+0.00 Joumolr Lul.

Nonetheless, we continue to produce them; some odds must be viewed as an improvement over no odds whatever. The present volume, then, is one of those. Its particular emphasis is announced in its title. It begins on a more or less micro scale with consideration of lightning (first part, six chapters), continues to the source of li~tnin~ cloud and thunderstorm electricity (second part, four chapters), and then concludes with the regional and global scale of electrification (part III, six chapters). Each chapter is written by a well-chosen specialist or two or three, and there are extensive bibliographies for each chapter. The volume is reviewed here, partly because I have a sense that a number of readers are at the borderline with cloud physics or atmospheric physics, partly becausequestions still remain as to whether the trace chemistry of the atmosphere plays a role in thunderstorm electrification, and partly because 1 found the book interesting having once done a btt of work in this area. Like all publications of the National Academy of Sciences,this one is carefully written by highly qualified authors, the book is produced with considerable care, and it is well indexed (though an author index to the literature citations in the 16 chapters would be helpful). This is an excellent review of an important field, written so that the average non-specialist scientist can understand it in most cases.If you find the subject interesting,you can always ignore the salesmanship that is largely restricted to the Executive Summary. I found it an excellent briehng on what has happened in the roughly 30 years since I worked in this area. JAMES

P. LODG& JR

Pollution in the Urban Environment, POLMET 85, Edited by M. W. H. Chan, R. W. M. Hoare, P. R. Holmes, R. J. S. Law and S. B. Reed, Elsevier Science Publishers Co., Inc. 52 Vanderbilt Ave., New York, NY 10017, outside U. S. Elsevier Applied Science Publishers, Ltd., Crow House, Linton Road, Barking, Essex, England, 1986, xvii f 699 pp. Price: $107.25. This somewhat curious volume appears to comprise a set of extended abstracts, generally 4-8 pages in tength, of papers presentedat a meeting held in Hong Kong inearly astmber, 1985. Publication in such a short time is commendable, but of course entails photo-printing from typed copy and the absenceof an index, slightly awkward in so large a vofume. It means a somewhat unsightly book, with a mixture of type faces, a certain amount of dirty type, and even an occasional correction inserted with pen and ink. The conference is apparently either the first or a very early one in what is intended as a ~ntinuing series, given the acronym POLMET, which is never explained. The title is reasonably accurate. Most of the concern is with urban pollution of all media, and hence only part of the volume is concerned with air pollution. However, it constatutesa stgnificant section, herecalled a “Stream.” There are altogether five Streams: environmental management and plannmg; an qualtty management; noise planning and control; wastes management; and water quality management. Within each Stream, papers are separated into “invited” and

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Book Reviews

“contributed papers.” Withtn these categortes, for some reason, the papers are arranged alphabetically by first author. This is definitely an international conference. I did not make an actual count, but after Hong Kong itself, the largest group seemed IO be British, with at least some representation from a number of European countries (although not from etther Germany), the U.S., and most of the countrtes of Asta, excluding U.S.S.R., but including both Chinas. A few of the authors are major members of the community. Most, however, are less famihar to the mainstream research community. NOW, these are not, at least in the air pollution area, major research papers that will set us forth on new paths and challenge the existing paradigms. Because they are summaries, there is not much detail as to methodologies, and I would be doing the readers a disservice if I reported that this was a major research publication. At IIS quite steep price, I seriously doubt that many people will feel impelled to acquire a personal copy Nevertheless, the volume is quite fascinating, and of sufficient consequence that many readers will want to influence then instItutional libraries to provide a copy for perusal. The point is that in many areas tt provides a first good look at pollution problems in areas from which there have been few reports. Want to know something about air quahty in Hong Kong or Panang? About emissions from factories in China? About noise problems in Guangzhou? About water quality problems tn India? It’s all here, at least in outlme. Perhaps more rmportant is the msight into the different views of pollutton. There are papers on such things as differences between the Brittsh and American approach to air pollution control, and between the American use of the envtronmental impact analysts and that of several other countrres. One problem is the extensive use of acronyms m some papers wtthout explanation. I suspecr that the problem did not arise at the meeting itself because the papers were presented m a different order. However, 1cannot attest to this from any real knowledge. Perhaps rn the future theeditorqof successor volumes can step in and provide a bit of assistance to those of us who were not there. The New York Times has been characterrzed as the bestunedited newspaper in the world. Whtle this volume may not be the best anything, it ts fascinatmg for precisely what n is. One thmg it is not is sigmficantly edited. Nevertheless, wtth all the bad English and everything else, I still found it fascinatmg. JAMES P. LODGE, JR

Nuclear Power: M~argement of High-Level Radioactive Waste, WHO Regional Publications, European Series No. 13, World Health Organiration, 1211 Geneva 27,

Swttzerland, 1982, vi + 63 pp. Paperbound. Price: SW. fr. 10. Nwlar He&b

Power: Accidental Releases-Principles of Public Action, WHO Regional Publications, European Series No. 16. World Health Organtzation, 121I Geneva 27,

Switxerland, 1984. 62 pp. Paperbound. Price: Sw. fr. 12. These volumes, while some years old, arrived on my desk a few months ago. There has been additional delay in getting

around to reviewing them, but at least some of the delay XI review is not my fault, There must be scarcely a single laboratory in the U.S. that, at some time or other, has not put up a cartoon showmg a bunch of' people dashing around, with a captton, “Now that we are organized, what the Hell should we dol” (I have no idea whether such cartoons would be posted m laboratortes m the rest of the world). This is certainly a questron that artses whenever a symposium is organized. Once I[ IS undertaken, what should the output be? I have attended symposia in which the inspiration seemed to come from that classtc cartoon by James Thurber that shows a large group at a cocktail party. One woman is exclaiming, “One of us ought to be a Boswell, wrttmg all thts down!” Stenotypists are present to record all dtscussion, as well as the text of all papers not previously submitted to the symposium management. The other extreme is represented by the Gordon Conferences and their clones; there are not only no records kept, but it is forbidden to cite or quote anythmg presented. There are numerous intermediate positions. obviously including publicatton of those papers presented that pass peer review rn this Journal, A route that IS probably too infrequently taken IS the pubhcatton of an extended summary of the maJor points of the meettnp, particularly when the meeting Itself is essentially didactic in its aims. This has both the advantage and dtsadvantage of somewhat distancing the substance from the mdivtdual authors; probably its a~eptabtltty to individual partrctpants varies inversely wtth the size of the egos involved. In any case, this is the techmque used m producing both of the slim volumes under review. There was a meeting, in each case, roughly two years prtor to publtcation. Rapporteurs were named who brought the entire subject matter into a relatively dense summary, vtrtuatly without attribution other than through the bibl;ography. I daresay the draft was then crrculated to the participants for approval and correction. then finally published. Not having been present, I can hardly comment on the adequacy of the summations. However, they read smoothly, and are probably. because of the mechantsm employed. a reasonable Job. They are rather d~ploma!i~liy worded, with rather bland statements that II IS possible to view indtvtdual problems in several ways in cases where there might well have been rather sptrtted differences of opinion. In addition. quick perusal of the lists of parttcipants suggests that nuclear extremists of either stripe were not welcome. The result in each case ts a good general ltstrng of avattable options, with some sense of present vtew of their relative ranking. There are few quantitative statements; tfyou feel the need to locate the best ltterature values of various probabilities connected with the subject, you will not find them here; you may find them in the articles referenced in the bibliographies. Probably appropriate to the brevity of the respective texts, there are no mdtces. It was rather disquieting to read thesccond of the two m the aftermath of the inctdent at Chernobyl. Is II possible to hope that that ghastly incident may be partially redeemed by better data, over the years, on the health effects of iomzmg radtatton? These, then, are good qualitattve dtscusrtons of their general respective areas. They should beconsidered for use by those needrng to know the general shape of their respective cognates. JAMES P LODGE, JR