Environmental policy: past, present, and future.

In this first issue of 2011, Volume 45 of Environmental Science & Technology, we present a Special Issue on a pressing concerns of modern society: environmental policy. While the pages of ES&T have been and will continue to be filled with discussions around this topic, we chose this date to reflect for several reasons. Fortieth anniversaries abounded in 2010: the first Earth Day(s) fetes occurred in 1970, the U.S. started the year of 1970 off on January 1 with the National Environmental Policy Act, which formed the Environmental Protection Agency on December 2. In addition, 2011 marks the International Year of Chemistry, where it is hoped that the general public will take a moment to appreciate the dividends that chemical and molecular sciences have given to our modern life. The topics called for in this Special Issue were chosen to provide a cross-section of environmental policies aiming to show how knowledge of the past in the present can best inform the future. Included is research and analysis spanning the past 40 on chemical risk management, energy, water quality and quantity, biodiversity, information management, and global poverty. The issue’s scope is well exemplified by the eight Features herein: Pak reflects on the development and evolution of environmentalism movements (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es101424p); KoloutsouVakakis and Chinta review the multilateral efforts to regulate environmentally harmful activities (e.g., the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions) (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es101373n); Hites narrates the historical rise of dioxins as an environmental threat (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/ es1013664); Amezaga et al. explore the seemingly contradictory concept of sustainable mining (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es101430e); Chakraborti et al. focus on the devastating public health concerns regarding India’s water supplies (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es101695d); Spivak et al. summarize the ongoing scientific investigations to understand and hopefully prevent the “bee dieoff” known as colony collapse disorder (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es101468w); Kolok and Schoenfuss ponder the utility of using various strata of scientific observers, from experts through to citizens, to provide an information web helpful to environmental monitoring and modeling (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es100455d); and Kuczenski et al. describe how risk assessment integrated with life cycle assessment (LCA) can help to design less harmful productssfreer of both human and ecological toxicantssand assuage environmental harm (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es101467z). Moving into the research content, the risk of potentially toxic molecules, especially those that may persist in the environment, are directly addressed by a trio of papers: McLachlan et al. consider the bioaccumulation of organic contaminants in humans and how biotransformation reactions affect the risk (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es101000w); Christensen et al. review the European experience of such studies working their way into environmental policy, namely in the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es101541b); and Arnot et al. aim to improve such integrations especially for persistent organic pollutants (POPs), largely restricted by the above-mentioned Stockholm Convention (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es102551d). Environmental chemists consider both the information management side of risk and studying the source and distribution of that risk through various environmental media. The confluence of both tacks comes with another trio: Digar et al. considering how to meet regulated targets for air quality (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es102581e); Bone et al. considering risk assessment and environmental management for soils (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es101463y); and Sparrevik et al. confronting contaminated sediment in the Oslo harbor (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/ es100444t). A prospect of climate change has always been melting ice, but now it appears that glaciers also locked up enough long-abandoned anthropogenic molecules to be considered a new source for liberated environmental pollutants. Schmid et al. present data on this icy record from 1960 to 2008. Glaciers are of course not the only place that nefarious molecules land, and the many chemistries of the natural environment, from photolysis to material reactions, can degrade and alter out new risks. Herein, Ng et al. consider how to confront degradation in risk assessment (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es1010237) and Maddigapu et al. hone in on phototransformation reactions (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/es102458n). The methodology of LCA has evolved in near-lockstep with environmental policy and regulation, with the former informing the latter and then (both) finding new challenges as a result. A couple of manuscripts consider the general approaches to LCA: Guinée et al. review the evolution and future suggested by LC Sustainability Analysis (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/ es101316v) while Curran et al. look to incorporate biodiversity in LCA (Environ. Sci. Technol. DOI 10.1021/ es101444k). As LCA often indicates where the “carbon footprint” of manufacturing and/or usage most occurs,