Talk:Environmental engineering
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--Alex 13:27, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
It may also be considered a ramification of Chemical Engineering.
Moved from article:
"Two of the principal current environmental problems are
- the increasing number of humans on Earth. Along this line, one of the first applications of environmental engineering is the removal of sewage from cities, which became increasingly important as population grew. There were (and still is in many countries) initially no treatment : wastes are for example simply brought to the nearest stream. However, since sewage disposal eventually cause damages to natural waters, methods of treating wastewaters prior to discharge were developped.
- the second major factor is the rising standard of living in many nations, such as in Europe and Australia. A higher living standard generate more consumption of natural resources and more pollution."
I buy part of the the first and not the second, there is lots of evidence that developing nations pollute more capita than developed nations because of lack of pollution control.
At any rate, these belong in discussion of environment more than environmental engineering which is not really concerned with either population control or standard of living, but rather more narrow engineering issues. dml
I disagree with you. I was trying to give to environmental engineering a historical perspective. These engineering techniques are not only about environmental issues, but also about health issues. I think a topic gains at being properly introduced, rather than giving links to other topics and letting the reader try to envision for which reasons env. eng. was developped.
Env. Eng. developped much sooner than environmental issues were ever raised up. And they developped primarily because some production of waste generated by a growing population could not be managed by environment natural clean-up services quickly enough to avoid human health issues. Typically, european cities began to suffer from accumulation of wastes, and decrease of water quality in middle ages. Before that, cities were small enough that it did not cause any major health issues. Then at some point, the wastes began badly accumulating in the street, that water carried microorganims which caused the huge epidemics, then env. eng. was set up. It was essentially then, setting up pipes to move dirty water out of the city. Napoleon building Paris sewage system.
Only later, in the early 1900 did env. eng. techniques began to take care of cleaning the waste water.
This does not mean there were necessarily environmental damages then. There were health issues mostly. That is why I think *this* does belong here, and not in the environment article which is a different topic.
As for the second paragraph you don't buy, please then rephrase it. There is nothing wrong with it. It only states obvious points. Right now, developped nations consume more than before, and the more is consumed, the more wastes are generated. It does not matter that regulations are set up. A regulation alone won't lower the amount of waste. Only more (or different) clean up techniques used by industries (for example) pushed by regulations will.
It may be insufficient for the whole article. But, what I mostly wanted to refer to are the historical reasons why env. eng. originally developped.
It is true that now, with pollution control, situation is different, but I see not why we should not put historical context under the reason the situation may be different now.
I intend this article to be more than two poor paragraphs, and not to be only about modern env. eng. in the modern states. There is more to say about it than just that. So, please edit instead of removing. I will try to improve later.
