Preface to the
First Edition
During the 1980s and 1990s environmental issues have attracted a great deal of
scientific, political and media attention. Global and regional-scale issues have
received much attention, for example, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions linked with
global warming, and the depletion of stratospheric ozone by chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs). Local issues, however, have been treated no less seriously, because their
effects are more obvious and immediate. The contamination of water supplies by
landfill leachate and the build up of radon gas in domestic dwellings are no longer
the property of a few idiosyncratic specialists but the concern of a wide spectrum
of the population. It is noteworthy that many of these issues involve under-
standing chemical reactions and this makes environmental chemistry a particu-
larly important and topical discipline.
We decided the time was right for a new elementary text on environmental
chemistry, mainly for students and other readers with little or no previous chem-
ical background. Our aim has been to introduce some of the fundamental chem-
ical principles which are used in studies of environmental chemistry and to
illustrate how these apply in various cases, ranging from the global to the local
scale. We see no clear boundary between the environmental chemistry of human
issues (CO 2 emissions, CFCs, etc.) and the environmental geochemistry of the
Earth. A strong theme of this book is the importance of understanding how
natural geochemical processes operate and have operated over a variety of
timescales. Such an understanding provides baseline information against which
the effects of human perturbations of chemical processes can be quantified. We
have not attempted to be exhaustive in our coverage but have chosen themes
which highlight underlying chemical principles.
We have some experience of teaching environmental chemistry to both
chemists and non-chemists through our first-year course in Environmental