WHAT DO ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTS DO?

Environmental chemists draw on a range of concepts from chemistry and various environmental sciences to assist in their study of what is happening to a chemical species in the environment. Important general concepts from chemistry include understanding chemical reactions and equations, solutions, units, sampling, and analytical techniques.

Environmental chemists are employed by environmental agencies and research bodies around the world to detect and identify the nature and source of pollutants. These can include:

· Heavy metal contamination of land by industry. These can then be transported into water bodies and be taken up by living organisms.

· Nutrients leaching from agricultural land into water courses, which can lead to algal blooms and eutrophication.

· Urban runoff of pollutants washing off impervious surfaces (roads, parking lots, and rooftops) during rain storms. Typical pollutants include gasoline, motor oil and other hydrocarbon compounds, metals, nutrients and sediment (soil).

 

Comprehension Aspect

Ex. 1. Match the following words on the left with the appropriate antonyms on the right:

human	adversary
current	to permit
water	to fail
to succeed	soil
supporter	inhuman
to ban	out-of-date

 

Ex. 2. Some of the following sentences can be incorrect. Find the mistakes and correct them.

1. Environmental chemistry should not be separated from green chemistry, which seeks to reduce potential pollution at its source.

2. Environmental chemistry heavily relies on analytical chemistry, quantitative chemical analysis being a key part of it.

3. Common analytical techniques including classical wet chemistry, such as gravimetric, titrimetric and electrochemical methods are used in the determination of trace metals and organic compounds.

4. Particle counters and Scintillation counters are most commonly used for toxicity evaluations of chemical effects on various organisms.

5. Unfortunately, nowadays homocentric system by which all natural goods are used just for human exploit is governing in world's philosophy, although number of supporters of ecocentric system based on ecosystem is rising as well.

 

Ex. 3. Complete the following passage using the words from the box.

 

primary goal, impact, dirty, energy resources, means, obsolete, acceptable, geothermal energy, fossil fuels, coal

 

The biggest pollutions on our planet are the result of (1) … use. Modern society is simply unthinkable without gasoline, oil, and (2) …, as they are dominating industrial world. The governments of rich states instead turning to alternative (3) … like wind energy, sun energy and (4) … are still more focused on decreasing the pollution caused by the use of fossil fuels rather than search for (5) … alternatives. Also, alternative energy resources are only used in rich countries in order to decrease the pollution in their own lands. To make things even worse, rich countries more often than not transfer their own (6) … industries to poor countries that do not have nor the appropriate knowledge nor the (7) … to even think about ecology, and are pretty much dependent on these (8) … technologies. It is very difficult, if not impossible to expect developed ecological conscience from population of poor countries as long as their (9) … is how to survive. In situations like this, ecology is probably last thing they think of, and this has to change. In fact, one gigantic global action is the thing we need to solve ecological problems because individual actions do not have enough (10) … to be sufficient on global level

 

Ex. 4. Speak on the main postulates of environmental chemistry.

Dwell on the major ecological problems that we face nowadays.

Specify the main areas of activity for environmental chemists

 

 

TEXT D

TEACHING CHEMISTRY

Pre-Reading Task

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