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BOOK REVIEW

HAZARDOUS WASTE MANAGEMENT

Edited by SONIA P. MALTEZOU, ASIT K. BISWAS AND HANS SUTTER Tycooly Publishing, London, England, 1989

This book should be required reading for anyone engaged in international environmental activities. The book is a selected collection of papers presented at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) Expert Workshop held in 1987 in Vienna, Austria. It presents a comprehensive and practical view of the technology and issues involved in the management of hazardous waste on a global basis and concludes with papers which describe experiences in developing countries. Above all, this collection of papers is a reminder that hazardous waste management is a concern in all countries and not just the more industrialized and developed ones. The Editors have divided the presentation of the papers into three parts: 1.) management and technology, 2.) economic, environmental and institutional issues, and 3.) experiences from developing countries. The papers appear to have been selected for quality as well as the ability to communicate technical accomplishments and convey a sense of concerns over issues thus providing balance between practices and policy throughout the book. Although the papers in Part I deal principally with practices in the developed European countries, this is expected since these countries have a longer history of effective hazardous waste management. The papers consistently reflect a concern for the application of the technology which will best protect all facets of the environment and are placed in a sequence which reinforces and emphasizes major points. The first paper presents a concise review of government and private sector systems for hazardous waste management and provides the background for the next paper which is a case study of hazardous waste management in Bavaria. This is followed by two excellent papers on incineration. The first is a summary of toxic and hazardous waste incineration methods, and the second deals with the incineration of specific types of wastes. The third paper summarizes the factors involved in monitoring the geologic environment of repositories and concludes with an example of the groundwater monitoring around an industrial liquid waste

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disposal site in the United Kingdom. Part I concludes, appropriately, with two papers on the treatment of the most difficult of wastes to manage: PCBs, dioxines, difuranes, waste oils, and solvents. Part II consists of thirteen papers which sequentially examine the issues of cost, legislation, health implications, risk, and information management. The first five papers examine the economic benefits of the treatment and disposal of hazardous wastes in an environmentally safe manner. The format consists of a summary followed by a case history and discussions of economic benefits of specific techniques. The next two papers discuss the regulatory approaches in Europe and the United States. The paper by Irwin on the Directive adopted by the Council of the European Communities to prevent and respond to major incidents involving hazardous substances is a "reading must" for anyone engaged in international commerce. The single paper on health effects presents a concise and practical scheme that can be used by the lesser developed countries (LDCs) for evaluating and studying exposures to toxic chemicals. The final five papers discuss perceptions and the management of risk using quantification techniques, fault free analysis and modeling. While the quantitative approach is emphasized, discussions of underlying assumptions, "lessons learned" and specific applications are included. These papers are presented in such a logical progression that it would be difficult to rate one group of papers over another. Part III contains a remarkable assemblage of papers relating hazardous waste management experiences in China, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and ASEAN. Emphasis is primarily on hazardous waste management at small and medium size facilities such as plating operations and small batch processing which generate large quantities of hazardous wastes. While there was a lack of data reported, some of the discussions of political problems and practices are surprisingly frank. Although the development of abatement plans and systems was discussed extensively, there was little, if any, discussion of enforcement mechanisms. This appears to be the "fatal flaw" in most of the hazardous waste management plans discussed. Also the lack of training of employees working with hazardous waste was identified as a major problem. Part III, more than the other two Parts, gives a clearer picture of the actual practice of hazardous waste management in developing countries. While these countries may not have the same level of efficiency or sophistication in hazardous waste management as the developed countries, these authors give hope for progress in this area. More papers definitely could/should have been included in this section. This book is remarkable for the high quality of papers, and one wonders if all papers at this conference were of such excellent quality, or if only the best were selected. Either way, this book gives a clearer, more comprehensive picture of hazardous waste management in Europe and Asia than any other such collection

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of papers to date. It should be considered a landmark publication in the field of hazardous waste management in countries other than the United States. Since the management of hazardous waste in Europe and the developing countries will be a key issue for the next ten years, this book should be on the required reading list of anyone conducting business in these areas. J. Shields Assistant Professor University of Texas School of Public Health MPH Program at San Antonio San Antonio, TX 88284