For those of us that have spent our careers improving the quality of the environment the misinformation depicting an environmental “Armageddon” is insulting.  However, without doing the research it has been hard to say to my RECON team “good job” we are making a difference.  Well this series of blogs gives all of us in the industry the encouragement that we are making a difference and the data proves it.  First lets look at air quality since that poses the greatest risk to the general public.  The EPA primarily tracts six metrics to assess air quality:  

1.    Ozone (O3)
2.    Nitrogen Oxides NOx
3.    Carbon Monoxide (CO)
4.    Sulfur Dioxide (SO2)
5.    Particulate Matter (PM10)
6.    Lead (Pb)

In general each of these contaminants is on the decline.  For example, since 1970 the CO level has dropped by 73% in the US and 80% in the UK.   We should be encouraged that CO levels continue to decline under current regulation, and all indications that if current regulations are allowed to run their coarse the air quality will continue to improve.

Our real challenge is developing countries are improving their standard of living at the expense of their local environment.  If we want to focus on CO as a problem we need to assist Beijing, New Delhi, and Mexico City in addressing their pollution from burning coal and garbage.  These developing countries are where CO posses the only real health risks.  Congratulations environment industry, I would say we have won this CO battle.

It does not need to be said that the media does not research sufficiently what they present as fact. When it comes to the condition of our environment, they are overly accepting of propaganda published for many reasons other than the dissemination of truthful information. The result of this negligent reporting manifests itself in people’s opinion of the condition of the environment. This was documented by Dunlap and Gallop in an international poll taken in 24 countries. The poll indicated that in virtually every country those polled believed the world’s environment was worse than their own country's, and that their country's environment was worse than their local communities. In other words, when those polled based their opinion of the condition of the environment on their personal experience they believed the environment was in reasonably good shape. However, when they based their opinion on the fear driven tactics of the media, politicians or special interest groups, the environment was perceived to be in poor shape.

The point of this 20 Blog series will be to present the facts about the change in the quality of the environment over the past 20 years, and to encourage those of us that have spent our lives and careers improving the environment through a systematic process of analyzing, designing, and implementing solutions to specific problems. The impetus for this series of blogs was my “all knowing” 16-year old's baseless accusation that after 25 years of cleaning up the environment I was not a conservationist. Frankly, I found this insulting. Over the last 20 years RECON (the company I run) has cleaned up over 3,000 hazardous waste sites, and contained tens of millions of tons of uncontrolled waste, but because some activist group has manipulated public opinion and created a fear of a catastrophic end to the environment as we know it, my 16 year old believes I am not “doing my fair share”. Please subscribe to my blog as I let the numbers speak for themselves. We will analyze the metrics and the trends in the metrics that define the quality of our environment. Stay Tuned!!