These professionals conduct laboratory and field procedures to determine the chemical composition or bacteriological activity of different kinds of environmental specimens. The specimens they collect may include gas samples from smokestacks and other sources. Water samples from streams, lakes, liquid industrial discharges, and other lakes, and other processed or unprocessed waster water, soil, silt, and mud samples. They prepare these sample substances for testing to determine their characteristics and pollutants, record the test data, and write up summaries and charts for review. In addition, they set up, operate, and maintain environmental-monitoring equipment and test instrumentation in fixed or mobile stations.
In general, part of their jobs in environmental area, pollution-control technicians operate on a day-to-day basis the equipment and systems designed to remove polluting materials from the environment. Likewise, they help to test and analyze environmental conditions and recommend the equipment and procedures to be used in removing pollutants.
Most pollution-control technicians specialize in one phase of environmental protection, such as in air pollution or in water pollution. No matter what their specialty, however, all pollution-control technicians share certain similarities in the work they do and in the preparation they require.
Furthermore, environmental pollution is an ancient problem that has been haunting these technician’s environmental careers. People began to affect air quality when they first began to build fires. When they began to live in cities, the problems of disposing of the wastes of daily life became serious. The sheer quantity and concentration in urban areas of refuse, garbage, sewage, smoke, and other substances became so great that they could not be readily and harmlessly dispersed in the environment. Local buildups of pollutants prompted a variety of attempted solutions. The ancient Romans, for example, had trenches outside the city where they put their trash and occasionally human corpses, a disposal method that ensured periodic epidemic diseases. In medieval European cities, all kinds of wastes were commonly thrown out of windows into streets or dumped in waterways, despite laws forbidding these practices. Laws were also passed against fouling the air with excessive smoke. For the most part, however, efforts to restrict the dissemination of pollutants in the environment were completely unsuccessful.
With the Industrial Revolution, environmental employment has increased in demand. Health problems brought on by smoke, noise, and other by-products of manufacturing became significant. By the nineteenth century, areas with high-population density and clusters of factories experienced markedly higher death and disease rates than area with little industrial development. Some bodies of water became reservoirs of chemical wastes and virulent microorganisms from untreated sewage, thus posing a major health hazard and making living nearby all but intolerable because of the odors. The air in some cases was heavily contaminated with smoke particles and with a variety of harmful gases, both of which contributed dramatically to respiratory ailments.
The technological advances of the twentieth century added new and different pollutants which broadened the environmental job sector. Industrialization grew steadily more widespread, and for a time the marks it made on the environment were apt to be regarded as necessary signs of prosperity. As automobiles assumed a central place in the lives of Americans, the automobile's exhaust increasingly polluted the air. More products were manufactured and consumed, generating more unused by-products and wastes. Not until after World War II did the public begin to see the air, water, and land as noticeably deteriorating because of the pollutants. Eventually, they decided to take responsible action immediately to minimize the damage and increasing risk.
In recent years, public concern has caused the development of more environmental engineering jobs to improve the safe disposal of hazardous wastes such as toxic chemicals and industrial by-products. Hazardous waste management has become one of the fastest growing areas of the pollution-control field. Pollution-control technology has thus come into its own only since the mid-century, combining the knowledge and approaches of several older disciplines. Today, control of environmental contamination includes a wide range of activities administered by governmental agencies, from local to federal, as well as activities of various industrial and research organizations.
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