What are future trends in the environmental discipline?
Most industrial organizations, including the military, are implementing Environmental Management Systems (EMS) based on international standards (ISO 14000 series). An EMS is a continual improvement process similar to other initiatives such as Total Quality Management. European countries, which are highly attuned to environmental protection, make use of the precautionary principle. This principle minimizes risk by erring on the side of caution whenever science does not fully understand an activity’s potential impacts. Advances in the biomedical sciences will lead to an understanding of pollutant health effects at the molecular level. Other emerging topics include industrial society’s impacts on children’s health, and assessing subtle chemical effects which are not well understood (e.g., endocrine disrupting compounds). Nanotechnology could provide significant environmental benefits by manipulating matter at the atomic scale, and also presents potential ES&H concerns. Climate change has
