OBJECTIVE To investigate the circumstances and geographic and temporal distributions of hazardous material releases and resulting human impacts in the United States. METHOD Releases with fatalities, injuries, and evacuations were identified from reports to the National Response Center between 1990 and 2008, correcting for data quality issues identified in previous studies. RESULTS From more...

Economists have recently grown interested in doing research on research or R & D, as it is called in industrial circles. Several studies have tested Schumpeter's hoary hypothesis that large firms are responsible for most industrial inventive activity.1 Few of these studies, however, suggest why this hypothesis is apparently valid for some industries and not for others. And statistical studies g...

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are biopolymers with desirable material properties similar to petrochemically derived plastics. PHAs are naturally produced by a wide range of microorganisms as a carbon storage mechanism and can accumulate to significantly high levels. PHAs are an environmentally friendly alternative to their petroleum counterparts because they can be easily degraded, potentially r...

The control banding method, or "control banding", is a simplified risk assessment system for chemical handling tasks. This system is supposed to provide assessment results of reasonable quality without expert involvement. The objective of this study was to evaluate the appropriateness of control banding judgment on the basis of workplace safety. A common approach for assessing workplace risk, w...

Brazil is made up of diverse population and a vast land. The Natives who were the original inhabitants of Brazil included the Carib and Arawak groups in the north, the Gas in eastern and southern Brazil, the Tupı́Guaranı́s in the East Coast of Brazil and in the Amazon River valley, and the Panos in the west. For the most part these groups of natives were essentially seminomadic, who subsisted by ...

Petroleum products play a major role in fueling the economy of the world but the pollution they create has become a critical issue. Understanding the diversity present in pipeline muck will help with the exploration of new microbial strains with better hydrocarbon degrading capacities for bioremediation of polluted sites. This study provides an analysis of petroleum muck using next generation s...

Spent petroleum catalyst from Korean petrochemical industry contains trace amount of metals such as Ni, V and Mo. Therefore an attempt was made to recover those trace metal using bioleaching process. Different leaching parameters such as Fe(II) concentration, pulp density, pH, temperature and particle size of spent catalyst particle were studied to evaluate their effects on the leaching efficie...

Since the end of previous century, the role of petroleum as a raw material of synthetic surfactant gradually deflated due to the reasons such as decreasing of the relative abundance of petroleum, leading to soared prices of petroleum and increasing of carbon dioxide emission by heavy utilization of petroleum. Instead, the industries concerning in the surfactants and detergents are focusing on t...