Unraveling Environmental Disasters

There are as many ways of describing and analyzing environmental disasters as there are disasters themselves. Unfortunately, such characterizations in the lay press and the scientific literature are incomplete and commonly wrong. Therefore, there is a great need for a dialogue within the scientific community. This book provides that dialogue between a prominent physical chemist, Trevor Letcher, and a notable environmental expert, Daniel Vallero, and in doing so approaches the presentation of disasters from a unique perspective. The book applies "failure analysis" to recent environmental catastrophes, such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the tsunami in Japan leading to the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster.