Elements of Environmental Chemistry 2nd Edition

It's required by the class. The size is comparably small, but it clearly tells about the caculation strategy. However, I'm not fond of the problem sets. Too many require estimation that different people have different ideas. The vendor is credible.

Ok, this book is incredibly useless. The chapters themselves do not actually cover the material very well, then asks questions at the end that assume you know every last detail of anything. For example, it asks a question about how many tires are in a dump when they do not tell you the size of the tires. It asks you for the volume of a garage and it gives you no dimensions or anything to find the dimensions. What was the editor smoking!

This book is OK ....but not great. If details were provided on how to answer the problems were available in another book, I would give it an excellent review. Unfortunately my abilities to solve the questions is limited to about 75% of the problems. I would really like more help to do the remaining 25%. While this is likely a reflection on my own abilities, I can not give a five star rating to a book that does not allow me to learn thoroughly.

I am extremely impressed by the 2nd Edition of "Elements of Environmental Chemistry". It begins with a set of useful skills for addressing problems frequently encountered in Environ Chem. For most students this should be a refresher. Regardless, I suspect that it will help many to make greater use of concepts that they have encountered but not fully absorbed. The second chapter continues with knowledge -- mass balance and kinetics -- needed to deal with frequently encountered environmental problems. The subsequent chapters introduce the major topics in Environmental Chemistry, including the chemistry responsible for air pollution/smog, climate change, pesticides, persistent organic pollutants, dioxins and flame retardants. The writing style is clear and frequently compelling -- at times you feel like you might be reading an article in the New Yorker. A case in point is the chapter on PCBs, dioxins and flame retardants, beginning with the disease that the Japanese called "Yusho". Not only is the text entertaining, so are many of the problems. This book contains one of the best sets of "real world" problems that I have encountered. Some of the problems are used as teaching examples and solved in the text. The answers to all of the problems are listed at the back of the text. I recommend this book to anyone studying or working in the area of environmental chemistry.

If you are in a class that uses this book, you have my sympathy. This is a worthless excuse for a textbook. It provides almost no instruction on how to actually do problems, skips steps, and makes outrageous assumptions.

This book is superbly written and very straightforward. I absolutely loved the footnotes; they are humorous and clever. I will definitely buy the 2nd edition.