xx Introduction
from liquid, solid, and gaseous waste; existing tools for environmental
management; ecological and social aspects of biodiversity and landscape
protection; and the antithesis between development and environment in
combination with ideas about sustainability.
Attention has been given to the clarification of issues about which dubious
views are often held by the public, including:
• The confusion between harmful effects or toxicity from radioactivity,
from ultraviolet radiation, from inorganic or organic chemical pollutants
• The easy attribution of many environmental damages to toxic pollution
• The underestimation of ecological perturbations not related to chemical pollution
• The decisive role of the limiting factors in ecosystems
• The biomass and oxygen produced by the land and marine ecosystems
• The confusion about the positive and negative effects of ozone
• The role of algae in the aquatic ecosystems and the naturalness or not
naturalness of eutrophication
• The supposed oxygen deficiency in the cities and more generally in the
atmosphere, the oxygen production by the forests or urban green and
the risk of oxygen depletion in the water environment