Report on the Berlin 2 Open Access Conference - European ...

according to Barbara S. Lollar who editedthe volume, following to two guidingprinciples: Firstly, focusing on geochemicalimpacts on the human health andthe health of the environment. Secondly,focusing on impacts at the local and theregional rather than the global scale. Insome of the chapters, both the impactof natural geochemical processes andof anthropogenic perturbations was addressed,while on others there is specificfocus on anthropogenic perturbations.The scope of the volume is so broad thatI am surely not able to review all chapterssince some of them fall quite far from myfields of interest.The book has 16 chapters, a volumesubject Index, 630 pages, many Tablesand Figures. The latter are mostly B&W,while there are about 10 color ones. Areference list at the end of each chapterfacilitates the reader that wants to lookdeeper in the aspects treated in the chapter;many references are very recent andgo until 2002. 70% of the 38 contributorscome from the US and Canada – an additional15% comes from the UK. Thisfact is not in favor of the volume, sinceaspects of relevant research that arepursued more actively in other parts ofEurope and the rest of the world are notpresented adequately.The first chapter is on risk, toxicityand exposure assessment for groundwaterand air contamination. It goes fromdefinitions of risk through regulatory andpolicy aspects and processes, throughexposure and toxicity assessment, riskcharacterization and uncertainties to riskmanagement and communication. Thefollowing three chapters deal with metalsin the environment – selenium, arsenic,heavy metals and mercury, treating tosome extend analytical methods, abundance,forms and biogeochemical pathwaysand emissions. Chapter 5 dealsquite comprehensively with acid minedrainage: mineralogy, sulfide oxidation,neutralization, secondary minerals, drainage,bioaccumulation and toxicity, remediationand prevention.Chapter 6 deals, in 58 pages, withradioactive contamination. Chapter 7,which I found quite interesting, is named“The medical geochemistry of dusts, soilsand other earth materials”. This chapterdeals with the linkages of earth materialsto human health: the different earthmaterials, their health effects, exposureroutes, assessment methods, chemicalconditions in the human body parts, bioreactivityare all treated briefly; the treatmentis augmented with five and a halfreference pages.The next three chapters deal witheutrophication, salinisation, acidificationand acid rain. The eutrophication chapterby E.E. Prepas and T. Charette fromCanada, in effect presents briefly somecase studies from Canadian Lakes; theother two chapters are, in my opinion,more broad.Chapter 11 deals with troposphericozone and particulates, a field where I feelmore confident to comment. S. Sillman isnot a stranger in the field and he presentsa nice overview, although limited somewhatto addressing US approaches andproblems as well as the author’s maininterests. I would like to see photosmogproblems in Asia, Africa and Europe alsotreated, and a bit more of the regulatoryaspects of our approaches to air quality.The figures are informative, clear and understandableeven to the undergraduate.Chapter 12 is on volatile fuel hydrocarbonsand MTBE. The next Chapteris on high molecular weight petrogenicand pyrogenic hydrocarbons in aquaticenvironments. Chapters 14 and 15 dealwith halogenated hydrocarbons andpesticides, while the last Chapter is ongroundwater geochemistry of waste disposalfacilities.The volume is excellently edited withreally very few misspelling errors and thequality of the figures is also great. In brief,the volume is very appealing. But again,as I have argued in the last issue when Iintroduced this set, it can be bought onlyas a set for a very high price; I would stillfind the price high if it was possible to buyindividual volumes for the correspondingfraction of the price. This volume, as wellas other volumes of this set, surely hasstudents as a target group, but again it isout of their reach. Only university librariescan afford the set, and in the presentsituation certainly only some libraries inthe most affluent countries. It is a pity toproduce such an excellent work and thenrestrict its access to most people but aprivileged few. My view is that in our eraof budgetary constrains such a businessmodel is no longer affordable. This situationhas led to the open access initiativesin the field of scientific journals and willsoon lead to a similar initiative in the fieldof books, especially the review or treatiseones. You can have a look alreadyat the “Live Reviews” – review articlesthat are regularly updated by the authors– principle that was recently initiated byMPI for Solar System Research with thelaunch of a new online journal for SolarPhysics (this issue, http://www.the-eggs.org/news.php?id=180&typeid=0). It isconceivable that after some time, whenenough articles are published, thesefreely accessed reviews will present avery comprehensive, treatise-like set ofarticles. It is also conceivable that similarinitiatives in other fields will sprout upsoon, if such excellent works by membersof the academic community as thepresent Treatise on Geochemistry aremarketed in a similar way.Kostas KourtidisDept. of Environmental EngineeringSchool of EngineeringDemokritus University of ThraceXanthi, Greecekourtidi@env.duth.grTHE EGGS 24