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Abstract
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Trite? Maybe, but this proverb is coming to be increasingly recognized as a rallying cry for U.S. environmental programs. The Administrator of the U.S. EPA has stated, "A new sense of urgency and resolve to improve the quality of the environment has taken root in our country. Despite the complexity of the environmental challenge—or perhaps because of it—we are falling back on some simple and common sense ideas. One of them is pollution prevention." The U.S. Congress passed the Pollution Prevention Act in October 1990. Pollution prevention is clearly a concept that will be of increasing importance to U. S. companies and to the public agencies that are responsible for regulating those companies. In this critical review the authors present the current state of knowledge regarding pollution prevention approaches to environmental improvement, explore the state of development of various private and public approaches to encouraging the adoption of pollution prevention strategies, highlight selected clean technologies and clean products, and examine various technical and economic issues related to the concept of pollution prevention.