When most people think of a hospital, they picture images of a big, white building filled with bustling doctors and nurses. Clean. Efficient. Organized. Perhaps that once fit the description of the former Cardwell Hospital of Stella, Missouri. But by late 2005, the long since abandoned building was a dilapidated, ghost of a structure with a failing roof, peeling paint, and ruptured, asbestos-laden pipe insulation and floor tiles.
Time and neglect had turned a place of healing into a health hazard. By the next year, the building was gone, and that's when the town got SMART-e.
While the city of Denver, Colorado is famous for its mile-high elevation, employees working in EPA's regional headquarters there are thinking slightly higher. The office building they occupy downtown is topped with a "green roof," some 40,000 plants growing in a network of two-foot by four-foot modular trays. The roof is the focus of a collaborative research project exploring the practicability and environmental benefits of cultivating green roofs in such high, semi-arid climates.
"Even before we moved into the building, we worked with the developer to help design a workspace that that could serve as model for minimizing the environmental footprint of the typical office building found in an urban setting. Our green roof is the most conspicuous-and I think the best-part of that effort," explains EPA regional scientist Patti Tyler, the project manager for the green roof research project.
Sneak a peek in our Science Notebook for a unique and close up view of science at EPA!
The TTN is a collection of technical Web sites containing information about many areas of air pollution science, technology, regulation, measurement, and prevention.
EPA uses environmental databases and scientific tools to learn more about chemical risks and conditions of the environment, whether locally or for the whole nation.
Find links to the major laboratories and other organizations that conduct research and carry out scientific and technical activities within EPA.
EPA uses a wide variety of scientific and technical models to support our decisions and policies. Models increase the level of understanding about natural systems and the way in which they react to varying conditions.
EPA's multi-year plans enable the Agency to focus on the highest priority needs for science and to coordinate research across its laboratories and centers to achieve research goals.
EPA's National Research Programs coordinate research planning across the Agency in areas like drinking water research and global change research.
The Office of Research and Development (ORD) is the scientific research arm of EPA. ORD's leading-edge research helps provide the solid underpinning of science and technology for the Agency.
Research strategies frame the scientific questions associated with important environmental issues and delineate the research needs and relative priorities required to address those questions.
Learn about Federal Advisory Committees that provide scientific and technical advice, the Science Advisory Board, and other organizations that address science policy issues at EPA.
The SI is a searchable database of activities, work products, and current projects conducted in our research laboratories and centers, and through grants and other assistance agreements.
Test methods measure the presence and concentration of physical and chemical pollutants; they evaluate properties of chemical substances; and they measure the effects of substances under various conditions.
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