Twenty Years of
Industrial Waste Treatment
DON E. BLOODGOOD, Professor of Sanitary Engineering
School of Civil Engineering
Purdue University
Lafayette, Indiana
INTRODUCTION
There have been measurements made of the degree of pollution abatement,
and reports have been made on the amounts of money that have been spent on the
problem. There have been many papers presented throughout the country on the
development of processes, the research that has gone into them, and the description of the design of waste treatment plants that have been functioning. This has
all been valuable information.
The question is: have we made full use of all of the information that has been
presented and made available to the general public? We may have more information than we know how to use. If this is the case, and the available information
is of great value, then steps ought to be taken to make it all usable to all the
people concerned. Actually, there seems to be a need to sell the known information. The Public Health Service has made grants available for use in developing
demonstration projects and these are intended to get into use some of the ideas
and findings that have been made known over the last several years.
In 1951, the writer presented a paper: "Outstanding Achievements in Treating Industrial Wastes", at a meeting of the American Society of Civil Engineers
in Chicago. In trying to measure the interest and activity in the field at that
time, a rough accounting was madeof the published articles about industrial wastes
in the period of 1925 to 1951. These articles were found in two places: the Sewage Works Journal and Sewage and Industrial Wastes, (now called the Water Pollution Control Federation Journal) and Engineering Index. There has been a tremendous increase from little or no information in 1925-1930 to well over 150
articles per year in 1951.
It was thought desirable to bring this information up to date. The peak number of articles published in the Journal was reached in 1951-52. Since that time,
the number of articles that have dealt with specific industrial wastes has gradually
decreased until, in 1964, when only 12 articles on a particular industrial waste
appeared in the Journal. It is true that the Journal has continued to publish about
the same number of pages each month, regarding subjects pertaining to the disposal of both municipal and industrial wastes. The question that arises and which
should be answered is: Has there been a change in the complexion of the articles
published or has there actually been a decrease in the amount of attention given to
industrial waste subject matter? Possibly more attention is now being given to
fundamental research pertaining to processes used by industry, and that this fundamental research is now broad enough so that it is not identified with a particular
industrial waste.
In a review of the material in references found in the Engineering Index, a
similar trend was also found, though it was not quite as marked as in the Water
Pollution Control Federation Journal.    The greatest number of published articles
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