About This Site

Table of Contents

Who We Are

EnvironmentalChemistry.com is a publication of J.K. Barbalace, inc., which is wholly responsible for its content. J.K. Barbalace, inc. is a privately held company, which is owned by Julia & Ken Barbalace. The editorial staff for EnvironmentalChemistry.com consists of:

Kenneth Barbalace - Founder & Editor-in-Chief

Ken first created what became EnvironmentalChemistry.com while he was studying at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Ken is responsible for all editorial and operational decisions as well as all all programing on EnvironmentalChemistry.com. Ken can be contacted at:

Ken Barbalace
EnvironmentalChemistry.com
P.O. Box 1004
Portland ME 04104
207-797-8202
via our contact form

Roberta Barbalace - Technical Editor & Contributing Writer

Roberta brings her many years of experience in the hazardous waste transportation industry and teaching college chemistry and environmental courses to EnvironmentalChemistry.com. She not only contributes many of the articles on this site, but edits and evaluates articles contributed by guest writers.

Julia Barbalace - Copy Editor

Julia, who is originally from the Yekaterinburg region of Russia, assists with research, data collection and copy editing. Julia holds a BA in English and in addition to copy editing articles for EnvironmentalChemistry.com, is an English-Russian translator and interpreter.

Background Information

Mission

EnvironmentalChemistry.com's mission is to be an educational site that makes the subject of chemistry a little less daunting to the average student. It is our desire to make this site as classroom friendly as possible so that it can help students have a positive learning experience. Along the way, we hope to encourage more students to take an interest in chemistry, environmental issues and science in general.

Site History - On the Web Since 1995

Originally called YOGI'S Behemoth, EnvironmentalChemistry.com first went on line on October 22, 1995 while Ken Barbalace, its founder, was a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. From this modest beginning, this site has grown into a well respected and very informative resource on the topics of chemistry, environmental issues and hazardous materials transportation. Today EnvironmentalChemistry.com is a highly respected and referenced website that is linked to by tens of thousands of webpages and used by professionals and in classrooms around the world on a daily basis.

Timeline:

  • October 22, 1995: YOGI'S Behemoth goes online and is housed on the University of Alaska Fairbanks servers, shortly after Ken brings a mirror of his site on-line from his own computer in his dorm room.
  • Aug. 1997: Ken registers his first domain name KLBProductions.com and moves this site from UAF computers to a commercial Internet service provider in Fairbanks Alaska using its own domain name.
  • Sept. 1999: EnvironmentalChemistry.com is registered and Ken brings a mirror of his site on-line in California to improve website performance (connections to Alaska were kind of slow).
  • July 2000: Ken moves to Maine and transfers his KLBProductions.com domain to a server hosted by Pair Networks in Pittsburg PA.
  • Sept. 2000: YOGI'S Behemoth is rebranded EnvironmentalChemistry.com to make the site easier to remember and find as well as have a more accurately descriptive title.
  • April 2001: The EnvironmentalChemistry.com domain is moved to Pair Networks, the same Web hosting provider that we use for KLBProductions.com domain ending the our long time practice of keeping the two mirrors of this site at different Web hosting firms.
  • August 2003: EnvironmentalChemistry.com is converted to PHP with a MySQL database used to manage banner ads. We also ceased using KLBProductions.com as a mirror for this site. This allowed Kenneth Barbalace, the creator and owner of EnvironmentalChemistry.com to launch a new website using that domain to promote his Database application and website development services.
  • Summer 2004: Improving ad revenues begin to allow new articles to be commissioned for EnvironmentalChemistry.com on a monthly basis rather than the very infrequent and sporadic basis, as was historically the case. Another example of ad revenues at work for you.
  • Fall 2004: Redesigned site to make it printer friendly, more bandwidth efficient, easier to maintain and more accessible to visually impaired users and handheld devices. Also in the fall of 2004, the chemical database, which has been under development for several years was finally fully brought online. This database added approximately 16,000 webpages to EnvironmentalChemistry.com.
  • Spring 2005: EnvironmentalChemistry.com begins to actively recruit writers to contribute articles.
  • Oct. 2005: EnvironmentalChemistry.com celebrates its tenth year on the web.
  • Feb. 2006: Ken begins a Blogger blog for EnvironmentalChemistry.com at http://blog.EnvironmentalChemistry.com on a trial basis.
  • July 2006: Site is retooled to validate to W3C's "HTML 4.01 Strict" specifications instead of "HTML4.01 Transitional". GZipping of HTML files is also implemented for browsers that support this option to reduce the download time required for pages by half, which greatly improves performance of site for users.
  • Oct 2006: We partnered with CareerBuilder to bring our users the latest U.S. CareerBuilder job listings in environmental, chemistry and hazardous materials related fields.
  • Mar 2007: As a result of our initial success with CareerBuilder U.S. job listings, our partnership was expanded to include job listings from Canada and the U.K.
  • Apr 2007: Ken's blog is officially tied into EnvironmentalChemistry.com and recristened "EnvironmentalChemistry.com Editors' Blog".
  • May 2009: The "Go Green" section was added featuring an eco renovation of a 1970s vintage home.
  • April 2012: EnvironmentalChemistry.com is switched over from W3C HTML4.01 Strict and CSS 2.1 specifications to W3C HTML5 and CSS3 specifications to take advantage of modern HTML/CSS features.

Chemistry Section

The chemistry section of this site revolves around a very detailed periodic table of elements that has been extensively researched and cross checked for accuracy. As with the rest of the site both the periodic table and the chemistry section are on going projects with research constantly taking place in an effort to both enlarge this section as well as ensure the accuracy of material already provided.

Environmental Section

The environmental section of this site consists of articles addressing important issues we face as a society. As environmental issues are often open to great debate and exaggeration by various interests, extra care is taken to ensure that these articles are balanced, objectively written and based on materials drawn from reliable sources. In addition bibliographies and related readings are provided with these articles to aid in further research on a given subject.

Go Green Section

Our go green" section focuses on real world home projects that demonstrate different ways to reduce energy consumption and/or carbon footprint or just be nicer to the environment. In time our goal is to feature many different green projects from new home construction, to home renovation projects, to basic home maintenance to home garden projects.

Hazardous Materials Transportation Section

The hazardous materials transportation section of this site focuses on United States federal regulations and attempts to help guide individuals in the right direction in regards understanding how they affect transportation. As this section is based on federal regulations, citations to applicable regulations are provided throughout these articles and resources. These materials shouldn't be taken as an authoritative interpretation of the regulations, rather they should be used as a general guide and the referenced citation should always be referred to when trying to determine regulatory compliance.

General Information

Using Us in the Classroom

If you are an educator, and would like to use EnvironmentalChemistry.com in your classroom or refer your students to it for their studies, please by all means do so. We just ask that you do not republished on another website, rather all pages MUST be pulled directly from our server (EnvironmentalChemistry.com).

If you would like to use printed copies of any of the web pages on this site, you may do so and all pages are designed to be printer friendly. When printing these pages for use as handouts, we simply ask that you follow these two guidelines:

  1. Any printed web page MUST retain its reference to EnvironmentalChemistry.com. Most web browsers print the web page address of the page being printed at either the top or bottom of the page; this is sufficient (provided it starts with:
    https://EnvironmentalChemistry.com).
  2. Printed copies may not be sold or redistributed outside of the classroom or educational environment without our expressed permission.

This site designed with the student in mind, so rest assured that all pages on this site are suitable for general audiences.

Advertising

As with any web site, EnvironmentalChemistry.com relies on some source of funding to keep it on the Internet as well as to allow for its expansion. As this site does not have a wealthy benefactor, it must rely on banner advertising to generate the revenue needed for its operational expenses and existence. Great care is taken to ensure that the advertising placed on this site is suitable for a general audience, and that the advertisers' sites are actually of value to visitors of this site and that it is not obnoxious in nature.

Bibliographies and Related Readings

There is a lot of unsubstantiated junk on the Internet and anyone can post anything without regards to factual accuracy and without documenting their sources. As such we believe it is important to include bibliographies along with articles that are published on this site. We feel this aids the reader in finding more information on the topic of the article and helps them to evaluate the quality of articles we publish. Except in extremely rare instances we avoid the use of anonymous sources.

Page Two: Links of Note