نبذه عن الكتاب: Until relatively recently the environment was taken for granted as the satisfier of all mankind’s needs, providing food, mineral and biological resources and a seemingly limitless facility for the disposal of waste materials. Today, it is increasingly evident that the capacity of natural systems to absorb the wastes and contaminants of modern human existence is limited. These limits are both quantitative and qualitative. Some of our wastes are naturally occurring and even essential substances, such as CO2, but are being produced in ever increasing quantities which simply overload the capacity of biogeochemical systems to maintain the steady state chemical compositions of the atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere. Other substances are produced in small quantities but are potentially so detrimental that their presence in the environment, even at low levels, is sufficient to cause concern. Prominent among this latter category are radionuclides, some of which are natural components of the environment but many of which are present largely as a result of man’s activities. Widespread, low-level contamination of the environment from anthropogenic sources can be traced back at least to Roman times, approximately 2000 years before present, when lead and silver mining and smelting were carried out at several major sites across Europe (Rosman et al., 1997). The environmental record for lead deposition is particularly revealing. In northern Scandinavia, for instance, Brannvall et al. (1999) have detected the presence of lead from the Roman period but have also shown the beginnings of a steady increase in lead concentrations in lake sediments which can be traced back to 900 AD.