Algunas herramientas para la prevención, control y mitigación de la Contaminación ambiental

since the beginning of the industrial revolution earlier on, intensive production techniques were developed that used potentially dangerous compounds and little attention was paid to the impact of such activities on the health of humans or ecosystems. mankind is now forced to study the consequences of those processes and acts of production, at local, national and global scales in order to find possible solutions to the widespread problems that have emerged and establish strategies aimed at the prevention, control or mitigation of the damages caused to the environment. in an early stage, the industries opted to install equipments at the end of the processes, to avoid modifications of the latter; however, such equipments are expensive, thus increasing the final cost of the products. more recently, the industries are becoming forced to adopt measures to prevent pollution from the beginning of the manufacturing processes in order to diminish the output of wastes. this work describes some tools used for the prevention, control and mitigation of the environmental pollution. such tools or solutions include the development of preventive monitoring programs using earlywarning signals, the design and application of clean technologies, the formation of a pro-environmental education in citizens, the evaluation of costs and values of natural resources, as well as ascribing costs to pollution, and the use of environmental management as a business strategy for the best exploitation of resources and a minimal generation of wastes.