Environmental Protection Technology

The following are freely available, reliable sources for searching chemical properties, lab procedures, formulas and more.

Use them in your lab reports, but remember to check their licenses to see what use is permitted. Look for a copyright statement on the home page that will indicate permitted uses.

For the web resources below, copying and re-using is permitted, but attribution is required; that is, you are free to use the information on the sites, but you must provide a statement as to their source.

A note about Wikipedia:

Wikipedia provides useful background information on topics in environmental chemistry, chemical structures and properties, and more. It will likely be the first page in your Google searches. Explore the broad overviews, recommended links to external sites, further reading, and references. These will very often lead to information on government and research sites that is freely accessible to the public.

Use your best critical thinking to determine whether a site is accurate, credible, and relevant to your research.

Think of Wikipedia as a starting point for your research. You should not be citing Wikipedia in your lab reports.

Why should you reference outside sources in your lab reports?

Here are the  reference examples for some of the more likely sources you might include in your lab reports. 

For examples of more common types of references (books, journal articles), please consult the Library's APA guide, available online or in print at all campuses. 

Remember that all entries in a reference list must be double-spaced and indented.

Specific entries from the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics

Fixed-point properties of H2O and D2O. (2016). In W. M. Haynes (Ed.), CRC handbook of chemistry and physics ( 97th ed., pp. 6-9). CRC Press.

Water. (2016). In W. M. Haynes (Ed.), CRC handbook of chemistry and physics ( 97th ed., pp. 4-94). CRC Press.

ENVI 1106 laboratory manual

Faculty of Science and Horticulture. (2019). ENVI 1106/1206 laboratory manual (Fall 2019 ed.). Kwantlen Polytechnic University Bookstore.

Specific page from a website, no author

Acid-Base Titrations. (2019). In Libretexts Chemistry.  https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/BethuneCookman_University/B-CU%3A_CH-345_Quantitative_Analysis/CH345_Labs/Demonstrations_and_Techniques/General_Lab_Techniques/Titration/Acid-Base_Titrations

Specific page from a website with author

Goodsell, D. (2016). Lead poisoning. https://pdb101.rcsb.org/motm/196

To make proper attribution to any photographs or figures you use in your work, first consider whether you are the creator of the image, or whether you have copied, or adapted it, from another source.

In the case of using your own photograph or figure:

• you only need to include a numbered caption below the figure, with a brief explanation.
  • For example:  Figure 1.  The standard apparatus for fractional distillation.
• you DO NOT need to include a reference to this in the reference list

In the case of an image that you have copied or adapted:

• include a numbered caption explaining the figure, and a statement with details about the source of the image.
  • For example. Figure 3. 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum. Reprinted from Practical organic synthesis: A student's guide by R. Keese, M. P. Brandle, & T. B.Toube, 2006, p. 68. Copyright 2006 by John Wiley & Sons. 
• you DO need to include a full entry for this item in the reference list.

See the Library's APA guide, Tables and Figures tab, for more examples.

A note about personal communication, such as emails, interviews, lecture notes, etc. APA considers these types of sources to be "unpublished". As such, include a brief in-text citation for your source, but it is NOT necessary to include it in your reference list.

For example, an in-text citation referring to your class notes, might look like this:

(D. Sud ENVI 1106 lecture notes, Oct 24, 2019).........

See the Library's APA guide, Personal Communications tab.

However, a class handout prepared by your instructor would be included in your reference list. See the library's APA guide on how to cite these Course Materials tab.

Zotero is a free browser tool that keeps track of your articles and webpages, and creates citations in several formats. Sign up for a free account, and your personal library will be accessible from any computer with an internet connection.

The short video below, from Idaho State University Libraries, will give you a sense of what Zotero can do. For help installing and using it, go to Zotero.org.

In addition to the various citation tools and permanent folders available in many of the Library's subscription databases, there are several free, web-based tools useful for formatting quick citations. Use such tools with caution though: they frequently result in incomplete or incorrect citations. It is ultimately your responsibility to make sure that your citations are correct. Always consult the Library's citation guides as a final step.