Port Pirie lead abatement Program, 1992

The Port Pirie Lead Decontamination Program commenced in 1984 with a ten year mandate. The abatement programme involves identification of children with elevated blood lead levels, house decontamination, soil treatment, general City greening, family education and support and community education. Since 1984 the smelter has also implemented substantial new environmental controls.Blood lead and air monitoring programmes as well as some investigations of recontamination are in place. The blood lead monitoring programme has shown a significant decrease in the mean blood lead levels of the children, with the magnitude of the reduction being greatest in areas remote from the smelter.The results of the air monitoring programme suggest that there has been little change in the general air lead levels in the City over the period of the abatement programme. Analysis of the data suggests that re-entrainment of lead from the contaminated areas within the City is only a small contributor to air-borne lead levels compared with that from the smelter and its environs.Sources and pathways of lead for absorption by the children in Port Pirie are discussed.     

Prenatal diagnosis of mucopolysaccharidosis type VII facilitating treatment in neonatal period

Duo exome testing was performed on a fetus conceived via in vitro fertilization with an egg donor. The fetus presented with non-immune hydrops fetalis (NIHF) at 20 + 0 weeks gestation. Two variants were detected in the GUSB gene. Biallelic pathogenic variants cause mucopolysaccharidosis type VII (MPS-VII), which can present with NIHF prenatally. At the time of analysis and initial report, one variant was classified as likely pathogenic and the other as of uncertain clinical significance. Biochemical testing of the amniotic fluid supernatant showed elevated glycosaminoglycans and low β-glucuronidase activity consistent with the diagnosis of MPS-VII. This evidence allowed the upgrade of the pathogenicity for both variants, confirming the diagnosis of MPS-VII. The infant was born at 36 + 5 weeks and enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) using vestronidase was initiated at 20 days with planning for hematopoietic stem cell transplant ongoing. The ERT therapy has been well tolerated, with decreasing quantitative urine glycosaminoglycans. Long-term follow up is required to determine whether treatment has been successful. This case demonstrates the utility of alternative testing methods to clarify the pathogenicity of variants and the clinical utility of obtaining a diagnosis antenatally in facilitating treatment in the neonatal period, and specifically highlights MPS-VII as a treatable cause of NIHF.     

Influence of the presence of ruthenium on the activity and stability of Co–Mg–Al-based catalysts in CO2 reforming of methane for syngas production

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Hydrogen production by methane dry reforming is an important yet challenging process. A performing catalyst will favor the thermodynamic equilibrium...     

Place‐based and data‐rich citizen science as a precursor for conservation action

Environmental education strategies have customarily placed substantial focus on enhancing ecological knowledge and literacy with the hope that, upon discovering relevant facts and concepts, participants will be better equipped to process and dissect environmental issues and, therefore, make more informed decisions. The assumption is that informed citizens will become active citizens––enthusiastically lobbying for, and participating in, conservation‐oriented action. We surveyed and interviewed and used performance data from 432 participants in the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST), a scientifically rigorous citizen science program, to explore measurable change in and links between understanding and action. We found that participation in rigorous citizen science was associated with significant increases in participant knowledge and skills; a greater connection to place and, secondarily, to community; and an increasing awareness of the relative impact of anthropogenic activities on local ecosystems specifically through increasing scientific understanding of the ecosystem and factors affecting it. Our results suggest that a place‐based, data‐rich experience linked explicitly to local, regional, and global issues can lead to measurable change in individual and collective action, expressed in our case study principally through participation in citizen science and community action and communication of program results to personal acquaintances and elected officials. We propose the following tenets of conservation literacy based on emergent themes and the connections between them explicit in our data: place‐based learning creates personal meaning making; individual experience nested within collective (i.e., program‐wide) experience facilitates an understanding of the ecosystem process and function at local and regional scales; and science‐based meaning making creates informed concern (i.e., the ability to discern both natural and anthropogenic forcing), which allows individuals to develop a personalized prioritization schema and engage in conservation action.     

Spatial relationships between lead sources and children’s blood lead levels in the urban center of Indianapolis (USA)

Urban children remain disproportionately at risk of having higher blood lead levels than their suburban counterparts. The Westside Cooperative Organization (WESCO), located in Marion County, Indianapolis, Indiana, has a history of children with high blood lead levels as well as high soil lead (Pb) values. This study aims at determining the spatial relationship between soil Pb sources and children’s blood lead levels. Soils have been identified as a source of chronic Pb exposure to children, but the spatial scale of the source–recipient relationship is not well characterized. Neighborhood-wide analysis of soil Pb distribution along with a furnace filter technique for sampling interior Pb accumulation for selected homes (n = 7) in the WESCO community was performed. Blood lead levels for children aged 0–5 years during the period 1999–2008 were collected. The study population’s mean blood lead levels were higher than national averages across all ages, race, and gender. Non-Hispanic blacks and those individuals in the Wishard advantage program had the highest proportion of elevated blood lead levels. The results show that while there is not a direct relationship between soil Pb and children’s blood lead levels at a spatial scale of ~100 m, resuspension of locally sourced soil is occurring based on the interior Pb accumulation. County-wide, the largest predictor of elevated blood lead levels is the location within the urban core. Variation in soil Pb and blood lead levels on the community level is high and not predicted by housing stock age or income. Race is a strong predictor for blood lead levels in the WESCO community.     

Predator detection and dilution as benefits of associations between yellow mongooses and Cape ground squirrels

Associations among organisms are thought to form because the benefits, such as increased foraging efficiency or decreased risk of predation, outweigh any costs, such as resource competition. Though many interspecific associations have been described for closely related mammals, few studies have examined the associations between mammals in different orders. The yellow mongoose (Cynictus pencillata), a carnivore, and the Cape ground squirrel (Xerus inauris), a rodent, co-occur in arid and semi-arid South Africa where they share sleeping burrows, predators, a similar body size, and the capability to emit alarm calls in response to predators. To investigate enhanced predator avoidance as a potential benefit explaining the persistence of this association, we assessed individual mongoose vigilance alone and with squirrels or other mongooses, and with varying interspecific group size, using field observations. We also tested for responses to conspecific and heterospecific alarm calls in both study species using playback experiments. The proportion of time mongoose individuals spent vigilant decreased in the presence of squirrels or other mongooses and was negatively correlated with interspecific group size; a similar pattern was previously shown for conspecific groups of Cape ground squirrels. These results are predicted by both the dilution and collective detection hypotheses. In addition, hetero- and conspecific alarm calls elicited vigilance responses in both species. These results suggest that both species can benefit from the collective detection and dilution arising from their interspecific association and that this interspecific association could be mutualistic.     

Sustaining recycling: identification and application of limiting factors in kerbside recycling areas

SUMMARY

Levels of recycling in the UK are substantially poorer than other European countries and American states. One explanation for low participation rates, has been the failure by some local authorities to bridge the gap between people's attitudes and behaviour. Research has shown that a gap exists between people's environmental attitudes and action. Previous experiments have employed antecedent and consequence conditions to influence the factors that limit environmental action, in an attempt to close the gap between attitudes and behaviour. This paper reports on the research carried out by Cardiff University and De Montfort University, which has attempted to identify and manipulate the factors that influence whether or not someone recycles in the Cities of Cardiff and Leicester. Different experiments were applied to different socio-demographic groups. Questionnaires were used to assess attitudes and behaviour before and after the implementation of a series of experiments. The research indicated that the interventions were more effective at increasing levels of recycling among existing recyclers rather than prompting non-recyclers to start recycling. The interventions differed in terms of their effect upon participation in particular sociodemographic groups. Key factors identified from the research could be equally applicable to other contexts of individual environmental action.     

Breaking rules for the right reasons? An investigation of pro‐social rule breaking

Pro‐social rule breaking (PSRB) is a form of constructive deviance characterized by volitional rule breaking in the interest of the organization or its stakeholders. Over the course of three studies, we developed a generalizable measure of PSRB and placed it in a nomological network with personality, workplace perceptions, counterproductive behaviors, and task and contextual performance ratings made by supervisors and coworkers. Results indicate that PSRB is negatively related to task performance ratings across both sources despite its pro‐social motivation intended to help the organization. Potential directions for future research concerning reactions to constructive deviance are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Unravelling a ‘miner’s myth’ that environmental contamination in mining towns is naturally occurring

Australia has a long history of metal mining and smelting. Extraction and processing have resulted in elevated levels of toxic metals surrounding mining operations, which have adverse health effects, particularly to children. Resource companies, government agencies and employees often construct ‘myths’ to down play potential exposure risks and responsibility arising from operating emissions. Typical statements include: contaminants are naturally occurring, the wind blows emissions away from residential areas, contaminants are not bioavailable, or the problem is a legacy issue and not related to current operations. Evidence from mining and smelting towns shows that such ‘myths’ are exactly that. In mining towns, the default and primary defence against contamination is that elevated metals in adjacent urban environments are from the erosion and weathering of the ore bodies over millennia—hence ‘naturally occurring’. Not only is this a difficult argument to unravel from an evidence-based perspective, but also it causes confusion and delays remediation work, hindering efforts to reduce harmful exposures to children. An example of this situation is from Broken Hill, New South Wales, home to one of the world’s largest lead–zinc–silver ore body, which has been mined continuously for over 130 years. Environmental metal concentration and lead isotopic data from soil samples collected from across Broken Hill are used to establish the nature and timing of lead contamination. We use multiple lines of evidence to unravel a ‘miner’s myth’ by evaluating current soil metal concentrations and lead isotopic compositions, geological data, historical environmental assessments and old photographic evidence to assess the impacts from early smelting along with mining to the surface soils in the city.