A qualitative descriptive case study on home medical waste management in Brazil

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - This work presents a survey on the management of the home medical care waste (HMCW) from the municipality of Caruaru, an important medical and...     

Autotrophic nitrogen removal for decentralized treatment of ammonia-rich industrial textile wastewater: process assessment,stabilization and modelling

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Digital textile printing (DTP) is a game-changer technology that is rapidly expanding worldwide. On the other hand, process wastewater is rich in...     

Environmental assessment of gas management options at the Old Ämmässuo landfill (Finland) by means of LCA-modeling (EASEWASTE)

The current landfill gas (LFG) management (based on flaring and utilization for heat generation of the collected gas) and three potential future gas management options (LFG flaring, heat generation and combined heat and power generation) for the Old Ämmässuo landfill (Espoo, Finland) were evaluated by life-cycle assessment modeling. The evaluation accounts for all resource utilization and emissions to the environment related to the gas generation and management for a life-cycle time horizon of 100 yr. The assessment criteria comprise standard impact categories (global warming, photo-chemical ozone formation, stratospheric ozone depletion, acidification and nutrient enrichment) and toxicity-related impact categories (human toxicity via soil, via water and via air, eco-toxicity in soil and in water chronic).The results of the life-cycle impact assessment show that disperse emissions of LFG from the landfill surface determine the highest potential impacts in terms of global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, and human toxicity via soil. Conversely, the impact potentials estimated for other categories are numerically-negative when the collected LFG is utilized for energy generation, demonstrating that net environmental savings can be obtained. Such savings are proportional to the amount of gas utilized for energy generation and the gas energy recovery efficiency achieved, which thus have to be regarded as key parameters. As a result, the overall best performance is found for the heat generation option – as it has the highest LFG utilization/energy recovery rates – whereas the worst performance is estimated for the LFG flaring option, as no LFG is here utilized for energy generation.Therefore, to reduce the environmental burdens caused by the current gas management strategy, more LFG should be used for energy generation. This inherently requires a superior LFG capture rate that, in addition, would reduce fugitive emissions of LFG from the landfill surface, bringing further environmental benefits.     

Untersuchungen zur Eignung wildlebender Wanderratten (Rattus norvegicus) als Indikatoren der Schwermetallbelastung

Depot compartments which are the primary sites of pollutant enrichment in the organism can be used as bioindicators (targets) in order to identify a burden for certain elements. Background concentrations of eleven elements in tissues and organs of wild-living rats (Rattus norvegicus) obtained from a region (Euroregion Neisse, around the trilateral border region of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic) distinguished by low to intermediate levels of environmental contaminations are given in part I of this work. In order to identify the most important depot compartments for certain elements, a body burden method was applied. Differences of affinity due to sex and age of analyzed rats are discussed, as are the suitability of specific organs and tissues with regard to bioaccumulation measurements concerning metals. The principal depot compartments for the heavy metals Cu, Mn, Cd (in adult rats) and Tl are the liver and kidneys, whereas the elements Ni, Sr, Pb (for adult animals) and Ti are more affinitivly to bones. Co and Zn displayed a more pronounced affinity towards tissues of the bones and liver. The analysis revealed large differences in Cd and Pb distributions both among young and adult rats, and with respect to sexes. It can be concluded that the distribution of the elements investigated in this study in free-living rats agrees with that in man, except for that of Ni. The above agreement gives proof of the possibility to use depot organs of rats for bioindication which was already mentioned in part I of this work (‘Sex and age-related quantification of Al, As, Cd, Co, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb, Sr, Ti, Tl and Zn in liver, heart, lung, kidney, muscle, brain and bones and establishment of distribution patterns’).     

Untersuchungen zur Eignung wildlebender Wanderratten (Rattus norvegicus) als Indikatoren der Schwermetallbelastung

Zusammenfassung  Durch die Quantifizierung von 12 chemischen Elementen im Organsystem von wildlebenden Ratten (Rattus norvegicus) aus dem Tierpark Zittau (Sachsen) sollte die Eignung dieser spezies als passiver Bioindikator untersucht werden. Neben der Ermittlung von sogenannten Hintergrund-konzentrationen standen insbesondere Fragen zur geschlechts-und altersspezifischen Akkumulation einzelner Elemente im Organsystem von Rattus norvegicus im Vordergrund. Spezifisch zeigten dabei einzelne Elemente unterschiedliche Affinit?ten zu den entsprechenden Geweben und Organen. Insbesondere die hierbei ermittelten geschlechts- und altersspezifischen Charakteristika einzelner Elemente macht eine detaillierte Ausarbeitung einer Beprobungsstrategie für den sp?teren Einsatz als passiver Bioindikator zwingend. Unter Berücksichtigung des durch die Berechnung des Body Burden (K?rperlast) im 2. Teil der Arbeit ermittelten typischen Verteilungsmusters einzelner Elemente ist Rattus norvegicus zum integrativen Monitoring-einsatz pr?destiniert. Bernd Markert ist Professor und Direktor des internationalen Hochschulinstitutes in Zittau und Lehrstuhlinhaber für Umweltverfahrenstechnik. Der Einsatz eines freilebenden, intelligenten ‘Sch?dlings’ für die Umweltüberwachung in der Bioindikation ergibt sich für ihn aus zwei zwingenden Gesichtspunkten: 1. Die Ratte als Nutztier (psychologisch/didaktischer Ansatz) 2. und als ‘missing link’ zwischen Wirbeltier und Mensch (bioindikativer/naturwissenschaftlicher Ansatz)     

An Evaluation of Air Pollution Health Impacts and Costs in São Paulo, Brazil

The need to determine cost estimates of the hazardous effects of diseases is important in order to establish the priorities of actions for prevention and health management. The evaluation of air pollution impacts on health, based on expenditures, has been carried out, but there are obvious comparison difficulties among countries, as the health-per-capita investment varies enormously. In order to achieve a standard indicator, we applied the Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALY) method to estimate the health burden and cost estimate due to air pollution in São Paulo, Brazil. The basic methodology was the utilization of dose–response curves of epidemiological studies conducted in São Paulo to assess air pollution and its health effects. DALY attributable to air pollution in São Paulo added up to 28,212 years annually. An indirect health cost attributable to air pollution resulted in US$ 3,222,676. This estimate refers to the children and the elderly population. These results give a preliminary and underestimated value of the burden of diseases promoted by air pollution.     

Are automatic systems the future of motorcycle safety? A novel methodology to prioritize potential safety solutions based on their projected effectiveness

Objective: Motorcycle riders are involved in significantly more crashes per kilometer driven than passenger car drivers. Nonetheless, the development and implementation of motorcycle safety systems lags far behind that of passenger cars. This research addresses the identification of the most effective motorcycle safety solutions in the context of different countries.

Methods: A knowledge-based system of motorcycle safety (KBMS) was developed to assess the potential for various safety solutions to mitigate or avoid motorcycle crashes. First, a set of 26 common crash scenarios was identified from the analysis of multiple crash databases. Second, the relative effectiveness of 10 safety solutions was assessed for the 26 crash scenarios by a panel of experts. Third, relevant information about crashes was used to weigh the importance of each crash scenario in the region studied. The KBMS method was applied with an Italian database, with a total of more than 1 million motorcycle crashes in the period 2000–2012.

Results: When applied to the Italian context, the KBMS suggested that automatic systems designed to compensate for riders' or drivers' errors of commission or omission are the potentially most effective safety solution. The KBMS method showed an effective way to compare the potential of various safety solutions, through a scored list with the expected effectiveness of each safety solution for the region to which the crash data belong. A comparison of our results with a previous study that attempted a systematic prioritization of safety systems for motorcycles (PISa project) showed an encouraging agreement.

Conclusions: Current results revealed that automatic systems have the greatest potential to improve motorcycle safety. Accumulating and encoding expertise in crash analysis from a range of disciplines into a scalable and reusable analytical tool, as proposed with the use of KBMS, has the potential to guide research and development of effective safety systems. As the expert assessment of the crash scenarios is decoupled from the regional crash database, the expert assessment may be reutilized, thereby allowing rapid reanalysis when new crash data become available. In addition, the KBMS methodology has potential application to injury forecasting, driver/rider training strategies, and redesign of existing road infrastructure.