Distribution of perfluorinated alkyl substances in marine shellfish along the Chinese Bohai Sea coast

Perfluorinated alkyl substances (PFASs) are emerging persistent organic pollutants, which pose a threat to human health primarily by dietary exposure, especially through seafood. Bohai Sea (a semi-closed sea located north of China) is an important shellfish aquaculture area that is possibly highly-polluted with PFASs. In this study, we first evaluated contamination by PFASs in a total of 230 samples of marine shellfish from the Bohai Sea. Samples included five important shellfish species, collected from important aquaculture spots distributed around the Bohai Sea. Samples were analyzed by an ultra-fast liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method, which could simultaneously detect 23 PFASs in shellfish. Our research verified that PFASs have become a threat to the safety of shellfish products in this area. Furthermore, contamination by PFASs in shellfish changed depending on the components of PFASs, the species of shellfish, and the sampling sites. Many of the 23 target compounds contributed to the high detection ratio (>50%) as follows: perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)?>?perfluorononanoic acid?>?perfluorodecanesulfonic acid?>?perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). Compared with other dominant components, PFOA not only had the highest detection percentage in shellfish samples (98.3%), but its detection level contributed to 87.2% of total PFASs concentrations, indicating that PFOA is the major threat to the safety of shellfish products. The highest level of PFAS was found in clams (62.5?ng?g^?1 wet weight of PFOA). The concentration of total PFAS in different shellfish species showed the following trend: clams?>?mussels?>?scallops?>?whelks?>?oysters. The maximum concentration of total PFAS or PFOA was found in Shouguang. The total concentration of PFOS and its precursor were highest in Cangzhou, possibly due to local industrial activities. The results presented in this paper provide new data on the contamination of marine shellfish along the Bohai Sea coasts in China, and constitute a reference for future monitoring of contamination by emerging contaminants in Bohai coast.     

Microplastics in seawater: sampling strategies,laboratory methodologies,and identification techniques applied to port environment

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The European Interreg Italy–France 2014–2020 Maritime Project SPlasH! (Stop to Plastics in H2O!) focused on the study of microplastics...     

Performance of the emerging biochar on the stabilization of potentially toxic metals in smelter- and mining-contaminated soils

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Soil potentially toxic metals (PTMs) pollution caused by anthropogenic activities has become serious concern with respect to the crop safety...     

北方某污水厂MBBR工艺升级改造后的高效脱氮除磷效果

为研究北方某污水厂经过MBBR提标改造后,在秋冬季进水碳源较低的条件下生化段脱氮除磷率高于理论值的原因,采用沿程水质测定法及小试实验的方法验证其脱氮除磷效果,并通过基于16S rRNA的高通量测序对好氧段微生物菌群进行分析。结果表明,系统在好氧区存在显著的TN去除,去除率约占15%～20%,在缺氧区存在显著的TP去除,去除率高达63.04%,显示系统内发生了同步硝化反硝化(SND)和反硝化除磷现象。通过小试实验验证了好氧SND现象主要来自于悬浮载体,得益于悬浮载体生物膜功能菌分层分布;反硝化除磷现象则得益于系统较长的缺氧停留时间及较短的泥龄。系统中SND和反硝化除磷的存在是系统在低碳源消耗条件下取得高效脱氮除磷效果的主要原因;微生物菌群分析验证了SND现象主要来源于悬浮载体;悬浮载体上硝化菌群相对丰度为28.56%,是污泥的14倍,反硝化菌相对丰度约8.34%,为SND效果的发生提供了微观保证;污泥中存在Candidatus Accumulibacter、Acinetobacter和Tetrasphaera,为该污水厂存在反硝化除磷及高效除磷现象提供了微观证据。     

电絮凝对电厂循环冷却水中硬度的去除

以某电厂冷却塔循环冷却水为处理对象,利用电絮凝法,以铝板为牺牲阳极去除水中的Ca~(2+)和Mg~(2+),分别考察了电絮凝过程中不同电流密度、电解时间、溶液初始pH、阳极极板数量对总硬度去除率的影响。结果表明:增加电流密度、延长电解时间有利于Ca~(2+)和Mg~(2+)的去除;当电流密度为10 mA·cm~(-2),电解时间为90 min时,Ca~(2+)和Mg~(2+)去除率分别达到93.5%和95.8%,总硬度去除率为94.6%;相对于酸性和中性条件,碱性条件更有利于Ca~(2+)和Mg~(2+)的去除,当初始pH为10时,Ca~(2+)和Mg~(2+)去除率分别达到85.4%和97.7%,总硬度去除率为93.5%;随极板数量的增加,Ca~(2+)和总硬度去除率均有所提高;投加Na_2CO_3有利于Ca~(2+)和总硬度的去除。上述结果可为进一步提高电絮凝过程中总硬度的去除率提供参考。     

Different response of bacterial community to the changes of nutrients and pollutants in sediments from an urban river network

• Bacterial community varied spatially in sediments from the urban river network. • Key environmental factors shaping bacterial community were detected by RDA. • Bacterial co-occurrence networks changed at different levels of nutrient and metal. • Potential indicator species were selected to predict pollution risk in sediment. Microbial communities in sediment are an important indicator linking to environmental pollution in urban river systems. However, how the diversity and structure of bacterial communities in sediments from an urban river network respond to different environmental factors has not been well studied. The goal of this study was to understand the patterns of bacterial communities in sediments from a highly dense urbanized river network in the lower Yangtze River Delta by Illumina MiSeq sequencing. The correlations between bacterial communities, the environmental gradient and geographical distance were analyzed by redundancy analysis (RDA) and network methods. The diversity and richness of bacterial community in sediments increased from upstream to downstream consistently with the accumulation of nutrient in the urban river network. Bacterial community composition and structure showed obvious spatial changes, leading to two distinct groups, which were significantly related to the characteristics of nutrient and heavy metal in sediments. Humic substance, available nitrogen, available phosphorus, Zn, Cu, Hg and As were selected as the key environmental factors shaping the bacterial community in sediments based on RDA. The co-occurrence patterns of bacterial networks showed that positive interaction between bacterial communities increased but the connectivity among bacterial genera and stability of sediment ecosystem reduced under a higher content of nutrient and heavy metal in average. The sensitive and ubiquitous taxa with an overproportional response to key environmental factors were detected as indicator species, which provided a novel method for the prediction of the pollution risk of sediment in an urban river network.     

An empirical perspective for understanding climate change impacts in Switzerland

Regional Environmental Change - Planning for the future requires a detailed understanding of how climate change affects a wide range of systems at spatial scales that are relevant to humans....     

Hospital admissions in Iran for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases attributed to the Middle Eastern Dust storms

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The main objective of this study was to assess the possible effects of airborne particulate matter less than 10 μm in diameter (PM10)...     

Comparison between absorption and biological activity on the efficiency of the biotrickling filtration of gaseous streams containing ammonia

Polluted air streams can be purified using biological treatments such as biotrickling filtration, which is one of the most widely accepted techniques successfully tuned to treat a wide variety of exhausted gaseous streams coming from a series of industrial sectors such as food processing, flavor manufacturers, rendering, and composting. Since the degradation of a pollutant occurs at standard pressure and temperature, biotrickling filtration, whether compared with other more energy-demanding chemical-physical processes of abatement (such as scrubbing, catalytic oxidation, regenerative adsorption, incineration, advanced oxidation processes, etc.), represents a very high energy-efficient technology. Moreover, as an additional advantage, biodegradation offers the possibility of a complete mineralization of the polluting agents. In this work, biotrickling filtration has been considered in order to explore its efficiency with respect to the abatement of ammonia (which is a highly water-soluble compound). Moreover, a complete mathematical model has been developed in order to describe the dynamics of both absorption and biological activities which are the two dominant phenomena occurring into these systems. The results obtained in this work have shown that the absorption phenomenon is very important in order to define the global removal efficiency of ammonia from the gaseous stream (particularly, 44% of the ammonia is abated by water absorption). Moreover, it has been demonstrated (through the comparison between experimental results and theoretical simulations) that the action of bacteria, which enhance the rate of ammonia transfer to the liquid phase, can be modeled through a simple Michaelis-Menten relationship.