The analysis of human health risk with a detailed procedure operating in a GIS environment

An approach for quantifying the human health risk caused by industrial sources, which, daily or accidentally, emit dangerous pollutants able to impact on different environmental media, is introduced. The approach is performed by the HHRA-GIS tool which employs an integrated, multimedia, multi-exposure pathways and multi-receptors risk assessment model able to manage all the steps of the analysis in a georeferenced structure. Upper-bound excess lifetime cancer risk and noncarcinogenic hazards are the risk measures, the spatial distribution of which is calculated and mapped on the involved territory, once all the pathways and receptors of the study area are identified. A sensitivity analysis completes the calculations allowing to understand how risk estimates are dependent on variability in the factors contributing to risk. The last part of the paper makes use of a case study concerning a working industrial site to put in evidence in which way the designed tool can help local authorities and policy makers in managing risks and planning remedial and reduction actions. The considered geographical area is a hypothetical territory characterized by residential, agricultural and industrial zones. The presence of two sources of contamination, a municipal waste incinerator (MWI) and a contaminated site, are evaluated by the tool application. Various typologies of receptors have been taken into account, each of them characterized by different anatomical and dietary properties. The achieved results are analyzed, compared with acceptable and background values and alternatives of minor environmental impact calculated.     

Methods for integrated assessment

Integrated assessment is an approach that seeks to involve all disciplines in policy-relevant assessment. The process aims to encompass environmental science, technology and policy problems. The aim is to establish an overview of the environmental issue in question that attempts to avoid the mistakes of the past associated with narrow, one-sided or unidimensional approaches. A number of methods are available for such assessments. However, they are also subject to a number of limitations, difficulties and dilemmas. Integrated methods are inherently complicated and the tradition is that only experts are involved. New more inclusionary procedures have to be devised in order to involve all stakeholders. They have to be involved in the framing of the issue and in the value judgements associated with the approach. The dilemmas cannot be solved by integrated approaches, but they can be mitigated via proper identification, analysis and evaluation of the gains and losses involved. In structuring the analysis the existence of ignorance has to be accounted for and communicated to the managers and the political decision makers. The ignorance/uncertainty aspects can be partially accommodated for via an intensification of feasible monitoring and research so as to minimise the risks of unpleasant surprises. Electronic Publication     

Carbon Emission from the Surface of Coarse Woody Debris in Korean Pine Forests of Southern Primorye

Carbon dioxide fluxes from the surface of coarse woody debris (CWD) have been measured in Korean pine forests of the southern Sikhote-Alin mountain range. The seasonal dynamics of oxidative conversion of CWD carbon have been evaluated, and average values of the CO₂ emission rate have been determined for CWD fragments of three tree species at different stages of decomposition. The degree of decomposition is an important factor of spatial variation in CO₂ emission rate, and temporal variation in this parameter is adequately described by an exponential function of both CWD temperature and air temperature (R² = 0.65–0.75).     

Ecosystem services assessments in local municipal decision making in South Africa: justification for the use of a business-based approach

The ecosystem services (ES) concept is being increasingly incorporated into environmental policy formulation and management approaches. The Corporate Ecosystem Services Review (ESR) is a framework used to assess the dependence and impact that a business has on ES. The success of the corporate experience of ES assessment provides an opportunity for adaption for local authority decision making. In this paper, the ESR tool was adapted to the South African setting at a local government level, and tested at two sites in the Msunduzi Municipality, KwaZulu-Natal. In testing the tool and gathering feedback from key stakeholders, it was found that there are both opportunities and challenges to this approach. Overall, however, it provides an opportunity for the systematic inclusion of ES assessment into existing regulatory frameworks for land-use planning and Integrated Environmental Management, whether in a strategic application, at a broader spatial (municipal) scale or in a specific locale within the municipality.     

The IPBES Conceptual Framework: An Unhelpful Start

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have recently launched themselves as the UN-sanctioned instrument for conserving nature. They seek to establish themselves as the authority in this field alongside the well-known Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in climate science. Quickly following or even before recent publication of their conceptual framework in two biology journals, they were already underway building upon it. This headlong push, we believe, is ill advised. We show how the framework is unsound as a foundation for further work—in a number of ways and perhaps even by its authors’ own lights. It is therefore urgent that the IPBES thoroughly and thoughtfully reconsider their framework before too much effort is wasted.     

Determinants of Individual Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare-Friendly Food Products

Animal welfare involves societal and human values, ethical concerns and moral considerations since it incorporates the belief of what is right or what is wrong in animal treatment and care. This paper aims to ascertain whether the different dimensions of individual attitudes toward animal welfare in food choices may be characterized by general human values, as identified by Schwartz. For this purpose, an EU-wide survey was carried out, covering almost 2500 nationally representative individuals from five European countries. Compared with the previous literature this study shows a twofold novelty: (1) it develops a general framework to link individual enduring beliefs and attitudes toward animal welfare attributes in food choices; (2) the framework is analyzed within a broad-based cross-country study. Our empirical results prove that human values related to self-transcendence are strongly associated to overall animal welfare attitudes and especially to those explicitly related to food choices, while values related to the spheres of self-enhancement and conservatism are significantly associated to less sensitive attitudes to animal welfare. Moreover, our results appear to indicate that a determinant of animal welfarism in food choices is potentially associated to individual concerns regarding food safety issues.     

A novel application of concentrated solar thermal energy in foundries

Scrap preheating in foundries is a technology that saves melting energy, leading to economic and environmental benefits. The proposed method in this paper utilizes solar thermal energy for preheating scrap, effected through a parabolic trough concentrator that focuses sunlight onto a receiver which carries the metallic scrap. Scraps of various thicknesses were placed on the receiver to study the heat absorption by them. Experimental results revealed the pattern with which heat is gained by the scrap, the efficiency of the process and how it is affected as the scrap gains heat. The inferences from them gave practical guidelines on handling scraps for best possible energy savings. Based on the experiments conducted, preheat of up to 160 °C and a maximum efficiency of 70 % and a minimum efficiency of 40 % could be achieved across the time elapsed and heat gained by the scrap. Calculations show that this technology has the potential to save around 8 % of the energy consumption in foundries. Cumulative benefits are very encouraging: 180.45 million kWh of energy savings and 203,905 t of carbon emissions cut per year across the globe. This research reveals immense scope for this technology to be adopted by foundries throughout the world.     

Production and optimization of biodiesel using mixed immobilized biocatalysts in packed bed reactor

Vegetable oils are used as raw materials for biodiesel production using transesterification reaction. Several methods for the production of biodiesel were developed using chemical (alkali and acidic compounds) and biological catalysts (lipases). Biodiesel production catalyzed by lipases is energy and cost-saving processes and is carried out at normal temperature and pressure. The need for an efficient method for screening larger number of variables has led to the adoption of statistical experimental design. In the present study, packed bed reactor was designed to study with mixed immobilized biocatalysts to have higher productivity under optimum conditions. Contrary to the single-step acyl migration mechanism, a two-step stepwise reaction mechanism involving immobilized Candida rugosa lipase and immobilized Rhizopus oryzae cells was employed for the present work. This method was chosen because enzymatic hydrolysis followed by esterification can tolerate high free fatty acid containing oils. The effects of flow rate and bed height on biodiesel yield were studied using two factors five-level central composite design (CCD) and response surface methodology (RSM). Maximum biodiesel yield of 85 and 81 % was obtained for jatropha oil and karanja oil with the optimum bed height and optimum flow rate of 32.6 cm and 1.35 L/h, and 32.6 cm and 1.36 L/h, respectively.