Potential physiological effects of pharmaceutical compounds in Atlantic salmon (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Salmo salar</Emphasis>) implied by transcriptomic analysis

Background, aim, and scope  

Pharmaceuticals are emerging pollutants widely used in everyday urban activities which can be detected in surface, ground, and drinking waters. Their presence is derived from consumption of medicines, disposal of expired medications, release of treated and untreated urban effluents, and from the pharmaceutical industry. Their growing use has become an alarming environmental problem which potentially will become dangerous in the future. However, there is still a lack of knowledge about long-term effects in non-target organisms as well as for human health. Toxicity testing has indicated a relatively low acute toxicity to fish species, but no information is available on possible sublethal effects. This study provides data on the physiological pathways involved in the exposure of Atlantic salmon as representative test species to three pharmaceutical compounds found in ground, surface, and drinking waters based on the evaluation of the xenobiotic-induced impairment resulting in the activation and silencing of specific genes.     

Use of CALPUFF for exposure assessment in a near-field,complex terrain setting

CALPUFF is an atmospheric source-receptor model recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for use on a case-by-case basis in complex terrain and wind conditions. The ability of the model to provide useful information for exposure assessments in areas with those topographical and meteorological conditions has received little attention. This is an important knowledge gap for use of CALPUFF outside of regulatory applications, such as exposure analyses conducted in support of risk assessments and health studies. We compared deposition of cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn) calculated with CALPUFF as a result of emissions from a zinc smelter with corresponding concentrations of the metals measured in attic dust and soil samples obtained from the surrounding area. On a point-by-point analysis, predictions from CALPUFF explained 11% (lead) to 53% (zinc) of the variability in concentrations measured in attic dust. Levels of heavy metals in soil interpolated to 100 residential addresses from the distribution of concentrations measured in soil samples also agreed well with deposition predicted with CALPUFF: R² of 0.46, 0.76, and 079 for Pb, Cd, and Zn, respectively. Community-average concentrations of Cd, Pb, and Zn measured in soil were significantly (p < 0.0001) and strongly correlated (R² ranged from 0.77 to 0.98) with predicted deposition rates. These findings demonstrate that CALPUFF can provide reasonably accurate predictions of the patterns of long-term air pollutant deposition in the near-field associated with emissions from a discrete source in complex terrain. Because deposition estimates are calculated as a linear function of air concentrations, CALPUFF is expected to be reliable model for prediction of long-term average, near-field ambient air concentrations in complex terrain as well.     

Spatial variability of carbonaceous aerosols and associated source tracers in two cites in the Midwestern United States

Semi-continuous and 24-h averaged measurements of fine carbonaceous aerosols were made concurrently at three sites within each of two U.S. Midwestern Cities; Detroit, Michigan and Cleveland, Ohio; during two, one-month intensive campaigns conducted in July of 2007 and January & February of 2008. A comparison of 24-h measurements revealed substantial intra-urban variability in carbonaceous aerosols consistent with the influence of local sources, and excesses in both PM_2.5 organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC) were identified at individual sites within each city. High time-resolved black carbon (BC) measurements indicated that elemental carbon concentrations were higher at sites adjacent to freeways and busy surface streets, and temporal patterns suggested that excess EC at sites adjacent to freeways was dominated by mobile source emissions while excesses in EC away from traffic corridors was dominated by point/area source emissions. The site-to-site variability in OC concentrations was approximately 7% within the neighborhood scale (0.5–4 km) and between 4 and 27% at the urban scale (4–100 km). In contrast, measurements of organic source tracers, in conjunction with a Chemical Mass Balance (CMB) source-apportionment model, indicated that the spatial variation in the contribution of both mobile and stationary sources to PM_2.5 OC often exceeded the variation in OC mass concentration by a factor of 3 or more. Markers for mobile sources, biomass smoke, natural gas, and coal combustion differed by as much as 60% within the neighborhood scale and by greater than 200% within the urban scale. The observations made during this study suggest that the urban excess of carbonaceous aerosols is much more complex than has been previously reported and that a more rigorous, source-oriented approach should be taken in order to assess the risk associated with exposure to carbonaceous aerosols within the industrialized environments of the Midwestern United States.     

Non-aqueous phase liquid spreading during soil vapor extraction

Many non-aqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) are expected to spread at the air-water interface, particularly under non-equilibrium conditions. In the vadose zone, this spreading should increase the surface area for mass transfer and the efficiency of volatile NAPL recovery by soil vapor extraction (SVE). Observations of spreading on water wet surfaces led to a conceptual model of oil spreading vertically above a NAPL pool in the vadose zone. Analysis of this model predicts that spreading can enhance the SVE contaminant recovery compared to conditions where the liquid does not spread. Experiments were conducted with spreading volatile oils hexane and heptane in wet porous media and capillary tubes, where spreading was observed at the scale of centimeters. Within porous medium columns up to a meter in height containing stagnant gas, spreading was less than ten centimeters and did not contribute significantly to hexane volatilization. Water film thinning and oil film pinning may have prevented significant oil film spreading, and thus did not enhance SVE at the scale of a meter. The experiments performed indicate that volatile oil spreading at the field scale is unlikely to contribute significantly to the efficiency of SVE.     

Simplified contaminant source depletion models as analogs of multiphase simulators

Four simplified dense non-aqueous phase liquid (DNAPL) source depletion models recently introduced in the literature are evaluated for the prediction of long-term effects of source depletion under natural gradient flow. These models are simple in form (a power function equation is an example) but are shown here to serve as mathematical analogs to complex multiphase flow and transport simulators. The spill and subsequent dissolution of DNAPLs was simulated in domains having different hydrologic characteristics (variance of the log conductivity field=0.2, 1 and 3) using the multiphase flow and transport simulator UTCHEM. The dissolution profiles were fitted using four analytical models: the equilibrium streamtube model (ESM), the advection dispersion model (ADM), the power law model (PLM) and the Damkohler number model (DaM). All four models, though very different in their conceptualization, include two basic parameters that describe the mean DNAPL mass and the joint variability in the velocity and DNAPL distributions. The variability parameter was observed to be strongly correlated with the variance of the log conductivity field in the ESM and ADM but weakly correlated in the PLM and DaM. The DaM also includes a third parameter that describes the effect of rate-limited dissolution, but here this parameter was held constant as the numerical simulations were found to be insensitive to local-scale mass transfer. All four models were able to emulate the characteristics of the dissolution profiles generated from the complex numerical simulator, but the one-parameter PLM fits were the poorest, especially for the low heterogeneity case.     

肯尼亚米达河红树林森林恢复状况:一个受损害的还是有保障的未来?

本文研究了米达河(南纬3°20',东经40°00')两个红树林森林地区(乌永博和基雷普维)带状横断面的红树林植被的结构和恢复型式.     

Water quality and health in northern Canada: stored drinking water and acute gastrointestinal illness in Labrador Inuit

One of the highest self-reported incidence rates of acute gastrointestinal illness (AGI) in the global peer-reviewed literature occurs in Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic. This high incidence of illness could be due, in part, to the consumption of contaminated water, as many northern communities face challenges related to the quality of municipal drinking water. Furthermore, many Inuit store drinking water in containers in the home, which could increase the risk of contamination between source and point-of-use (i.e., water recontamination during storage). To examine this risk, this research characterized drinking water collection and storage practices, identified potential risk factors for water contamination between source and point-of-use, and examined possible associations between drinking water contamination and self-reported AGI in the Inuit community of Rigolet, Canada. The study included a cross-sectional census survey that captured data on types of drinking water used, household practices related to drinking water (e.g., how it was collected and stored), physical characteristics of water storage containers, and self-reported AGI. Additionally, water samples were collected from all identified drinking water containers in homes and analyzed for presence of Escherichia coli and total coliforms. Despite municipally treated tap water being available in all homes, 77.6% of households had alternative sources of drinking water stored in containers, and of these containers, 25.2% tested positive for total coliforms. The use of transfer devices and water dippers (i.e., smaller bowls or measuring cups) for the collection and retrieval of water from containers were both significantly associated with increased odds of total coliform presence in stored water (OR_{transfer device} = 3.4, 95% CI 1.2–11.7; OR_dipper = 13.4, 95% CI 3.8–47.1). Twenty-eight-day period prevalence of self-reported AGI during the month before the survey was 17.2% (95% CI 13.0–22.5), which yielded an annual incidence rate of 2.4 cases per person per year (95% CI 1.8–3.1); no water-related risk factors were significantly associated with AGI. Considering the high prevalence of, and risk factors associated with, indicator bacteria in drinking water stored in containers, potential exposure to waterborne pathogens may be minimized through interventions at the household level.