Book reviews

Making Cities Work: the role of local government in the urban environment. Richard Gilbert, Don Stevenson, Herbert Girardet &; Richard Stren, 1996, London, Earthscan, 203pp. ISBN 1 85383 354 1, £13.95 pbk

Environmental Policy in an International Context, Vols 1–3: Perspectives, Conflicts and Prospects. P. Glasbergen &; A. Blowers (Series Eds) London, Arnold

Rhetoric and Reality in Environmental Policy. M. Wintle &; R. Reeve (Eds), 1994, Aldershot, Avebury Studies in Green Research, 154 pp. ISBN 1 85628 927 3

FutureNatural: Nature, Science, Culture. G. Roberston et al. (Eds) 1996, London, Routledge, ISBN 0415 070139, £40.00 hbk

Environmental Policy with Political Integration: the European Union and the United States. New horizons in environmental economics. John B. Braden, Henk Folmer &; Thomas S. Ulen (Eds), 1996, Cheltenham, Elgar Publishing, 477 pp. ISBN 1 85898 217 0     

Accumulation of radiocesium by mushrooms in the environment: a literature review

During the last 50 years, a large amount of information on radionuclide accumulators or "sentinel-type" organisms in the environment has been published. Much of this work focused on the risks of food-chain transfer of radionuclides to higher organisms such as reindeer and man. Until the 1980s and 1990s, there were few published data on the radiocesium ((134)Cs and (137)Cs) accumulation by mushrooms. The present review of published data for (134,137)Cs accumulation by mushrooms in nature discusses the aspects that promote (134,137)Cs uptake by mushrooms and focuses on mushrooms that demonstrate a propensity for use in the environmental biomonitoring of radiocesium contamination. Transfer factors (TF, as dry weight concentration in fruiting body divided by concentration in substrate) ranged up to 24 (unitless), and aggregate transfer factors (T(ag), as Bq(137)Cs/kg dw in fruiting body divided by the aerial deposition as Bq/m(2)) ranged up to 8m(2)/kg dw.     

Emerging infectious disease as a proximate cause of amphibian mass mortality

A newly discovered infectious disease of amphibians, chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, is implicated in population declines and possible extinctions throughout the world. The purpose of our study was to examine the effects of B. dendrobatidis on the mountain yellow-legged frog (Rana muscosa) in the Sierra Nevada of California (USA). We (1) quantified the prevalence and incidence of B. dendrobatidis through repeat surveys of several hundred R. muscosa populations in the southern Sierra Nevada; (2) described the population-level effects of B. dendrobatidis on R. muscosa population abundance; and (3) compared the mortality rates of infected and uninfected R. muscosa individuals from pre- through post-metamorphosis using both laboratory and field experiments. Mouthpart inspections conducted in 144 and 132 R. muscosa populations in 2003 and 2004, respectively, indicated that 19% of R. muscosa populations in both years showed indications of chytridiomycosis. Sixteen percent of populations that were uninfected in 2003 became infected by 2004. Rana muscosa population sizes were reduced by an average of 88% following B. dendrobatidis outbreaks at six sites, but at seven B. dendrobatidis-negative sites, R. muscosa population sizes increased by an average of 45% over the same time period. In the laboratory, all infected R. muscosa developed fatal chytridiomycosis after metamorphosis, while all uninfected individuals remained healthy. In the field experiment in which R. muscosa tadpoles were caged at infected and uninfected sites, 96% of the individuals that metamorphosed at infected sites died vs. 5% at the uninfected sites. These studies indicate that chytridiomycosis causes high mortality in post-metamorphic R. muscosa, that this emerging disease is the proximate cause of numerous observed R. muscosa population declines, and that the disease threatens this species with extirpation at numerous sites in California's Sierra Nevada.     

Reactions of the amine-containing drugs fluoxetine and metoprolol during chlorination and dechlorination processes used in wastewater treatment

The reactivities of the amine-containing pharmaceuticals fluoxetine and metoprolol with hypochlorite were studied using conditions that simulate wastewater disinfection including neutral pH (7.0), a range of reaction times (2–60 min), and a molar excess of hypochlorite relative to the pharmaceutical concentration (5.7 times). The reactions were monitored using liquid chromatography (LC) with several detection modes including ultraviolet absorbance (UV), mass spectrometry (MS), and post-column reaction/reductive electrochemistry (EC) for determining active chlorine products. At levels of 10 μM, both compounds reacted rapidly (<2 min) to form principally N-chloramine products that were stable in aqueous solution for at least 1 h. The reaction was also studied in wastewater, and similar reactivity was noted. These results demonstrate that the cations fluoxetine and metoprolol are likely to be rapidly transformed into neutral N-chloramines during wastewater disinfection. The reactivity of the N-chloramines was also studied with sulfite to simulate dechlorination, which is often employed in wastewater treatment. Both N-chloramines reacted slowly with sulfite. In the pure water dechlorination experiments, it was estimated that 70% and 10% of the peak areas remained after 2 min reaction time for fluoxetine and metoprolol, respectively. At longer reaction times both N-chloramines had been completely reduced by sulfite, and the product of the sulfite reduction reaction was the parent pharmaceutical amine. Since typical dechlorination times in wastewater treatment are on the order of seconds, this suggests the chloramines formed from these two basic drugs might evade dechlorination and be released into the environment. The implications of chloramine release are discussed.