This paper examines the determinants of illegal waste dumping at the county level in Slovakia (in 77 of 79 counties), using a truncated regression model. It analyzes a unique data-set composed of illegal dumping data provided by the TrashOut platform and sociodemographic data from the national statistical authority.
This study shows that a higher level of expected overall waste production results in a higher rate of illegally dumped waste and a higher number of illegal dumping sites. More precisely, income has a positive impact on the rate of illegal waste dumping, poverty influences the rate of illegal dumping negatively and a higher level of education does not result in more responsible waste management. On the contrary, higher education has a positive influence on the rate of dumping. A negative relationship between costs of illegal waste disposal and dumping rate, as well as a positive relationship between costs of legal waste disposal and dumping rate has been revealed. 相似文献
While convenient and often used, on-site surveys are biased by the fact that users who visit the site more often are proportionately more likely to be sampled. This so-called avidity or size biased sampling results in over-estimating the visitation patterns of the average user. This analysis develops a rule of thumb method that may easily be applied by recreation site managers to visitation data collected on-site in order to infer behavior of the average user of the site. The key assumption that drives the derivation is that the visitation data of users is logarithmically distributed. To evaluate the methodology, we analyze several data sets of recreational users assuming that they reflect the populations of users and from these construct hypothetical on-site samples. 相似文献
The aim of the present work is the assessment of metal toxicity in runoff, in their contaminated soils and in the groundwater
sampled from two mining areas in the region of Marrakech using a microbial bioassay MetPLATE™. This bioassay is based on the
specific inhibition of the β-galactosidase enzyme of a mutant strain of Escherichia coli, by the metallic pollutants. The stream waters from all sampling stations in the two mines were all very toxic and displayed
percent enzyme inhibition exceeding 87% except SWA4 and SWB1 stations in mine C. Their high concentrations of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) confirm the acute toxicity shown by MetPLATE.
The pH of stream waters from mine B and C varied between 2.1 and 6.2 and was probably responsible for metal mobilization,
suggesting a problem of acid mine drainage in these mining areas. The bioassay MetPLATE™ was also applied to mine tailings
and to soils contaminated by the acidic waters. The results show that the high toxicity of these soils and tailings was mainly
due to the relatively concentration of soluble Zn and Cu. The use of MetPLATE™ in groundwater toxicity testing shows that,
most of the samples exhibited low metal toxicity (2.7–45.5% inhibition) except GW3 of the mine B (95.3% inhibition during
the wet season and 82.9% inhibition during the dry season). This high toxicity is attributed to the higher than usual concentrations
of Cu (189 μg Cu l−1) and Zn (1505 μg Zn l−1). These results show the potential risk of the contamination of different ecosystems situated to the vicinity of these two
metalliferous sites. The general trend observed was an increase in metal toxicity measured by the MetPLATE with increasing
total and mobile metal concentrations in the studied matrices. Therefore, the MetPLATE bioassay is a reliable and fast bioassay
to estimate the metals toxicity in the aquatic and solids samples. 相似文献
In Vietnam, Nicotex's site is perhaps the most infamous case of illegal disposal of toxic pesticides near residential areas. In 2013, affected villagers discovered illegal burials of around 1,000 tons of expired pesticides in the Nicotex factory. Organic pesticides were detected in illegal burial areas (IBAs) around 60 times greater than acceptable levels, but no attention was paid to contamination of metals, metalloids, and other classes of organic contaminants, which could be co-contaminants in pesticide formulation. This study assessed the contaminants remaining in the IBAs and surrounding residential areas two years after the source removal conducted in 2014. Additionally, a preliminary health risk assessment from residual contaminants was performed. Nine classes of chemicals including parental pesticides, inorganic and organic degradation byproducts, and metals and metalloids, comprising 123 chemicals were quantified in soil, sediment, and water samples from Nicotex and surrounding residential areas. Although concentrations of organic pesticides were below acceptable levels, arsenic contamination in the soil in a Nicotex IBA named NCT5 and Nap village (NV) exceeded the acceptable level. The enrichment factor and log-probability plot indicate that arsenic enrichment at NV is not from natural sources but is associated with arsenic contamination in NCT5. Arsenic may be a co-contaminant in pesticide manufacturing or an arsenical pesticide, such as monosodium methanearsonate. Arsenic found in NV was toxic arsenate for which the preliminary risk assessment yielded an unacceptable excess carcinogenic risk (1 × 10?4). While all attention was paid to investigate and treat contamination of organic pesticides, it turns out that arsenic is the major existing threat which poses an unacceptable cancer risk in good agreement with the high cancer rate claimed by villagers near Nicotex. This justifies the need for further investigation of the extent of the arsenic contamination and restoration of the contaminated land. 相似文献