Zebrafish embryo toxicity of 15 chlorinated, brominated, and iodinated disinfection by-products

Disinfection to protect human health occurs at drinking water and wastewater facilities through application of non-selective oxidants including chlorine. Oxidants also transform organic material and form disinfection by-products (DBPs), many of which are halogenated and cyto- and genotoxic. Only a handful of assays have been used to compare DBP toxicity, and researchers are unsure which DBP(s) drive the increased cancer risk associated with drinking chlorinated water. The most extensive data set employs an in vitro model cell, Chinese hamster ovary cells. Traditionally, most DBP research focuses on the threat to human health, but the effects on aquatic species exposed to DBPs in wastewater effluents remain ill defined. We present the developmental toxicity for 15 DBPs and a chlorinated wastewater to a model aquatic vertebrate, zebrafish. Mono-halogenated DBPs followed the in vivo toxicity rank order: acetamides > acetic acids > acetonitriles ~ nitrosamines, which agrees well with previously published mammalian in vitro data. Di- and tri-halogenated acetonitriles were more toxic than their mono-halogenated analogues, and bromine- and iodine-substituted DBPs tended to be more toxic than chlorinated analogues. No zebrafish development effects were observed after exposure to undiluted or non-concentrated, chlorinated wastewater. We find zebrafish development to be a viable in vivo alternative or confirmatory assay to mammalian in vitro cell assays.     

关于建设项目生态补偿的思考

作为一种解决环境保护与经济社会发展矛盾的重要经济手段,生态补偿越来越受到人们关注。建设项目生态补偿是生态补偿的一个重要领域,但相对于其他领域而言,理论和实践研究均相对较少。结合实际案例研究,文章初次提出了建设项目生态补偿概念、原则及应注意的问题。最后,建议加强两方面研究,建设项目生态补偿内涵和范畴确定;建设项目生态补偿方式及标准确定。     

县域产业结构转型升级对策研究——以生态文明为视角

目前,生态文明视角下县域经济产业结构调整面临着工业化快速发展和生态环境日益恶化的局面,面对新的挑战,一方面必须大力发展县域绿色经济、建立县域生态消费保障机制;另一方面要转变传统产业发展模式,通过以产业结构重组实现产业结构生态化,推进生态产业发展,从而创造出一种由生态产业支撑的循环经济发展模式。     

生态环境空间分级管控策略研究

生态环境空间分级管控是为了确保各级尺度下的生态环境空间充分发挥其生态服务功能所采取的管理控制手段与途径,同时给城市生态环境空间的管控提供依据,在不同尺度下,生态环境空间需按照不同精细度的管控方法和不同的土地空间单位进行分级,生态环境空间分级管控主要包括:省域尺度生态环境空间的管控、市域尺度生态环境空间管控和在主城区尺度下生态环境空间管控。通过3种尺度不同管控方法和策略的有效衔接,从宏观、中观和微观3个层次保证了生态规划的完整性和连续性,使生态系统服务真正发挥其价值。     

生态保护红线在实践过程中的问题剖析——以湖北宜昌为例

宜昌市生态保护红线于2015年1月正式颁布实施,文章结合宜昌市生态保护红线的应用情况,剖析了生态功能红线、水环境质量红线及大气环境质量红线在实践过程中存在的主要问题,同时,对生态保护红线管理机制需要解决的重点问题进行了阐述。     

A systems perspective of managing error recovery and tactical re-planning of operating teams in safety critical domains

Introduction

Research in human error has provided useful tools for designing procedures, training, and intelligent interfaces that trap errors at an early stage. However, this “error prevention” policy may not be entirely successful because human errors will inevitably occur. This requires that the error management process (e.g., detection, diagnosis and correction) must also be supported. Research has focused almost exclusively on error detection; little is known about error recovery, especially in the context of safety critical systems. The aim of this paper is to develop a research framework that integrates error recovery strategies employed by experienced practitioners in handling their own errors.

Method and Results

A control theoretic model of human performance was used to integrate error recovery strategies assembled from reviews of the literature, analyses of near misses from aviation and command & control domains, and observations of abnormal situations training at air traffic control facilities. The method of system dynamics has been used to analyze and compare error recovery strategies in terms of patterns of interaction, system affordances, and types of recovery plans. System dynamics offer a promising basis for studying the nature of error recovery management in the context of team interactions and system characteristics.

Impact on industry

The proposed taxonomy of error recovery strategies can help human factors and safety experts to develop resilient system designs and training solutions for managing human errors in unforeseen situations; it may also help incident investigators to explore why people's actions and assessments were not corrected at the time.     

浅析如何制定企业职业安全健康方针

制定适合企业自身发展的职业安全健康方针至关重要,然而目前这方面的研究相对较少。本文收集了国内27家、国外10家知名企业的职业安全健康方针,统计分析了国内外职业安全健康方针在形式和内容上的区别与联系。通过定性分析和定量研究,得出国外企业职业安全健康方针的共性特点和国内企业职业安全健康方针的最常见组合模式。理论联系实际,将我国《职业安全健康管理体系规范（》GB/T28001-2004）中方针的编写要求与研究结论相结合,探讨在新形势下,如何制定企业职业安全健康方针的方法。     

Life-Cycle Impact Assessment of oil drilling mud system in Algerian arid area

The objective of this work is to assess the environmental impacts of the drilling mud system in Algeria's arid region. Water-based mud (WBM) and oil-based mud (OBM) are used during well drilling in Hassi Messaoud petroleum field, and have a considerable pollution potential particularly on the aquifer system which constitutes the single resource of drinking water in the Sahara. The Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach is applied to evaluate the impacts of several drilling mud systems across all stages of their life cycle, e.g. use, treatment and disposal. Environmental impacts of five treatments scenarios corresponding to the drilling waste management applied in Hassi Messaoud are compared: reserve pit without treatment (burial option), secondary high centrifugation (vertical cuttings dryer), stabilisation/solidification online, stabilisation/solidification off line and thermal desorption. The impact assessment is carried on using the LCIA models of Impact 2002+ method in SIMAPRO7 software. This assessment identifies human toxicity and terrestrial eco-toxicity as the major impact categories in this specific arid context and quantifies the emissions contributions. The local environmental impact is the most important of the drilling mud life cycle and is mainly linked to emissions from reserve pits, treated cuttings, and drilling phase 16″ through the Turonian and Albian aquifer. The main contributing substances are aromatic hydrocarbons fraction and metals in particular barium, zinc, antimony, arsenic, and aluminium. Concerning the comparison of the treatment scenarios, it appears that stabilisation/solidification online is the best one; it has the lowest impact score in the two dominating categories because of the waste minimisation: mud storage avoided in the reserve pit. The second best scenario is the thermal desorption which obtains the lowest impact score in carcinogen effects due to hydrocarbons reduction (<1%) and avoided impacts of recovered oil. The toxic substances fate modeling will be improved by taking into account their site-specific impact.     

Cosmic exergy based ecological assessment for a wetland in Beijing

Wetlands research and restoration has become one of the critical concern due to their importance in providing ecosystem services. This study proposes a holistic methodology to assess the wetland ecosystem based on cosmic exergy as a thermodynamic orientor. This new approach is applied to two typical wastewater treatment facilities (an activated sludge system and a cyclic activated sludge system) and to a constructed wetland ecosystem in Beijing for comparison. Results show that the Beijing wetland ecosystem gains positive net present ecological value of 3.08E+14 J_c regarding its total life cycle. Comparison with the activated sludge system and cyclic activated sludge system, shows that the wetland ecosystem has greater dependencies on local resources (22% vs. 0% vs. 0%) and renewable resources (67% vs. 38% vs. 31%) as well as a larger ecological sustainability index (0.64157 vs. 0.00005 vs. 0.00008). This implies that the wetland ecosystem is more environmentally friendly and sustainable method for water treatment.     

Using classification trees to analyze the impact of exotic species on the ecological assessment of polder lakes in Flanders, Belgium

Polder lakes in Flanders are stagnant waters that were flooded by the sea in the past. Several of these systems are colonized by exotic species, but have hardly been studied until present. The aim of the present study was: (1) to assess the influence of exotic macrobenthic species on the outcome of the Multimetric Macroinvertebrate Index Flanders (MMIF) and (2) to use classification trees for evaluating to what extent physical-chemical characteristics affect the presence of exotic species.In total, 27 mollusc and 10 macro-crustacean species were present in the monitored lakes of which respectively five and four were exotic. The exclusion of the exotic species from the MMIF resulted in a significant decline of this ecological index (−0.03 ± 0.04; p = 0.00). This elimination often resulted into a lower ecological water quality class and more samples were classified into the bad and poor ecological water quality classes.Single-target classification trees for Gammarus tigrinus and Potamopyrgus antipodarum were constructed, relating environmental parameters and ecological status (MMIF) to the occurrence of both exotic invasive species. The major advantages of using single-target classification trees are the transparency of the rule sets and the possibility to use relatively small datasets. However, this classification technique only predicts a single-target attribute and the trees of the different species are often hard to integrate and use for water managers. As a solution, a multi-target approach was used in the present study. Exotic molluscs and crustaceans communities were modelled based on environmental parameters and the ecological status (MMIF) using multi-target classification trees. Multi-target classification trees can be used in management planning and investment decisions as they can lead to integrated decisions for the whole set of exotic species and avoid the construction of many models for each individual species. These trees provide general insights concerning the occurrence patterns of individual crustaceans and molluscs in an integrated way.