Showing papers in "Science of The Total Environment in 2013"

TL;DR: The final objective is to implement wastewater treatment technologies capable of assuring the production of UWTPs effluents with an acceptable level of ARB, to understand the factors and mechanisms that drive antibiotic resistance maintenance and selection in wastewater habitats.

TL;DR: The total non-cancer and cancer risk results indicated that the investigated arable fields near industrial and waste mining sites were unsuitable for growing leaf and root vegetables in view of the risk of elevated intakes of heavy metals adversely affecting food safety for local residents.

TL;DR: In this paper, two large-scale pilot advanced wastewater treatments were tested in parallel over more than one year at the municipal WWTP of Lausanne, Switzerland, and the results showed that the PAC-UF treatment, despite its current higher cost, was the most suitable option, enabling good removal of most micropollutants and macropolutants without forming problematic by-products, the strongest decrease in toxicity and a total disinfection of the effluent.

TL;DR: It is suggested that health risks from congestion are potentially significant, and that additional traffic can significantly increase risks, depending on the type of road and other factors.

TL;DR: Analysis of individual contributions of each therapeutic group showed that NSAIDs, analgesics and antibiotics are among the groups with the highest inputs, showing that pharmaceuticals are widespread pollutants in both hospital and urban wastewaters.

TL;DR: This research tries to conduct an exhaustive compilation of C WW characterization and a comparative study between the different features of CWW, cheese whey (CW), second cheese Whey (SCW) and dairy industry effluents.

TL;DR: The faster growth of e-waste generated in the developing than in the developed world presages continued expansion of a pervasive and inexpensive informal processing sector, efficient in its own way, but inherently hazard-ridden.

TL;DR: This review explores the biotic transformations of nitrogenous compounds that occur during denitrification, and the factors that influence denitrifier populations and enzyme activities, and hence, affect the production of nitrous oxide and dinitrogen in soils.

TL;DR: This paper, as the-state-of-the-art, attempts to revise the over world trends of treatment technologies and advances for pollution prevention from tannery chemicals and wastewater to apply the best prevention solution for the future tanneries.

TL;DR: Twenty-one antibiotics were found in the sewage sludge from the two WWTPs at the concentrations up to 5800ng/g, with tetracycline, oxytetracy Cline, norfloxacin and ofloxacIn being the predominant antibiotics.

TL;DR: A novel conceptual model for the integrated assessment of human exposure to air pollutants taking into account latest technological capabilities and contextual information is proposed.

TL;DR: The future research needs in relation to nitrogen and carbon dynamics in soil to broaden the use of OAs in agriculture to maintain soil health with minimum impact on GHG emission from agriculture are emphasized.

TL;DR: This paper evaluated the excretion masses and environmental occurrence of 11 classes of 50 antibiotics in six typical swine and dairy cattle farms in southern China, suggesting that livestock farms could be an important pollution source of various antibiotics to the receiving environments.

TL;DR: The index of additive cancer risk (IACR) values in almost one third of urban soil samples were more than the safe value of 1.0, indicating these urban soil PAHs in the study area may pose a potential threat to potable groundwater water quality from leaching of carcinogenic PAH mixtures from soil.

TL;DR: These findings highlight previously overlooked, anatomically significant effects of metal nanoparticles, and recommend considering detailed anatomical investigations in tandem with the standard developmental phytotoxicity assays (germination and root elongation) as the latter ones appear less sensitive for screening plant responses to nanomaterial insults.

TL;DR: The most significant pesticides in terms of concentration and frequency of detection were diazinon and diuron, followed by atrazine, simazine and malathion, which were also the most relevant from the environmental point of view, according to the calculated ERPWI.

TL;DR: This paper takes a look into the remediation options available for PCB-contaminated soils and sediments, differentiating between biological, chemical, physical and thermal methods.

TL;DR: Evidence of increasing concentrations in mercury in some biota in Arctic Canada and Greenland is therefore a concern with respect to ecosystem health.

TL;DR: The results indicate that although the drugs ofabuse are not present at very high concentrations in river water, their occurrence and possible synergic action is of concern, and the study of multiple groups of drugs of abuse is of significant importance.

TL;DR: Chemical and biological characterization of water and sediments from three water supply reservoirs subjected to a wide pollution gradient allowed to draw an accurate picture of the concentration of antibiotics and prevalence of ARGs, and showed significant correlation between the presence of ARG conferring resistance to macrolides and the composition of bacterial communities.

TL;DR: The prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and their relationship with antibiotics in the surface waters of the Huangpu River and the drinking water sources of Shanghai, China, were investigated and generally consistent relations were observed between the concentrations of tet genes and the tetracycline levels and between the concentration of sul genes andThe sulfonamide levels.

TL;DR: The results demonstrate that this CO2 evolution was at least partially microbially mediated, and that biochar application to soil can cause significant and rapid changes in the soil microbial community; likely due to addition of labile C and increases in soil pH.

TL;DR: The Aphekom project as mentioned in this paper assessed the health and monetary benefits of reducing short and long-term exposure to particulate matter (PM) and ozone in 25 European cities.

TL;DR: A systematic review of original articles that evaluate the effects on neurodevelopment and behavioural disorders due to pre or post natal exposure to arsenic, cadmium and manganese in children up to 16 years of age suggested that a 50% increase of arsenic levels in urine would be associated with a 0.4 decrease in the intelligence quotient (IQ) of children aged 5-15 years.

TL;DR: TEM analysis proves that nZVIs (d=10-20 nm) can be produced using the tree leaf extracts, and the results show that dried leaves produce extracts with higher antioxidant capacities than non-dried leaves.

TL;DR: Almost every trace metal had its highest total concentrations in the industrial area, except for Sr which had its high concentration in the commercial area.

TL;DR: Potential applications of TNTs in wastewater treatment for heavy metals are indicated, with particular attention paid to competitive adsorption and the effect of inorganic ions.

TL;DR: An empirical formula is proposed that reproduces the effect of mixtures of electrolytes in the presence of humic substances and cations that can be used to help predict the aggregation behavior of cit-AgNPs in environmental and ecotoxicological media.

TL;DR: Despite the respective seeming advantages of source separation and treatment technology, a combined strategy may cost-effectively prevent the cytostatic residues from seeping into the environment, however, the combination calls for further evaluation on the associated technological, social-economic and administrative issues at hand.

TL;DR: Critical investigation on distribution pattern of this new group of emerging contaminant and their potential harmful impact on the authors' environment needs immediate attention.