Non-renewable energy sources have detrimental environmental effects, which directly and indirectly affect the biosphere as environmental deposits from their use for energy generation exceed a threshold. This study performs a streamlined life cycle assessment (LCA) of a coal-fired plant in South Africa. The cradle-to-grave LCA focuses on the coal cycle to determine hotspots with high environmental impacts in the process. Four impact categories were considered in this study: global warming potential, photochemical ozone creation potential, eutrophication potential, and acidification potential. Coal transportation, coal pulverization, water use, and ash management were identified as hotspots in the coal cycle. The coal process has 95% potential for global warming, 4% potential for eutrophication, 1% potential for acidification, and a negligible percentage for photochemical ozone creation. Susceptibility to climate change, eutrophication, acid rain, soil degradation, and water contamination among others are major concerns of the coal cycle. Outsourcing coal from nearby mines with train as medium of transportation reduces environmental impact. Similarly, the use of mitigation technologies like flue gas desulphurization, carbon capture storage, or selective catalytic reduction will reduce the concentration of the flue gas emitted. Ultimately, substituting the coal process with renewable energy sources will ensure environmental sustainability in South Africa. This study will serve as a good resource for further studies on LCA of coal power plants not only in other African countries but in other developing countries with similar situation.

The issue of urban river pollution has attracted great attention due to high concentrations of ammonia nitrogen (NH₄⁺-N) and low concentrations of dissolved oxygen (DO) in polluted water bodies. In order to investigate the effects of aeration-enhanced horizontal subsurface-flow constructed wetlands on polluted river water, unaerated aeration (NA), continuous aeration (CA), and intermittent aeration (IA) constructed wetlands were established. The purification effects of the wetland on various pollutants and the form of effluent nitrogen, influences of temperature on the removal rates of pollutants, the change of redox potential—oxidation reduction potential (ORP)—and the difference of dissolved oxygen (DO) between influent and effluent were investigated. The results indicated that aeration enhancement can improve the purification efficiencies of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and NH₄⁺-N in constructed wetlands. The purification efficiencies of TN in IA and CA constructed wetlands were 91.9% and 53.7%, respectively, indicating that IA is the optimized aeration method for removal of various pollutants in wetlands. Changes of DO and ORP in effluent under IA and CA suggested improvement of aeration on the water environment. Meanwhile, DO was more sensitive to temperature compared with ORP. Additionally, a study of the nitrogen content in effluent suggested that the aeration method had a significant influence on the nitrogen content in effluent. The removal rates of both NH₄⁺-N and TN degraded as the temperature dropped. The results also demonstrated that the removal rate of NH₄⁺-N under aeration condition was more sensitive to temperature than that under NA condition and the effect of temperature on the removal rate of NH₄⁺-N was greater than that of TN.

The developmental triangle earlier comprises economic growth, income inequality, and poverty, while in this study, we extended it by incorporating environmental and resource factors, health and education factors, sectoral value added, and some other growth-specific factors for assessing pro-poor growth, by considering Bolivian economy as a case study. The elasticity estimates show that agriculture and industrial sector growth is not pro-poor due to account of high income inequality, while services sector played a vital role in country’s economic development and supports poor livelihood in a country. Energy and environmental resources negatively impact on quality of life of the poor relative to non-poor, which create income differences among them. Health and education expenditures give favors to the poor and supported the notion of pro-poor growth, while country’s per capita income and foreign direct investment inflows increase income inequality that lead towards pro-rich growth. The results conclude that, in general, Bolivian economy growth is fairly unstable, polluted, and unhealthy that biased to the poor relative to non-poor.

The natural catastrophic events largely damage the country’s sustainability agenda through massive human fatalities and infrastructure destruction. Although it is partially supported the economic growth through the channel of “Schumpeter creative destruction” hypothesis, however, it may not be sustained in the long-run. This study examined the long-run and causal relationships between natural disasters (i.e., floods, storm, and epidemic) and per capita income by controlling FDI inflows and foreign aid in the context of Malaysia, during the period of 1965–2016. The study employed time series cointegration technique, i.e., autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)-bounds testing approach for robust inferences. The results show that flood, storm, and epidemic disasters substantially decrease the country’s per capita income, while FDI inflows and foreign aid largely supported the country’s economic growth in the short-run. These results are disappeared in the long-run, where flood and storm disasters exhibit the positive association with the economic growth to support the Schumpeter creative destruction hypothesis. The foreign aid decreases the per capita income and does not maintain the “aid-effectiveness” hypotheses in a given country. The causality estimates confirmed the disaster-led growth hypothesis, as the causality estimates running from (i) storm to per capita income, (ii) epidemic to per capita income, and (iii) storm to foreign aid. The results emphasized for making disaster action plans to reduce human fatalities and infrastructure for sustainable development.

Effective landfill management and operation require an accurate evaluation of the occurrence and extent of odour emission events, which are among the main causes of resident complaints and concerns, in particular in densely urbanised areas. This paper proposes a fuzzy optimal protection system (FOPS) based on fuzzy logic to manage odour production from a municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill. The case study is a MSW landfill in an old quarry site located 6 km north-west of Naples city centre (Italy). The aim is to reduce the odour nuisance in the area surrounding the landfill where there are several sensitive receptors. FOPS is based on logical relationships between local atmospheric dynamics, number and intensity of odour pollution events detected by certain fixed receptors and odour emission rate via an optimal fuzzy approach. Such system allows to start, in real time, established mitigation actions required to further reduce the odorous emissions from the landfill itself (e.g. spraying of perfumed substances and activation of extraction wells), especially when weather conditions might not be favourable and cause by causing a higher odour perception. The fuzzy system was coupled with the air pollutant transport software CALPUFF to simulate the odour dispersion in the considered area taking into account both different odour emission rates and local weather conditions. FOPS results show that this approach can be very useful as, by measuring the odour concentrations, a significant reduction of the odour exceedances over the thresholds fixed, to minimise the olfactory harassment, was observed in the whole area studied.

Large amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are emitted from industrial, mobile, and domestic sources, causing adverse effects on human health and environment. Among VOCs, toluene and isopropanol (IPA) are commonly used as solvent, soldering flux, and spray paint and their emissions need to be reduced. Several VOCs abatement technologies are available to reduce VOC emission and photocatalytic oxidation of VOC is regarded as a viable technique due to its advantage of utilizing solar energy. TiO₂ has been investigated for its oxidation capability toward VOCs because of its good photocatalytic activity. However the utilization is limited to UV due to its wider bandgap; furthermore, its fast recombination rate of electron-hole pair reduces the oxidation rate of VOCs. Black-TiO₂ and perovskite-type photocatalyst such as LaFeO₃ can be applied to enhance photocatalytic activity due to narrower bandgap and longer electron-hole pair lifetime. In this study, black-TiO₂ and LaFeO₃ are prepared and investigated for their photocatalytic oxidation rates toward toluene and IPA. Results show that toluene removals achieved with black-TiO₂ and LaFeO₃ are 89% and 98% while IPA removals are 90% and 94%, respectively. Both photocatalysts show better photocatalytic activity than TiO₂ and good absorption capability toward visible light. Graphical abstract

Global consumption of synthetic dyes is roughly 7 × 10⁵ tons per year, of which the textile industry expends about two-thirds. Consumption of synthetic dyes produces large volumes of wastewater discharged into aquatic ecosystems. Colored effluents produce toxic effects in the hydrobionts, reduce light penetration, and alter the photosynthetic activity, causing oxygen depletion, among other effects. Some dyes, such as Congo red (CR), are elaborated with benzidine, a known carcinogenic compound. Information regarding dye toxicity in aquatic ecosystems is scarce; therefore, our study was aimed at evaluating the toxicity of CR on a battery of bioassays: the microalga Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata, the cladocerans Daphnia magna and Ceriodaphnia rigaudi, and the zebrafish Danio rerio. P. subcapitata was the most sensitive species to CR (IC₅₀, 3.11 mg L⁻¹); in exposed individuals, population growth was inhibited, but photosynthetic pigments and macromolecule concentrations were stimulated. D. magna was tolerant to high dye concentrations, the determined LC₅₀ (322.9 mg L⁻¹) is not an environmentally relevant value, but for C. rigaudi, LC₅₀ was significantly lower (62.92 mg L⁻¹). In zebrafish embryos, exposure to CR produced yolk sac edema, skeletal deformities, and stopped larvae hatching; lack of heart beating was the only observed lethal effect. CR affected organisms of different trophic levels diversely. Particularly, the effects observed in microalgae confirm the vulnerability of primary producers to dye-polluted wastewaters, because dyes produced toxic effects and interfered with photosynthesis. Different cladoceran species displayed different acute effects; thus, species sensitivity must also be considered when toxicity of dyes is assessed. Inhibition of fish larvae hatching is a significant effect not previously reported that warns about the toxicity of dyes in fish population dynamics. Synthetic azo colorants should be considered as emerging pollutants because they are discharged into the aquatic environment and are not currently included in the environmental regulation of several countries.

Cyanobacterial blooms in eutrophic water bodies are a worldwide problem. Combined effects of mixtures of secondary metabolites produced by different cyanobacterial species on aquatic fauna are still not well recognised. We compared the survivorship of Brachionus calyciflorus Pallas (Rotifera) and Daphnia pulex Leyding (Cladocera) exposed to pure microcystin LR (MC-LR), anatoxin-a (ANTX) and to five extracts obtained from bloom-forming cyanobacteria Microcystis, Planktothrix and Dolichospermum. The obtained results revealed different response of the organisms to high concentrations of pure MC-LR, ANTX and complex cyanobacterial extracts. The extracts’ toxicity to invertebrates was higher than that exerted by pure cyanotoxins and was dependent on the composition of cyanobacterial metabolites: Microcystis spp. extract containing anabaenopeptins A and B, aeruginosamide, four variants of cyanopeptolins and five MCs was not toxic to either of the organisms, whereas Planktothrix agardhii extract (I), containing anabaenopeptins A, B, F, 915, oscillamide Y, five different aeruginosins and four variants of MC was more toxic to daphnids than to rotifers. The extracts of another P. agarhdii (II) biomass and two different biomass samples of Dolichospermum spp. also affected survivorship of the rotifer and cladoceran, however, to various extent. It strongly suggests that non-ribosomal oligopeptides, other than MCs, had essential contribution to the observed toxicity to invertebrates and their effects on particular species or populations can vary depending on the secondary metabolite profiles of cyanobacteria.

To evaluate the relation between caregiver exposure to toxics during pregnancy and childhood and the child’s cognitive function in Lebanese children. This was a cross-sectional study conducted on Lebanese students in public and private schools from November 2017 to May 2018, enrolling 464 children. A first linear regression, taking the Cattell total score as the dependent variable and taking sociodemographic characteristics and the family history of the child as independent variables, showed that higher age (Beta = 1.65) was significantly associated with higher cognition, whereas a history of eczema in any of the parents (Beta = −7.32) was significantly associated with lower cognition in the child. A second linear regression, taking the Cattell total score as the dependent variable and taking sociodemographic characteristics and the family history of the child, and the exposure to toxics as independent variables, showed that maternal alcohol intake during pregnancy (Beta = −1.07) and detergent mixing (Beta = −1.48) were significantly associated with lower cognition in the child. A third linear regression, taking the Cattell total score as the dependent variable and taking sociodemographic characteristics and the family history of the child, the exposure to toxics and the diseases in the child as independent variables, showed that maternal alcohol intake during pregnancy (Beta = −1.07) and detergent mixing (Beta = −1.45) were significantly associated with lower cognition in the child, whereas a history of eczema in the child before the age of 2 years (Beta = 8.72) was significantly associated with higher cognition in the child. This study is the first to examine the association of a child’s prenatal exposure and their exposure during childhood to environmental toxicants with their cognitive function in Lebanon. We consider this study to be important as it shows the possible effect of cleaning products mixing and maternal alcohol consumption on cognitive functions among children in Lebanon.

Using the hologram quantitative structure-activity relationship (HQSAR) method, a quantitative model of the structure-activity relationship between the genotoxicity of quinolones towards gram-negative bacteria and structure of quinolones is constructed. A series of novel quinolones are designed, and 4 environmentally friendly quinolone derivatives are finally selected, because of their enhanced genotoxicity towards gram-negative/positive bacteria, decreased bioconcentration and increased photodegradability and biodegradability. The mechanisms underlying the genotoxicity of quinolones and its derivatives are analysed based on amino acid residues and molecular interactions. Three hydrophilic amino acids [arginine (ARG), asparagine (ASN) and aspartic acid (ASP)] play important roles in the antibacterial effects of quinolones. The introduction of highly hydrophilic groups into the C-7 position of amifloxacin (AMI) not only improved the stability of the AMI derivative-topoisomerase IV-DNA complex but also improved the antibacterial activities of AMI derivatives.