Microplastic ingestion by the farmed sea cucumber is undocumented. Microplastics were isolated from the sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus that was collected from eight farms along the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea in China. To examine microplastic ingestion, the intestines were isolated, digested and then subjected to the floatation test. The microplastic abundance in the sediment ranged from 20 to 1040 particles kg−1 of dry sediment, while the ingested microplastics ranged from 0 to 30 particles intestine−1. After filtering the coelomic fluid, the extracted microplastics from the coelomic fluid ranged from 0 to 19 particles animal−1. Thus, we speculated that microplastics may transfer to the coelomic fluid of sea cucumber. The ingested microplastics did not correlate with the animal body weight but was site dependent, suggesting that sea cucumber may serve as sentinel for microplastic pollution monitoring in the sediment. The microplastics were identified by Fourier transform infrared micro spectroscopy, and the polymer types were mainly cellophane, polyester, and polyethylene terephthalate. This study revealed that, microplastics widely existed in sea cucumber farms, and that sea cucumbers ingest microplastics as suitable with their mouth open. Moreover, the microplastics might transfer to the coelomic fluid of the sea cucumber. Further investigations are needed to assess the chronic effect of the microplastics on the growth and physiological status of the sea cucumber.

From previous catastrophic fission nuclear accidents, such as the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, researchers learnt the lessons that external hazard beyond design basis or human errors could result in severe accidents and multi-failure of the confinements although they were considered as very-low-probability events and not requested to be paid much attention to according to the current nuclear safety regulations. Fusion energy is always regarded as a safe and clean energy. However, massive quantity of radioactivity still exists in the fusion reactor and is possible to be released into the environment. The environmental pollution and potential public consequences due to severe accidents of fusion reactor remain largely unexplored. In this contribution, we intended to investigate the hypothetical accident to envelop the worst but probable consequences of fusion reactor, and compare with historic Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents under assumed environmental conditions. It was demonstrated that, the radiation consequences of a hypothetical fusion accident would be much less severe than fission accidents, e.g. an INES 7 accident could not appear in a fusion reactor, as in the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents. However, it would still be disastrous and the publics close to site might be exposed to “potentially lethal” radiation dose.

The challenge of sludge digester liquor treatment is its high ammonium nitrogen (NH₄⁺-N) concentration. Early reports found that complete ammonia oxidation (comammox) was not present and anaerobic ammonia oxidation (anammox) was difficult to achieve in most sludge digester liquor treatments. In this study, NH₄⁺-N removal by cooperation between partial-nitrification, comammox, and anammox processes was achieved in a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) for sludge digester liquor treatment. The results showed that 2100–2200 mg/L of NH₄⁺-N was removed in the SBR with 98.82% removal efficiency. In addition, 55.11% of NH₄⁺-N was converted to nitrite nitrogen (NO₂⁻-N) by partial-nitrification, 25.43% of NH₄⁺-N was converted to nitrate nitrogen (NO₃⁻-N) by comammox, and 18.28% of NH₄⁺-N was removed by anammox. During the operation, in the SBR, the relative abundance of the dominant ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (Chitinophagaceae) was 18.89%, that of the dominant anammox bacteria (Candidatus Kuenenia) was 0.10%, and that of the dominant comammox bacteria (Nitrospira) was 0.20%. Therefore, the high nitrogen removal efficiency in this system was considered the result of the combination of the three processes. These results showed that comammox and anammox could play very important roles in nitrogen transformation and energy-saving in nitrogen removal systems.

The link between phthalate exposure and the risk of subclinical atherosclerosis in young population remains unclear. This study investigated the association between phthalate exposure and subclinical atherosclerosis, in terms of carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT), in young population. From a nationwide mass urine screening for renal health, conducted in 1992–2000 among school children 6–18 years of age in Taiwan, we recruited 789 subjects to participate in the cardiovascular health examination in 2006–2008. Among them, 787 received measurements of 7 urinary phthalate metabolites and CIMT. Results showed both mean and maximal values of CIMT at all segments of carotid arteries significantly increased with the urinary mono-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (MEHP), ∑ di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), and mono-n-butyl phthalate (MnBP) in a dose-response relationship after adjustment for multiple linear regression models. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that higher quartiles of urinary concentrations of MEHP, ∑DEHP, and MnBP were associated with a higher risk of thicker CIMT. Compared to subjects with the lowest quartile (Q1) of urinary MEHP, the adjusted odds ratios (95% confidence interval) for thicker CIMT among subjects with higher urinary MEHP were 2.13 (1.18–3.84) at Q2, 4.02 (2.26–7.15) at Q3 and 7.39 (4.16–13.12) at the highest Q4. In conclusion, urinary phthalate metabolites of MEHP, ∑DEHP, and MnBP are strongly associated with CIMT in adolescents and young adults in Taiwan.

Graphene family nanomaterials (GFNs) have attracted significant attention due to their unique characteristics and applications in the fields of biomedicine and nanotechnology. However, previous studies highlighted the in vitro and in vivo toxicity of GFNs with size and oxidation state differences are still elusive. Therefore, we prepared graphene (G) and graphene oxide (GO) of three different sizes (S-small, M-medium, and L-large), and characterized them using multiple surface-sensitive analytical techniques. In vitro assays using HEK 293T cells revealed that the small and large sizes of G and GO significantly reduced the cell viability and increased DNA damage, accompanying with activated reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and induced various expressions of associated critical genetic markers. Moreover, the bacterial assays highlighted that G and GO caused strong acute toxicity on Tox2 bacteria. Effects of G were higher than GO and showed size dependent effect: L > M > S, while the medium size of GO induced mild genetic toxicity on RecA bacteria. In vivo assays revealed that exposure to G and GO caused the developmental toxicity, induced ROS generation, and activated related pathways (specifically GO) in zebrafish. Taken together, G showed stronger ability to decrease the survival rate and induce the acute toxicity, while GO showed obvious toxicity in terms of DNA damages, ROS generation, and abnormal gene expressions. Our findings highlighted that G and GO differentially induced toxicity based on their varying physical characteristics, especially sizes and oxidation state, and exposure concentrations and sensitivity of the employed in vitro and in vivo models. In short, this study provided deep insights on the negative effects of GFNs exposure.

Many portable monitors for quantifying mass concentrations of particulate matter air pollution rely on aerosol light scattering as the measurement method; however, the relationship between scattered light (what is measured) and aerosol mass concentration (the metric of interest) is a complex function of the refractive index, size distribution, and shape of the particles. In this study, we compared 33-h personal PM2.5 concentrations measured simultaneously using nephelometry (personal DataRAM pDR-1200) and gravimetric filter sampling for working adults (44 participants, 249 samples). Nephelometer- and filter-derived 33-h average PM2.5 concentrations were correlated (Spearman's ρ = 0.77); however, the nephelometer-derived concentration was within 20% of the filter-derived concentration for only 13% of samples. The nephelometer/filter ratio, which is used to correct light-scattering measurements to a gravimetric sample, had a median value of 0.52 and varied by over a factor of three (10th percentile = 0.35, 90th percentile = 1.1). When 33-h samples with >50% of 10-s average nephelometer readings below the nephelometer limit of detection were removed from the dataset during sensitivity analyses, the fraction of nephelometer-derived concentrations that were within 20% of the filter-derived concentration increased to 25%. We also evaluated how much the accuracy of nephelometer-derived concentrations improved after applying: (1) a median correction factor derived from a subset of 44 gravimetric samples, (2) participant-specific correction factors derived from one same from each subject, and (3) correction factors predicted using linear models based on other variables recorded during the study. Each approach independently increased the fraction of nephelometer-derived concentrations that were within 20% of the filter-derived concentration to approximately 45%. These results illustrate the challenges with using light scattering (without correction to a concurrent gravimetric sample) to estimate personal exposure to PM2.5 mass among mobile adults exposed to low daily average concentrations (median = 8 μg m−3 in this study).

Few attempts have been made to systematically investigate the impacts of urbanization on PM₂.₅ concentrations in countries at different stages of economic development. In this study, a broad concept of urbanization that considers the transformations in the urban economy and the transport sector induced by urbanization is proposed to investigate the influence of urbanization on national PM₂.₅ concentrations for underdeveloped, developing and developed countries during 1998–2014. The results indicate that urbanization has a significant relationship with PM₂.₅ concentrations, but the magnitude of its influence varies among groups of countries with different development levels. First, the positive response of PM₂.₅ concentrations to increased urbanization and transport-related emissions in underdeveloped countries are noticeably stronger than that in developing and developed countries. Second, for developing countries, urbanization, transport-related emissions and industrialization all have a significant positive effect on national PM₂.₅ concentrations increase, although their impacts are unexpectedly smaller than those in the other groups of countries. Finally, increasing urbanization and the decrease in CO₂ emissions from manufacturing industry appear to reduce national average PM₂.₅ concentrations in developed countries, while the decrease in transport-related CO₂ emission is likely to cause the rise in national average PM₂.₅ concentrations.

Gabapentin (GPT) has become an emerging contaminant in aquatic environments due to its wide application in medical treatment all over the world. In this study, embryos of zebrafish were exposed to gabapentin at realistically environmental concentrations, 0.1 μg/L and 10 μg/L, so as to evaluate the ecotoxicity of this emergent contaminant. The transcriptomics profiling of deep sequencing was employed to illustrate the mechanisms. The zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryo were exposed to GPT from 12 hpf to 96 hpf resulting in 136 and 750 genes differentially expressed, respectively. The results of gene ontology (GO) analysis and the Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis illustrated that a large amount of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were involved in the antioxidant system, the immune system and the nervous system. RT-qPCR was applied to validate the results of RNA-seq, which provided direct evidence that the selected genes involved in those systems mentioned above were all down-regulated. Acetylcholinesterase (AChE), lysozyme (LZM) and the content of C-reactive protein (CRP) were decreased at the end of exposure, which is consistent with the transcriptomics results. The overall results of this study demonstrate that GPT simultaneously affects various vital functionalities of zebrafish at early developmental stage, even at environmentally relevant concentrations.

Artificial illumination at night represents an increasingly concerning threat to ecosystems worldwide, altering persistence, behaviour, physiology and fitness of many organisms and their mutual interactions, in the long-term affecting ecosystem functioning. Bats are very sensitive to artificial light at night because they are obligate nocturnal and feed on insects which are often also responsive to lights. Here we tested the effects of LED lighting on prey-predator interactions at riverine ecosystems, using bats and their insect prey as models, and compared bat and insect reactions in terms of bat activity and prey insect abundance and diversity, respectively, on artificially lit vs. unlit nights. Artificial light influenced both insect and bat assemblages in taxon-specific directions: insect abundances increased at lit sites, particularly due to an increase in small dipterans near the light source. Composition of insect assemblages also differed significantly between lit and unlit sites. Total bat activity declined at lit sites, but this change was mainly due to the response of the most abundant species, Myotis daubentonii, while opportunistic species showed no reaction or even an opposite pattern (Pipistrellus kuhlii). We show that artificial lighting along rivers may affect trophic interactions between bats and insects, resulting in a profound alteration of community structure and dynamics.

Bioaccessibility measurements of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in soils are significant for exposure risk assessment. The current physicochemical methods require tedious operation processes, underestimate the actual risks, or are unsuitable for high organic content soils. In this work, an efficient and convenient method based on polydopamine-coated polyethylene sieve plate (PDA@PESP) and hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin (HPCD) was developed to predict the bioaccessibility of PAHs in multi-type soils. The PDA@PESP can be prepared via in situ self-polymerization, allowing to extract PAHs from HPCD solution quantitatively and rapidly. When applied to evaluate the bioaccessibility with PDA@PESP as an adsorption sink and HPCD as a diffusive carrier, the proposed method can significantly improve the extractable fraction of PAHs compared to single HPCD extraction in particular for high organic carbon content soil and high-ring PAHs. The desorption kinetics data indicated that the method can predict the bioaccessible fraction of PAHs. In addition, the method predicted a satisfactory accumulation into earthworms (Eisenia fetida) with a slope statistically approximated to 1. A highly significant linear regression (R2 = 0.95) was also found between the proposed method and Tenax desorption in historically contaminated soils, demonstrating that the method is an efficient and convenient approach for the bioaccessibility prediction of PAHs in soils.