Rigorous studies of recovery from soil acidification are rare. Hence, we resampled 97 old-growth beech stands in the Vienna Woods. This study exploits an extensive data set of soil (infiltration zone of stemflow and between trees area at different soil depths) and foliar chemistry from three decades ago. It was hypothesized that declining acidic deposition is reflected in soil and foliar chemistry. Top soil pH within the stemflow area increased significantly by 0.6 units in both H2O and KCl extracts from 1984 to 2012. Exchangeable Ca and Mg increased markedly in the stemflow area and to a lower extent in the top soil of the between trees area. Trends of declining base cations in the lower top soil were probably caused by mobilization of organic S and associated leaching with high amounts of sulfate. Contents of C, N and S decreased markedly in the stemflow area from 1984 to 2012, suggesting that mineralization rates of organic matter increased due to more favorable soil conditions. It is concluded that the top soil will continue to recover from acidic deposition. However, in the between trees areas and especially in deeper soil horizons recovery may be highly delayed. The beech trees of the Vienna Woods showed no sign of recovery from acidification although S deposition levels decreased. Release of historic S even increased foliar S contents. Base cation levels in the foliage declined but are still adequate for beech trees. Increasing N/nutrient ratios over time were considered not the result of marginally higher N foliar contents in 2012 but of diminishing nutrient uptake due to the decrease in ion concentration in soil solution. The mean foliar N/P ratio already increased to the alarming value of 31. Further nutritional imbalances will predispose trees to vitality loss.

Enforcement of an air quality standard for PM2.5 in the Seoul metropolitan area (SMA) was enacted in 2015. From May to June of 2016, an international airborne and surface measurement campaign took place to investigate air pollution mechanisms in the SMA. The total and speciated PM2.5 concentrations since 2008 have been measured at an intensive monitoring site for the SMA operated by the National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER). To gain insight on the trends and sources of PM2.5 in the SMA in May, we analyze PM2.5 concentrations from 2009 to 2013 using the measurements and simulations from a 3-dimensional global chemical transport model, GEOS-Chem and its adjoint. The model is updated here with the latest regional emission inventory and diurnally varying NH3 emissions. Monthly average PM2.5 concentration measured by β-ray attenuation ranges from 28 (2010) to 45 (2013) μg/m3, decreased from 2009 to 2010, and then continuously increased until 2013. The model shows good agreement with the measurements for the daily average PM2.5 concentrations (R ≥ 0.5), and reproduces 10 out of 17 measured episodes exceeding the daily air quality standard (50 μg/m3). Using the GEOS-Chem adjoint model, we find that anthropogenic emissions from the Shandong region have the largest modeled influence on PM2.5 in Seoul in May. Average contributions to the high PM2.5 episodes simulated by the model are 39% from the Shandong region, 16% from the Shanghai region, 14% from the Beijing region, and 15% from South Korea. Anthropogenic SO2 emissions from South Korea are negligible with 90% of the total contribution originating from China. Findings from this study may guide interpretation of observations obtained in the KORUS-AQ measurement campaign.

NM's potential to induce adverse effects in humans or the environment is being addressed in numerous research projects, and methods and tools for NM hazard identification and risk assessment are advancing. This article describes how integrated approaches for the testing and assessment of NMs can ensure the safety of nanomaterials, while adhering to the 3Rs principle.

There is an urgent need for sufficient knowledge to allow reliable assessment of the risks associated with engineered nanomaterials (ENPs). Significant advances in basic understanding of nano safety have been made, but there is still no clear systematic basis for risk-related research, and major uncertainties remain in the absence of uniform procedures. The following papers provide the guidance on how to proceed within the area of fate and hazard assessment, and how this links into grouping, testing and risk assessment of nanomaterials. This guidance is coupled with an industrial view on the most important research areas for nanomaterials.

A series of numerical simulations are performed to study the pollutant and sediment transport in free surface channel flow. The present paper examines the dispersion of passive contaminants injected from a time periodic source in a fully developed turbulent flow. More precisely, the pulsation effects on the distribution behaviors of dissolved and particulate pollutants are analyzed and discussed. Simulations are carried out using a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) code, Fluent 6.3, which is based on the finite volume approach. The standard k−ε turbulence closure model is selected to simulate the turbulence generation and the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is used to accurately capture the time varying free surface. The Discrete Phase Model (DPM) is used for capturing the movement of particles. Numerical results show that increasing pulsation amplitude and decreasing frequency generates higher dispersive effects in the concentration profiles of a dissolved pollutant. It is also concluded that, unlike dissolved substances, the particle transportation can be enhanced only for certain combinations of the pulsation amplitude and frequency due to the synchronization of the particle’s movement with the oscillating potential.•Increasing pulsation amplitude and decreasing frequency generates higher dispersive effects.•Particle transportation can be enhanced only for certain amplitude-frequency combinations.

Among urban stormwater pollutants, hydrocarbons are a significant environmental concern due to their toxicity and relatively stable chemical structure. This study focused on the identification of hydrocarbon contributing sources to urban road dust and approaches for the quantification of pollutant loads to enhance the design of source control measures. The study confirmed the validity of the use of mathematical techniques of principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) for source identification and principal component analysis/absolute principal component scores (PCA/APCS) receptor model for pollutant load quantification. Study outcomes identified non-combusted lubrication oils, non-combusted diesel fuels and tyre and asphalt wear as the three most critical urban hydrocarbon sources. The site specific variabilities of contributions from sources were replicated using three mathematical models. The models employed predictor variables of daily traffic volume (DTV), road surface texture depth (TD), slope of the road section (SLP), effective population (EPOP) and effective impervious fraction (EIF), which can be considered as the five governing parameters of pollutant generation, deposition and redistribution. Models were developed such that they can be applicable in determining hydrocarbon contributions from urban sites enabling effective design of source control measures.

Ingestion of soot present in soil or other environmental particles is expected to be an important route of exposure to nitro and oxygenated derivatives of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). We measured the apparent bioaccessibility (Bapp) of native concentrations of 1-nitropyrene (1N-PYR), 9-fluorenone (9FLO), anthracene-9,10-dione (ATQ), benzo[a]anthracene-7,12-dione (BaAQ), and benzanthrone (BZO) in a composite fuel soot sample using a previously-developed in vitro human gastrointestinal model that includes silicone sheet as a third-phase absorptive sink. Along with Bapp, we determined the 24-h sheet-digestive fluid partition coefficient (Ks,24h), the soot residue-fluid distribution ratio of the labile sorbed fraction after digestion (Kr,lab), and the maximum possible (limiting) bioaccessibility, Blim. The Bapp of PAH derivatives was positively affected by the presence of the sheet due to mass-action removal of the sorbed compounds. In all cases Bapp increased with imposition of fed conditions. The enhancement of Bapp under fed conditions is due to increasingly favorable mass transfer of target compounds from soot to fluid (increasing bile acid concentration, or adding food lipids) or transfer from fluid to sheet (by raising small intestinal pH). Food lipids may also enhance Bapp by mobilizing contaminants from nonlabile to labile states of the soot. Compared to the parent PAH, the derivatives had larger Kr,lab, despite having lower partition coefficients to various hydrophobic reference phases including silicone sheet. The Blim of the derivatives under the default conditions of the model ranged from 65.5% to 34.4%, in the order, 1N-PYR > ATQ > 9FLO > BZO > BaAQ, with no significant correlation with hydrophobic parameters, nor consistent relationship with Blim of the parent PAH. Consistent with earlier experiments on a wider range of PAHs, the results suggest that a major determinant of bioaccessibility is the distribution of chemical between nonlabile and labile states in the original solid.

High energy consumption in the urban environment impacts the urban surface energy budget and causes the emission of anthropogenic heat fluxes (AHFs) into the atmosphere. AHFs vary over time and space. Thus, a reliable estimation of AHF is needed for mesoscale meteorological modeling. This study used a statistical regression method to estimate the annual mean gridded AHF with high spatial (1-km) resolution. Compared with current methods for AHF estimation, the statistical regression method is straightforward and can be easily incorporated with meteorological modeling. AHF of the highly populated urban areas in Taiwan were estimated using data from the anthropogenic pollutant emission inventory of CO and NOx for year 2010. Over 40% of the total AHF values in Taiwan main island fell within the range of 10–40 Wm−2. When the study domain was confined to urban land, the percentage contributions from AHF values were increased, with over 68% of the total AHF values within the range of 10–40 Wm−2. AHF values > 40 Wm−2 were more abundant in the Southern region, followed by the Central and Northern regions. An assessment of the heat emissions by the large scale urban consumption of energy (LUCY) model revealed that the mean AHFs are reasonably close to those produced while the maximum AHFs are underestimated. The results obtained evidence the impact of spatial distribution of land use types, particularly population densities, main highways and industries on AHF generation in Taiwan.

With the increasing use of treated wastewater and biosolids in agriculture, residues of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in these reused resources may contaminate food produce via plant uptake, constituting a route for human exposure. Although various PPCPs have been reported to be taken up by plants in laboratories or under field conditions, at present little information is available on their metabolism in plants. In this study, we applied carrot cell cultures to investigate the plant metabolism of PPCPs. Five phase I metabolites of carbamazepine were identified and the potential metabolism pathways of carbamazepine were proposed. We also used the carrot cell cultures as a rapid screening tool to initially assess the metabolism potentials of 18 PPCPs. Eleven PPCPs, including acetaminophen, caffeine, meprobamate, primidone, atenolol, trimethoprim, DEET, carbamazepine, dilantin, diazepam, and triclocarban, were found to be recalcitrant to metabolism. The other 7 PPCPs, including triclosan, naproxen, diclofenac, ibuprofen, gemfibrozil, sulfamethoxazole, and atorvastatin, displayed rapid metabolism, with 0.4–47.3% remaining in the culture at the end of the experiment. Further investigation using glycosidase hydrolysis showed that 1.3–20.6% of initially spiked naproxen, diclofenac, ibuprofen, and gemfibrozil were transformed into glycoside conjugates. Results from this study showed that plant cell cultures may be a useful tool for initially exploring the potential metabolites of PPCPs in plants as well as for rapidly screening the metabolism potentials of a variety of PPCPs or other emerging contaminants, and therefore may be used for prioritizing compounds for further comprehensive evaluations.

In this study, we conducted a 14-month investigation in Daya Bay, southern China to understand the effects of oyster farming on phytoplankton community and biomass by using size-fractionated phytopigments. Results proved the filtering effects of oysters on phytoplankton biomass. During the oyster culture period, the average concentration of total chlorophyll a (sum of size-fractionated Chl a) within the farming area was approximately 60% lower than that at the reference site. Phytoplankton depletion in the aquaculture zone mainly occurred in micro-sized fractions (>20 μm) of Chl a, fucoxanthin, and peridinin. The influence of oyster filtration on nano-sized (2.7–20 μm) pigments seemed less than that on micro-sized ones. The depletion of peridinin and 19′-hex-fucoxanthin in aquaculture zone was higher than those of the other pigments, which indicated that flagellated cells might be selectively filtered by oysters and could be more easily influenced by oyster aquaculture. The pico-sized Chl a (<2.7 μm) comprised 24% of total Chl a on the average in the aquaculture zone during the cultural period compared to 6% in the reference site. Picoeukaryote abundance, which was determined via flow cytometry, was significantly higher in the aquaculture zone than in the non-aquaculture areas. The abundance of picoeukaryote is significantly and positively correlated with the concentrations of pico-sized prasinoxanthin, violaxanthin, and neoxanthin, indicating that picoeukaryote is dominated by those in prasinophyte. The results suggest that oyster aquaculture might stimulate the growth of prasinophyte, although the seasonal variations are mainly controlled by the water temperature in the study area. This research highlights the successful use of size-fractionated phytopigments to estimate size-specific phytoplankton biomass and community, which can be applied as a routine method to monitor the environmental effect and food resources of bivalve aquaculture.