Consumption advice to ensure the health and safety of fish consumers remains urgent to handle the ever-increasing panic over heavy metal toxicity. Moreover, studies of fish consumption rarely focus on the perceptions and awareness of consumers. Considering this, the present study examines the factors determining the willingness to follow fish consumption advice as well as calculate the risk–benefit ratio and produce the vulnerability map followed by formulating fish consumption advice for consumers of two commercially important fish species, tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) and mudfish (Ophiocephalus striatus), in the Laguna de Bay area of the Philippines. Primary data on consumers’ perceptions were collected through a questionnaire, whereas heavy metal contamination data were compiled from the best available literature. We concluded that people’s willingness to adopt consumption advice is mostly dependent on their existing level of fish consumption (P = 0.000). There was no discernible difference in the mean concentration of heavy metals in fish between the dry and wet seasons, with the exception of As concentrations in the samples (t15.75 = 3.72, p < 0.001). The hazard quotient (risk–benefit ratio) for fish consumption (HQefa) was an order of magnitude higher in the mudfish samples (0.05 and 28.28) compared to tilapia (0.04 to 16.02). Binangonan and Taguig from the Northern West Bay (1A, 1B) were clearly recognised on the vulnerability map as the most vulnerable regions in the lake. In general, it was determined that As and Pb were the elements causing consumption restrictions on tilapia collected from various parts of Laguna Lake. As with tilapia, locations with a high-risk advisory for mudfish were identified as the Northern West Bay and Central Bay, with a consumption limit of five meals per month due to excessive mercury pollution. This empirical study can serve as an option for the future development of fish consumption advice in the region.

In the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, both the large daily temperature difference and soil salinization make plants susceptible to abiotic stresses such as freeze-thaw and salinity. Meanwhile, crops in this area can be affected by artemisinin, an antimalarial secondary metabolite produced in Artemisia. Under freeze-thaw and salinity stresses, artemisinin was induced as an allelopathy stress factor to explore the physiological response of highland barley, including the relative electrical conductivity (RC), soluble protein (SP) content, malondialdehyde (MDA) content, antioxidant enzyme activity, and water use efficiency (WUE). Compared with the control group, the contents of RC and MDA in seedling leaves under stress were significantly increased by 24.74–402.37% and 20.18–77.95%, indicating that cell membrane permeability was greatly damaged, and WUE was significantly decreased by 15.77–238.59%. The activity of enzymes increased under single stress and decreased under combined stress. Salinity, artemisinin, and freeze-thaw stress show a synergistic relationship; that is, compound stresses were more serious than single stress. In summary, the results of this study revealed the physiological and ecological responses of barley seedlings under different habitat stresses and the interactions among different stress factors.

This study investigated the water quality parameters (dissolved oxygen, electrical conductivity, salinity, pH, and temperature) and the mass flux of eight heavy metals (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn) in five years (2015-2019) of the Houjing River. The river flows through a heavily-industrialized zone in Kaohsiung City in southern Taiwan. The surface water was sampled 4 times per year from five sampling locations: upstream sites (H1 and H2), industrial wastewater discharge point sites (H3 and H4), and downstream (H5). Our findings show that the water quality parameters improved in the study period, especially dissolved oxygen. However, some parameters, such as electrical conductivity (mean = 1152.50 ± 414.21 μS cm⁻¹), were still higher than the Taiwan water quality irrigation standards. The heavy metal pollution was investigated in the aspect of mass fluxes and sources contribution. The spatial variation of the total heavy metal mass flux increased gradually from upstream to downstream, with H5 having the highest total mass flux of 74.1 kg d⁻¹. H2, located near an industrial zone, had a total mass flux of 33.7 kg d⁻¹ and contributed to the most Ni, Cr, Pb, Zn, and Hg fluxes. This study indicates that the water quality improvements observed are still not enough to meet the regulations. Stricter enforcement is required as well as further investigation to identify any illegal pollution sources.

In the Qaidam Basin, meteorological stations are sparsely distributed, and the observational precipitation data are therefore not comprehensive, which significantly hampers the accurate assessment and optimal allocation of regional water resources. This study aims to evaluate the accuracy of three precipitation products (MSWEP V2, GPM IMERG V6, and TRMM 3B43) against gauged-based precipitation data from nine meteorological stations and 12 hydrologic stations in the Qaidam Basin from 2001 to 2016. The results reveal the following: (1) At the annual and monthly scales, the MSWEP product has the highest accuracy, followed by the GPM product. However, the TRMM product only reveals a correlation at the monthly scale; (2) the MSWEP product performs better in the wet season than the dry season, and the TRMM product has an abnormally high value of precipitation in the wet season. Moreover, it was shown that the accuracy of the GPM product is superior to that of the TRMM product; however, it has a low detection capability in some mountainous areas; and (3) the average error of each precipitation product at the meteorological stations is smaller than that at the hydrological stations.

Laboratory testing with spiked sediments with organic contaminants is a valuable tool for ecotoxicologists to study specific processes such as effects of known concentrations of toxicants, interactions of the toxicants with sediment and biota, and uptake kinetics. Since spiking of the sediment may be performed by using different strategies, a plethora of procedures was proposed in the literature for spiking organic chemicals onto sediments to perform ecotoxicological analyses. In this paper, we reviewed the scientific literature intending to characterise the kind of substrates that were used for spiking (i.e. artificial or field-collected sediment), how the substrates were handled before spiking and amended with the organic chemical, how the spiked sediment was mixed to allow the homogenisation of the chemical on the substrate and finally how long the spiked sediment was allowed to equilibrate before testing. What emerged from this review is that the choice of the test species, the testing procedures and the physicochemical properties of the organic contaminant are the primary driving factors affecting the selection of substrate type, sediment handling procedures, solvent carrier and mixing method. Finally, we provide recommendations concerning storage and characterization of the substrate, equilibrium times and verification of both equilibration and homogeneity.

Swine wastewater (SW) poses a great threat to the environment due to its high-nutrient profiles if not properly managed. Advanced biological treatment method is an efficient method to treat SW by screening potent microalgae or bacterial strains. In this study, activated sludge, three locally isolated heterotrophic nitrification bacteria and one microalgal strain (Chlorella) were used as inoculums in treating a local SW. Their treatment efficiencies were compared, while the nitrogen removal mechanisms and microbiome profile were explored in detail. It was found that certain heterotrophic nitrification strains had a slight advantage in removing chemical oxygen demand and phosphorus from SW, with the highest removal efficiencies of 83.9% and 76.2%, respectively. The removal efficiencies of ammonia nitrogen and total nitrogen in wastewater by microalgae reached 80.9% and 66.0% respectively, which were far higher than all the heterotrophic nitrification strains. Biological assimilation was the main pathway of nitrogen conversion by microalgae and heterotrophic nitrifying bacteria; especially microalgae showed excellent biological assimilation performance. Correlation analysis showed that Comamonas was highly positively correlated with nitrogen assimilation, while Acidovorax was closely correlated with simultaneous nitrification and denitrification. This study gives a comparison of microalgae and heterotrophic nitrifying bacteria on the nitrogen transfer and transformation pathways.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAHs) is an important organic contaminant substance in the environment. Their concentration monitoring is of great significance for predicting the potential environmental risk and protecting the organism safety. Here, molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) coating was prepared on zylon heat-resistant fiber by in situ polymerization, which was packed to a stainless steel needle to develop a needle-type device (NTD) for the analysis of PAHs. Pyrene was used as the template molecule in this MIPs. To obtain excellent selectivity and adsorption efficiency, 4-vinylpyridine (4-VP) and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EDMA) were chosen as functional monomers and cross-linker, respectively, and the ratio of ingredients was optimized. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used for identifying micro-morphologic characteristics of the obtained MIPs-coating fiber. The PAHs from environmental water samples were extracted with the NTD by headspace extraction and detected by gas chromatography with a flame ionization detector (GC-FID). Under optimized conditions, the proposed method exhibited a good linearity dynamic range (LDR) of 0.5–1800 µg·L⁻¹ with the correlation coefficients (R²) between 0.9953 and 0.9977. The limits of detection are in the ranges of 0.09–0.40 µg·L⁻¹ and the limits of quantification are in the ranges of 0.37–1.40 µg·L⁻¹. Furthermore, the device showed remarkable durability and storage capacity. It could be reused 60 times, and the loss ratio was less than 15% with relative standard deviations (RSDs) less than 6.4% after 3 days of storage. The developed method is easy, sensitive, and accurate, and it can be used for detection of trace PAHs in water sample.

Adding a corrosion inhibitor to the chloride deicing salt can prevent the corrosion and pollution of Cl⁻, which is very important. Layered double hydroxide (LDHs), calcined at high temperature is used as adsorbents to remove various anionic contaminants, and it can reduce the freezing point of solution after adsorbing anions. Therefore, this paper reports the use of calcined LDHs as corrosion inhibitors in deicing salts, which are denoted as MgAlOₓ or MgAlFeOₓ depending on the preparation element. By analyzing the removal efficiency and the freezing point of MgAlOₓ and MgAlFeOₓ to Cl⁻, the feasibility of the study was determined. Resulted that the removal efficiency to Cl⁻ of MgAlFeOₓ at low temperature (0 ± 2 °C) and room temperature (25 ± 2 °C) was higher than that of MgAlOₓ, reaching 39.4% and 85.60%, respectively. And the freezing point of MgAlFeOₓ was lower than that of MgAlOₓ, the value was −12.0 °C. At the same time, we also found that CaCl₂-MgAlOₓ and CaCl₂-MgAlFeOₓ significantly reduced the corrosion of carbon steel and concrete compared with chloride salts, and CaCl₂-MgAlFeOₓ had the lowest corrosion degree. Hence, MgAlFeOₓ was chosen as the corrosion inhibitor in chloride deicing salt. The metal molar ratio, synthesis temperature, and calcination temperature for preparation of MgAl/MgAlFe-LDHs were determined by XRD and TG-DSC analysis that were 9/2/1, 120 °C, and 500 °C, respectively. Characterization methods such as Zeta, XRD, XPS, BET, and SEM were used to study in detail the characteristic changes of MgAlFe-LDHs and MgAlFeOₓ after Fe³⁺ was added, and the mechanism of corrosion inhibitors was further determined that was achieved by adsorption and neutralization.

This discourse aimed at providing insight into the strategies that can be adopted to boost the process of photoreduction of Cr(VI) to Cr(III). Cr(VI) is amongst the highly detestable pollutants; thus, its removal or reduction to an innocuous and more tolerable Cr(III) has been the focus. The high promise of photocatalysis hinged on the sustainability, low cost, simplicity, and zero sludge generation. Consequently, the present dissertation provided a comprehensive review of the process enhancement procedures that have been reported for the photoreduction of Cr(VI) to Cr(III). Premised on the findings from experimental studies on Cr(VI) reductions, the factors that enhanced the process were identified, dilated, and interrogated. While the salient reaction conditions for the process optimization include the degree of ionization of reacting medium, available photogenerated electrons, reactor ambience, type of semiconductors, surface area of semiconductor, hole scavengers, quantum efficiency, and competing reactions, the relevant process variables are photocatalyst dosage, initial Cr(VI) concentration, interfering ion, and organic load. In addition, the practicability of photoreduction of Cr(VI) to Cr(III) was explored according to the potential for photocatalyst recovery, reactivation, and reuse reaction conditions and the process variables.