As a well-known toxic element, antimony occurred in a wide range of concentrations in the geothermal waters discharging from Rehai and Daggyai, two representative hydrothermal areas in the Yunnan-Sichuan-Tibet Geothermal Province of China. Antimony speciation in different types of the hot springs in Rehai and Daggyai varied greatly as well, and tri- and tetrathioantimonate were detected in most neutral to alkaline Rehai hot springs. Neutral to alkaline pH, high sulfide concentrations, and high sulfide to antimony ratios were the critical factors promoting the formation of thioantimonates. The fact that no thioantimonates were detected in neutral to alkaline Daggyai hot springs is attributed to high concentrations of coexistent arsenic capable of inhibiting the thiolation of oxyantimony anions, because thioantimonates are kinetically more labile than thioarsenates. Upon discharge of the hot springs, both total aqueous antimony and arsenic decreased rapidly and substantially via immobilization to the sediments in the spring vents and their outflow channels. Some of the common iron-bearing minerals in the spring sediments, like pyrite and goethite, are known sinks for antimony and arsenic. Yet, an interesting difference was observed with antimony and iron contents in the sediment samples showing a significant correlation that was lacking for arsenic and iron contents. The explanation might be that for arsenic, sorption affinities are known to vary significantly with aqueous arsenic speciation and mineral phases. Typically, thiolation increases, and oxidation decreases arsenic mobility. Sorption experiments for antimony conducted in the present study, in contrast, showed that different antimony species were comparably sorbed to pyrite over a wide range of initial antimony concentrations and to goethite at relatively low initial antimony concentrations (but still covering the concentration range of antimony in common natural waters), so neither thiolation nor oxidation contributed significantly to the mobility of antimony in the hot springs investigated in this study.

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons are strongly associated with agricultural, residential, transportation, and industrial activities. This study determined by GC-MS the concentration of 15 PAHs in soil and sediments at different sites from the Awotan-Asunle dumpsite area in the Southwestern region of Nigeria, which is one of the largest dumpsites in Africa. The sources of contamination, toxicity and associated risks for human health were also evaluated. Total PAHs concentrations were from 489 to 5616 μg kg⁻¹, and 642–2159 μg kg⁻¹, for soil and sediment, respectively. For soils, the highest values were observed for indeno[1,2,3-c,d]pyrene, coronene, and phenanthrene, while for sediments, the most abundant species were pyrene, fluoranthene and phenanthrene. Diagnostic ratios were used to determine the sources of PAHs and suggested that the compounds were mainly emitted from non-traffic sources. The total BaP-TEQ and BaP-MEQ for soils did not exceed the value recommended by the Canadian guideline since the country does not present guidelines. The analysis of incremental lifetime cancer risk was high mostly for dermal and ingestion exposures in the population. This study might provide valuable information regarding exposure to PAHs in soils of a Nigerian community.

High levels of air pollutants in Vietnam, especially particulate matters including PM₂.₅, can be important risk factors for respiratory diseases among children of the country. However, few studies on the effects of ambient air pollution on human health have been conducted in Vietnam so far. The aim of this study is to examine the association between PM₂.₅ and hospital admission due to acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) among children aged < 5 years old in Ho Chi Minh city, the largest city of Vietnam. Data relating PM₂.₅ and hospital admission were collected from February 2016–December 2017 and a time series regression analysis was performed to examine the relationship between PM₂.₅ and hospital admission including the delayed effect up to three days prior to the admission. We found that each 10 μg/m³ increase in PM₂.₅ was associated with an increase of 3.51 (95%CI: 0.96–6.12) risk of ALRI admission among children. According to the analysis, male children are more sensitive to exposure to PM₂.₅ than females, while children exposed to PM₂.₅ are more likely to be infected with acute bronchiolitis than with pneumonia. The study demonstrated that young children in HCMC are at increased risk of ALRI admissions due to the high level of PM₂.₅ concentration in the city's ambient air.

Environmental monitoring and surveillance studies of pharmaceuticals routinely examine occurrence of substances without current information on human consumption patterns. We selected 10 streams with diverse annual flows and differentially influenced by population densities to examine surface water occurrence and fish accumulation of select psychoactive medicines, for which consumption is increasing in the Czech Republic. We then tested whether passive sampling can provide a useful surrogate for exposure to these substances through grab sampling, body burdens of young of year fish, and tissue specific accumulation of these psychoactive contaminants. We identified a statistically significant (p < 0.05) relationship between ambient grab samples and passive samplers in these streams when psychoactive contaminants were commonly quantitated by targeted liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry, though we did not observe relationships between passive samplers and tissue specific pharmaceutical accumulation. We further observed smaller lotic systems with elevated contamination when municipal effluent discharges from more highly populated cities contributed a greater extent of instream flows. These findings identify the importance of understanding age and species specific differences in fish uptake, internal disposition, metabolism and elimination of psychoactive drugs across surface water quality gradients.

The release of fine particles from biochar materials applied in the environment may have important environmental implications, such as mobilization of environmental contaminants. In natural environments biochar fine particles can undergo various transformation processes, which may change their surface chemistry and consequently, the mobility of the particles. Here, we show that sulfide reduction can significantly alter the transport of wheat-straw- and pine-wood-derived biochar fine particles in saturated porous media. Counterintuitively, the sulfide-reduced biochar particles exhibited greater mobility in artificial groundwater than their non-reduced counterparts, even though reduction led to decrease of surface charge negativity and increase of hydrophobicity (from the removal of surface O-functional groups), both should favor particle deposition, as predicted based on extended Derjaguin–Landau–Verwey–Overbeek (XDLVO) theory. Using transport experiments conducted in single-cation background solutions containing K⁺, Mg²⁺ or Ca²⁺ under different pH conditions, we show that the surprisingly greater mobility of sulfide-reduced biochar particles was attributable to the removal of surface carboxyl groups during reduction, as this markedly alleviated particle deposition through cation bridging, wherein Ca²⁺ acted as the bridging agent in linking the surface O-functional groups of biochar particles and quartz sand. These findings show the critical roles of surface properties in dictating the mobility of biochar fine particles and call for further understanding of their transport properties, which apparently cannot be simply extrapolated based on the findings of other (engineered) carbonaceous nanomaterials.

2,3,3,3-Tetrafluoro-2-(heptafluoropropoxy)propanoate (known as GenX) has been used as an alternative to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) which was phased out of formulations for industrial and consumer product applications in 2015. While the effects of GenX on lab animals have been studied, little is known about its effects on plants. This study examined and compared the accumulation and toxicity of GenX and PFOA in the model plants Arabidopsis thaliana and Nicotiana benthamiana. Both plants showed reduction in biomass and root growth following exposure to PFOA or GenX in a dosage-dependent manner. The bioaccumulation factors (BFs) of GenX and PFOA were plant species-dependent, with higher BFs in A. thaliana compared to N. bethanminana. Additionally, GenX and PFOA were more readily accumulated into shoot tissues of A. thaliana than in N. bethanminana. Exposure to GenX also caused a reduction in chlorophyll content (18%) and total phenolic compounds (26%). However, GenX exposure increased superoxide dismutase activity and H₂O₂ content (1.6 and 2.6 folds increase, respectively) in N. benthamiana. Overall, our result suggest that GenX is bioaccumulative, and that its accumulation likely inhibits plant growth and photosynthesis as well as inducing oxidative stress.

This study describes the development of a sequential extraction procedure for the evaluation of metal nanoparticle mobility and bioaccessibility in soils. The procedure, that was developed using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as model species, relies on the fractionation of nanoparticles by sequentially dissolving soil matrix components (carbonates, metal oxides, organic matter and mineral phases) in order to release the entrapped nanoparticle species in the extract solution. By summing up the concentration of AuNPs recovered in each fraction it was found that 93.5% of the spiked AuNP concentration could be recovered which satisfactorily represents the nominal AuNP concentration in the soil. The efficiency of the procedure was found to depend on several procedural artifacts related to the separation of AuNPs from soil colloids and the reactivity of the extraction reagents with AuNPs and their precursor metal ions. Based on the results obtained a protocol for the speciation of the AuNPs and Au ions in the soil sample was also developed. The results of the study show that both AuNPs and Au ions are mainly associated with soil organic matter, which significantly reduces their mobility, while a small amount (<10%) is associated with metal oxides which are more mobile and potentially bioaccessible. The developed procedure provides a springboard for further development of sequential extraction procedures of metal nanoparticles in soils that could be used to assess both the exposure and release of metal nanoparticles and their precursor metal ions in the environment (as total extractable concentration) as well as provide evidence regarding their bioaccessibility and potential bioavailability by determining the concentration of nanoparticles in each specific soil fraction.

Carbon disulfide (CS₂) is seen an odor-toxic organic sulfur compound, which presents a major impact on global climate change. Therefore, the conversion of CS₂ into valuable chemicals is the key to reduce the concentration of CS₂ in the atmosphere. On the basis of a CS₂ fixation strategy, CS₂-storage materials (CS₂SMs) are firstly synthesized by the reaction of CS₂ with a binary ion-like liquid systems of ethylenediamine (EDA) and ethylene glycol derivatives (EGs) under mild condition. In view of the serious shortage of sulfur fertilizer and its important position in global agricultural production, it is a promising choice to use the CS₂SMs as a new type of green sulfur fertilizer to promote the growth of eggplant, tomato, sweet pepper and cucumber. In this work, the influence of CS₂SMs on the growth of plants were studied by taking plants irrigated by using various aqueous CS₂SMs solutions as experimental groups, and those irrigated by using water and NH₄HCO₃ as control groups. The experimental results showed that all CS₂SMs could promote plant height, stem diameter, root weight, flower bud number and leaf size. Especially, several CS₂SMs presented significant influence on fluorescence and fruit number. Further studies showed that the CS₂SMs as new energy resources sulfur-containing boosted leaf area, improved root development, enhanced photosynthesis and soil nutrient uptake, and promoted vegetative and reproductive growth of these four types of plants. Thus, this work provided a new strategy for the use of CS₂ as an indirect energy source for the experimental four plants.

Microplastics (MP) are omnipresent contaminants in the oceans, however little is known about the MP transfer between marine compartments and species. Three connected laboratory experiments using the filter-feeding mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis and the omnivorous polichaete Hediste diversicolor were conducted to evaluate whether the filtering action by mussels affects the vertical transfer of MP of different sizes (MPSMALL = 41 μm; MPLARGE = 129 μm) and densities (polyamide = 1.15 g cm⁻³; polypropylene = 0.92 g cm⁻³) across compartments and species with different feeding modes. Mussels significantly removed MP from the water column by incorporating them into biodeposits. This effect was particularly evident for the MPSMALL, whose deposition from the water column to the bottom was enhanced (about 15%) by the action of mussels. The incorporation of MP into faecal pellets increased the particles’ sinking velocity by about 3–4 orders of magnitude. Conversely, the MP presence significantly decreased the depositional velocities of faecal pellets, and the magnitude of this effect was greater with increasing MP size and decreasing density. The MP incorporation into mussels’ biodeposits also more than doubled the amount of MP uptake by H. diversicolor. We conclude that detrital pathways could be a transfer route of MP across marine compartments and food webs, potentially affecting the distribution of MP in sediments and creating hot-spots of bioavailable MP.

This study was designed to evaluate the sensitivities of diverse cell lines on DNA damage effects and genotoxic effects of three brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and three metal ions (Cu²⁺, Cd²⁺, Hg²⁺) by comet assay. First, THP-1 was identified as the most sensitive cell line in terms of DNA damage among 11 kinds of cells screened. Accordingly, the THP-1 cell line was used as a model in subsequent single/combined genotoxicity tests. Single exposure tests to BFRs or metal ions revealed that the DNA damage effects increased with increasing exposure concentration. In combined exposure tests, BFRs (at concentrations of 1/2 EC₅₀) were deployed in combination with different concentrations of Cu²⁺, Cd²⁺, or Hg²⁺. The results showed that the % tail DNA values were significantly increased by most mixtures. Our findings on combined toxic effects by comet assay provide valuable information for setting valid environmental safety evaluation standards.