Light pollution or artificial light at night (ALAN) is increasingly recognised to be an important anthropogenic environmental pressure on wildlife, affecting animal behaviour and physiology. Early life experiences are extremely important for the development, physiological status and health of organisms, and as such, early exposure to artificial light may have detrimental consequences for organism fitness. We experimentally manipulated the light environment of free-living great tit nestlings (Parus major), an important model species in evolutionary and environmental research. Haptoglobin (Hp) and nitric oxide (NOx), as important indicators of immunity, health, and physiological condition, were quantified in nestlings at baseline (13 days after hatching) and after a two night exposure to ALAN. We found that ALAN increased Hp and decreased NOx. ALAN may increase stress and oxidative stress and reduce melatonin which could subsequently lead to increased Hp and decreased NOx. Haptoglobin is part of the immune response and mounting an immune response is costly in energy and resources and, trade-offs are likely to occur with other energetically demanding tasks, such as survival or reproduction. Acute inhibition of NOx may have a cascading effect as it also affects other physiological aspects and may negatively affect immunocompetence. The consequences of the observed effects on Hp and NOx remain to be examined. Our study provides experimental field evidence that ALAN affects nestlings' physiology during development and early life exposure to ALAN could therefore have long lasting effects throughout adulthood.

Rapid industrialization and urbanization has caused large emission and potential contamination of mercury (Hg) in urban environment. However, little is known about the impact of socioeconomic factor on Hg accumulation in sediment. In the present study, historical record of anthropogenic Hg deposition of Shanghai was reconstructed by using three sediment cores from three park lakes (C1: Luxun Park; C2: Fuxing island Park; C3: Xinjiangwan Park). Meanwhile, the influence of socioeconomic factor to Hg emissions and sedimentary record was calculated based on an extended STIRPAT (stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence and technology) model. The profiles of Hg levels and fluxes in the three sediment cores showed that Shanghai has recently undergone urbanization. The anthropogenic Hg fluxes exhibited fluctuant increases from ∼1900 to present and accelerated after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and the implementation of reform and opening up policy in 1978. The mean flux ratios of Hg in post-2000 were 2.2, 12, and 2.7 in the C1, C2 and C3 cores, respectively. The extended STIRPAT model was constructed based on strong positive relationships between socioeconomic factors and Hg fluxes, revealing that the proportion of coal consumption, the urbanization rate, and the proportion of heavy industry were the three most important driving factors for Hg accumulations in urban sediment of Shanghai.

In order to evaluate the impact of semi-intensive shrimp farming, comparisons between Control and Impact areas were made based on multiple lines of evidence using an asymmetrical design. Water and sediment samples were collected in four shrimp farms located in Todos os Santos Bay, Bahia, Brazil. Nutrients, trace elements and macrobenthic assemblages were evaluated using uni- and multivariate analyzes.Significant differences were observed between Impact and Control areas for the water column dataset (i.e., ancillary variables, SPM, dissolved nutrients and major and trace elements in SPM), whereas no significant differences were observed for the chemistry of sediments. Macrobenthic assemblages were negatively affected by shrimp farm activities. Impacted sites presented the lowest abundance, richness and different structure of macrofaunal benthic assemblages. Farms clearly produced negative impacts in the Todos os Santos Bay. This conclusion was only possible to be reached through the use of multiple lines of evidence. Chemistry and benthic assemblages data combined produced a better description of the quality and impacts of the evaluated environments. Different conclusions would have been reached if chemistry and ecology results were studied separately vs. together.

Lead (Pb) isotope has been extensively used to identify sources of Pb and apportion their contributions in the environment. Conventionally, isotope ratios are used to express Pb isotopic composition. However, the linear combination of Pb isotope ratios is not consistent with mass balance. Moreover, the graphical presentations based on Pb isotope ratios are always inconsistent when different Pb isotope ratios are used. In this study, we proposed to use fractional abundance to express Pb isotopic composition to achieve more accurate and reliable source apportionment. A new method (rotation-projection method) based on fractional abundance was developed in this research. The new method compared favorably to the isotopic ratio-based method and to another fractional abundance based method using default 204Pb value (0) (Walraven’s method). It allows to present four-dimensional (4-D) Pb isotope fractional abundance data in a 3-D plot. In the meantime, due to the low variation of the fractional abundance of 204Pb in the terrestrial ecosystem, the terrestrial Pb isotope fractional abundance data fell nearly on a plane, which further allows to plot the Pb isotope fractional abundance data on a two-dimensional diagram. Proper presentation of the isotopic composition data helps to achieve more accurate and reliable source identification and apportionment.

While the potential of plants to uptake polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is widely acknowledged, empirical evidence of the effects of this process on local atmospheric PAH concentrations and human health is tenuous. We measured gaseous PAH concentrations using passive samplers in urban tree-covered areas and adjacent open, treeless areas in a near-road environment in Finland to gain information on the ability of urban vegetation to improve air quality. The ability of urban, mostly deciduous, vegetation to affect PAHs was season dependent: during summer, concentrations were significantly higher in tree-covered areas, while in the fall, concentrations in open areas exceeded those in tree-covered areas. During winter, concentrations in tree-covered areas were either lower or did not differ from those in open areas. Results of this study imply that the commonly believed notion that trees unequivocally improve air quality does not apply to PAHs studied here.

This review introduces recent advances in an emerging research area that is focussed on studying the effect of exposure to vehicular emissions on cognition, with specific attention to children from urban environments. Today, air pollution is a global environmental issue, especially in urban environments, emitting particulate matter (PM), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) into the surroundings. The association of exposure to urban air pollution and cognitive disorders in children is a major cause of concern. We review recent findings associated with exposure to air pollutants and explained the potential mechanisms driving oxidative stress in living systems. An attempt has been made to investigate the cognitive effects of air pollutants leading to neurodegeneration, neurodysfunction, attention deficit/hypersensitivity deficiencies and autism in children. Accumulating evidence suggests that urban air pollution may have significant impact on central nervous system (CNS) of the developing brain.

Ciprofloxacin (CIP) is a broad-spectrum antibiotic found within μg/L concentration range in the aquatic environment. It is a known contributor of umuC induction in hospital wastewater samples. CIP can undergo photolysis to result in many transformation products (TPs) of mostly unknown toxicity. The aims of this study were to determine the genotoxicity of the UV mixtures and to understand the possible genotoxic role of the stable TPs. As such, CIP and its UV-irradiated mixtures were investigated in a battery of genotoxicity and cytotoxicity in vitro assays. The combination index (CI) analysis of residual CIP in the irradiated mixtures was performed for the umu assay. Further, Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationships (QSARs) predicted selected genotoxicity endpoints of the identified TPs. CIP achieved primary elimination after 128 min of irradiation but was not completely mineralized. Nine photo-TPs were identified. The irradiated mixtures were neither mutagenic in the Ames test nor genotoxic in the in vitro micronucleus (MN) test. Like CIP, the irradiated mixtures were umuC inducing. The CI analysis revealed that the irradiated mixtures and the corresponding CIP concentration in the mixtures shared similar umuC potentials. QSAR predictions suggested that the TPs may be capable of inducing chromosome aberration, MN in vivo, bacterial mutation and mammalian mutation. However, the experimental testing for a few genotoxic endpoints did not show significant genotoxic activity for the TPs present as a component of the whole mixture analysis and therefore, further genotoxic endpoints may need to be investigated to fully confirm this.

This work develops a new approach for delineating sites that are contaminated by multiple soil heavy metals and applies it to a case study. First a number of contaminant sample data are transformed into multiple spatially un-correlated factors using Uniformly Weighted Exhaustive Diagonalization with Gauss iterations (U-WEDGE). Sequential Gaussian simulation (sGs) is then used to generate sets of realizations of each resultant factor. These are then transformed into sets of sGs contaminant distribution realizations, which are then used to analyze the local and spatial (global) uncertainties in the distribution and concentration of contaminants via joint simulation. Finally, Info-Gap Decision Theory (IGDT) is used to consider different monitoring and or remediation regimes based on the analysis of contaminant realization spatial uncertainty. In our case study each heavy metal contaminant was considered individually and together with all other heavy metals; as the number of heavy metals considered increased, higher critical proportion values of local probability were chosen to obtain a low global uncertainty (to provide high reliability). Info-Gap Decision Theory (IGDT) yielded the most appropriate critical proportion values which minimized information loss in terms of specific goals. When the false negative rate is set to zero, meaning that it is necessary to monitor all potentially polluted areas, the corresponding false positive rates are at least 63%, 65%, 66%, 68%, 70%, and 78% to yield robustness levels of 0.50, 0.60, 0.70, 0.80, 0.90, and 1.00 respectively. However, when the false negative rate tolerance threshold is raised to 50%, the false positive rate tolerance which yields robustness levels of 0.50, 0.60, 0.70, 0.80, 0.90 and 1.00 drop to 12%, 14%, 15%, 18%, 20%, and 39%. The case study demonstrates the effectiveness of the developed approach at making robust decisions concerning the delineation of sites contaminated by multiple heavy metals.

The effluents from wastewater treatment plants have been recognized as a significant environmental reservoir of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Reclaimed water irrigation (RWI) is increasingly used as a practical solution for combating water scarcity in arid and semiarid regions, however, impacts of RWI on the patterns of ARGs and the soil bacterial community remain unclear. Here, we used high-throughput quantitative PCR and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism techniques to compare the diversity, abundance and composition of a broad-spectrum of ARGs and total bacteria in 12 urban parks with and without RWI in Victoria, Australia. A total of 40 unique ARGs were detected across all park soils, with genes conferring resistance to β-lactam being the most prevalent ARG type. The total numbers and the fold changes of the detected ARGs were significantly increased by RWI, and marked shifts in ARG patterns were also observed in urban parks with RWI compared to those without RWI. The changes in ARG patterns were paralleled by a significant effect of RWI on the bacterial community structure and a co-occurrence pattern of the detected ARG types. There were significant and positive correlations between the fold changes of the integrase intI1 gene and two β-lactam resistance genes (KPC and IMP-2 groups), but no significant impacts of RWI on the abundances of intI1 and the transposase tnpA gene were found, indicating that RWI did not improve the potential for horizontal gene transfer of soil ARGs. Taken together, our findings suggested that irrigation of urban parks with reclaimed water could influence the abundance, diversity, and compositions of a wide variety of soil ARGs of clinical relevance.Irrigation of urban parks with treated wastewater significantly increased the abundance and diversity of various antibiotic resistance genes, but did not significantly enhance their potential for horizontal gene transfer.