A new sampling system has been developed for the measurement of time-averaged concentrations (TWA) and diffusion coefficients of organic micropollutants in aquatic environments. The system is based on the diffusion of targeted organic compounds through a rate-limiting membrane and the subsequent accumulation of these species in a bound, hydrophobic solid-phase material. Two separate prototype systems are described. One is suitable for the sampling of carbamates such as carbaryl, carbofuran, 3-hydroxycarbofuran, baygon, propham, clorpropham, and the other one for s-triazines such as atrazine, prometryn, propazine, simazine, terbuthylazine, terbutryn, metribuzin, cyanazine, and metamitron pesticides. The systems use solid-phase material (47-mm C₁₈ Empore disk) as the receiving phase but are fitted with rate-limiting membranes of either polysulfone or polycarbonate. For the two designs investigated, the cumulative uptake of all target analytes was considered over exposure periods of 7 days. The determined sampling rates ranged from 0.1323 to 0.0465 L day⁻¹ with both membranes. The best system was the one with the polysulfone membrane allowing a better cumulative uptake.

In epidemiological studies, ultrafine particle (UFP) data from a single monitoring site are generally used as a measure of population exposure potentially resulting in exposure misclassification. From August 2009 to October 2010, 1-week campaigns were conducted during each season. The temporal and spatial variations of UFP number size distributions were investigated at 12 monitoring sites distributed across a 9 × 9 km urban area in Rochester, New York using a Fast Mobility Particle SizerTM spectrometer. The overall average number concentrations of 5.6- to 560-nm particles in summer, winter, spring, and fall were 9,025, 10,939, 4,955, and 14,485 cm−3, respectively. Coefficients of divergence and correlation coefficients were calculated between site pairs to assess the spatial heterogeneity in the particle number size distributions. Moderate spatial divergence and uniform temporal variation were found for the chosen sites. Elevated UFP number concentrations were observed near highways, off-road diesel engines, and residential wood combustion sources, indicating significant contributions to the UFP exposure of people living adjacent to these sources. Our results suggest that one stationary monitoring site may not represent the actual human UFP exposure over a whole urban area.

Coagulation and flocculation are basic chemical engineering operations employed to remove suspended solids from water. The growing concern for environmental and ecological issues warrants the use of the biodegradable flocculants in wastewater and industrial effluent treatment. In this work, unconventional coagulant, namely lactic acid, calcium lactate, sodium lactate, and citric acid were studied in comparison with AlCl3, a usual coagulant widely employed to remove water turbidity. It was observed that lactic acid and calcium lactate were able to reduce the water turbidity similarly to AlCl3. This fact can be very interesting because lactic acid salts can be produced by biotechnological process, and contrarily to aluminium salts, they are biodegradable, reducing the risk for human and animal’s health.

The aim of the present study was the estimation of changes in the phytotoxicity of soils amended with sewage sludge with relation to Lepidium sativum, Sinapis alba and Sorghum saccharatum. The study was realised in the system of a plot experiment for a period of 29 months. Samples for analyses were taken at the beginning of the experiment, and then after 5, 17 and 29 months. Two kinds of sewage sludge, with varying properties, were added to a sandy soil (soil S) or a loamy soil (soil L) at the dose of 90 t/ha. The addition of sewage sludge to the soils at the start of the experiment caused a significant reduction of both seed germination capacity and root length of the test plants, the toxic effect being distinctly related to the test plant species. With the passage of time the negative effect of sewage sludge weakened, the extent of its reduction depending both of the kind of sewage sludge applied and on the type of soil. Phytotoxicity of the soils amended with the sewage sludges was significantly lower at the end of the experiment than at the beginning. The species of the plants grown on the soils also had a significant effect on their phytotoxicity. The greatest reduction of toxicity was observed in the soil on which no plants were grown (sandy soil) and in the soil under a culture of willow (loamy soil). Solid phase of sewage sludge-amended soils was characterised by higher toxicity than their extracts.

Studies were conducted to examine the effect of flue gas carbon dioxide (CO₂) on solubility and availability of different metals in fly ash of Powder River Basin (PRB) coal, Wyoming, USA. Initial fly ash (control) was alkaline and contains large amounts of water-soluble and exchangeable metals. Reaction of flue gas CO₂ with alkaline fly ash resulted in the formation of carbonates which minimized the solubility of metals. Results for metal fractionation studies also supported this fact. The present study also suggested that most of the water-soluble and exchangeable metals present in the control (untreated) fly ash samples decreased in the flue gas-treated samples. This may be due to the transfer of the above two forms to more resistant forms like carbonate bound (CBD), oxide bound (OXD), and residual (RS). Geochemical modeling (Visual MINTEQ) of water solubility data suggested that the saturation index (SI) values of dolomite (CaMg(CO₃)₂) and calcite (CaCO₃) were oversaturated, which has potential to mineralize atmospheric CO₂ and thereby reduce leaching of toxic metals from fly ash. Results from this study also showed that the reaction of flue gas CO₂ with alkaline fly ash not only control the solubility of toxic metals but also form carbonate minerals which have the potential to fix CO₂.

The Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge (Refuge) developed throughout millennia as a system with waters low in nutrients. Today, the Refuge wetlands are impacted by inflows containing elevated nutrient concentrations originating from agricultural sources. Surface water samples were collected monthly at 48 marsh and five canal sites from June, 2004 through May, 2011 and analyzed water quality trends by sampling perimeter, transition, and the interior zones based on distance from the canal towards the Refuge interior. Nutrient, inorganic ion, and C concentrations generally decreased with distance from the canal to the Refuge interior. These water quality parameters also decreased from the canal to the Refuge interior, but less sharply. This finding suggests that there has been less canal water intrusion into the Refuge during the sampling period. The origin of the high Ca and Cl concentrations in canal water is most likely from intrusion of connate seawater into the canal. The reason for the improved water quality from June, 2004 to June 2011 can be attributed to an improved STA1-East performance since 2005. Additionally, canal water that originally by-passed treatment in STA1-East and STA1-West, and flowed into the L-7 canal through the S-6 pump, is now diverted farther south into STA2 for treatment.

The separation on microchip provides the advantages including high efficiency, increased throughput, reduced quantities of hazardous materials, cost saving, relatively facile instrumentation, improved portability, etc. A technique of micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) coupled with amperometric detection has been actualized on a polydimethylsiloxane microchip for the rapid separation and determination of three phenolic xenoestrogens as octylphenol (OP), 4-nonylphenol (4-NP), and bisphenol A (BPA). The baseline separation of these phenolic xenoestrogens is successfully obtained within 55 s under the optimized MEKC conditions with borate running buffer of pH 8.0 containing sodium dodecyl sulfate and β-cyclodextrin. The linear range for OP, 4-NP, and BPA are 20–1,000, 15–1,000, and 20–1,000 μg/L with the detection limit of 5.0, 4.0, and 3.0 μg/L, respectively. The present method is successfully applied for the determination of these phenolic xenoestrogens in some industrial wastewater samples from mainland of China with the recoveries ranged from 90.2 to 109.4 %.

Marine waters are most vulnerable to crude oil pollution due to increased sea-based oil-related activities. Successful remediation of such polluted environments is normally carried out in a laboratory with suitable physical and environmental alterations. However, it is challenging to alter the physical and environmental conditions in crude oil-contaminated natural environments. In a previous study, six hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria were isolated from an oil-contaminated site. Here we report on their ability to mineralise weathered crude oil as a carbon source in seawater mesocosms, in order to construct a hydrocarbonoclastic consortia for the effective mineralisation of hydrocarbons present in the weathered crude oil at seawater-based environment. This was completed without altering the physical and environmental parameters (salinity, pH and temperature) and followed by the detection of microbial community changes. The total amount of oil mineralised by these six isolates individually over 28-day incubation ranged from 4.7 to 10 %. The bacterial consortia composed of these six strains showed a greater mineralisation rate (18.5 %). Temperature gradient gel electrophoresis revealed that the functionally dominant species were present after the first week (week 2 to week 4) following the addition of the consortia, which were represented in dendrogram by cluster 2 and also these weeks representing a distinct point on the Pareto–Lorenz curve; no community could be identified in controls in which no consortia were added. This shows that the addition of consortia potentially dealt with changing environmental conditions and preserved its functionality followed by effective mineralisation of weathered crude oil.

Combinations of sequential anaerobic and aerobic process enhance the treatment of textile wastewater. The aim of this study was to investigate the treatment of diazo dye Reactive Black 5 (RB5)-containing wastewater using granular activated carbon (GAC)–biofilm sequencing batch reactor (SBR) as an integration of aerobic and anaerobic process in a single reactor. The GAC–biofilm SBR system demonstrated higher removal of COD, RB5 and aromatic amines. It was observed that the RB5 removal efficiency improved as the concentration of co-substrate in the influent increased. The alternative aeration introduced into the bioreactor enhanced mineralization of aromatic amines. Degradation of RB5 and co-substrate followed second-order kinetic and the constant (k 2) values for COD and RB5 decreased from 0.002 to 0.001 and 0.004 to 0.001 l/mg h, respectively, as the RB5 concentration increased from 100 to 200 mg/l in the GAC–biofilm SBR system.

This study aimed at evaluating and comparing the removal of arsenic from solutions by a low-cost waste-based sorbent, produced by pyrolysing sewage sludge under appropriate conditions, and by a commercially activated carbon. Batch sorption experiments were performed under isothermal conditions (20°C), in order to evaluate the effect of pH on the arsenic sorption kinetics and on the equilibrium sorption capacity of the materials under study. Kinetic data revealed that the arsenic sorption was faster onto the activated carbon than onto the pyrolysed sludge. The sorption process was well described by both the pseudo-first and pseudo-second-order kinetics equations for both materials. Changes in the initial solution pH have distinct effects on the removal of arsenic onto pyrolysed sludge and activated carbon. While for pyrolysed sludge, pH affects essentially the equilibrium time, for activated carbon it affects the sorption capacity. Equilibrium results were well described by both Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm models, although fittings corresponding to the Langmuir isotherm were slightly better. The Langmuir maximum sorption capacity determined for the pyrolysed sludge was 71 μg g−1, while for activated carbon was 229 μg g−1. Despite the relative lower capacity of the pyrolysed sludge, the considerable lower cost and the valorisation of the sludge may justify further research on its use for water decontamination.