Halophytes are widely distributed throughout several regions due to the presence of the saline condition. The present paper reflects vegetation cover along with plant species of different kinds in the coastal area of Mangrol taluka of Gujarat, India. It consists of 25 plant species under 25 genera and 12 families of angiosperm. During the field survey, observations were made and plant characteristics and habitat of flora were studied. The main objectives of the present study are the identification, baseline survey and utility of saline plants in the area. The utility of the plants such as ecological and economic (such as medicinal, industrial and commercial, etc.) which can reflect their significance to the society. Majority of the plant species found are naturally occurring, but a few of them are agricultural plants used for various purposes. Due to increasing population growth, urbanization and especially over-demanding medicinal plants people are harvesting without any knowledge of regeneration and conservation, due to which many species are threatened. Because of this, it is very important to conserve plant species, which are extensively utilized in various purposes.

In areas with water resources shortage, sewage irrigation can alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand for water. However, long-term use of sewage irrigation will affect soil, crops and groundwater. In this paper, irrigation water and groundwater in different irrigation source areas were sampled and analysed respectively to study the effect of sewage irrigation on groundwater. The irrigation water was evaluated for Cl-, Cd, Pb, Cr6+, As, Cu, F-, TP, Hg and Zn as standards for irrigation water quality which along with Nemerow index method were used for comprehensive evaluation. The result of the evaluation is that the water quality of the reclaimed water, domestic sewage and mixed sewage meet the requirements of the agricultural irrigation, and the industrial sewage pollution index is relatively high and less suitable for agricultural irrigation. The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method was adopted to evaluate groundwater quality, using Quality Standard for Ground Water (GBT14848- 2017) as evaluation factor standard and ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), chloride (Cl-), nitrate (NO3-N) and nitrite (NO2-N) as evaluation indicators. The results of the evaluation showed that the water quality of 2 monitor wells among the 11 monitor wells was within Category II, 6 within Category III, and 3 within Category IV. With regards to the influence of different irrigation sources on groundwater, the comprehensive evaluation results are reasonable as well. According to the comprehensive membership grades, it can be concluded that the influence of different water sources on groundwater quality, in turn, is reclaimed water < domestic sewage < mixed sewage < industrial sewage. The evaluation results are in line with the actual situation in the study area.

Air is one of the precious natural resources which is essential for living beings. Pollution in the urban areas like Cairo, Delhi, Mexico and Dhaka far surpasses the acceptable limits set by the World Health Organization (WHO). Urban air pollution in the South Asian region is approximated to cause more than 300,000 deaths and billions of cases of respiratory disease per year. In Bangladesh, about 200,000 people die each year due to air pollution as the WHO estimates in 2018. The air in Dhaka city, the capital of Bangladesh, has worsened to a level that the city has been identified as one of the most polluted cities in the world. Taking the problem with utmost importance into consideration as it is related to public health, air pollution is being treated as one of the priority issues. The level of pollution in the roadside environment is deeply connected with the density of motor vehicles plying on the roads. This situation is expected to worsen further in the upcoming days due to the increasing number of motor vehicles resulted from rapid economic growth and industrialization. This paper aims to provide the present status of air pollution in Dhaka city and some specific recommendations for making the city a better living place by reducing its air pollution.

The occurrence of heavy metals into the environment through various natural and anthropogenic sources is inevitable due to their persistent nature. This study investigated the concentration of heavy metals lead (Pb), zinc (Zn) and chromium (Cr) in liver, kidney, muscle and bones of three different species of owls namely Indian Eagle Owl (Bubo bengalensis), Barn Owl (Tyto alba) and Spotted Owlet (Athene brama) from Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India. Given their sentinel role, birds can be used as suitable and reliable indicators in monitoring the quality of the environment. From the study, it was observed that Bubo bengalensis accumulated the highest concentration of metals followed by Athene brama and Tyto alba. On an average, the concentration of Zn (1.67±1.40 ?g/g) was higher than Pb (0.079±0.05 ?g/g) and Cr (0.99±1.11 ?g/g). Among all the species, Spotted Owlet (Athene brama) recorded the highest concentration of Zn in bone (3.98 ?g/g) whereas in the bone of Indian Eagle Owl (Bubo bengalensis) 2.44 ?g/g of chromium (Cr) was reported. Pearson’s correlation of the data showed significant positive correlations in the absorption of metals by the tissues. Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA was applied to validate the results and check whether the groups originated from the same population. Additionally, Principle Component Analysis (PCA) revealed that Pb showed a strong relationship with both Zn and Cr and might be due to the differences of sources of these elements in the environment.

The evaluation of health level of land-use ecosystem provides important support for the regional health and social-economic sustainable development. To measure and study the granularity characteristics and spatial differentiation law of ecological health level of land-use in Yibin City, based on PSR model, taking kilometre grid as an evaluation unit, spatial exploration method was used to reveal its spatial differentiation law, and the decisive force of each factor was visualized through the factor detector. The results show that: (1) The health level of the land-use ecosystem in Yibin City is generally good, and the regional development is relatively balanced, but there are significant differences between the municipal districts and suburban counties. The average index of comprehensive health level of landuse ecosystem fluctuates around 0.60, the land for health level accounts for 46.07% of the total area, the land for sub-health level accounts for 29.78%, the land for unhealthy level accounts for 24.15%. (2) The health level of land-use ecosystem had a strong spatial correlation, which was mainly positive, and there was a significant spatial agglomeration pattern, dominated by HH type or LL type clusters. (3) The difference of human activities was the main factor that affects the spatial differentiation of ecological health level of land-use in the whole city, followed by the difference of natural system resilience, and the other factors were soil properties, landform and policy regulation. Finally, it was concluded that tightening the upper limit of capacity, holding the ecological bottom line, insisting on the intensive utilization of land, optimizing the spatial layout of “production, life and ecology”, adjusting the industrial structure, and developing ecotourism will become the necessary measures for Yibin city to improve the ecological health level of land-use and build a famous ecological city of landscape culture.

Use of cyanide in developing countries is rampant, especially in gold mining areas. Though it could cause serious environmental problems, cyanide contamination is of less priority for government monitoring because of the limited resources. The current detection and monitoring schemes of cyanide are the conventional and expensive laboratory-based methods, which need technical capabilities to conduct the actual testing and preparing manual data recording, making it tedious and too laborious. More efforts were directed towards digitizing the data recording from manual laboratory analyses as the manual data recording usually cause problems like delayed information, lost data, and erroneous data entry. Hence, the goal of this study is to provide a cost-effective and zero manual-recording measurement method for cyanide in water samples. This work focuses on the design of electrochemical measuring devices with the same capability with the portable or benchtop-type of cyanide meter but with an automated and realtime data recording using global system for mobile communications (GSM) technology. Results of this study showed that with the existing GSM technology and infrastructure of the new monitoring system, the measurements are comparable to that of a commercial bench-type cyanide meter with an R-squared (R2) of 0.9907. It was also noted that data being recorded were intact during wireless transmission testing using the GSM Network. The results obtained suggest that wireless communication using GSM Technology could be applied to environmental monitoring. Importantly, the newly developed online system for cyanide monitoring offers significant advantages over the conventional techniques such as low-cost, easy deployment, and ease of use. It can increase spatiotemporal data for better analysis of the data. The automated data acquisition and display through cellular phones are also made readily-available.

Use of biomass with traditional cooking technologies causes indoor air pollution and is responsible for 3.5 million deaths globally. Women play the main role in biomass-based energy systems in developing countries. The current study attempted to estimate determinants of household cooking fuels and impacts of fuels on women’s health in rural Pakistan. The results of the study show that 75.5% of the households in the study area use fuelwood, 44.4% use LPG, and 27.9% use crop residues for cooking. Households with LPG spend on average 3.02 h/day for cooking while households with biomass spend almost 4 h. Health expenditures of households using biomass are almost 25% higher than those using LPG. Use of traditional biomass with traditional devices was found to be having negative impacts on rural women’s life. Household composition, education, income, access to electricity and LPG, and distance from the market were found to be significant factors affecting the choice of fuels for cooking. Clean energy and technologies and empowerment through education and awareness will help minimize the negative impacts of biomass fuels on women.

With the continued growth of cities in many areas of the world, it is important to understand variations in atmospheric deposition in relation to site-specific geographic factors. Accordingly, this research investigated wet or bulk deposition (WD/BD) and dry deposition (DD) of SO₄²⁻, NO₃⁻, and NH₄⁺ onto Japanese cedar within the Tokyo metropolis and surrounding areas with the primary aim of evaluating which geographical factors most influence the deposition of pollutants. Two new sites were established and, along with five existing sites, comprised an array of sites with varied geographic settings (distance from the center of Tokyo, elevation, and azimuthal difference between slope aspect and dominant wind direction). Annual WD/BD and DD values of SO₄²⁻, NO₃⁻, and NH₄⁺ ranged from 9–35, 16–83, and 12–96 mmol m⁻² year⁻¹, respectively, and 1–25, − 5–104, and − 7–142 mmol m⁻² year⁻¹, respectively. Annual WD/BD values only showed a statistically significant difference with azimuthal difference for SO₄²⁻ and NH₄⁺. In contrast, annual DD values of SO₄²⁻, NO₃⁻, and NH₄⁺ were found to significantly decrease with distance from the center of Tokyo. In addition, site elevation was a significant factor influencing the DD of SO₄²⁻, NO₃⁻, and NH₄⁺ in linear regression models. Azimuthal difference was not significantly related to DD variability. Given these results, it is necessary to consider both the distance from emission source as well as the geographic factors of particular locations when evaluating the deposition of atmospheric pollutants from megacities to forested areas within and beyond the city.

Rapid population growth and agricultural development are generating a considerable amount of effluents, which poses threats to the quality of rural water resources as well as sanitary conditions. However, with a range of rural wastewater treatment (WT) technologies available, one major problem facing the practitioners is which to choose as the most favorable option suited to specific areas. In this study, a novel decision-making framework is proposed to evaluate and select the optimal alternative in rural areas of Xi’an within multiple consecutive time periods. Firstly, an evaluation index system is constructed and picture fuzzy numbers (PFNs) are used to represent both evaluation levels and experts’ refusal due to limitation of knowledge. Secondly, fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) is applied to derive weights of criteria, which enables experts to assign fuzzy numbers to express their preferences for comparison judgments. Thirdly, evidence theory is utilized to obtain the aggregated values from multiple time periods. Finally, based on the belief intervals obtained, sequencing batch reactor (A₄) is determined as the optimal rural WT technology in Xi’an from 2006 to 2020, whereas the membrane bio-reactor (A₂) is the last option. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is further validated by comparative analysis. This research can hopefully serve as useful guidance for the assessment of rural WT technologies in various regions.

Epidemiological studies have proven that children mental health can be affected by environmental pollutants which are believed to be visible in the form of psychological disorder later in their childhood. Moreover, the effects of children mental health are evidently clear in the case of phthalates which have been observed to increase psychological disorder, specifically attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Hence, the present study aims to conduct a systematic review and provide an overview of the existing literature on the association between urinary phthalate metabolite concentrations and ADHD symptoms among children by emphasizing the confounding factors and limitations. Additionally, this review addressed the possible phthalate mechanism insights in human body including its impact on ADHD symptoms. In this case, 16 epidemiological studies (five cross-sectional, nine cohort and two case control studies) that met all the inclusion criteria were selected out of the total of 427 papers screened to show varying quantitative associations between phthalate exposure and ADHD symptoms among children with confounding factors and limitations in the existing studies in regard to the exposure and outcomes. This review also attempted to present possible explanation on phthalate mechanism in children body and its connection on neurodevelopment and ADHD symptom development which remains unclear in most of the studies. Finally, it is highly recommended for further research to carefully design cohort studies from prenatal to later childhood development with a complete sample size in order to understand phthalate impacts on children health.