Search results for "Waste"
showing 10 items of 2580 documents
Outdoor, indoor and personal distribution of BTEX in pregnant women from two areas in Spain - Preliminary results from the INMA project
2010
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are habitually found in both outdoor and indoor environments, may represent a significant health risk. In this context, pregnancy is a critical period since foetuses are more vulnerable than adults to exposure to toxic compounds. The objective of this study is to present the preliminary results of a series of measurements of outdoor (O), indoor (I) and personal exposure (P) to benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, o-xylene and m,p-xylene (BTEX) in 107 pregnant women from two areas in Spain, namely Valencia and Sabadell. BTEX samplers were installed for 48 hours both inside and outside of the women’s homes, along with personal samplers. In addition, the tes…
Long-term (1995-2018) aerosol optical depth derived using ground based AERONET and SKYNET measurements from aerosol aged-background sites
2019
Abstract We examined long-term aerosol optical depth (AOD) trends over 53 sites across the globe which comprise 49 sites from the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) and 4 sites from the Sky radiometer Network (SKYNET) during 1995–2018. Most of these sites are located in remote and isolated aged-background regions, and few are in urban/semi-urban sites having averaged AOD ∼0.1 at 500 nm. These selected sites have a global distribution including tropical, mid-latitudes, high-latitudes and Polar regions. Among them, there are 14 high-altitude stations (∼1028–5050 m amsl), including Himalayan and Polar regions. The main objective of the present work is to evaluate the AOD trends over the aged-ba…
Low cost three-dimensional virtual model construction for remanufacturing industry
2018
Remanufactured products can save up to 80% of production and energy costs whilst generating lower CO2 emissions. The key success factors for remanufacturing are quality, lead-time and cost. Extensive work within the industry and the detailed analysis of the remanufacturing process has shown that component inspection has significant bearing on overall productivity. Remanufacturing lacks automation because activities are predominantly manual. Automation of remanufacturing process will not only decrease the number of non-remanufacturable components, through decreasing cost and increasing consistency in quality, but also attract industries to design for remanufacture. A digital model of the com…
Characterization of automotive shredder residues before and five years after landfill disposal
2015
The paper illustrates the results of an extensive analytical characterization study of automotive shredder residues (ASR), also known as "fluff". The analyses concerned material fractions and their content, with special reference to heavy metals (e.g. Cd, Cr, Hg, Pb, Cu) and arsenic. Elution tests on the original materials were also conducted. Moreover, chemical concentrations of ASR samples after about five years' landfill residence was assessed, in order to verify possible changes resulting from both in-situ leaching and organic matter degradation phenomena. Results show that lead seems to be the most critical element in view of possible ASR acceptance in non-hazardous waste landfills bec…
Wastewater surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 variants in October-November 2022 in Italy: detection of XBB.1, BA.2.75 and rapid spread of the BQ.1 lineage
2023
This study adds insight regarding the occurrence and spread of SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern (VOCs) and Var-iants of Interest (VOIs) in Italy in October and November 2022, by testing urban wastewater collected through-out the country. A total of 332 wastewater samples were collected from 20 Italian Regions/Autonomous Provinces (APs) within the framework of national SARS-CoV-2 environmental surveillance. Of these, 164 were collected in the first week of October and 168 in the first week of November. A similar to 1600 bp fragment of the spike protein was sequenced by Sanger (for individual samples) and long-read nanopore sequencing (for pooled Region/AP samples).In October, mutations charact…
Plant invasion risk inside and outside protected areas: Propagule pressure, abiotic and biotic factors definitively matter
2023
Invasive alien species are among the main global drivers of biodiversity loss posing major challenges to nature conservation and to managers of protected areas. The present study applied a methodological framework that combined invasive Species Distribution Models, based on propagule pressure, abiotic and biotic factors for 14 invasive alien plants of Union concern in Italy, with the local interpretable model-agnostic explanation analysis aiming to map, evaluate and analyse the risk of plant invasions across the country, inside and outside the network of protected areas. Using a hierarchical invasive Species Distribution Model, we explored the combined effect of propagule pressure, abiotic …
Amino polyphosphonates - chemical features and practical uses, environmental durability and biodegradation
2012
Growing concerns about the quality of the environment led to the introduction of complex system of safety assessment of synthetically manufactured and commonly applied chemicals. Sometimes, however, our knowledge of consequences that result from the usage of these substances, appears far later, than at the beginning of their application. Such situation is observed in the case of aminopolyphosphonates being an important subgroup of organophosphorus compounds. The increasing industrial and household applications, led to introduce thousand tons of polyphosphonates every year into the environment. These substances are difficult to determine in environmental samples because of lack of appropriat…
Bacterial Community Structure of an IFAS-MBRs Wastewater Treatment Plant
2017
TIn this work, the bacterial community putatively involved in BNR events of a UCT-MBMBR pilot plant was elucidated by both culture-dependent and metagenomics DNA analyses. The presence of bacterial isolates belonging to Bacillus (in the anoxic compartment) and to Acinetobacter, Stenotrophomonas, Rhodococcus, Escherichia and Aeromonas (in the aerobic compartment) is in agreement with the nitrification/denitrification processes observed in the plant. Moreover, the study of bacterial community structure by NGS revealed a microbial diversity suggesting a biochemical complexity which can be further explored and exploited to improve UCT-MBMBR plant performance.
Decontamination of Seawater in a Harbor: Case Study of Potential Bioterrorism Attack
2021
Bioterrorism attack to large harbors is likely, simply by the discharge of intentionally infected ship’s ballast water. Therefore, the ships must be equipped with the control probes of extensive microbial growth in the ballast water tanks to avoid such a scenario. In case of intentional discharge of ballast water containing Bacillus anthracis, a two-dimensional disinfection of the harbor’s seawater surface can be made using hydrophobic or surface-active disinfectant, by using humic acid with trimethylammonium groups, concentrating in the monomolecular layer on water–air interphase. It will prevent the formation and dispersion of the deadly bioaerosol to atmosphere after a bioterrorism attac…
A statistical model for predicting the inter-annual variability of birch pollen abundance in Northern and North-Eastern Europe
2018
The paper suggests a methodology for predicting next-year seasonal pollen index (SPI, a sum of daily-mean pollen concentrations) over large regions and demonstrates its performance for birch in Northern and North-Eastern Europe. A statistical model is constructed using meteorological, geophysical and biological characteristics of the previous year). A cluster analysis of multi-annual data of European Aeroallergen Network (EAN) revealed several large regions in Europe, where the observed SPI exhibits similar patterns of the multi-annual variability. We built the model for the northern cluster of stations, which covers Finland, Sweden, Baltic States, part of Belarus, and, probably, Russia and…