Search results for "heavy metals."
showing 10 items of 199 documents
Chemistry, mineralogy and radioactivity inposidonia oceanicameadows from North-Western Sicily
2004
This paper presents measurements of major, minor, metal trace elements and radionuclides in sediments and in Posidonia oceanica samples from north-western Sicily (Italy). The mineralogical and chemical composition of sediments were determined by X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence techniques, respectively. A flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry was used to measure concentrations of Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb in P. oceanica samples and in sediments. Specific activities of selected radionuclides have been determined by high-resolution gamma spectrometry. Standard statistical analysis was used to assess correlations between different elements and different sample types.
Heavy Metals and Human Health: Possible Exposure Pathways and the Competition for Protein Binding Sites
2021
Heavy metals enter the human body through the gastrointestinal tract, skin, or via inhalation. Toxic metals have proven to be a major threat to human health, mostly because of their ability to cause membrane and DNA damage, and to perturb protein function and enzyme activity. These metals disturb native proteins’ functions by binding to free thiols or other functional groups, catalyzing the oxidation of amino acid side chains, perturbing protein folding, and/or displacing essential metal ions in enzymes. The review shows the physiological and biochemical effects of selected toxic metals interactions with proteins and enzymes. As environmental contamination by heavy metals is one of the most…
Toxicogenomics for the prediction of toxicity related to herbs from traditional Chinese medicine.
2010
Toxicogenomics represents the integration of genomics and toxicology to investigate the interaction between genes and environmental stress in human health. It is a scientific field that studies how the genome is involved in responses to environmental stressors and toxicants. The patterns of altered gene expression that are caused by specific exposures or disease outcomes reveal how toxicants may act and cause disease. Nowadays, toxicogenomics faces great challenges in discriminating the molecular basis of toxicity. We do believe that advances in this field will eventually allow us to describe all the toxicological interactions that occur within a living system. Toxicogenomic responses of a …
Pollutant concentrations in placenta.
2011
Unborn children are exposed to environmental pollutants via the placenta, and there is a causal relationship between maternal intake of pollutants and fetal exposure. Placental examination is an effective way for acquiring data for estimating fetal exposure. We analyzed the concentrations of 104 congeners of persistent organic pollutants, seven organotin compounds, five heavy metals, and methylmercury in 130 randomly selected placentas. Additionally, we examined similarities between pollutant concentrations by analyzing correlations between their placental concentrations. Our results yield new information for conducting contaminant risk assessments for the prenatal period. Out of the 117 in…
Poisoning histories in the Italian renaissance: The case of Pico Della Mirandola and Angelo Poliziano.
2018
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Angelo Poliziano were two of the most important humanists of the Italian Renaissance. They died suddenly in 1494 and their deaths have been for centuries a subject of debate. The exhumation of their remains offered the opportunity to study the cause of their death through a multidisciplinary research project. Anthropological analyses, together with documentary evidences, radiocarbon dating and ancient DNA analysis supported the identification of the remains attributed to Pico. Macroscopic examination did not reveal paleopathological lesions or signs related to syphilis. Heavy metals analysis, carried out on bones and mummified tissues, showed that in Pico's…
The Origin of Heavy Metals and Radionuclides Accumulated in the Soil and Biota Samples Collected in Svalbard, Near Longyearbyen
2017
Abstract Heavy metals and radioactive compounds are potentially hazardous substances for plants, animals and humans in the Arctic. A good knowledge of the spatial variation of these substances in soil and primary producers, and their sources, is therefore essential. In the samples of lichen Thamnolia vermicularis, Salix polaris and Cassiope tetragona, and the soil samples collected in 2014 in Svalbard near Longyearbyen, the concentrations of the following heavy metals were determined: Mn, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd, Pb and Hg, as well as the activity concentrations of the following: K-40, Cs-137, Pb-210, Pb-212, Bi-212, Bi-214, Pb-214, Ac-228, Th-231 and U-235 in the soil samples. The differences in th…
Mosses as biomonitors of atmospheric heavy metal deposition : Spatial patterns and temporal trends in Europe
2010
In recent decades, mosses have been used successfully as biomonitors of atmospheric deposition of heavy metals. Since 1990, the European moss survey has been repeated at five-yearly intervals. Although spatial patterns were metal-specific, in 2005 the lowest concentrations of metals in mosses were generally found in Scandinavia, the Baltic States and northern parts of the UK ; the highest concentrations were generally found in Belgium and south-eastern Europe. The recent decline in emission and subsequent deposition of heavy metals across Europe has resulted in a decrease in the heavy metal concentration in mosses for the majority of metals. Since 1990, the concentration in mosses has decli…
Influence of arbuscular mycorrhizal colonisation on cadmium induced Medicago truncatula root isoflavonoid accumulation.
2012
Cadmium is a serious environmental pollution threats to the planet. Its accumulation in plants affects many cellular functions, resulting in growth and development inhibition, whose mechanisms are not fully understood. However, some fungi forming arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis with the majority of plant species have the capacity to buffer the deleterious effect of this heavy metal. In the present work we investigated the capacity of Rhizophagus irregularis (syn. Glomus irregularis) to alleviate cadmium stress in Medicago truncatula. In spite of a reduction in all mycorrhizal parameters, plants colonized for 21 days by R. irregularis and treated by 2 mg kg(-1) cadmium displayed less growth…
Cadmium-induced changes in soil biochemical characteristics of oat (Avena sativa L.) rhizosphere during early growth stages
2011
A microcosm was assembled to physically separate soil from roots and was used to study both the impact of living roots on the soil–plant system during early stages of growth and plant responses to abiotic stress. Oat (Avena sativa L.) seedlings were grown in the microcosm unit for 44 days. Twenty-three days after planting, 0.154 mg CdSO4/g dry soil was added. Plants grown in Cd-treated microcosms showed considerable inhibition of shoot growth rates, and leaf chlorophyll content. Soil microbial biomass C and respiration increased with plant age, and most of the measured biochemical indicators decreased with increasing distance from the soil–root interface, thus demonstrating the rhizosphere …
Metal distribution in road dust samples collected in an urban area close to a petrochemical plant at Gela, Sicily
2006
Eight samples of road dust were collected from three different localities (industrial, urban, peripheral) of the town of Gela (Italy) to characterize their chemical composition and to assess (a) the influence of the petrochemical plant and the urban traffic on the trace element content in different grain-size fractions of street dust and (b) the solid-phase speciation of the analysed metal using sequential extraction. The samples were sieved into six particle size ranges: 500–250, 250–125, 125–63, 63–40, 40–20 and <20 μm and then analysed for 15 trace elements by ICP-MS. Sequential extraction of metals was performed on each subsample. A principal component analysis was also carried out to d…