Non-degradable plastics such as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) are among the most generated plastic wastes in municipal and industrial ...waste streams. The mismanagement of abandoned plastics and toxic plastic additives have threatened marine and land fauna as well as human beings for several decades. The available thermal processes can degrade plastic at pilot- and commercial-scale. However, they are energy-intensive and can generate toxic gases. Degradation of plastic waste with the help of live microorganisms (biodegradation) is an eco- and environmentally friendly method for plastic degradation, although the slow processing time and low degradation rate still hinder its applications at pilot- and large-scale. In this review, the advantages and limitations of current plastic degradation methods, their technology readiness levels (TRL), biodegradation mechanisms and the associated challenges in biodegradation are assessed in detail. Based on this analysis, a path toward an efficient and greener way toward degradation of non-recyclable single-use PE, PP, PS and PET plastic is proposed.
•Thermal technologies while degrade plastics in full scale are energy intensive.•Biodegradation is the most environmentally friendly way of plastic degradation.•The current low biodegradation efficiency limits its potential in commercial scale.•Enzyme engineering, aging and biosurfactant can enhance biodegradation rate.
Anthelmintics are drugs used for the treatment and prevention of diseases caused by parasitic worms (helminths). While the importance of anthelmintics in human as well as in veterinary medicine is ...evident, they represent emerging contaminants of the environment. Human anthelmintics are mainly used in tropical and sub-tropical regions, while veterinary anthelmintics have become frequently-occurring environmental pollutants worldwide due to intensive agri- and aquaculture production. In the environment, anthelmintics are distributed in water and soil in relation to their structure and physicochemical properties. Consequently, they enter various organisms directly (e.g. plants, soil invertebrates, water animals) or indirectly through food-chain. Several anthelmintics elicit toxic effects in non-target species. Although new information has been made available, anthelmintics in ecosystems should be more thoroughly investigated to obtain complex knowledge on their impact in various environments. This review summarizes available information about the occurrence, behavior, and toxic effect of anthelmintics in environment. Several reasons why anthelmintics are dangerous contaminants are highlighted along with options to reduce contamination. Negative effects are also outlined.
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•Anthelmintics enter the environment mainly through human and animal excretion.•Anthelmintics persist in soil and/or leach into water and/or are metabolized by living organisms.•Some anthelmintics are ecotoxic, they effect predominantly dung invertebrates.•Anthelmintics circulate in the environment and in food-chains.•The impact of anthelmintics on non-target organisms needs to be investigated more thoroughly.
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a process where several stakeholders take part, each with different interests, making bias unavoidable and a major cause of concern, but there is a big ...difference between inherent stakeholders' bias and manipulation, an illegitimate attempt to alter decisions for spurious interests. Although manipulation has usually been attributed to developers, any stakeholder may try to use it for self-benefit. In this paper we analyse manipulation possibilities, and how they can be used by stakeholders. While bias is unavoidable and should be reduced, understood and managed in EIA, manipulation is unacceptable and must be excluded.
•Manipulation is an illegitimate attempt to alter EIA for spurious interests.•Any stakeholder may try to manipulate EIA in self-benefit.•While bias is unavoidable in EIA and should be managed, manipulation is unacceptable.
Reflecting the popularity of nature-based activities such as hiking and mountain biking, there are thousands of kilometres of recreational trails worldwide traversing a range of natural areas. These ...trails have environmental impacts on soils and vegetation, but where has there been research, what impacts have been found and how were they measured? Using a systematic quantitative literature review methodology, we assessed the impacts of trails on vegetation and soils, highlighting what is known, but also key knowledge gaps. Of the 59 original research papers identified on this topic that have been published in English language peer-reviewed academic journals, most were for research conducted in protected areas (71%), with few from developing countries (17%) or threatened ecosystems (14%). The research is concentrated in a few habitats and biodiversity hotspots, mainly temperate woodland, alpine grassland and Mediterranean habitats, often in the USA (32%) or Australia (20%). Most examined formal trails, with just 15% examining informal trails and 11% assessing both types. Nearly all papers report the results of observational surveys (90%), collecting quantitative data (66%) with 24% using geographic information systems. There was an emphasis on assessing trail impacts at a local scale, either on the trail itself and/or over short gradients away from the trail edge. Many assessed changes in composition and to some degree, structure, of vegetation and soils with the most common impacts documented including reduced vegetation cover, changes in plant species composition, trail widening, soil loss and soil compaction. There were 14 papers assessing how these local impacts can accumulate at the landscape scale. Few papers assessed differences in impacts among trails (7 papers), changes in impacts over time (4), species-specific responses (3) and only one assessed effects on plant community functioning. This review provides evidence that there are key research gaps including assessing informal trails, comparing trail types, landscape and temporal scale impacts, functional responses and impacts on threatened ecosystems/species. A more diverse geographic spread of research is also required including in regions experiencing rapid growth in tourism and recreation.
•Research on vegetation and soil impacts of recreational trail infrastructure is limited.•Current research is biased to only a few ecosystems in protected areas in developed nations.•Most responses measured are compositional and are measured at local scales.•There is a need for more landscape-scale, temporal and comparative research on trail impacts.•A greater geographical spread of research is encouraged especially in urban, unprotected or threatened ecosystems.
Based on the samples of 113,468 publications on environmental assessment (EA) from the past 20years, we used a bibliometric analysis to study the literature in terms of trends of growth, subject ...categories and journals, international collaboration, geographic distribution of publications, and scientific research issues. By applying thresholds to network centralities, a core group of countries can be distinguished as part of the international collaboration network. A frequently used keywords analysis found that the priority in assessment would gradually change from project environmental impact assessment (EIA) to strategic environmental assessment (SEA). Decision-theoretic approaches (i.e., environmental indicator selection, life cycle assessment, etc.), along with new technologies and methods (i.e., the geographic information system and modeling) have been widely applied in the EA research field over the past 20years. Hot spots such as "biodiversity" and "climate change" have been emphasized in current EA research, a trend that will likely continue in the future. The h-index has been used to evaluate the research quality among countries all over the world, while the improvement of developing countries' EA systems is becoming a popular research topic. Our study reveals patterns in scientific outputs and academic collaborations and serves as an alternative and innovative way of revealing global research trends in the EA research field.
Many types of methods to assess land use impact have been developed. Nevertheless a systematic synthesis of all these approaches is necessary to highlight the most commonly used and most effective ...methods. Given the growing interest in this area of research, a review of the different methods of assessing land use impact (LUI) was performed using bibliometric analysis. One hundred eighty seven articles of agricultural and biological science, and environmental sciences were examined. According to our results, the most frequently used land use assessment methods are Life-Cycle Assessment, Material Flow Analysis/Input–Output Analysis, Environmental Impact Assessment and Ecological Footprint. Comparison of the methods allowed their specific features to be identified and to arrive at the conclusion that a combination of several methods is the best basis for a comprehensive analysis of land use impact assessment.
•We identified the most frequently used methods in land use impact assessment.•A comparison of the methods based on several criteria was carried out.•Agricultural land use is by far the most common area of study within the methods.•Incentive driven methods, like LCA, arouse the most interest in this field.
•Text mining & interviews were used to study drought's effect on infrastructure siting and review.•Extent of drought & consideration of drought impacts on infrastructure were closely ...correlated.•Attention to water & climate impacts on infrastructure increased, but not correlated to drought.•Slow-onset hazards may not shift institutional norms as easily as fast-onset hazards.
Climate change necessitates major changes in infrastructure siting, design, and operations. Successful adaptation of infrastructure management requires overcoming thorny institutional challenges including path dependency and isomorphic pressures that inhibit major shifts in norms and practices. Hazards have been posited as a potential trigger for changing long-standing institutions because they can upend stable system states. However, research on the ability of hazards to shift norms and practices is still nascent and focuses on rapid-onset disasters like floods, hurricanes, or fires. This paper uses the 2012–2016 California drought to assess the potential for slow-onset hazards to lead to institutional change. We assess whether it yielded a shift in institutional norms, namely agency application of existing regulations toward enhanced socio-ecological resilience in the face of climate change. We focus on the environmental impact assessment process under the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's process for licensing hydropower dams. Using computational text analysis of Environmental Impact Statements and participant observation of infrastructure licensing negotiations, we assess whether, over the years of the drought, agencies placed more emphasis on drought issues or climate resilience in analyzing infrastructure siting and design. In EIS documents, we observe a short-term spike in consideration of drought-related impacts and a longer-term increase in water security, suggesting some shifts in institutional practice; however, consideration of climate impacts decreased over the time period. In FERC licensing, there was no consideration of future climate impacts, despite managers’ recognition that this posed a problem for projects’ future operations. Although these results do not preclude the ability of slow-onset hazards to shift institutional norms, they suggest that doing so is challenging.
Medical waste management - A review Windfeld, Elliott Steen; Brooks, Marianne Su-Ling
Journal of environmental management,
11/2015, Letnik:
163
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper examines medical waste management, including the common sources, governing legislation and handling and disposal methods. Many developed nations have medical waste legislation, however ...there is generally little guidance as to which objects can be defined as infectious. This lack of clarity has made sorting medical waste inefficient, thereby increasing the volume of waste treated for pathogens, which is commonly done by incineration. This review highlights that the unnecessary classification of waste as infectious results in higher disposal costs and an increase in undesirable environmental impacts. The review concludes that better education of healthcare workers and standardized sorting of medical waste streams are key avenues for efficient waste management at healthcare facilities, and that further research is required given the trend in increased medical waste production with increasing global GDP.
Rivers are known for carrying out a fundamental role in the transportation of human debris from continental areas to the marine environment and have been identified as hotspots for plastic pollution. ...We characterized microplastics (MPs) along confluence areas in the Paraíba do Sul River basin, the biggest river in southeastern Brazil. This water body crosses highly industrialized areas, with the highest population density, and the major water demand in South America. Considering the important ecological function of this extensive watershed and the implications of MP pollution, we evaluate the spatial variation of MP concentration in the confluence areas and upstream from the confluence. Samples were taken from the superficial layer of the water column in February and June 2022, using manta net with 300 μm mesh size. A total of 19 categories and 2870 plastic particles were determined. The confluences areas of rivers showed the highest concentration of MPs, highlighting the confluences of the Paraiba do Sul and Muriaé rivers (0.71 ± 0.25 MP/m3), followed by Paraíba do Sul and Dois Rios rivers (0.42 ± 0.23 MP/m3) and Paraíba do Sul and Pomba rivers (0.38 ± 0.14 MP/m3). Black fibers were the main category, followed by blue fibers and blue fragments. The MPs in the surface waters of Paraíba do Sul River is significantly influenced by the sampling points spatiality. This result corroborates other studies around the world and reinforces the argument that affluents are important sources for the introduction of MPs in larger rivers. Nevertheless, our results provide a better understanding of the different contributing factors and occurrence of MPs in river basins.
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•Microplastics were found in all surface water samples from the Paraiba do Sul River.•River confluence present greater concentration of microplastics upstream areas.•Fibers were predominant category of microplastics in Paraiba do Sul River.
The hydroxyl radical (•OH) is one of the most powerful oxidizing agents, able to react unselectively and instantaneously with the surrounding chemicals, including organic pollutants and inhibitors. ...The •OH radicals are omnipresent in the environment (natural waters, atmosphere, interstellar space, etc.), including biological systems where •OH has an important role in immunity metabolism. We provide an extensive view on the role of hydroxyl radical in different environmental compartments and in laboratory systems, with the aim of drawing more attention to this emerging issue. Further research on processes related to the hydroxyl radical chemistry in the environmental compartments is highly demanded. A comprehensive understanding of the sources and sinks of •OH radicals including their implications in the natural waters and in the atmosphere is of crucial importance, including the way irradiated chromophoric dissolved organic matter in surface waters yields •OH through the H2O2-independent pathway, and the assessment of the relative importance of gas-phase vs aqueous-phase reactions of •OH with many atmospheric components. Moreover, considering the fact that people spend so much more time in dwellings than outside, the impact of the reactivity of indoor hydroxyl radicals on health and well-being is another emerging research topic of great concern.
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