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Environmental Contamination with Emerging Contaminants; Associated Health Risks and Remediation Strategies

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Health, Well-Being and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 August 2022) | Viewed by 8276

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Soil and Water Department, Arish University, El-Arish 45516, Egypt
Interests: environmental soil chemistry; contaminated/non-contaminated soil assessment and remediation; biogeochemistry of trace elements as bulk and nanoparticle forms; Soil and Water inorganic pollutants; organic waste management and recycling; phosphorus soil chemistry; multi-element stable isotopic lability

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Guest Editor
Department of Environmental Science and Technology, University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742, USA
Interests: bioenergy engineering; biohydrogen; biogas; microbial electrolysis cell; microbial fuel cell; anaerobic digestion; pyrolysis; solar energy; life cycle assessment; electrochemical; nanotechnology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Air Pollution Research Department, Environmental Research Division, National Research Centre, 33 El-Bohouth St., Dokki, Giza 12622, Egypt
Interests: environmental analytical chemistry; biogeochemistry; Isotope geochemistry; air pollution; soil pollution; atmospheric chemistry; waste management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The development of consumable products containing different elemental proportions is likely to rapidly expand in the immediate future. At present, such products are disposed of in the environment, with minimum or no consideration of their potential environmental risks. These consumable products are directly responsible for the release of both conventional and emerging contaminants. Emerging pollutants have been identified as a universal environmental issue, due to their severe toxicity for surrounding communities.

Emerging contaminants include but are not limited to suspended metal(loid)s such as sub-micron particulates associated with organic and inorganic materials, micro- and nano-plastics, nanomaterials including fertilizers and pesticides, PFASs, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetic products, and illicit drugs. Most of these pollutants are discharged into the environment, without consideration of their adverse effects on the environment. Indeed, many of these contaminants can still exert toxic effects even at trace levels, and their environmental occurrence might still be hard to detect. This is even more challenging when analytical measurements of such contaminants in real environmental conditions are difficult to achieve, due to several interferences. To date, the fate, transport, and toxicity of emerging contaminants remain unclear, reflecting more challenges in their remediation.

The lack of such advanced studies prompted this Special Issue to systematically assess the human health and ecological risks brought by various emerging contaminants, detected in both soil, air, and water environments. Moreover, the processes and technologies used to remediate these contaminates are still not fully developed. Therefore, there is a pressing need to understand the environmental behavior, toxicity, and developments in remediation technologies, to control the health and ecological risks of these pollutants. This Special Issue will present some of the study efforts in the aforementioned fields.

The specific topics of the Special Issue are:

  • Analytical techniques of emerging environmental pollutants;
  • Contaminant fate and transport;
  • Risk assessment and management of the pollutants;
  • Environmental remediation process and technologies;
  • Natural attenuation of environmental pollution;
  • Sustainable tools for new emerging wastewater treatment;
  • Related fields.

Dr. Ezzat R. Marzouk
Dr. Amro Hassanein
Dr. Waleed Hares Shetaya
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • metals
  • trace elements
  • soil contamination
  • air pollution
  • remediation
  • emerging contaminants
  • water treatment
  • risk assessment
  • human health
  • toxicity
  • analytical approaches
  • nanomaterials
  • kinetic modeling
  • natural attenuation

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 4612 KiB  
Article
Toxicity and Uptake of CuO Nanoparticles: Evaluation of an Emerging Nanofertilizer on Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Plant
by Amany S. Ibrahim, Gomaa A. M. Ali, Amro Hassanein, Ahmed M. Attia and Ezzat R. Marzouk
Sustainability 2022, 14(9), 4914; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14094914 - 19 Apr 2022
Cited by 27 | Viewed by 3925
Abstract
Wet chemistry was used to produce copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs). The results indicated that most nanoparticles were bacillus-shaped and relatively uniform in size (less than 30 nm). The effect of synthesized CuO NPs on wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) germination and growth [...] Read more.
Wet chemistry was used to produce copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs). The results indicated that most nanoparticles were bacillus-shaped and relatively uniform in size (less than 30 nm). The effect of synthesized CuO NPs on wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) germination and growth parameters was studied and compared to bulk Cu. The results showed that no significant difference was obtained in germination rate among all treatments. Bulk Cu additions significantly affect the mean germination rate and mean germination time. On the contrary, germinability was significantly affected by CuO NPs additions. Seed vigor index was calculated to demonstrate the superior treatment in wheat germination parameters, and the results confirmed that 0.1 mg L−1 of CuO NPs could be successfully used to improve wheat seed germination. Moreover, the general average Cu concentrations in the plant tissue were 139 and 103 mg kg−1 dry weight for bulk and CuO NPs, respectively, indicating the dissolution behavior of CuO NPs. The addition of CuO NPs (0.1 mg L−1) promotes chlorophyll formation equal to 0.5 mg L−1 of the bulk Cu addition. This means using nanoparticles as fertilizer could reduce 80% of traditional fertilizers. Nonetheless, Cu additions in both forms (NPs and bulk) reduce root growth substantially compared to control. The effective toxic dose (EC50) for bulk Cu and CuO NPs was 0.37 mg L−1 and 0.94 mg L−1, respectively. The results indicated that approximately 2.5 times CuO NPs concentration is equal to the toxicity dose of bulk Cu due to lowered CuO NPs dissolution. Our study showed that Cu phytotoxicity is a non-nanosized effect and showed that plant-induced changes under environmentally real conditions should be considered when measuring the dissolution of CuO NPs near wheat plant roots. This study implies that using nano-CuO as a micronutrient amendment has a potential benefit rather than the soluble Cu salt for plant growth. Full article
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12 pages, 3243 KiB  
Article
Taranto’s Long Shadow? Cancer Mortality Is Higher for People Living Closer to One of the Most Polluted City of Italy
by Roberto Cazzolla Gatti and Alena Velichevskaya
Sustainability 2022, 14(5), 2662; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052662 - 24 Feb 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2976
Abstract
A national-scale study in Italy showed an incidence of cancer higher in the territories indicated as highly polluted compared to the regional average. One of them, the city of Taranto in Apulia (Italy), which is considered one of the most polluted cities in [...] Read more.
A national-scale study in Italy showed an incidence of cancer higher in the territories indicated as highly polluted compared to the regional average. One of them, the city of Taranto in Apulia (Italy), which is considered one of the most polluted cities in Europe, has numerous industrial activities that impact population health. We studied the epidemiological effects of a high level of pollution produced by the industrial area of Taranto in increasing the mortality rate for some specific cancer types in the city and towns of the two provinces located downwind. We analysed 10-year mortality rates for 15 major types of tumours reported among the residents of Taranto, of eight surrounding towns, randomly placed within an imaginary cone in the main wind direction from the vertex of the industrial zone of Taranto, and of the two related provinces (Bari and Taranto’s metropolitan areas). Our results confirm our hypothesis that the mortality rate for some specific types of cancer is higher than the norm in the municipality of Taranto. We also found strong evidence that, for 12 out of 15 tumour types, mortality decreases with the distance of the other towns from Taranto’s industrial site. However, we have reasons to believe that other local causes may be implicated in the excess of mortality in some specific municipalities besides the potential dispersal of pollutants from the industrial area of Taranto. The proximity to Taranto cannot, in fact, explain all the anomalies detected in some populations. It is likely that other site-specific sources of heavy pollution are playing a role in worsening the death toll of these towns and this must be taken into serious consideration by environmental policymakers and local authorities. Full article
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