Articles

The effect of cold waves on mortality in urban and rural areas of Madrid

While many studies analyze the effect of extreme thermal events on health, little has been written about the effects of extreme cold on mortality. This scarcity of papers is particularly relevant when we searc...

Authors: José Antonio López-Bueno, Miguel Ángel Navas-Martín, Julio Díaz, Isidro Juan Mirón, María Yolanda Luna, Gerardo Sánchez-Martínez, Dante Culqui and Cristina Linares

Correction to: Environmental fate of tetracycline antibiotics: degradation pathway mechanisms, challenges, and perspectives

Authors: Fiaz Ahmad, Daochen Zhu and Jianzhong Sun

In vitro bioanalytical assessment of toxicity of wetland samples from Spanish Mediterranean coastline

Fresh water bodies represent less than 1% of overall amount of water on earth and ensuring their quality and sustainability is pivotal. Although several campaigns have been performed to monitor the occurrence ...

Authors: Alberto Celma, Geeta Mandava, Agneta Oskarsson, Juan Vicente Sancho, Lubertus Bijlsma and Johan Lundqvist

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substance exposure and association with sex hormone concentrations: results from the NHANES 2015–2016

There is increasing global concern regarding the health impacts of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are emerging environmental endocrine disruptors. Results from previous epidemiolog...

Authors: Xin Xie, Xueqiong Weng, Shan Liu, Jingmin Chen, Xinrong Guo, Xinyu Gao, Qiaoyuan Fei, Guang Hao, Chunxia Jing and Liping Feng

Environmental fate and effects assessment of human pharmaceuticals: lessons learnt from regulatory data

Human pharmaceuticals are extensively studied and assessed before marketing approval. Since 2006, this also includes an assessment of environmental risks. In the European Union, this is based on the guideline ...

Authors: Simon Schwarz, Daniela Gildemeister, Arne Hein, Patrick Schröder and Jean Bachmann

Transgene behavior in genetically modified teosinte hybrid plants: transcriptome expression, insecticidal protein production and bioactivity against a target insect pest

In 2009, Spanish farmers reported a novel weed, now identified as a relative of maize’s ancestor, teosinte, in their maize fields. Introgression of the insect resistance transgene cry1Ab from genetically modified...

Authors: André Felipe Lohn, Miluse Trtikova, Ignacio Chapela, Rosa Binimelis and Angelika Hilbeck

Radiological survey on radon entry path in an underground mine and implementation of an optimized mitigation system

The European Union council has introduced the basic safety standards (EU-BSS) for protection against the dangers arising from exposure to ionizing radiation by laying down a new radon reference level at workpl...

Authors: Amin Shahrokhi and Tibor Kovacs

Toxicant-induced loss of tolerance for chemicals, foods, and drugs: assessing patterns of exposure behind a global phenomenon

Despite 15–36% of the U.S. population reporting Chemical Intolerances (CI) or sensitivity, the condition has been overlooked in medicine and public health. CI is characterized by multisystem symptoms and new-o...

Authors: Shahir Masri, Claudia S. Miller, Raymond F. Palmer and Nicholas Ashford

Environmental fate of tetracycline antibiotics: degradation pathway mechanisms, challenges, and perspectives

Tetracycline pollution is a growing global threat to aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity due to its unprecedented use in aquaculture, livestock, and human disease prevention. The influx of tetracycline may an...

Authors: Fiaz Ahmad, Daochen Zhu and Jianzhong Sun

Heavy metal pollutants and their spatial distribution in surface sediments from Thondi coast, Palk Bay, South India

The concentration of heavy metals and their spatial distribution in surface sediments collected from the Thondi coast, Palk Bay, South India were analysed in this study. The sediment grain size, pH, EC, and ma...

Authors: Karthikeyan Perumal, Joseph Antony and Subagunasekar Muthuramalingam

Correction to: Glass-bottled drinking water: a time capsule to study the historic presence of hazardous chemicals using effect-based methods

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

Authors: Johan Lundqvist, Kenneth M. Persson and Agneta Oskarsson

Challenges of the Blue Economy: evidence and research trends

The Blue Economy is a recent field of study that encompasses economic activities that depend on the sea, often associated with other economic sectors, including tourism, maritime transport, energy and fishing....

Authors: Rosa María Martínez-Vázquez, Juan Milán-García and Jaime de Pablo Valenciano

Subsoils—a sink for excess fertilizer P but a minor contribution to P plant nutrition: evidence from long-term fertilization trials

The phosphorus (P) stocks of arable subsoils not only influence crop production but also fertilizer P sequestration. However, the extent of this influence is largely unknown. This study aimed to (i) determine ...

Authors: Nina Siebers, Liming Wang, Theresa Funk, Sabine von Tucher, Ines Merbach, Kathlin Schweitzer and Jens Kruse

Natural attenuation along subsurface flow paths based on modeling and monitoring of a pesticide metabolite from three case studies

Groundwater—especially for the use as drinking water—is a strictly protected resource in the existing guidelines for pesticide registration and drinking water protection in the EU. One aspect that has hardly p...

Authors: Marco Herrmann and Robin Sur

Calibration of the SPEAR_pesticides bioindicator for cost-effective pesticide monitoring in East African streams

Pesticides are washed from agricultural fields into adjacent streams, where even short-term exposure causes long-term ecological damage. Detecting pesticide pollution in streams thus requires the expensive mon...

Authors: Akbar A. Ganatra, Faith Jebiwot Kandie, Ulrike Fillinger, Francis McOdimba, Baldwyn Torto, Werner Brack, Matthias Liess, Henner Hollert and Jeremias M. Becker

Evidence for antifouling biocides as one of the limiting factors for the recovery of macrophyte communities in lakes of Schleswig-Holstein

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) has been implemented to achieve a good ecological status in European water bodies requiring macrophyte community assessment as one of the biological quality element...

Authors: Oliver Machate, Julian Dellen, Tobias Schulze, Valerie Carolin Wentzky, Martin Krauss and Werner Brack

Economic policy instruments for sustainable phosphorus management: taking into account climate and biodiversity targets

Phosphorus (P) is a vital and non-substitutable nutrient for agricultural production. However, P is often used inefficiently in European agriculture. To ensure food security while avoiding environmental damage...

Authors: Beatrice Garske and Felix Ekardt

Correction to: Phytotoxin sorption to clay minerals

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

Authors: Carina D. Schönsee, Felix E. Wettstein and Thomas D. Bucheli

Evaluation of indicators for cyanobacterial risk in 108 temperate lakes using 23 years of environmental monitoring data

Cyanobacterial blooms are of increasing concern for drinking water supply. In Sweden, a survey among drinking water producers showed that the sense of urgency was little. At 60% of the Swedish drinking water t...

Authors: J. Li, K. M. Persson, H. Pekar and D. Jansson

Hydrological and biogeochemical controls on temporal variations of dissolved carbon and solutes in a karst river, South China

Understanding the responses of riverine dissolved carbon dynamics and chemical weathering processes to short-term climatic variabilities is important to understand the Surface-Earth processes under ongoing cli...

Authors: Jing Liu, Jun Zhong, Shuai Chen, Sen Xu and Si-Liang Li

Association of temporary Environmental Protection Agency regulation suspension with industrial economic viability and local air quality in California, United States

This study seeks to answer two questions about the impacts of the 2020 Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement regulation rollbacks: is this suspension bolstering the economic viability of industries as ...

Authors: Emily Chang, Kenneth Zhang, Margaret Paczkowski, Sara Kohler and Marco Ribeiro

Effects of glyphosate-based herbicides and their active ingredients on earthworms, water infiltration and glyphosate leaching are influenced by soil properties

Glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs) are among the most often used pesticides. The hundreds of GBHs used worldwide consist of the active ingredient (AI) glyphosate in form of different salts, possibly other AIs,...

Authors: Johann G. Zaller, Maureen Weber, Michael Maderthaner, Edith Gruber, Eszter Takács, Mária Mörtl, Szandra Klátyik, János Győri, Jörg Römbke, Friedrich Leisch, Bernhard Spangl and András Székács

Rule-based classification and mapping of ecosystem services with data on the integrity of forest ecosystems

The state of ecosystems influences their services for humans. Therefore, the European Union aims to assess and map ecosystem conditions and ecosystem services at the level of the Union and the Member States to...

Authors: Angela Schlutow and Winfried Schröder

Interspecific sensitivity of European amphibians towards two pesticides and comparison to standard test species

Although debates about the assessment of potential effects of pesticides on amphibians are ongoing, amphibians are not yet considered in the current EU environmental risk assessment of pesticides. Instead, the...

Authors: Elena Adams, Christoph Leeb, Alexis P. Roodt and Carsten A. Brühl

Leaching of nanoparticles from nano-enabled products for the protection of cultural heritage surfaces: a review

The development of highly innovative techniques and technologies to enhance performance and technical sustainability of materials used in the field of cultural heritage conservation is providing conservators w...

Authors: Andrea Brunelli, Loris Calgaro, Elena Semenzin, Virginia Cazzagon, Elisa Giubilato, Antonio Marcomini and Elena Badetti

Long-term trends of black carbon and particle number concentration in the lower free troposphere in Central Europe

The implementation of emission mitigation policies in Europe over the last two decades has generally improved the air quality, which resulted in lower aerosol particle mass, particle number, and black carbon m...

Authors: Jia Sun, Markus Hermann, Ye Yuan, Wolfram Birmili, Martine Collaud Coen, Kay Weinhold, Leizel Madueño, Laurent Poulain, Thomas Tuch, Ludwig Ries, Ralf Sohmer, Cedric Couret, Gabriele Frank, Benjamin Tobias Brem, Martin Gysel-Beer, Nan Ma…

Methodology for classifying the ecosystem integrity of forests in Germany using quantified indicators

Atmospheric deposition of nitrogen and climate change can have impacts on ecological structures and functions, and thus on the integrity of ecosystems and their services. Operationalization of ecosystem integr...

Authors: Martin Jenssen, Stefan Nickel and Winfried Schröder

Bracken growth, toxin production and transfer from plant to soil: a 2-year monitoring study

Bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum) produces several toxic glycosides, of which ptaquiloside (PTA) is the most well documented. PTA is released from bracken to soil and leaches to surface water and to groundwater....

Authors: Daniel B. García-Jorgensen, Efstathios Diamantopoulos, Vaidotas Kisielius, Mette Rosenfjeld, Lars H. Rasmussen, Bjarne W. Strobel and Hans Chr. B. Hansen

Occurrence of carcinogenic illudane glycosides in drinking water wells

Ptaquiloside (PTA), caudatoside (CAU) and ptesculentoside (PTE) are carcinogenic illudane glycosides found in bracken ferns (Pteridium spp.) world-wide. The environmentally mobile PTA entails both acute and chron...

Authors: Natasa Skrbic, Vaidotas Kisielius, Ann-Katrin Pedersen, Sarah C. B. Christensen, Mathilde J. Hedegaard, Hans Christian Bruun Hansen and Lars Holm Rasmussen

Retrospective non-target analysis to support regulatory water monitoring: from masses of interest to recommendations via in silico workflows

Applying non-target analysis (NTA) in regulatory environmental monitoring remains challenging—instead of having exploratory questions, regulators usually already have specific questions related to environmenta...

Authors: Adelene Lai, Randolph R. Singh, Lubomira Kovalova, Oliver Jaeggi, Todor Kondić and Emma L. Schymanski

Evaluating ecological risks and tracking potential factors influencing heavy metals in sediments in an urban river

Heavy metal pollution of aquatic systems is a global issue that has received considerable attention. Canonical correlation analysis (CCA), principal component analysis (PCA), and potential ecological risk inde...

Authors: Dongping Liu, Jian Wang, Huibin Yu, Hongjie Gao and Weining Xu

Non-lead rifle ammunition: Danish hunters’ attitudes

Lead particles from hunting rifle ammunition become embedded in the tissue of shot animals and pose a health risk to predators and scavengers that eat discarded offal or parts of non-retrieved carcasses of sho...

Authors: Niels Kanstrup, Thorsten Johannes Skovbjerg Balsby, Kavi Askholm Mellerup and Hans Peter Hansen

Differential influences of (±) anatoxin-a on photolocomotor behavior and gene transcription in larval zebrafish and fathead minnows

Though anatoxin-a (antx-a) is a globally important cyanobacterial neurotoxin in inland waters, information on sublethal toxicological responses of aquatic organisms is limited. We examined influences of (±) an...

Authors: Lea M. Lovin, Sujin Kim, Raegyn B. Taylor, Kendall R. Scarlett, Laura M. Langan, C. Kevin Chambliss, Saurabh Chatterjee, J. Thad Scott and Bryan W. Brooks

PFAS accumulation in indigenous and translocated aquatic organisms from Belgium, with translation to human and ecological health risk

Despite specific restrictions on their production and use, per- and polyfluoralkyl substances (PFAS) are still omnipresent in the environment, including aquatic ecosystems. Most biomonitoring studies have inve...

Authors: Lies Teunen, Lieven Bervoets, Claude Belpaire, Maarten De Jonge and Thimo Groffen

Genome-edited Camelina sativa with a unique fatty acid content and its potential impact on ecosystems

‘Genome editing’ is intended to accelerate modern plant breeding enabling a much faster and more efficient development of crops with improved traits such as increased yield, altered nutritional composition, as...

Authors: Katharina Kawall

Quantitative analysis of cadmium in rice roots based on LIBS and chemometrics methods

Excessive cadmium can damage cell structure, inhibit enzyme activity, and affect metabolic process, thus, leading to decline of rice yield and quality. Root is an important organ of crops, the detection of cad...

Authors: Wei Wang, Wenwen Kong, Tingting Shen, Zun Man, Wenjing Zhu, Yong He and Fei Liu

Phytotoxin sorption to clay minerals

Phytotoxins of various classes and origin are often found in their cationic form in the soil environment and thus, their overall soil behavior may be strongly affected by all geosorbents presenting cation exch...

Authors: Carina D. Schönsee, Felix E. Wettstein and Thomas D. Bucheli

Ingestion of bivalve droppings by benthic invertebrates may lead to the transfer of nanomaterials in the aquatic food chain

Manufactured nanomaterials (MNMs) are released into the environment in increasing quantities. Consequently, MNMs also reach the aquatic environment, where they can interact with different organisms. Previous s...

Authors: Sebastian Kuehr, Noemi Diehle, Ralf Kaegi and Christian Schlechtriem

Glass-bottled drinking water: a time capsule to study the historic presence of hazardous chemicals using effect-based methods

Contamination of drinking water by hazardous chemicals can be associated with human health risks. Recent studies using effect-based in vitro methods have demonstrated that a large part of the observed toxic ef...

Authors: Johan Lundqvist, Kenneth M. Persson and Agneta Oskarsson

Bioanalytical screening of low levels of dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs in pig meat (pork) for checking compliance with EU maximum and action levels using highly sensitive “third generation” recombinant H4L7.5c2 rat hepatoma cells

Low maximum and action levels set by the European Union for polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) and dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls (DL-PCBs) in pig meat (pork) have led to a de...

Authors: Johannes Haedrich, Claudia Stumpf and Michael S. Denison

Clustering and prioritization to design a risk-based monitoring program in groundwater sources for drinking water

The number of chemical parameters included in monitoring programs of water utilities increased in the last decade. In accordance with the European Drinking Water Directive, utilities aim at a tailored risk-bas...

Authors: Rosa M. A. Sjerps, Andrea M. Brunner, Yuki Fujita, Bernard Bajema, Martin de Jonge, Patrick S. Bäuerlein, Joost de Munk, Merijn Schriks and Annemarie van Wezel

Occurrence of a single-species cyanobacterial bloom in a lake in Cyprus: monitoring and treatment with hydrogen peroxide-releasing granules

Excess loads of nutrients finding their way into waterbodies can cause rapid and excessive growth of phytoplankton species and lead to the formation of cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cyano-HABs). Toxic c...

Authors: Eleni Keliri, Christia Paraskeva, Angelos Sofokleous, Assaf Sukenik, Dariusz Dziga, Ekaterina Chernova, Luc Brient and Maria G. Antoniou

Carbon footprinting of universities worldwide: Part I—objective comparison by standardized metrics

Universities, as innovation drivers in science and technology worldwide, should be leading the Great Transformation towards a carbon–neutral society and many have indeed picked up the challenge. However, only ...

Authors: Eckard Helmers, Chia Chien Chang and Justin Dauwels

Cyanobacteria and their secondary metabolites in three freshwater reservoirs in the United Kingdom

Bloom-forming cyanobacteria occur globally in aquatic environments. They produce diverse bioactive metabolites, some of which are known to be toxic. The most studied cyanobacterial toxins are microcystins, ana...

Authors: Daria Filatova, Martin R. Jones, John A. Haley, Oscar Núñez, Marinella Farré and Elisabeth M.-L. Janssen

Urban population exposure to air pollution in Europe over the last decades

The paper presents an overview of air quality in the 27 member countries of the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (previous EU-28), from 2000 to 2017. We reviewed the progress made towards meeting the...

Authors: Pierre Sicard, Evgenios Agathokleous, Alessandra De Marco, Elena Paoletti and Vicent Calatayud

Fate of recycled tyre granulate used on artificial turf

The production of granulates as infill for artificial turf is able to process 21% of the end-of-life tyres in Europe, approximately 600 million kg per year. In doing so it avoids an annual CO₂ emission comparable...

Authors: Anja J. Verschoor, Alex van Gelderen and Ulbert Hofstra

Phototransformation kinetics of cyanobacterial toxins and secondary metabolites in surface waters

Cyanobacteria and their toxins occur in high concentrations during the so-called bloom events in surface waters. To be able to assess the risks associated with cyanobacterial blooms, we need to understand the ...

Authors: Regiane Natumi, Sandro Marcotullio and Elisabeth M.-L. Janssen

Occurrence of plant secondary metabolite fingerprints in river waters from Eastern Jutland, Denmark

A large number of chemicals are constantly introduced to surface water from anthropogenic and natural sources. So far, unlike anthropogenic pollutants, naturally occurring compounds are not included in environ...

Authors: Mulatu Yohannes Nanusha, Martin Krauss, Bettina Gro Sørensen, Tobias Schulze, Bjarne W. Strobel and Werner Brack

Does the natural carcinogen ptaquiloside degrade readily in groundwater?

Ptaquiloside (PTA) is a natural carcinogen found in bracken ferns. PTA is released from the plants via soil to surface and groundwaters from where humans can be exposed via drinking water. Primary degradation ...

Authors: Jane S. Wu, Frederik Clauson-Kaas, Dan Nybro Lindqvist, Lars Holm Rasmussen, Bjarne W. Strobel and Hans Christian Bruun Hansen

A novel LUMNAqSoP approach for prioritising groundwater monitoring stations for implementation of the Nitrates Directive

The Nitrates Directive (ND) is an EU anti-pollution legislative that, for almost 30 years, has controlled and protected hydro-resources against excessive levels of nitrates originating from agroecosystems, str...

Authors: G. Ondrasek, H. Bakić Begić, D. Romić, Ž. Brkić, S. Husnjak and M. Bubalo Kovačić