Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology

Health risks at population level may be investigated with different types of environmental studies depending on access to data and funds. Options include ecological studies, case-control studies with individual interviews and human sample analysis, risk assessment or cohort studies. Most public health projects use data and methodologies already available due to the cost of ad-hoc data collection. The aim of the article is to perform a literature review of environmental exposure and health outcomes with main focus on methodologies for assessing an association between water and/or soil pollutants and cancer...

Heavy metal pollution is a global problem although its sources and trends differ by region and time. To data, no published research has reported heavy metal pollution in global rivers and lakes. This study reviewed past sampling data across six continents from 1970 to 2018 and analyzed the trends and sources of 10 heavy metal species in sediments from 289 rivers and 133 lakes. Collectively, river sediments showed increasing trends in Cd, Cr, Ni, Mn, and Co and decreasing trends in Hg, indicating that rivers acted as a sink for the former and a source for the latter...

Heavy metal (HM) contamination is a serious global environmental crisis. Over the past decade, industrial effluents, modern agricultural practices, and other anthropogenic activities have significantly depleted the soil environment. In plants, metal toxicity leads to compromised growth, development, productivity, and yield. Also, HMs negatively affect human health due to food chain contamination. Thus, it is imperative to reduce metal accumulation and toxicity. In nature, certain plant species exhibit an inherent capacity of amassing large amounts of HMs with remarkable tolerance...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Freshwater and marine water bodies receive chemical contaminants from industrial, agricultural, urban, and domestic wastes. Eco-genotoxicity assays are useful tools to assess the cumulative genotoxicity of these pollutants. Fish are suitable indicators for biomonitoring of mutagenic and carcinogenic pollution.In this review, we present a complete overview of the studies performed so far using the micronucleus test in peripheral erythrocytes of fish exposed to polluted water. We have listed all the species of fish used and the geographical distribution of the investigations...

Graphene possesses wider biomedical applications including drug delivery, photothermal ablation of tumors, biosensors, and also in the disease diagnosis. The accidental or intentional exposure of the environment including plants, ecosystem, and humans toward graphene is gradually increasing. Therefore, graphene toxicity becomes a critical issue to be addressed despite their diverse applications in multiple fields. In this situation, the scientific community as well as the general public must get awareness about the toxicity of graphene...

Plastic has been an incredibly useful and indispensable material in all aspects of human life. Without it many advances in medicine, technology or industry would not have been possible. However, its easy accessibility and low cost have led to global misuse. Basically, the production of the plastics from different chemical agents is very easy but unfortunately difficult to reuse or recycle, and it is thrown away as litter, incinerated or disposed of in landfill. Plastic once in the environment begins to degrade to very small sizes...

The impact of ambient particulate matter (PM) on public health has become a great global concern, which is especially prominent in developing countries. For health purposes, PM is typically defined by size, with the smaller particles having more health impacts. Particles with a diameter <2.5 μm are called PM2.5 . Initial research studies have focused on the impact of PM2.5 on respiratory and cardiovascular diseases; nevertheless, an increasing number of data suggested that PM2.5 may affect every organ system in the human body, and the kidney is of no exception...

Glyphosate-resistant (GR) crops, commercially referred to as glyphosate-tolerant (GT), started the revolution in crop biotechnology in 1996. Growers rapidly accepted GR crops whenever they became available and made them the most rapidly adopted technology in agriculture history. Adoption usually meant sole reliance on glyphosate [N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine, CAS No. 1071-83-6] for weed control. Not surprisingly, weeds eventually evolved resistance and are forcing growers to change their weed management practices...

Glyphosate is the most used herbicide globally. It is a unique non-selective herbicide with a mode of action that is ideal for vegetation management in both agricultural and non-agricultural settings. Its use was more than doubled by the introduction of transgenic, glyphosate-resistant (GR) crops. All of its phytotoxic effects are the result of inhibition of only 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS), but inhibition of this single enzyme of the shikimate pathway results in multiple phytotoxicity effects, both upstream and downstream from EPSPS, including loss of plant defenses against pathogens...

The aim of the present review was to give an overview of the current state of science concerning herbicide exposure and toxicity to aquatic primary producers. To this end we assessed the open literature, revealing the widespread presence of (mixtures of) herbicides, inevitably leading to the exposure of non-target primary producers. Yet, herbicide concentrations show strong temporal and spatial variations. Concerning herbicide toxicity, it was concluded that the most sensitive as well as the least sensitive species differed per herbicide and that the observed effect concentrations for some herbicides were rather independent from the exposure time...

Urban yellow dust deposition is a common phenomenon in many parts of the world, which is sometimes called "sulfur shower," "sulfur rain," or "pollen storm." Most people, especially those living in the vicinity of industrial facilities, wrongly perceive the yellow dust as sulfur when in fact it is pollen. The misunderstanding increases risk perception as people believe the "yellow powder" is a serious threat to their health. Based on simple observations, it is virtually impossible to differentiate sulfur from pollen, so risk communication should consider the chemical, biological, and toxicological aspects of these agents...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Carbamazepine (CBZ) is among the ten most frequent pharmaceuticals that occur in the aquatic systems, with known effects on inhabiting organisms, including bivalves. Bivalves are important species in coastal ecosystems, often exhibiting a dominant biomass within invertebrate communities. These organisms play a major role in the functioning of the ecosystem and particularly in food webs (as suspension-feeders) and represent a significant fraction of the fisheries resource. They also have strong interactions with the environment, water and sediment and are considered good bioindicator species...

The intensity of emerging pollutants such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the aquatic and terrestrial environment is a major source of concern to researchers. The current conventional methods of wastewater treatment plants are considered not efficient enough in the complete removal of the recalcitrant contaminants from water. The use of modified transition metals in visible responsive synthesis to degrade PPCPs and other pollutants (organic and inorganic) is considered as a developing green chemistry and sustainable technology...

Levonorgestrel is one of the active ingredients of oral contraceptives detected in the aquatic environment at concentrations in the order of ng/L. During the past decade, a wealth of new information about levonorgestrel has been produced, with several studies having reported negative effects in the reproduction and growth of aquatic organisms after exposure to this emerging contaminant of concern. In the present study, the data about its levels in water and its effects on aquatic organisms were integrated and used to perform an updated preliminary aquatic risk assessment for levonorgestrel based on the guideline for Environmental Risk Assessment of Medicinal Products for Human Use from the European Medicines Agency...

The occupational exposure to airborne manganese (Mn) has been linked for decades with neurological effects. With respect to its environmental exposure, the first reviews on this matter stated that the risk posed to human health by this kind of exposure was still unknown. Later, many studies have been developed to analyze the association between environmental Mn exposure and health effects, most of them including the measure of Mn in selected human biomarkers. This review aims at collecting and organizing the literature dealing with the environmental airborne Mn exposure (other routes of exposure were intentionally removed from this review), the biomonitoring of this metal in different body matrices (e...

Increasing production and utilization of cerium oxide nanoparticles (CNPs) in recent years have raised wide concerns about their toxicity. Numerous studies have been conducted to reveal the toxicity of CNPs, but the results are sometimes contradictory. In this review, the most important factors in mediating CNPs toxicity are discussed, including (1) the roles of physicochemical properties (size, morphology, agglomeration condition, surface charge, coating and surface valence state) on CNPs toxicity; (2) the phase transfer and transformation process of CNPs in various aqueous, terrestrial, and airborne environments; and (3) reductive dissolution of CNPs core and their chemical reactions with phosphate, sulfate/S2- , and ferrous ions...

The original version of the chapter was inadvertently published with a couple of fundamental mistakes in the Conclusion section on page 36.