PCBs

The use of electronic waste in cement concrete as a fibre additive has proven to be very promising for improving mechanical characteristics and developing sustainable construction materials to reduce the waste dumped in landfills. The following study investigated the effect of electronic waste (printed circuit boards (PCBs)) on the mechanical properties of concrete and predicted the same properties with an appropriate machine learning technique. PCB fibres 45 mm in length and 1.5 mm in width were manufactured and added as fibre additions to two sets of concrete mixes with and without silica fume...

With industrialisation and the rapidly growing agricultural demand, many organic compounds have been leaked into the environment, causing serious damage to the biosphere. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are a type of toxic chemicals that are resistant to degradation through normal chemical, biological or photolytic approaches. With their stable chemical structures, POPs can be accumulated in the environment, and transported through wind and water, causing global environmental issues. Many researches have been conducted to remediate POPs contamination using various kinds of biological methods, and significant results have been seen...

Nanoplastics (NPs) and persistent organic pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are ubiquitous aquatic pollutants. The coexistence of these pollutants in the environment emphasises the need to study their combined toxicity. NPs can cross biological membranes and act as vectors for other pollutants, whereas PCBs are known for their ability to bioaccumulate and biomagnify. The present work aimed to study the combined toxicity of polystyrene NPs and PCB-153 using physiological (development, heart rate, respiration), behavioural (swimming behaviour) and molecular (transcriptome) endpoints in zebrafish larvae...

Rayon microfibers, micro-sized semi-synthetic polymers derived from cellulose, have been frequently detected and reported as "micropollutants" in marine environments. However, there has been limited research on their ecotoxicity and combined effects with persistent organic pollutants (POPs). To address these knowledge gaps, thick-shell mussels (Mytilus coruscus) were exposed to rayon microfibers at 1000 pieces/L, along with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) at 100 and 1000 ng/L for 14 days, followed by a 7-day recovery period...

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are persistent organic pollutants that pose a current ecosystem and human health concern. PCB exposure impacts the gut microbiome in animal models, suggesting a mechanistic link between PCB exposure and adverse health outcomes. The presence and absence of the microbiome and exposure to PCBs independently affect the lipid composition in the liver, which in turn affects the PCB disposition in target tissues, such as the liver. Here, we investigated microbiome × subacute PCB effects on the hepatic lipid composition of conventional and germ-free female mice exposed to 0, 6, or 30mg/kg body weight of an environmental PCB mixture in sterile corn oil once daily for 3 consecutive days...

Environmental chemicals have been indicated to cause disruption of thyroid homeostasis in human populations. However, previous studies mostly focused on single group of chemicals. Herein, we investigate the independent and combined effects of multiple pollutants on thyroid homeostasis, including thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), total and free thyroxine (tT4 and fT4) and total and free triiodothyronine (tT3 and fT3) in elderly people. These environmental pollutants (n = 144) are from ten categories, including phenols, parabens, perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), phthalate esters (PAEs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), organophosphate pesticides (OPPs), synthetic pyrethroids (SPs), herbicides, and metals...

The prevalence of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) continues to increase due in part to the obesity epidemic and to environmental exposures to metabolism disrupting chemicals. A single gavage exposure of male mice to Aroclor 1260 (Ar1260), an environmentally relevant mixture of non-dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), resulted in steatohepatitis and altered RNA modifications in selenocysteine tRNA 34 weeks post-exposure. Unbiased approaches identified the liver proteome, selenoproteins, and levels of 25 metals...

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are endocrine-disrupting chemicals that have been associated with various adverse health conditions. Herein we explored the associations of PCBs with dyslipidemia and further assessed the modification effect of genetic susceptibility and lifestyle factors. Six serum PCBs (PCB-28, 101, 118, 138, 153, 180) were determined in 3845 participants from the Wuhan-Zhuhai cohort. Dyslipidemia, including hyper-total cholesterol (HyperTC), hyper-triglyceride (HyperTG), hyper-low density lipoprotein cholesterol (HyperLDL-C), and hypo-high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HypoHDL-C) were determined, and lipid-specific polygenic risk scores (PRS) and healthy lifestyle score were constructed...

During the manufacturing process of printed circuit boards (PCBs), quality defects can occur, which can affect the performance and reliability of PCBs. Existing deep learning-based PCB defect detection methods are difficult to simultaneously achieve the goals of high detection accuracy, fast detection speed, and small number of parameters. Therefore, this paper proposes a PCB defect detection algorithm based on CDI-YOLO. Firstly, the coordinate attention mechanism (CA) is introduced to improve the backbone and neck network of YOLOv7-tiny, enhance the feature extraction capability of the model, and thus improve the accuracy of model detection...

This review summarises our two decades of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) monitoring in different marine organisms along the eastern Adriatic Sea. The aim was to gain an insight into the trends of PCB distribution in order to evaluate the effectiveness of past and current legislation and suggest further action. Here we mainly focus on PCB levels in wild and farmed Mediterranean mussels, wild and farmed bluefin tuna, loggerhead sea turtles, common bottlenose dolphins, and small pelagic fish. The use of artificial intelligence and advanced statistics enabled an insight into the influence of various variables on the uptake of PCBs in the investigated organisms as well as into their mutual dependence...

In 2022 the World Health Organization (WHO) published updated 'Toxic Equivalence Factors' (TEFs) for a wide variety of chlorinated dioxins, dibenzofurans and PCBs [collectively referred to as 'dioxin-like chemicals'; DLCs) that interact with the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR)]. Their update used sophisticated statistical analysis of hundreds of published studies that reported estimation of 'Relative Effective Potency' (REP) values for individual DLC congeners. The weighting scheme used in their assessment of each study favored in vivo over in vitro studies and was based largely on rodent studies...

Inhalation of PCB-contaminated air is increasingly recognized as a route for PCB exposure. Because limited information about the disposition of PCBs following inhalation exposure is available, this study investigated the disposition of 2,2',5,5'-tetrachlorobiphenyl (PCB52) and its metabolites in rats following acute, nose-only inhalation of PCB52. Male and female Sprague-Dawley rats (50-58 days of age, 210 ± 27 g; n = 6) were exposed for 4 h by inhalation to approximately 14 or 23 μg/kg body weight of PCB52 using a nose-only exposure system...

Multilayer printed circuit boards (PCBs) can be produced not only in the traditional way but also additively. Both traditional and additive manufacturing can lead to invisible defects in the internal structure of the electronic component, eventually leading to the spontaneous failure of the device. No matter what kind of technology is used for the production of PCBs, when they are used in important structures, quality control is important to ensure the reliability of the component. The nondestructive testing (NDT) of the structure of manufactured electronic components can help ensure the quality of devices...

Recently, the investigation of the dielectric properties of glasses in the GHz frequency range has attracted great interest for use in printed circuit boards (PCBs) as a reinforcing material in the application of high-speed 5G/6G communications. In particular, glasses with low dielectric properties are a prerequisite for high-frequency applications. In this study, the GHz dielectric properties of alkali-free aluminoborosilicate glasses without and with La2 O3 were analyzed using the Clausius-Mossotti equation where both the electronic and ionic polarizabilities contribute to the dielectric constant...

Food authorities aim to safeguard our food. This requires sensitive analyses to guarantee detection of both banned and regulated substances at low concentrations. At the same time, broad screening methods are needed to identify new emerging risks. For this purpose, effect-based bioassays combined with mass spectrometric analyses offer an advantage. During the regular monitoring of dioxins in agricultural products, a discrepancy was observed between the results of the DR CALUX (Dioxin-Responsive Chemical Activated Luciferase gene Expression) bioassay and the confirmatory gas chromatographic high resolution mass spectrometric (GC-HRMS) analysis in egg and broiler fat samples...

Critical care physicians are commonly faced with patients exhibiting atrial fibrillation (AF), a cardiac arrhythmia with multifaceted origins. Recent investigations shed light on the heterogeneity among AF patients by uncovering unique AF phenotypes, characterized by differing treatment strategies and clinical outcomes. In this retrospective study encompassing 9401 AF patients in an intensive care cohort, we sought to identify differences in average treatment effects (ATEs) across different patient groups. We extract data from the MIMIC-III database, use hierarchical agglomerative clustering to identify patients' phenotypes, and assign them to treatment groups based on their initial drug administration during AF episodes...

This work presents a low-cost transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) instrument for nucleic acid detection, employing an Arduino Nano microcontroller. The cooling system includes customized printed circuit boards (PCBs) that serve as electrical resistors and incorporate fans. An aluminum block is designed to accommodate eight vials. The system also includes two PCB heaters-one for sample heating and the other for vial lid heating to prevent condensation. The color detection system comprises a TCS3200 color 8-sensor array coupled to one side of the aluminum heater body and a white 8-LED array coupled to the other side, controlled by two Multiplexer/Demultiplexer devices...

The current study examined the level of Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in tumor and blood serum of female breast cancer patients and control individuals recruited from Punjab, Pakistan. Breast tumor and blood serum from 40 patients and only blood serum from ten control subjects were obtained and concentration of 32 PCB congeners was analyzed through Gas chromatography coupled with Mass spectrophotometry. Sociodemographic variables of the patients along with essential clinical and haematological parameters were taken as covariates...

UNLABELLED: Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are bioaccumulative persistent organic pollutants with a great impact on cetaceans. To examine the content of PCBs and their risks to finless porpoises, this study determined the concentrations of seven typical PCB congeners in 56 tissue samples of East Asian finless porpoises (EAFPs) sampled in 2009-2012 from Ningbo (29.8835° N, 122.0644° E), Pingtan (25.5133° N, 119.8172° E) and Lvsi (32.1035° N, 121.6078° E)...

The occurrence of persistent organic pollutants like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in food represents a public health concern. The BfR MEAL Study was initiated to generate a comprehensive data base of occurrence data for chemicals in the most consumed foods in Germany. Non-dioxin-like PCBs (NDL-PCBs) and PBDEs were analysed in 300 foods, purchased and prepared representatively for the eating behaviour of the population in Germany. Highest levels of NDL-PCBs and PBDEs were detected in spiny dogfish, cod liver, herring, and eel...