Erin R Bennett

University of Windsor · Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research

A citation analysis was completed on articles published in Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology over the period of 1966–2009. Articles were grouped into 5 year intervals and the top 50 most-cited papers in each year interval were categorized according to research theme. Over the journal’s history, articles in the toxicity research...

This 177-page book in English titled "Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology" is volume 222 in its series. The book contains 4 individually authored chapters. Specific topics discussed include persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity of halogen-free flame retardants, radiation exposure and adverse health effects of interventional c...

Energy managers in public agencies are subject to multiple and sometimes conflicting policy objectives regarding cost, environmental, and security concerns associated with alternative energy technologies. Making infrastructure investment decisions requires balancing different distributions of risks and benefits that are far from clear. For example,...

Evaluation of dredged material for aquatic placement requires assessment of bioaccumulation potentials for benthic organisms using standardized laboratory bioaccumulation tests. Critical to the interpretation of these data is the assessment of steady state for bioaccumulated residues needed to generate biota sediment accumulation factors (BSAFs) an...

Fuel delivery to forward operating bases (FOBs) in Afghanistan and Iraq is problematic. Fuel in transit requires personnel and equipment for storage, handling, transport, and protection. More importantly, attacks to fuel convoys accounted for more than 50% and 30% of casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively during 2009. Therefore, reducing f...

Pesticide contamination of surface waters has been a global concern for decades. In agricultural areas, pesticides enter receiving waters through irrigation and storm runoff, spray drift, or even atmospheric deposition. Management practices incorporating vegetation and phytoremediation have demonstrated success in reducing pesticide loads to rivers...

The concept of energy conservation is now deeply entrenched in building design and operation. Typical approaches take a first law perspective that seeks to reduce energy quantity losses at individual system components. While this conventional approach often results in energy savings, it is not sufficient to realize ultra-low energy communities. How...

Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes) is a valuable model organism in reproductive and developmental toxicity testing. The purpose of this experiment is to assess the response of medaka to aquatic estrogen exposure over the course of 1 year. Each week, three pairs of adult male medaka were exposed separately for 4 days (100% static renewal daily) to 17...

Reliable, up-front information on physical and biological properties of emerging materials is essential before making a decision and investment to formulate, synthesize, scale-up, test, and manufacture a new material for use in both military and civilian applications. Multiple quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSARs) software tools are...

Nanomaterials and their associated technologies hold promising opportunities for the development of new materials and applications in a wide variety of disciplines, including medicine, environmental remediation, waste treatment, and energy conservation. However, current information regarding the environmental effects and health risks associated wit...

Constructed wetlands are a suggested best management practice to help mitigate agricultural runoff before entering receiving aquatic ecosystems. A constructed wetland system (180 m × 30 m), comprising a sediment retention basin and two treatment cells, was used to determine the fate and transport of simulated runoff containing the pyrethroid insect...

Reliable estimates of physical and biochemical properties of novel energetic compounds are essential before making the investment to synthesize, scale-up, and manufacture a new material for use in either military or civilian applications. Quantitative Structure-Activity Relation-ship (QSAR) software tools are available for predicting the physicoche...

About the book: Many potential questions regarding the risks associated with the development and use of wide-ranging technologies enabled through engineered nanomaterials. For example, with over 600 consumer products available globally, what information exists that describes their risk to human health and the environment? What en- neering or use co...

Traditional risk assessment procedures are inadequate for predicting the ecological risks associated with the release of nanomaterials (NM) into the environment. The root of the problem lies in an inadequate application of solid phase chemical principles (e.g. particle size, shape, functionality) for the risk assessment of NMs. Thus, the “solubilit...

In intensively cultivated areas, agriculture is a significant source of pesticides associated with storm runoff. When these pollutants enter aquatic receiving waters, they have potential to damage nearby aquatic ecosystems. Constructed wetlands are a best management practice (BMP) designed to help alleviate this potential problem. A constructed wet...

The influence of seasonal changes in water conditions and parameters on several major pharmacologically active compounds (PhACs) and s-triazine herbicides was assessed in the wastewater and sewage treatment plant (WSTP) effluent as well as the downstream surface water from sites on the Canadian side of the upper Detroit River, between the Little Ri...

The depletion and degradation of pharmacologically active compounds (PhACs) and pesticides as a function of ozonation in drinking water treatment processes is not well studied. The A.H. Weeks drinking water treatment plant (DWTP) serves the City of Windsor, Ontario Canada, and incorporates ozone treatment into the production of drinking water. This...

A pesticide runoff event was simulated on two 10 m x 50 m constructed wetlands (one non-vegetated, one vegetated) to evaluate the fate of methyl parathion (MeP) (Penncap-M). Water, sediment, and plant samples were collected at five sites downstream of the inflow for 120 d. Semi-permeable membrane devices (SPMDs) were deployed at each wetland outflo...

The effectiveness of aquatic macrophytes in reducing runoff- and spray-drift-induced azinphos-methyl (AZP) input was compared in a vegetated stream. Water, sediment and plant samples were taken at increasing distances from a point of input during a spray-drift event and two runoff (10 and 22 mm/day) events. Peak concentrations of AZP decreased sign...

An increasing amount of research has focused on alternate methods to mitigate pesticide exposure in agricultural surface waters. The interception of spray-drift-derived azinphos-methyl (AZP) by emergent aquatic macrophytes was investigated in a tributary of the Lourens River, South Africa. The stream was dominated (80% coverage) by three species of...

Drainage ditches are indispensable components of the agricultural production landscape. A benefit of these ditches is contaminant mitigation of agricultural storm runoff. This study determined bifenthrin and lambda-cyhalothrin (two pyrethroid insecticides) partitioning and retention in ditch water, sediment, and plant material as well as estimated...

Triclosan (5-chloro-2-(2,4-dichlorophenoxy)phenol) is an antimicroibial disinfectant agent used in a wide array of consumer products. An analytical method based on solid-phase extraction (SPE) followed by reverse phase, liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization (negative)-tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry (LC-ESI(-)-MS/MS; in the...

Soils contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs) represent a potentially major, ongoing source of these compounds to the environment, especially during warmer temperatures. A great deal of work has been devoted to understanding the mechanisms that govern the vaporization of SVOCs from soil, b...

Wetland ecosystems have reduced ambient levels of various organic and metallic compounds, although their effectiveness on agricultural pesticides is not well documented. Five stations within each of two 10 x 50 m constructed wetlands (two vegetated, two nonvegetated) were selected to measure the fate and effects of methyl parathion (MeP). Following...

Persistent methyl sulfone (MeSO2-) and hydroxylated (HO-) polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) metabolites have emerged as important classes of environmental contaminants in vertebrate, aquatic biota and humans. In the present study, PCB, MeSO2-PCB and HO-PCB concentrations and congener patterns were determined in the whole blood and adipose tissue of ma...

Since 1998, two vegetated agricultural drainage ditches within the Mississippi Delta Management Systems Evaluation Area (MDMSEA) have been used to determine whether ditches can effectively mitigate concentrations of pesticides associated with runoff. Through simulated storm events, pesticides and water were amended into drainage ditches at concentr...

Vegetated agricultural ditches play an important role in mitigation of pesticides following irrigation and storm runoff events. In a simulated runoff event in the Mississippi (USA) Delta, the mitigation capacity of a drainage ditch using the pyrethroid esfenvalerate (Asana XL) was evaluated. The pesticide was amended to soil prior to the runoff eve...

Methyl-parathion (MeP) was introduced into constructed wetlands for the purpose of assessing the importance of distance from the source of contamination and the role of emergent vegetation on the acute toxicity to Hyalella azteca (Crustacea: Amphipoda). A vegetated (90% cover: mainly Juncus effuses) and a nonvegetated wetland (each with a water bod...

Our knowledge about the effectiveness of constructed wetlands in retaining agricultural nonpoint-source pesticide pollution is limited. A 0.44-ha vegetated wetland built along a tributary of the Lourens River, Western Cape, South Africa, was studied to ascertain the retention, fate, and effects of spray drift-borne azinphos-methyl (AZP). Composite...

Methyl parathion (MeP) was introduced into constructed wetlands for the purpose of assessing the influence of emergent vegetation on transport and toxicity of the pesticide. Two vegetated (90% cover, mainly Juncus effusus) and two nonvegetated wetland cells (each with a water body of 50 x 5.5 x 0.2 m) were each dosed with 6.5 m3 of water containing...

Halogenated phenolic contaminants (HPCs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and other organochlorine (OC) contaminants (DDTs, chlordanes, HCH, and octachlorostyrene (OCS)) were determined (ng/g, wet wt basis) in the blood plasma of 6 piscivorous/pelagic- and 7 benthic-feeding fish species from the Detroit River. Seven to twelve hydroxylated (OH) PC...

Drainage ditches are integral components of agricultural production landscape, yet their contaminant mitigation capacity has been scarcely examined. If ditches are indeed capable of contaminant mitigation, then their use may serve as an alternative agricultural best management practice (BMP). A 50m portion of an agricultural drainage ditch, located...

Contamination of sediments in the Detroit River has been shown to have impacts upon the health of benthic fish in direct contact with the sediments. It was hypothesized that hydrophobic contaminants partition from sediments into the aqueous phase in the Detroit River, subsequently bioaccumulating in fish and causing toxic effects. In order to asses...

The time course of exposure to p-nonylphenol (NP) from two different sources was compared to equivalent exposures of 17-beta-estradiol (E2) and a solvent control (ethanol; EtOH). Japanese medaka were exposed for 4 days to a nominal concentration of 20 micrograms/l of either NP-I (Schenectady International, Inc.), NP-II (Aldrich), or E2, and were th...

Triclosan is an antibacterial agent commonly used in industry and often detected in waste-water effluent. The potential of triclosan to act as an endocrine disruptor was examined because its chemical structure closely resembles known non-steroidal estrogens (e.g. DES, bisphenol A). Japanese medaka fry (Oryzias latipes) were exposed for 14 days begi...

Degradation of alkylphenol ethoxylate (APEO) surfactants in the environment leads to the formation of relatively hydrophobic compounds such as nonylphenol (NP), octylphenol (OP), nonylphenol monoethoxylate (NP1EO), and nonylphenol diethoxylate (NP2EO) that have been shown to have estrogenic activity. Previous studies have shown that sewage treatmen...

Alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEOs) are a group of non-ionic surfactants that are degraded microbially into more lipophilic degradation products with estrogenic potential, including nonylphenol monoethoxylate (NP1EO), nonylphenol diethoxylate (NP2EO), octylphenol (4-tOP) and nonylphenol (4-NP). Nonylphenol ethoxylates are used in paper recycling plants...

Alkylphenol polyethoxylates are a major class of nonionic surfactants that are microbially degraded in sewage treatment plants (STPs) and sediments to more toxic and hydrophobic alkylphenols. Recent data on the estrogenic activity of alkylphenols has prompted interest in the distribution of these compounds in the aquatic environment. Sediment sampl...

Semi-permeable membrane devices (SPMDs) were deployed for 4 weeks (May-June, 1994) at 8 sites in the Otonabee River, Ontario, Canada, and subsequently extracted for analysis of PCBs and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The concentrations of PCBs were elevated in the SPMDs deployed in Little Lake at the upstream end of this system, which re...

Studies have shown that runoff and spray-drift are important sources of nonpoint-source pesticide pollution of surface waters. Owing to this, public concern over the presence of pesticides in surface and ground water has resulted in intensive scientific efforts to find economical, yet environmentally sound solutions to the problem. The primary obje...