Manish Kumar

Tecnológico de Monterrey | ITESM · Escuela de Ingeniería y Ciencias - School of Engineering and Sciences

Soakaway sediment trapped in urban infiltration facilities exhibits high heavy metal content that makes it an important diffuse pollution source of groundwater contamination. In this study, heavymetal (Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb) content, speciation and stable isotopic variation of Pb in soakaway sediments were coupled and compared with soils (surface and u...

Phosphorous (P) fractionation of the surficial sediment of high altitude lakes (HAL) i.e. P.T.Tso and Sella lakes of Arunachal Pradesh State, India were studied with an objective to investigate the phosphorus availability in the environment, nutrient status of the lake and the role of climate change. Moreover, the variation in phosphorous fraction...

Considerable lacunae exists in As and F(-) co-contamination investigation in the Brahmaputra and Gangetic floodplains. Therefore we selected Diphu a township in the Karbi Plateau rising from the Brahmaputra floodplains for evaluation of As and F co-occurrence, correlation with coexisting ions of the aquifer system and elucidation of potential proce...

This paper aims to emphasize the occurrence of various emerging contaminant (EC) mixtures in natural ecosystems and highlights the primary concern arising from the unregulated release into soil and water, along with their impacts on human health. Emerging contaminant mixtures, including pharmaceuticals, personal care products, dioxins, polychlorina...

We conducted laboratory experiments under varied solar radiation and salinity levels to investigate their influences on the natural attenuation of multiple promising microbial indicators including fecal bacteria and two types of bacteriophages. Inactivation coefficients were estimated and compared following first-order kinetics. Somatic coliphage w...

Heavy metals (HMs) in indoor dust are among the most toxic micropollutants and have attracted mainly the attention of researchers in the last three decades concerning the environmental and human health perspectives. Hence, a thorough literature-based bibliometric analysis was inevitably needed to identify the research trend for the prevalence of HM...

In order to stop the spread of infectious diseases, appropriate public health measures, such as lockdowns and limitations, were urgently needed, as highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Establishing a compromise between pandemic prevention and environmental sustainability is crucial as we go into the post-COVID future. The significance of environme...

The COVID-19 pandemic had a lasting effect on the world and destroyed life everywhere. The worldwide outbreak has increased the demand for single-use plastics, putting an already tremendous strain on the world’s plastic waste problem. The COVID-19 outbreak severely threatens human society and still there is widespread fear. This chapter highlights...

The SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact leading to rates of illness and death. People affected by COVID-19 often develop fungal infections, some of which are resistant, to common treatments. These resistant infections have been associated with outcomes and fatalities. This chapter explores the correlation between C...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a serious global danger to human health. The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic has sparked interest in studying both the consequences of such medical catastrophes on our environment and the techno-economic crisis they have brought about. Unusual situations frequently necessitate extraordinary responses....

Biochar, a promising carbon-rich and carbon-negative material, can control water pollution, harness the synergy of sustainable development goals, and achieve circular economy. This study examined the performance feasibility of treating fluoride-contaminated surface and groundwater using raw and modified biochar synthesized from agricultural waste r...

Nitrate contamination in groundwater poses a significant threat to water quality and public health, especially in regions with limited data availability. This study addresses this challenge by employing machine learning (ML) techniques to predict nitrate (NO3--N) concentrations in Mexico's groundwater. Four ML algorithms-Extreme Gradient Boosting (...

In the present work, we present an eight-month longitudinal study of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) in Ahmedabad, India, where wastewater surveillance was introduced in September 2020 after the successful containment of the first wave of COVID-19 to predict the resurge of the infection during the second wave of the pandemic. The study aims to...

This work includes that application of agro wastes in polymer composites are trending at present due to the enormous potential available in the area of biopolymer composites. Due to the increasing production of various composites, there will be a major portion of plastic waste in the form of composite polymer. Rice husk, wood floor, sunnhemp, inorg...

The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic has stoked interest in researching not only the techno-economic crisis that it has caused but also the effects which occurred due to such medical emergencies on our environment. An attempt has been made to critically review detailed overview of different aspects of environmental issues like elevated...

Catastrophic increase in urbanisation and industrialisation along the coastal region leads to increased stress on groundwater reservoirs worldwide. As a growing economy, India faces extreme water crises due to rising water demand and escalating salinisation, specifically in the coastal districts. Therefore, this study shows the implication of a com...

We quantified the occurrences and seasonal variations of the target Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) at four (two major municipals, and two academic institutions) WWTPs in Dehradun city, Uttarakhand, India. The results showed estrone in higher concentrations at μgL-1 levels in influent among the WWTPs, compared to triclosan (TCS) at ngL-1 leve...

We produced carbon-negative biochar from the pyrolysis of sawdust biomass alone (SB) and from the co-pyrolysis of sawdust and plastic waste (SPB). The co-pyrolysis approach in this study was driven by several hypothetical factors, such as increased porosity, surface chemistry, stability, as well as waste management. We applied pyrolyzed and co-pyro...

Presently, there are limited techniques to identify submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) zones in the coastal regions due to the dynamic and invisible nature of the phenomenon driven by natural and anthropogenic factors. The driving factors for SGD include but are not limited to groundwater potential (hydraulic head), groundwater occurrence (type...

Various catalysts are being used in fuel production from biomass and polymeric waste for the obtention of an alternative energy source with both environmental friendliness and economic viability. Biochar, red mud bentonite, and calcium oxide have been shown to play a pertinent role as catalysts in waste-to-fuel conversion processes, such as transes...

Reusing sewage water for crop irrigation becomes necessary due to freshwater scarcity, and groundwater depletion. Although the suitability of using treated sewage for crop irrigation remains a topic of argument among government authorities and policymakers. In light of this, this review article summarizes the present global situation and techniques...

Micro and nano-plastics (MNPs) have been considered one of the major emerging contaminants that require immediate attention. Their potential impact on the natural ecosystems is yet to be understood, especially their associations with other contaminants like heavy metals and organisms essential for the sustenance of life, i.e., microbes. Microplasti...

Avirulent halotolerant plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (HPGPR) located on the roots' periphery can reduce abiotic stressors (such as salinity and drought), enhance plant productivity. Salinity poses a significant challenge for growing agricultural products, like rice, in the coastal regions. It is crucial to enhance production because of limit...

Sun hemp fibers are natural fibers obtained from plants grown in India and nearby countries. It is lignocellulosic biomass having the complex structure of hemicelluloses, cellulose and lignin. Chemical treatment of natural fibers is in practice to enhance the properties being used as reinforcement. Alkaline-treated fiber was sampled and thermal sta...

Sun hemp fibers are natural fibers obtained from plants grown in India and nearby countries. It is lignocellulosic biomass having the complex structure of hemicelluloses, cellulose and lignin. Chemical treatment of natural fibers is in practice to enhance the properties being used as reinforcement. Alkaline-treated fiber was sampled and thermal sta...

TGA at three heating rates is performed to access the kinetics of treated sunnhemp. • KAS, FWO, Friedman and Starink methods used to find activation energy of pyrolysis. • Pre exponential factor (A) is calculated using DAEM method. • Linear relationship between E a and ln A is established with R 2 = 0.95. • Standard deviation calculated to validate...

The paper reviews the widely used heavy metal pollution indices (HPIs) in water, soil, and sediments and pre- sents their numerical equation and application in various fields. HPIs are an essential and efficient tool to mea- sure metal contamination in the environmental system. The present study includes twenty pollution indices from water, soil, a...

Growing industrialization and urbanization along the coastal regions are the potential sources of emerging contaminants that escalate the concentration of contaminants such as pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs), microplastic (MPs), Pesticides, herbicides, and endocrine-disrupting compounds. Among all the PPCPs are frequently found in...

We present the use of root zone treatment (RZT) based system for the removal of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) from domestic wastewater. The occurrence of more than a dozen PPCPs were detected in an academic institution wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) at three specific locations, i.e., influent, root treatment zone, and effluen...

Aromatic hydrocarbons are persistent pollutants in aquatic systems as endocrine disruptors, significantly impacting natural ecosystems and human health. Microbes perform as natural bioremediators to remove and regulate aromatic hydrocarbons in the marine ecosystem. The present study focuses upon the comparative diversity and abundance of various hy...

Groundwater has become an indispensable source of irrigation and drinking water. Industrial dependence on groundwater has also increased drastically. This has led to the rapid exploitation of groundwater. There is accelerating concern about the depletion of groundwater water levels and the deterioration of groundwater quality due to geogenic and an...

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has been demonstrated for its great potential in tracking of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) transmission among populations despite some inherent methodological limitations. These include non-optimized sampling approaches and analytical methods; stability of viruses in sewer systems; partitioning/retention in...

Fluoride (F⁻) contamination in water is a global health concern, threatening the well-being of millions. This study investigated the role of ZnCl2/FeCl3-rice husk-modified biochar (Zn-BC and Zn/Fe-BC) in treating F⁻-contaminated surface and groundwater under the influence of varying solution chemistry, co-existing ions, and biochar-amended through...

Over the decades, there has been an increase in the number of Emerging Contaminants (ECs) in different aquatic compartments. These ECs do have a direct effect on marine organisms and indirect impacts on human health. Numerous studies regarding the ECs detection, fate, and health impacts are confined to developed nations. Indian River systems have r...

In the recent times, multi-metal co-contamination in the groundwater of various parts of the globe has emerged as a challenging environmental health problem. While arsenic (As) has been reported with high fluoride and at times with uranium; and Cr & Pb are also found in aquifers under high anthropogenic impacts. The present work probably for the fi...

The pinnacle of all the efforts of nutrient removal is practically put-down the moment biological cells are lysed, hydrolyzed or digested causing subsequent reappearance of assimilated nitrogen and phosphorus in any biological process. While sludge reduction requires high SRT, the enhanced phosphorus assimilative uptake demands low SRT. A novel rea...

We present a simplified status description of the prevalence and occurrences of organic micropollutants including endocrine disruptive chemicals (EDCs), therapeutic drugs, hormones, fragrances and ultraviolet (UV) filters in the wastewaters and the adjacent coastal oceans in the Northern and Southern Antarctica. Different treatment technologies ado...

Reclaimed water is highly required for environmental sustainability and to meet sustainable development goals (SDGs). Chemical processes are frequently associated with highly hazardous and toxic by-products, like nitrosamines, trihalomethanes, haloaldehydes, haloketones, and haloacetic acids. In this context, we aim to summarize the formation of va...

Microplastics (MPs) are non-biodegradable substances that can sustain our environment for up to a century. What is more worrying is the incapability of modern technologies to annihilate MPs from om environment. One ramification of MPs is their impact on every kind of life form on this planet, which has been discussed ahead; that is why these substa...

Black Carbon (BC) is an important constituent of both aquatic and terrestrial environment, but also has several adverse effects on human health, aquatic life, and contributes to the global climate change. Thus, to understand the fate and transport of BC nanoparticles (NPs) in the environment, it's important to understand the colloidal stability or...

Photochemical transformation of pharmaceuticals plays an important role in their natural attenuation, especially in lagoon-based wastewater treatment plants and surface waters receiving substantial sunlight. In this study, the photodegradation of five important pharmaceuticals was studied in samples obtained from a wastewater treatment plant and su...

Various studies have been conducted on the perfluorochemicals (PFCs) family over the years. These compounds have been sought in various industrial aspects involving the synthesis of everyday utilities due to their broad range of applications. As a result, PFCs have built up in the environment, causing concern. The presence of PFCs in various enviro...

The global production of PPCPs have increased by multiple folds promoting excessive exposure of its metabolites to humans via different aquatic systems. The higher residence time of toxic precursors of these metabolites pose direct human health risk. Among the different aquatic systems, the contamination of groundwater by PPCPs is the most concerni...

This work primarily emphases on evaluating the prevalence of organic micropollutants (OMPs) in the perennial Yamuna River (YR) that flow through the national capital of India, Delhi. Sixteen sampling campaigns (non-monsoon, n = 9; monsoon n = 7) were organized to understand the seasonal variations with special emphasis on monsoon. We have found fif...

This works examines the entire spectrum of ‘Environmental Surveillance (EnvSurv)’ of SARS-CoV-2 fragments i.e. the Questions, Quests, and Conquests of the technology since early year 2020. The prime focus of the present work to document the journey with achieved objectives and remaining ambitions associated with the technology. Despite the EnvSurv...

Groundwater serves as the essential potable water resource in coastal areas worldwide, and dependency on groundwater is also increasing in the present scenario due to various reasons. The quality and quantity assessment of the groundwater resource is essential for the effective management and optimal deployments of water resources in semi-arid regi...

Most of the coastal groundwater aquifer in the world serves as a water source for various domestic, agricultural, and industrial needs. An increase in the water demand and low rainfall received leads to a decline in groundwater level. Along with these issues, seawater intrusion deteriorates the existing groundwater quality in the coastal areas arou...

Arsenic (As) can geogenically and anthropogenically contaminate the potable water resources and undoubtedly reduces its availability for human consumption. To circumvent this predicament, present study focuses on the development of a novel biosorbent by impregnating calcium cross-linked polyuronate (alginate) beads (CABs) with bilayer–oleic coated...

The present work comprehensively reviews all the pertinent large-scale climate indices used to analyse the hydrological extremes in India; along with various non-linear models, which have utilized long-term past precipitation data, and global climate indices to produce forecasts at different temporal scales. We specifically enumerated various stati...

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has been considered as a promising approach for population-wide surveillance of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Many studies have successfully quantified severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA concentration in wastewater (CRNA). However, the correlation between the CRNA and the COVI...

The current research intends to assess the impact of shorter hydraulic retention time (HRTs) and different sized filter material on the pollutant removal performance of two pilot-scale vertical sub-surface flow constructed wetlands (VSSF CW) to treat dairy wastewater. Two CWs (CW-1 & CW-2) were filled with 10 mm and 20 mm gravels, respectively, pla...

Worldwide regulatory agencies should (re)examine the consideration of: (i) sub-threshold responses, (ii) non-linear dose-response models able to detect sub-threshold responses of both a beneficial and detrimental nature, and (iii) abandoning the use of default dose-response models for their risk assessment. Mounting evidence for significant sub-thr...

The upper Brahmaputra floodplain (UBF) is highly enriched with geogenic contaminants, mostly the Arsenic (As), owing to its sensitive geomorphology, aquifer groundwater (GW) dynamics, huge sediment deposition along with natural and anthropogenic disturbance significantly accelerate the As leaching rate into the groundwater, leading to an increase t...

Wastewater-based genomic surveillance can identify a huge majority of variants shed by the infected individuals within a population, which goes beyond genomic surveillance based on clinical samples (i.e., symptomatic patients only). We analyzed four samples to detect key mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 genome and track circulating variants in Ahmedabad...

Contaminant vulnerability in the critical zones like groundwater (GW)-seawater (SW) continuum along the entire Gujarat coast was investigated for the first time through an extensive water monitoring survey. The prime focus of the study was to evaluate whether or not: i) seawater intrusion induced metal load translates to toxicity; ii) in the coasta...

The Brahmaputra river system (BRS) produces the largest discharge in India, supplying water to more than 62 million inhabitants. The present study aims to quantify the environmental elements that affect the spatio-temporal variation of nutrients in the Brahmaputra river system (BRS). The association of physico-chemical characteristics of floodplain...

Compacted clay barriers have been used to retard leakage of contaminated fluids from landfillsites. These liners may shrink, crack, desiccate and lose their integrity if the liner material doesn't have permeability (10⁻⁹ m/s), unconfined compressive strength (UCS = 200 kPa) and no desiccation cracks at all as per the CPCB-2001 and USEPA 1989 guidel...

Biochar has sparked a lot of interest in recent years for various applications such as contaminant removal, carbon sequestration and soil amendment. However, laboratory scale studies dominates over the real-world applications. In this study, we first enumerated on the various ongoing uses of biochar along with adsorption mechanism; and then identif...

Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) has been recognized as an integral pathway of hydrological cycle. The role of SGD as a mechanism for material transport from terrestrial to marine ecosystems has also been investigated , considering the large hydrological flux and a massive load of solutes is found to be carried as SGD to the coastal oceans. Ho...

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) monitoring can play a key role in managing future pandemics because it covers both pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, especially in densely populated areas with limited community health care. In the present work, wastewater monitoring was employed in Ahmedabad, India, after the successful containment of the...