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The impact of persistent organic pollutants on freshwater ecosystems and human health
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Persistent organic pollutants general considerations. Modelling bioaccumulation circuits, POP scatering in the environment and adjacent risk assessment. GIS - in pollution modeling of persistent organic pollutants. The impact of persistent organic pollutants on human health. DDT - from a universal cure to an environmental problem. Persistent organic pollutants in continental aquatic ecosystems. The effects of DDT on physiological mechanisms in fish. Persistent organic pollutants in Mureș watershed.
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... The studied Mureș River is, regrettably, not excluded from this context; from this perspective, it is considered a European hotspot [29][30][31][32][33][34], having been impacted by humans from the Stone Age onwards [35][36][37][38][39]. It is the major tributary of the Tisza, situated between a longitude of 20°11′ E and 25°44′ E and a latitude of 45°14′ and 47°08′, with a length of 761 km and a basin surface area of 28,319 km 2 . ...
... The Mureș Basin was selected for this study for several reasons, including its large surface and rank within the Danube Basin [42], its large human population [40,43], and the related human activities and impact [29,33,34,[37][38][39]44] that disturb the river basin's ecological state. ...
... This river was chosen as it is the second longest river in Romania, after the Danube, and it traverses a significant portion of the country from east to west, passing some major cities including Târgu Mureș, Alba Iulia, Deva, Arad, etc. [33]. The samples were collected from 10 locations/cities with 3 sampling sites per location (on the river 200 m upstream of the WWTP effluent, on the river downstream of the WWTP effluent, and the WWTP effluent) and 3 extractions per sampling site, resulting in a total of 90 samples. ...
The aim of this study was to assess the impact of WWTP effluents on the sediment microbial communities throughout the Mures , River. This study shows the existence of an ecological equilibrium between the WWTP effluent disruptors and the resilience of the Mures , River sediment microbiomes, a fact that suggests the river's stable/balanced ecological status in this regard, partly due to the microbial communities' resilience to the local impact of WWTP effluents. High-throughput 16S bacterial metabarcoding was used to evaluate the bacterial communities in the sediment. Due to the lotic system's sediment microbial communities' sensitivity to environmental changes, we assumed the dependency of these community structures and functions on environmental abiotic and abiotic parameters. The study results show that, although bacterial communities are equally diverse in the three locations (upstream WWTP, WWTP effluents, and downstream WWTP), there is a difference in community structure between the upstream samples and the WWTP samples, while the downstream samples contain a mixture of the upstream and WWTP effluent communities. Just downstream of the WWTP sediment, microbial communities are influenced by the specific input from the WWTP effluents; nevertheless, the river sediment microbiome is resilient and able to further recover its natural microbial composition, as evidenced by the similarity in bacterial community structures at all upstream river locations. This study demonstrates the ecological equilibrium between the WWTP effluent disruptors and the resilience capacity of the Mures , River sediment microbiomes, a fact that indicates the river's stable/balanced ecological status, in part due to the microbial communities' resilience to the local impact of WWTP effluents. Based on these findings, a monitoring system should be implemented here in the future.
... The second class includes the anthropogenically produced POPs, further subcategorized into eight classes (Table 1), according to their origin and parent structures as described in Fig. 1A (Akhtar et al., 2021). The second classification classifies POPs into three classes based on their function or human utilization (Curtean-Bȃnȃduc, 2016). The three classes are pesticides, chemicals used in industry, and by-products of industrial production (Fig. 1B). ...
With the advent of the industrial revolution, the accumulation of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the environment has become ubiquitous. POPs are halogen-containing organic molecules that accumulate, and remain in the environment for a long time, thus causing toxic effects in living organisms. POPs exhibit a high affinity towards biological macromolecules such as nucleic acids, proteins and lipids, causing genotoxicity and impairment of homeostasis in living organisms. Proteins are essential members of the biological assembly, as they stipulate all necessary processes for the survival of an organism. Owing to their stereochemical features, POPs and their metabolites form energetically favourable complexes with proteins, as supported by biological and dose-dependent toxicological studies. Although individual studies have reported the biological aspects of protein-POP interactions, no comprehensive study summarizing the structural mechanisms, thermodynamics and kinetics of protein-POP complexes is available. The current review identifies and classifies protein-POP interaction according to the structural and functional basis of proteins into five major protein targets, including digestive and other enzymes, serum proteins, transcription factors, transporters, and G-protein coupled receptors. Further, analysis detailing the molecular interactions and structural mechanism evidenced that H-bonds, van der Waals, and hydrophobic interactions essentially mediate the formation of protein-POP complexes. Moreover, interaction of POPs alters the protein conformation through kinetic and thermodynamic processes like competitive inhibition and allostery to modulate the cellular signalling processes, resulting in various pathological conditions such as cancers and inflammations. In summary, the review provides a comprehensive insight into the critical structural/molecular aspects of protein-POP interactions.
... The Mureş River watershed was chosen for this research for various reasons: among them, its relatively large area and significance within the Danube Basin [47], the relatively large and important human population existing in this area, including major urban areas [45,46,48], the resulting human impacts and related problems in this basin [49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]. These factors affect the diversity and the variability of environments over space and time and biocoenosis in the river and its watershed. ...
Numerous sections of the Mureş River vary in terms of the abundance of nitrates, ammonia, and orthophosphates; and of correlated lotic sediment bacterial microbiome structures in terms of both diversity and abundance. This highlights the great versatility of microbiomes in being influenced by the physical-chemical characteristics of environments and their spatial changes. Bacteria microbiomes exhibit dynamic and shifting potential and significant tendencies toward self-organization and self-adaptation. These typical features represent an essential ecologic basis for lotic systems having to do with the use and reuse of various kinds of environmental resource as chemical substances. In this respect, trophic processes assure the river ecosystem optimum health ecologic status dynamic and trend, to be reached. The flexibility of shifting bacterial microbiomes is crucial in maintaining this ecological context’s vital role in biogeochemically sustaining other taxonomic groups, which are spatially and temporally continuous. This is especially important for nutrient cycle processes, even for rivers with high levels of negative human impact, in promoting a functional lotic system.
... The Mureş River basin contains over seven million people and accumulates the majority of the human communities' pollutants [11,12]. The origins here of potential POPs pollution are the chemical industry, intensive livestock farms, waste warehouses, water treatment plants, metallurgical factories, electrical transformer plant facilities, etc. [70]. Sediment, Ephemeroptera, and Trichoptera samples were collected on 7-16 August 2016 from the following sampling sites: M1, M2, M3, M4, M6, M7, M11, M12, and M14 on the Mureș River ( Figure 1). ...
Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have been at the forefront of environmental contamination research even before their ban in 2001 at the Stockholm Convention. Their relation to different compartments of the environment (biotic and abiotic) has been thoroughly investigated. This article aims to identify whether the benthos could represent a reliable indicator of environmental contamination with POPs and to highlight its potential transfer role between abiotic and upper trophic compartments-benthos feeders. In this regard, we determined that the Ephemer-optera samples have higher concentrations (p < 0.05) of ΣPCB, ΣHCH, and ΣDDT than sediment samples while Trichoptera samples have higher concentrations (p < 0.05) only in the case of ΣPCB and ΣDDT. This, along with the fact that the frequency of detection for POPs is similar between the sample types (sediments, Trichoptera, and Ephemeroptera), makes the benthos samples valuable indicators of contamination with sediment samples working as complementary information about how recent the contamination is.
The Danube Delta is one of Earth’s biodiversity hotspots and includes many endemic, rare, and important species of both major conservation and economic value. This unique complex of ecosystems also plays a key role for Danube River and Black Sea fish fauna through its role as a natural safe buffer, shelter, feeding, reproduction, and smooth transitional area for a large number of fish species. Climate change is inducing a progressive sea level rise in the Black Sea, a fact that is expected to impact the delta’s key complex and dynamic habitats, biocoenoses, and associated biota, and last but not least the key taxonomic group, namely, fish. Around one-third of the fish species of this delta will be greatly affected, sometimes negatively, by this climate change scenario, another one-third to a lesser extent, and the final one-third not at all. The ecological positive feedback of fish can stimulate environmental change and is expected to be responsible for changes within Danube Delta ecosystems, and also for the near Danube River and Black Sea diverse matrix of aquatic and semi-aquatic ecosystems. Sea level rise in the Black Sea is considered to have been one of the main stress factors of the Danube Delta fish fauna in the past, and is likely to be the case in the future. In this spatio-temporal dynamic context, for the fish species under threat and risk, in situ-adapted management measures are highly required. The current work brings for the first time such a prospective knowledge about the potential impact on Danube River–Danube Delta–Black Sea coast fish diversity in the potential climate change–sea level rise scenario.
The Romanian Oltul Mijlociu-Cibin-Hârtibaciu Natura 2000 site of community importance (SCI) was designated for the purpose of protecting biodiversity and maintaining the wild flora and fauna in a favorable conservation status, as well as the natural habitats of conservation interest. This research focused on the possible disparition of one protected fish species Pelecus cultratus (Linnaeus, 1758) and the appearance of an alien one Babka gymnotrachelus (Kessler, 1857), as ecological indicators of the fact that at least this Natura 2000 site is far from being properly protected and a new, more responsible way should be followed and different administrators put in charge of the areas management.
This paper is a synthetic overview of some of the threats, risks, and integrated water management elements in freshwater ecosystems. The paper provides some discussion of human needs and water conservation issues related to freshwater systems: (1) introduction and background; (2) water basics and natural cycles; (3) freshwater roles in human cultures and civilizations; (4) water as a biosphere cornerstone; (5) climate as a hydrospheric 'game changer' from the perspective of freshwater; (6) human-induced stressors' effects on freshwater ecosystem changes (pollution, habitat fragmentation, etc.); (7) freshwater ecosystems' biological resources in the context of unsustainable exploitation/overexploitation; (8) invasive species, parasites, and diseases in freshwater systems; (9) freshwater ecosystems' vegetation; (10) the relationship between human warfare and water. All of these issues and more create an extremely complex matrix of stressors that plays a driving role in changing freshwater ecosystems both qualitatively and quantitatively, as well as their capacity to offer sustainable products and services to human societies. Only internationally integrated policies, strategies, assessment, monitoring, management, protection, and conservation initiatives can diminish and hopefully stop the long-term deterioration of Earth's freshwater resources and their associated secondary resources.
Wastewater treatment is one of the main problems of industrialized societies. Decreasing availability of freshwater creates a need for finding new, better and more efficient ways of pollution elimination. Lately, static mixers are more often used in wastewater treatment. Variety of possible shapes and sizes of static mixers opens up the way for finding new technical solutions. In this paper the review of static mixer application as multifunctional reactors for wastewater treatment is presented. The following processes were discussed: photocatalysis, ozonation, coagulation, flocculation and membrane filtration. In each case the application of static mixers significantly enhanced the efficiency of treatment process. The huge variety of possibilities in design of static mixers makes these multifunctional reactors a very interesting and promising alternative for wastewater treatment technology.
This study was designed to determine the occurrence, potential sources, human and ecological risks of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in soil from Wuhan, central China. The soil samples were collected from twenty-six sites at soil depth of 1-20 cm from three land-use types and analyzed for the presence of eight OCPs. The instrumental analysis was carried out using Gas Chromatography-Electron Capture Detector (GC-ECD). The obtained result ranged from 0.193 to 135.277 ng g −1 with the mean value of 17.337 ng g −1 for ΣHCHs and 2.479 to 987.248 ng g −1 with the mean value of 80.056 ng g −1 for ΣDDTs. The total sum (ΣOCPs) ranged from 5.44 to 994.44 ng g −1 with the mean value of 97.39 ng g −1. p, p′-DDE was the highest OCP (976 ng g −1) detected in the soil followed by p, p′-DDD (287.454 ng g −1). Pearson correlation analysis indicated that there was a significant correlation between individual OCPs, while a weak and negative correlation between OCPs and selected soil properties. Isomeric ratio results indicated that DDTs in the soil came from historical (early use of DDTs) and HCHs originated from the use of lindane. Incremental lifetime cancer risks (ILCR) indicated that HCHs can cause very low risk for adults while, low risks for children and DDTs can cause low risk on adults and high risks on children.
The Assessment and monitoring of persistent pollutants in lotic ecosystems methodological guide include the following main chapters: persistent organic pollutants (POP) definition and classification; POP assessment in lotic type ecosystems; POP sampling and sample preservation; and POP chemical analysis.
Environmental contaminants, such as heavy metals and pesticides, are the most important toxic compounds of aquatic habitats. Heavy metals enter the aquatic environments via natural and anthropogenic pathways while the only source of pesticides is the anthropogenic usage of different types of pesticides including fungicide, insecticide and herbicide. Fish larvae and fingerlings are the most vulnerable life stages of fish which could be severely affected by pesticides as non-target organisms as well as by heavy metal pollution. The most important tissues affected by these pollutants are the gill, kidney and liver. Histopathological alterations of these vital organs could affect the survival rate, biological activities, osmoregulation, reproduction, buoyancy, etc., which finally could lead to failures in stock recruitment and population changes.
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are widespread in marine ecosystems and originate from natural sources and anthropogenic activities. PAHs enter the marine environment in two main ways, corresponding to chronic pollution or acute pollution by oil spills. The global PAH fluxes in marine environments are controlled by the microbial degradation and the biological pump, which plays a role in particle settling and in sequestration through bioaccumulation. Due to their low water solubility and hydrophobic nature, PAHs tightly adhere to sediments leading to accumulation in coastal and deep sediments. Microbial assemblages play an important role in determining the fate of PAHs in water and sediments, supporting the functioning of biogeochemical cycles and the microbial loop. This review summarises the knowledge recently acquired in terms of both chronic and acute PAH pollution. The importance of the microbial ecology in PAH-polluted marine ecosystems is highlighted as well as the importance of gaining further in-depth knowledge of the environmental services provided by microorganisms.
The Tibetan Plateau (TP) has been contaminated by persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including legacy organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) through atmospheric transport. The exact source regions, transport pathways and time trends of POPs to the TP are not well understood. Here polystyrene–divinylbenzene copolymer resin (XAD)-based passive air samplers (PASs) were deployed at 16 Tibetan background sites from 2007 to 2012 to gain further insight into spatial patterns and temporal trends of OCPs and PCBs. The southeastern TP was characterized by dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT)-related chemicals delivered by Indian monsoon air masses. The northern and northwestern TP displayed the greatest absolute concentration and relative abundance of hexachlorobenzene (HCB) in the atmosphere, caused by the westerly-driven European air masses. The interactions between the DDT polluted Indian monsoon air and the clean westerly winds formed a transition zone in central Tibet, where both DDT and HCB were the dominant chemicals. Based on 5 years of continuous sampling, our data indicated declining concentrations of HCB and hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCHs) across the Tibetan region. Inter-annual trends of DDT class chemicals, however, showed less variation during this 5-year sampling period, which may be due to the ongoing usage of DDT in India. This paper demonstrates the possibility of using POP fingerprints to investigate the climate interactions and the validity of using PAS to derive inter-annual atmospheric POP time trends.
Hatchery losses of lake trout fry from areas of high DDT use led to a 4-year study of the accumulation of the chemical in fish flesh and eggs from a number of waters in New York. Graphs are presented to indicate the range of DDT content of ether-extracted oils from spawning female lake trout and a comparison of the amount in the oil of the adult with that in the eggs. No constant relationship was found. A procedure is described to relate the mass of the fry at the time of development of the syndrome associated with the mortality to the DDT in the ether-extracted oil of the eggs. Graphical plotting of the concentration in the mass of the fry shows a relatively close relationship between the p.p.m. of DDT and the mortality.
