December 2024
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32 Reads
Environmental Pollution
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December 2024
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32 Reads
Environmental Pollution
December 2024
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19 Reads
Environmental Pollution
November 2024
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75 Reads
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1 Citation
Chemosphere
October 2024
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107 Reads
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3 Citations
Shipping is responsible for a range of different pressures affecting air quality, climate, and the marine environment. Most social and economic analyses of shipping have focused on air pollution assessment and how shipping may impact climate change and human health. This risks that policies may be biased towards air pollution and climate change, whilst impacts on the marine environment are not as well known. One example is the sulfur regulation introduced in January 2020, which requires shipowners to use a compliant fuel with a sulfur content of 0.5% (0.1% in SECA regions) or use alternative compliance options (Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems, EGCS) that are effective in reducing sulfur oxide (SOx) emissions to the atmosphere. The EGCS cleaning process results in large volumes of discharged water that includes a wide range of contaminants. Although regulations target SOx removal, other pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), metals and combustion particles are removed from the exhaust to the wash water and subsequently discharged to the marine environment. Based on dilution series of the Whole Effluent Testing (WET), the impact of the EGCS effluent on marine invertebrate species and on phytoplankton was found to vary between taxonomic groups, and between different stages of the invertebrate life cycle. Invertebrates were more affected than phytoplankton, and the most sensitive endpoint detected in the present project was the fertilisation of sea urchin eggs, which were negatively affected at a sample dilution of 1 : 1,000,000. Dilutions of 1: 100,000 were harmful to early development of several of the tested species, including mussels, polychaetes, and crustaceans. The observed effects at these low concentrations of EGCS effluent were reduced egg production, and deformations and abnormal development of the larvae of the species. The ecotoxicological data produced in the EMERGE project were used to derive Predicted No Effect Concentration values. Corresponding modelling studies revealed that the EGCS effluent can be considered as a single entity for 2-10 days from the time of discharge, depending on the environmental conditions like sea currents, winds, and temperature. Area 10-30 km outside the shipping lanes will be prone to contaminant concentrations corresponding to 1 : 1,000,000 dilution which was deemed harmful for most sensitive endpoints of WET experiments. Studies for the Saronikos Gulf (Aegean Sea) revealed that the EGCS effluent dilution rate exceeded the 1 : 1,000,000 ratio 70% of the time at a distance of about 10 km from the port. This was also observed for 15% of the time within a band of 10 km wide along the shipping lane extending 500 km away from the port of Piraeus. When mortality of adult specimens of one of the species (copepod Acartia tonsa) was used as an endpoint it was found to be 3-4 orders of magnitude less sensitive to EGCS effluent than early life stage endpoints like fertilisation of eggs and larval development. Mortality of Acartia tonsa is commonly used in standard protocols for ecotoxicological studies, but our data hence shows that it seriously underestimates the ecologically relevant toxicity of the effluent. The same is true for two other commonly used and recommended endpoints, phytoplankton growth and inhibition of bioluminescence in marine bacteria. Significant toxic effects were reached only after addition of 20-40% effluent. A marine environmental risk assessment was performed for the Öresund region for baseline year 2018, where Predicted Environmental Concentrations (PECs) of open loop effluent discharge water were compared to the PNEC value. The results showed modelled concentrations of open loop effluent in large areas to be two to three orders of magnitude higher than the derived PNEC value, yielding a Risk Characterisation Ratio of 500-5000, which indicates significant environmental risk. Further, it should be noted that between 2018-2022 the number of EGCS vessels more than quadrupled in the area from 178 to 781. In this work, the EGCS discharges of the fleet in the Baltic Sea, North Sea, the English Channel, and the Mediterranean Sea area were studied in detail. The assessments of impacts described in this document were performed using a baseline year 2018 and future scenarios. These were made for the year 2050, based on different projections of transport volumes, also considering the fuel efficiency requirements and ship size developments. From the eight scenarios developed, two extremes were chosen for impact studies which illustrate the differences between a very high EGCS usage and a future without the need for EGCS while still compliant to IMO initial GHG strategy. The scenario without EGCS leads to 50% reduction of GHG emissions using low sulfur fuels, LNG, and methanol. For the high EGCS adoption scenario in 2050, about a third of the fleet sailing the studied sea areas would use EGCS and effluent discharge volumes would be increased tenfold for the Baltic Sea and hundredfold for the Mediterranean Sea when compared to 2018 baseline discharges. Some of the tested species, mainly the copepods, have a central position in pelagic food webs as they feed on phytoplankton and are themselves the main staple food for most fish larvae and for some species of adult fish, e.g., herring. The direct effect of the EGSE on invertebrates will therefore have an important indirect effect on the fish feeding on them. Effects are greatest in and near shipping lanes. Many important shipping lanes run close to shore and archipelago areas, and this also puts the sensitive shallow water coastal ecosystems at risk. It should be noted that no studies on sub-lethal effects of early life stages in fish were included in the EMERGE project, nor are there any available data on this in the scientific literature. The direct toxic effects on fish at the expected concentrations of EGCS effluent are therefore largely unknown. According to the regional modelling studies, some of the contaminants will end up in sediments along the coastlines and archipelagos. The documentation of the complex chemical composition of EGCS effluent is in sharp contrast to the present legislation on threshold levels for content in EGCS effluent discharged from ships, which includes but a few PAHs, pH, and turbidity. Traditional assessments of PAHs in environmental and marine samples focus only on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) list of 16 priority PAHs, which includes only parent PAHs. Considering the complex PAHs assemblages and the importance of other related compounds, it is important to extend the EPA list to include alkyl-PAHs to obtain a representative monitoring of EGCS effluent and to assess the impact of its discharges into the marine environment. An economic evaluation of the installation and operational costs of EGCS was conducted noting the historical fuel price differences of high and low sulfur fuels. Equipment types, installation dates and annual fuel consumption from global simulations indicated that 51% of the global EGCS fleet had already reached break-even by the end of 2022, resulting in a summarised profit of 4.7 billion €2019. Within five years after the initial installation, more than 95% of the ships with open loop EGCS reach break-even. The pollutant loads from shipping come both through atmospheric deposition and direct discharges. This underlines the need of minimising the release of contaminants by using fuels which reduce the air emissions of harmful components without creating new pollution loads through discharges. Continued use of EGCS and high sulfur fossil fuels will delay the transition to more sustainable options. The investments made on EGCS enable ships to continue using fossil fuels instead of transitioning away from them as soon as possible as agreed in the 2023 Dubai Climate Change conference. Continued carriage of residual fuels also increases the risk of dire environmental consequences whenever accidental releases of oil to the sea occur.
July 2024
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26 Reads
Freshwater Biology
Aquatic insects serve as vital inter‐habitat linkages between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, as their life cycle includes both aquatic and terrestrial stages. They facilitate the flow of energy and nutrients and play an important role in the transport of waterborne contaminants to terrestrial environments. This study focused on the under‐investigated environmental fate of emerging contaminants (ECs), particularly pharmaceuticals (PhACs) and endocrine‐disrupting compounds (EDCs), which originate from wastewater effluents and accumulate in aquatic insects. Using an in situ study of a highly abundant caddisfly species (Trichoptera), Silo nigricornis (Pictet, 1834), inhabiting a wastewater‐impacted drainage ditch, we examined the bioaccumulation and bioamplification of PhACs and EDCs across the aquatic and terrestrial life stages of the caddisfly. We observed variations in the highest concentrations of PhACs and EDCs in different sample types, including water, biofilm and different life stages of S. nigricornis . Adult S. nigricornis exhibited the highest total concentrations of ECs among the different life stages, with 17 different ECs bioaccumulated in caddisfly tissues. Most of these ECs had higher concentrations in terrestrial adults compared to aquatic larvae and pupae. The total concentration of ECs increased significantly with development, revealing a 41% higher concentration in adult terrestrial caddisflies compared to pupae and larvae. Bioamplification factors provided insights into the increased body burden of the majority of compounds during at least one stage of metamorphosis in S. nigricornis . Evidence of bioamplification was observed in both metamorphosis stages, with certain compounds, such as antibiotics (azithromycin and tilmicosin), endocrine disruptors (TCPP – tris[1‐chloro‐2‐propyl]phosphate and parabens; methylparaben, propylparaben), consistently exhibiting increased concentrations from larval to pupal and from pupal to adult stages. The observed pattern of increasing body burden of contaminants during the caddisfly life cycle emphasises the effects of metamorphosis on the concentration of PhACs and EDCs in adult holometabolous aquatic insects. Our results emphasise the importance of adult caddisflies for the transport of waterborne contaminants such as PhACs and EDCs from aquatic to terrestrial environments. Therefore, our results emphasise the need to include adult trichopterans in the assessment of habitat quality, as their influence extends beyond the boundaries of the aquatic ecosystem.
July 2024
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60 Reads
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1 Citation
The Science of The Total Environment
June 2024
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52 Reads
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4 Citations
MethodsX
Scrubber water, a waste stream generated by ships exhaust gas cleaning systems, may pose a threat when released into the marine environment due to potential contamination with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their alkyl derivatives (alkyl-PAHs). This study aims to develop a reliable analytical procedure combining headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) with gas chromatography coupled to triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (GC–MS/MS) to simultaneously separate and determine target compounds in aqueous samples. Method validation demonstrated good linearity up to 200 ng L⁻¹ (r²> 0.996) and low limits of detection (0.33 to 1.67 ng L⁻¹, except for naphthalene at 3.3 ng L⁻¹). The method shows good precision (RSD<20%) and satisfactory analytical recoveries. The methodology was successfully applied to scrubber water samples collected from a container ship and the results highlight the prevalence of naphthalene, phenanthrene, and their alkyl derivatives.•Rapid and reproducible HS-SPME-GC–MS/MS method for the analysis of PAHs and alkyl-PAHs in scrubber water. •The capacity of SPME to analyze both filtered and unfiltered samples was assessed, showing that the more hydrophobic PAHs may be lost during filtration.
May 2024
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19 Reads
This study evaluates the effectiveness of non-thermal plasma at atmospheric pressure (NTP APPJ) for treating PFAS - contaminated water in different matrices. Successful removal of several perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCAs) (C6 to C4), perfluroalkane sulfonic acids (PFSAs) (C8 to C4) and perfluropolyethers (PFPEs) (GenX and ADONA) PFAS compounds was achieved in laboratory scale experiments. Complex matrix effects influence degradation rates. Byproducts from the plasma treatment were investigated, revealing distinct degradation mechanisms for various PFAS compounds. For PFSAs and PFCAs, degradation involved electron transfer, bond breaking and subsequent reactions. Conversely, ADONA and GenX degradation initiated with ether-group cleavage, followed by additional transformation processes. Plasmabased technology shows potential for degradation of PFAS, especially for newer substitute compounds like ADONA and GenX. However, further research is needed to optimize plasma performance for complete mineralization of PFAS. This study also proposes a degradation mechanism for ADONA, marking a novel investigation into ether-group PFAS degradation with potential implications for further research and understanding toxicological implications.
May 2024
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38 Reads
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5 Citations
Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering
February 2024
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49 Reads
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5 Citations
Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
The use of novel high‐throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies to examine the responses of natural multidomain microbial communities to scrubber effluent discharges to the marine environment is still limited. Thus, we applied metabarcoding sequencing targeting the planktonic unicellular eukaryotic and prokaryotic fraction (phytoplankton, bacterioplankton, and protozooplankton) in mesocosm experiments with natural microbial communities from a polluted and an unpolluted site. Furthermore, metagenomic analysis revealed changes in the taxonomic and functional dominance of multidomain marine microbial communities after scrubber effluent additions. The results indicated a clear shift in the microbial communities after such additions, which favored bacterial taxa with known oil and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) biodegradation capacities. These bacteria exhibited high connectedness with planktonic unicellular eukaryotes employing variable trophic strategies, suggesting that environmentally relevant bacteria can influence eukaryotic community structure. Furthermore, Clusters of Orthologous Genes associated with pathways of PAHs and monocyclic hydrocarbon degradation increased in numbers at treatments with high scrubber effluent additions acutely. These genes are known to express enzymes acting at various substrates including PAHs. These indications, in combination with the abrupt decrease in the most abundant PAHs in the scrubber effluent below the limit of detection—much faster than their known half‐lives—could point toward a bacterioplankton‐initiated rapid ultimate biodegradation of the most abundant toxic contaminants of the scrubber effluent. The implementation of HTS could be a valuable tool to develop multilevel biodiversity indicators of the scrubber effluent impacts on the marine environment, which could lead to improved impact assessment. Environ Toxicol Chem 2024;00:1–18. © 2024 The Authors. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of SETAC.
... Traditional drainage management strategies, such as trash screens for removing gross pollutants, are cost-effective but prone to clogging with plastic waste during heavy storms, creating additional obstructions [18,19]. While providing additional capacity for stormwater conveyance, open channels can act as conduits for pollutants like sediments, heavy metals, hydrocarbons, and nutrients, leading to downstream water quality degradation and endangering aquatic ecosystems [20,21]. Separate sewer systems, designed to handle stormwater runoff independently from sewage treatment plants, reduce the risk of system overload during heavy rainfall but still require additional treatment measures to address pollutants carried by runoff [22][23][24]. ...
November 2024
Chemosphere
... In this context, nonthermal plasma-assisted PFAS degradation is an interesting alternative. One of the main advantages of using nonthermal plasma is that the energy applied to the working gas (e.g., air, argon, helium, mixtures) leads to a mixture of oxidative and reductive species [20]. Nonthermal plasma in contact with water with argon as the carrier gas generates a mixture of highly reactive species such as [21][22][23]. ...
May 2024
Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering
... However, the increased use of EGCS raised several concerns on the effects on the marine environment caused by the discharge of scrubber effluents (i.e. scrubber water) considering both their direct ecotoxicological effects upon discharge (Genitsaris et al., 2024;Monteiro et al., 2024;Picone et al., 2023;Ytreberg et al., 2021Ytreberg et al., , 2019 and how they may contribute to long-term pollution Ytreberg et al., 2022). ...
February 2024
Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
... 43.4 ng/L of Benzo(ghi)perylene was measured, compared to 20 ± 10 ng/L reported in the literature (Lunde Hermansson et al., 2021), which shows that PAH concentrations may vary depending on fuel type, engine state (load and service time), scrubber type, and properties of the seawater used as feed in the scrubber. All the target PAHs identified previously in scrubber effluent (García-Gómez et al., 2023) in addition to biphenyl, dibenzofuran, dibenzothiophene, and perylene, were detected in the filter samples. These results are in agreement with previous studies that highlight the need to expand conventional priority substance lists and further elucidate the mix of PAHs in scrubber effluent and how it evolves with time (whether in seawater or in storage), while taking into account the degradation byproducts of the parent compounds (García-Gómez et al., 2023;Du et al., 2022). ...
September 2023
Chemosphere
... Several techniques remove pharmaceutical compounds contaminating water, including biological treatment, chlorination, oxidation, ultrasound, electrochemical treatment, and adsorption (Audino et al., 2023;Baeza et al., 2020;Chandak et al., 2020;khalidi-idrissi et al., 2023;Termoul et al., 2006). Adsorption is a viable solution for removing aminophenols from water. ...
September 2023
Water
... open, closed, hybrid), engine load and/or additional treatment of the effluent before discharged (Teuchies et al. 2020). Study of García-Gómez et al. (2023) based on gas chromatography coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry focused on the identification of PAHs and their alkylated derivatives, which are among the most frequent and potentially toxic organic contaminants detected in scrubber effluents, showed that all the detected compounds are present in crude oil and petroleum contaminated sites. Among the 16 priority PAHs, naphthalene and phenanthrene were the compounds present at the highest concentrations, ranging from 3 to 13 µg L −1 . ...
June 2023
Ecological Informatics
... The toxicity of scrubber effluents was reported in previous studies (Magnusson et al., 2018;Koski et al., 2017;Teuchies et al., 2020). In the EMERGE project, five research labs have conducted further ecotoxicological experiments and tests, considering field samples of endemic species from many different organism groups and life stages, exposed to scrubber effluents at multiple dilution rates (Chen et al., 2024;Monteiro et al., 2024;Picone et al., 2023;Genitsaris et al., 2024;Magnusson and Granberg, 2022). The most sensitive endpoint was the fertilisation of eggs from the green sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis), with a lowest observed effect concentration (LOEC) of 0.0001 % (dilution factor 1 × 10 6 ). ...
March 2023
Marine Pollution Bulletin
... The model was developed and applied within the scope of the Horizon 2020 project Evaluation, control and Mitigation of the EnviRonmental impacts of shippinG Emissions (EMERGE). The overall goal of the project is to achieve a comprehensive assessment of the impacts from shipping to the atmosphere and to the marine environment, with focus in the European region (Kukkonen et al., 2022). Some of the results from, e.g., chemical analyses, toxicological tests and modelling were summarised by . ...
January 2023
... 22 Despite the numerous attempts to fabricate efficient photoactive materials, TiO 2 remains the benchmark photocatalyst, 30 providing strong oxidation potential for pollutant decomposition, physical and chemical stabilities, and reduced cost and toxicity. 31 Concerning the synthesis approaches, microwave irradiation has many advantages, such as high reaction yields in a shorter amount of time and less energy consumption than other conventional methods (e.g., oven), good reproducibility, straightforward manipulation and control of the nanostructures' properties based on the microwave parameters. These attributes make it an ideal choice for the synthesis of nanomaterials. ...
December 2022
... This may suggest the presence of common resistance mechanisms or specific environmental or demographic characteristics in the Northeast regions. 22 Spearman's rank correlativity analysis also identified a positive correlation between per capita health costs, vancomycin consumption, and the incidence of VRE fm . Vancomycin use is a primary driver of AMR. ...
October 2022
The Science of The Total Environment