This investigation was performed to provide heavy metal signatures of urban soils, dusts, rainwater and to evaluate potential sources in Arak, Markazi Province. Thirty-one samples of urban soils, 29 dust and16 rainwater samples were collected in Arak city. Then, Pb, Cu, Zn, As and Ni concentrations were determined by using atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Application of discriminant analysi...

Trace metals are intrinsic, natural constituents of our environment. Apart from the natural sources, several anthropogenic ones also contribute to metal concentrations in the environment. Some of the anthropogenic sources of the metals in the environment are: mining, smelting, production and use of the compounds and materials containing the metals, burning of fossil fuels, waste dumping and lea...

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.” Rapid industrialization has resulted in the generation of liquid, solid and gaseous wastes in such a huge quantity that a serious threat is likely to be posed to the quality of water in the years to come. The crux of the present day environmental problem concerning the water is further accentuated due to everyday po...

Agricultural residues are rich in bioactive compounds. These residues can be used as an alternate source for the production of different products like biogas, biofuel, mushroom, and tempeh as the raw material in various researches and industries. The use of agro-industrial wastes as raw materials can help to reduce the production cost and also reduce the pollution load from the environment. Agr...

Natural steroidal estrogens are an environmental concern because low nanogram per liter concentrations in water can adversely affect aquatic vertebrate species by disrupting the normal function of their endocrine systems. There is a critical need to accurately measure estrogens in dairy wastes, a potential source of estrogens such as 17beta-estradiol, to assess the risk of estrogen contaminatio...

Anaerobic digestion is an old biological wastewater treatment process, having first been studied more than a century ago. It is a multistep process in which organic matter is degraded into a gas mixture of methane and carbon dioxide by microorganisms. It thus reduces the Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) of the influent and produces valuable energy (methane). The biological scheme involves several m...

Earthworms have been successfully used in the vermistabilization of urban, industrial and agricultural wastes in order to produce organic fertilizers and obtain protein for animal feed. Although many species could be used for these ends, given their nutritional requirements and reproductive biology, only Perionyx excavatus and Lampito mauritii are widely used. The most effective use of earthwor...

The mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus has nutritional and medicinal characteristics that depend on the growth substrate. In nature, this fungus grows on dead wood, but it can be artificially cultivated on agricultural wastes (coffee husks, eucalyptus sawdust, corncobs and sugar cane bagasse). The degradation of agricultural wastes involves some enzyme complexes made up of oxidative (laccase, mangane...

The main directions in food packaging research are targeted toward improvements in food quality and food safety. For this purpose, food packaging providing longer product shelf-life, as well as the monitoring of safety and quality based upon international standards, is desirable. New active packaging strategies represent a key area of development in new multifunctional materials where the use o...

A Publication of the Association for Iron & Steel Technology Ironand steelmaking processes present a largely untapped opportunity to transform some of the world’s most problematic waste streams into raw materials for production. This opportunity lies in their high-temperature environments, which offer sustainable pathways for utilizing chemical reactions to repurpose waste materials as resource...