Recent flooding in New Orleans as a result of Hurricane Katrina caused surface waters to mingle with a variety of hazardous chemicals. The prolonged inundation of low-lying neighborhoods caused the potentially contaminated surface waters to saturate the underlying soils, possibly leaving behind contaminants once the floodwater receded. An area of Chalmette, St. Bernard Parish, was sampled on th...

Pseudomonas sp. FeS53a was isolated from the roots of rice plants cultivated in one area with a well-established history of iron toxicity. The FeS53a genome sequence provides the genetic basis for understanding its lifestyle and survival in association with rice in conditions of iron toxicity.

Quantification of risks to the ecosystem is necessary for cost-effective remediation strategies. Contaminant endpoints need to be established that consider the bioavailability of toxicants in soil. The challenge is to develop methods that assign risk to the bioavailable toxic contaminants, thereby protecting ecosystems, while balancing remediation costs. Our objective was to evaluate changes in...

The effects of eight polycyclic aromatic compounds on the survival and reproduction of the collembolan Folsomia fimetaria L. were investigated in a well-characterized Danish agricultural soil. With the exception of acridine, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and neutral N-, S-, and O-monosubstituted analogues showed similar toxicities to soil collembolans when the results were expressed i...

Endosulfan is a broad-spectrum cyclodiene insecticide that has been used extensively for over 30 years on a variety of crops. It is a mixture of two stereoisomers, a and b endosulfan, in a ratio of 7 : 3. Its toxicity is extremely high against fish and aquatic invertebrates, and it has increasingly been implicated in mammalian gonadal toxicity, genotoxicity and neurotoxicity; however, endosulfa...

Since toxicity is time dependent, short-term toxicity tests may overlook mixture effects, because chemical accumulation within an organism takes time. We therefore studied the effects of cadmium on the toxicokinetics of pyrene and its metabolites in the soil-dwelling collembolan Folsomia candida exposed through Lufa 2.2 soil. Single pyrene was rapidly taken up and steady state was reached withi...

Despite the fact that chlorinated paraffins have been produced in relatively large amounts, and high concentrations have been found in sewage sludge applied to soils, there is little information on their concentrations in soils and the effect on soil organisms. The aim of this study was to investigate the toxicity of chlorinated paraffins in soils. The effects of short-chain chlorinated paraffi...

The toxicity of arsenic in soil and ground water is one of the most important environmental problems particularly in South-East Asia. Arsenic-polluted irrigation water creates hazard in soil environment and also in crop quality. In the present study, response of black gram (Vigna mungo L.) to arsenic with or without phosphate application was investigated. Arsenic-treated plants showed reduction...

Selenium is an essential mineral element to humans and animals because it is an important component of selenoproteins that are important for functioning of the metabolism. Because of poor soil conditions in various regions of the world, the enrichment of edible plants with selenium via the biofortification strategy has been implemented. However, selenium in the context of plant mineral nutritio...

Ten organic chemicals were tested for toxicity to four earthworm species: Allolobophora tuberculata, Eisenia fetida, Eudrilus eugeniae and Perionyx excavatus, using the European Economic Community's (EEC) earthworm artificial soil and contact testing procedure. The phenols were the most toxic chemicals tested, followed by the amine, substituted benzenes, halogenated aliphatic hydrocarbon, polyc...