Nowadays, aromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals, pesticides and endocrine disruptors are the most common environmental pollutants. Typically, chemical analysis is used to detect these toxicants. However, chemical analysis can only be applied to known toxicants using standard procedures and expensive equipment. Additionally, data obtained from chemical analysis does not faithfully reflect the phys...

[1] This study examines the impact of projected changes (A1B ‘‘marker’’ scenario) in emissions of four short-lived air pollutants (ozone, black carbon, organic carbon, and sulfate) on future climate. Through year 2030, simulated climate is only weakly dependent on the projected levels of short-lived air pollutants, primarily the result of a near cancellation of their global net radiative forcin...

A disposable preoxidation technique that dramatically improves the detection and identification of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by a colorimetric sensor array is reported. Passing a vapor stream through a tube packed with chromic acid on silica immediately before the colorimetric sensor array substantially increases the sensitivity to less-reactive VOCs and improves the limits of detection...

risk-based assessment methods are commonly used at the contaminated sites by hydrocarbon pollutants. this paper presents the results of a two-dimensional finite volume model of reactive transport of biodegradable btex which have been developed for the saturated zone of an unconfined aquifer in the pump station area of tehran oil refinery, iran. the model governing equations were numerically sol...

The rapid screening and sensitive monitoring of environmental pollutants, such as pesticides, persistent organic pollutants (POPs), endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), explosives, and toxins, is indeed essential to ensure environmental quality, and therefore, human health. Until recently, the quantification of most contaminants has been limited to the traditional chromato‐ graphic and spectr...

Recent interest has been expressed in the possible need to develop ways to detect and quantify pollutants that affect evolution. Although environmental pollutants clearly can affect evolutionary processes, the evolutionary changes are a response to ecosystem-level toxicity elicited by the pollutant, rather than a direct effect of the pollutant on evolution. Accordingly, emphasis needs to be pla...

The ecological impacts of emerging pollutants such as pharmaceuticals are not well understood. The lack of experimental approaches for the identification of pollutant effects in realistic settings (that is, low doses, complex mixtures, and variable environmental conditions) supports the widespread perception that these effects are often unpredictable. To address this, we developed a novel scree...

Marine pollution is ubiquitous, and is one of the key factors influencing contemporary marine biodiversity worldwide. To protect marine biodiversity, how do we surveil, document and predict the shortand long-term impacts of pollutants on atrisk species? Modern genomics tools offer high-throughput, information-rich and increasingly cost-effective approaches for characterizing biological response...

Juvenile stages of Caenorhabditis elegans (nematoda) were isolated and grown in an axenic medium containing various concentrations of CdCl2. Growth of the organisms was significantly reduced from a level of 1 microM CdCl2. Reproduction of the nematodes was also reduced from that 1 microM exposure level. At levels of 160 and 320 microM, growth was retarded at the early juvenile stages and the or...

Pollutants, including synthetic organic materials and heavy metals, are known to adversely affect physiological systems in all animal species studied to date. While many individual chemicals can perturb normal functions, the combined actions of multiple pollutants are of particular concern because they can exert effects even when each individual chemical is present at concentrations too low to ...