This study identifies the natural background, anthropogenic background and distribution of contamination caused by heavy metal pollutants in soil in Chunghua County of central Taiwan by using a finite mixture distribution model (FMDM). The probabilities of contaminated area distribution are mapped using single-variable indicator kriging and multiple-variable indicator kriging (MVIK) with the FM...

Background & Aims: Fungi are among the most important biological agents in air pollution. Textile factories are known as high risk places for contamination with fungal spores and metabolites. Since Yazd is one of the most important textile industry centers, this study was conducted to determine the concentration and types of airborne fungi in Yazd textile factories. Methods: A total of 235 indo...

The aflatoxins are a group of chemically similar poisonous, carcinogenic fungal secondary metabolites produced by Aspergillus flavus, A. parasiticus, and A. nomius, which are abundant in warm and humid regions of the world. They are probably the most intensively researched toxins in the world due to their carcinogenic and mutagenic effects. Aflatoxins have also been identified as a potential bi...

Leakage of oil from pipelines and oil tankers into seas and oceans is ecologically important and can have significant social and economic impacts on the environment. An early detection of deliberate or accidental oil spills can reduce serious hazards that may threaten coastal residents and help identify pollutants. Iran has been surrounded by seas from the north and the south and they provide u...

We investigate the performance of robust estimates of multivariate location under nonstandard data contamination models such as componentwise outliers (i.e., contamination in each variable is independent from the other variables). This model brings up a possible new source of statistical error that we call “propagation of outliers.” This source of error is unusual in the sense that it is genera...

Indicators, for groundwater resources, have mostly been employed to define the present status and the degradation tendency, regarding both quantity (under- or overexploitation) and quality (natural and anthropic contamination). This work presents the application of indicators in order to draw a picture of the groundwater resources situation in the 22 Water Resource Management Units (WRMU) of th...

Local adaptation to environmental stress at different levels of genetic polymorphism in various plants and animals has been documented through evolution of heavy metal tolerance. We used samples of Drosophila subobscura populations from two differently polluted environments to analyze the change of chromosomal inversion polymorphism as genetic marker during laboratory exposure to lead. Exposure...