Suchergebnisse

Rapid measurement tools or fast identification of bioaerosols
Bioaerosols are complex mixtures of airborne particles of biological origin, many are of inhalable size, but those less than 10 μm are respirable and can penetrate deep into the respiratory system, making them a health concern, argue Professors Frederic Coulon and Corinne Whitby. While causing infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and COVID-19, bioaerosols are also associated with non-infectious diseases, such as hypersensitivity, allergies, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma, that cause significant mortality and morbidity. There are two major challenges to the fast identification of bioaerosols: 1) bioaerosol sampling and characterisation, 2) lack of evidenced exposure thresholds to inform regulators and health officials. In this article, the researchers look at the opportunities, sampling and characterisation of these bioaerosols.

Unconventional natural gas development (UNGD, e.g. shale gas) poses a threat to the environment and human health. While the Member States of the European Union (EU) decide whether to develop this resource, they require evidence to assess the associated risks. Much of the evidence regarding the risks (e.g. contamination, exposure, disturbance) comes from the US, and we argue this evidence cannot be used by the Member States to conduct risk assessments due to demographic differences, geological differences, and differences in regulation. The EU, as a whole, has recognized their need for evidence and has funded research partnerships to explore the environmental effects of UNGD. We argue that such research efforts need to be extended further in order to address the gaps in human health studies and to develop comprehensive environmental baseline studies.

The impact of emissions from urban, agricultural and industrial areas on local air quality is a growing concern. However, understanding the identities, distribution and abundance of airborne microorganisms remains in its infancy. Deleterious health effects can arise following exposure to infective bacterial and viral organisms. Indeed, the risk to human exposure from bioaerosols and volatile organic compounds are still difficult to quantify in real time. There is also growing concern about the accidental or deliberate release of biological materials in the environment and the associated impacts on human/animal health and the economy. Thus, rapid bioaerosol detection is an urgent civilian and military requirement. In 2012, the Government instigated a "Blackett Review" to address the question "Which technologies or capabilities will enable rapid, wide-area surveillance of a broad spectrum of biological agents in the next 15 years?" As the risk of exposure is directly linked to the concentration and type of microorganisms, much clearer characterisation, quantification and monitoring methods are needed if the temporal and spatial trends of infectious species are to be evaluated in different environments. Current monitoring methods are labour-time intensive, expensive and inefficient at capturing sufficient amounts of biomaterial for bioaerosol characterisation. Furthermore, there is currently no standardised protocol established which often leads to an underestimation of the diversity and quantity of microbial load. Thus, a more in-depth understanding of bioaerosol material is required. Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) has facilitated the characterisation of bioaerosol material at the fine-scale. However, such methods are being used with no guidelines as to the type of filter to be used; sampling flow rate, time period, or extraction methods. Furthermore, simply characterising the aerosol microbiome is only the first step to understanding the microbial processes occurring in bioaerosols in different environments. Metatranscriptomics which provides an understanding of how communities respond to changes in their environment may be more appropriate to analysing complex bioaerosol communities and their interactions with biotic/ abiotic factors in the environment. The overall aim of this project is to develop a 'bio-toolkit' for high-confidence, wide-area biodetection and biomonitoring of bioaerosols from urban, agricultural and industrial environments. Specifically, the project aims to develop novel techniques for rapid, high-throughput sample capture, concentration and preparation for detecting bioaerosols. The project will utilise a combination of NGS (metagenetic) and chemical marker analysis to characterise the aerosol microbiome across environments. This will provide a robust, cost-effective, sensitive approach to identify, quantify and monitor key pathogens in bioaerosols. We will use metatranscriptomics to identify the functional diversity of the aerosol microbiome and provide insights into the processes supporting bacterial diversity in aerosol samples. We will examine how functional diversity changes across environment type and context and provide additional phylogenetic information on total bacterial diversity. A major project output for end-user beneficiaries will be an optimised network system for the rapid and responsive wide-area real-time monitoring (i.e. detection, characterisation and quantification) of bioaerosols (specifically bacterial pathogens) across urban, agricultural and industrial environments using portable 'in-field' micro-instrumentation. We will produce a database of microbial volatile organic markers for the rapid characterisation of bioaerosols from different sources. The project also provides a better understanding of the impact of bioaerosols from different sources on human exposure which is of direct relevance to the NERC strategy.

Sites affected by petroleum hydrocarbons from oil exploitation activities have been identified as a major environmental and socio-economic problem in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The current Nigerian regulatory instruments to manage these contaminated sites are fragmented and the roles and responsibilities of government agencies, such as the Department for Petroleum Resources (DPR), and the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), are not well defined. This lack of coordination has led to ineffective land contamination policy and poor enforcement more generally. Appropriate, risk-based policy instruments are needed to improve regulatory capacity, and to enhance the regulator's ability to manage new and existing petroleum hydrocarbons contaminated sites. Lessons can be learned from countries like the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States America (USA) that have experience with the management and clean up of historically contaminated land. In this paper, we review the status of petroleum hydrocarbon contaminated sites management in Nigeria and identify the gaps in existing policy and regulation. We review the contaminated land policies and regulation from the UK and the USA, and identify lessons that could be transferred to the Nigerian system. Finally, we provide a series of recommendations (e.g. source – pathway-receptor approach, soil screening criteria, clean-up funding, liability) that could enhance contaminated land legislation in Nigeria.

Transfer of environmental policy from one country to another without consideration for the contextual differences (e.g. socio-cultural, economic) between the countries can be a barrier that prevents adoption, or limits the implementation and effectiveness of that policy. In this study, we investigate the socio-cultural preferences of stakeholders in the Niger Delta to understand how different stakeholder groups value socio-cultural differences. We used a modified, mixed-methods stakeholder engagement approach to capture this information, combining stakeholder workshops and interviews. Community groups, regulators, experts in contaminated land management, and oil exploration operators participated in this study, and our results revealed a general consensus concerning the ranked priority of issues. Top issues included water quality, soil quality for agriculture, food production, and human health and wellbeing. Despite this consensus, differences in how stakeholder groups arrived at their rankings might pose a challenge for policy makers. Other potential barriers to effective policy transfer identified in this study include political and cultural differences, regulatory structure, and corruption. In sum, this study provides insights about the socio-cultural preferences of stakeholders from the Niger Delta; information that could be used by policy makers to contextualise contaminated land management policy transfer.

Over the past five decades, Nigeria has developed a number of contaminated land legislations to address the damage caused primarily by oil and gas exploitation activities. Within these legislations exists elements of risk assessment and risk-based corrective action. Despite this progress, we argue that contaminated land management approaches in Nigeria need further development to be able to integrate new scientific information, and to address environmental, economic, and social values. By comparison, advanced contaminated land regimes in the United Kingdom (UK), the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States of America (USA) apply a number of integrative approaches (e.g. sustainability appraisal, liability regime, funding mechanisms, technology demonstration) that enable them to meet the environmental, economic, and social needs of their populations. In comparison, Nigerian governance lacks many of these mechanisms and management of contaminated land is ad hoc. In this paper we propose an integrated risk assessment framework for Nigeria that incorporates the principles of sustainability and stakeholder engagement into the decision-making processes for contaminated land risk assessment and risk management. The integrated approach relies on transparency to promote acceptance and build trust in institutions, and uses stakeholder engagement to address data deficiencies. We conclude this paper with a roadmap for how Nigeria might implement such an integrative approach into their existing contaminated land regulatory system, as well as identify a series of policy priorities that should be addressed.

Polymer-bonded explosives (PBX) fulfil the need for insensitive munitions. However, the environmental impacts of PBX are unclear, even though it is likely that PBX residues from low-order detonations and unexploded ordnance are deposited on military training ranges. The release of high explosives from the polymer matrix into the environment has not been studied in detail, although as polymers degrade slowly in the environment we anticipate high explosives to be released into the environment. In this study, PBXN-109 (nominally 64% RDX) samples were exposed to variable UK climatic conditions reproduced in the laboratory to determine the effects of temperature, UV irradiation and rainfall on the release of RDX from the polymer binder. The most extreme conditions for spring, summer and winter in the UK were artificially reproduced. We found that up to 0.03% of RDX was consistently released from PBXN-109. The rate of RDX release was highest in samples exposed to the summer simulation, which had the lowest rainfall, but the highest temperatures and longest UV exposure. This was confirmed by additional experiments simulating an extreme summer month with consistently high temperatures and long periods of sunlight. These results probably reflect the combination of polymer swelling and degradation when samples are exposed to higher temperatures and prolonged UV irradiation.

Managing environmental risk is essential to ensure organisations minimise their impact on the environment, comply with environmental legislation and maintain their reputation in an increasingly environmentally aware society. Organisations frequently use management systems to plan and execute routine environmental assessments, however environmental impacts may still arise from routine activities or accidents that could be avoided by effective environmental management. Currently there is no method for an organisation to assess the level of awareness their employees have of activities that may lead to an environmental impact, or the level of uptake of environmental management processes. Therefore, the Environmental Management Performance Assessment (EMPA) process was developed to enable organisations to self-assess existing environmental management processes by survey of their employees. The EMPA process was aligned to key phases of the Deming Cycle and involves development and distribution of a survey to organisation employees. The responses are then used to recognise areas for improvement by progression through a bespoke flow chart integrated with the initial survey. This enables demonstration of how particular hazards arise from insufficient awareness at different stages in the Deming Cycle and how these hazards can have wider, reputational, economic, and legislative consequences. The process was trialled by surveying academic researchers on the environmental management processes in their laboratories as a sample set.

Insensitive High-Explosive (IHE) typically comprises up to five constituents including 2,4-dinitroanisole (DNAN), 3-nitro-1,2,4-triazol-5-one (NTO), and 1,3,5-trinitroperhydro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX), which are mixed in various ratios to achieve desired performance and increase insensitivity. Insensitive munitions, which are designed to detonate on command and not accidentally, are currently in use in military operations and training areas around the world. However, there is minimal literature available on the physiochemical behavior of these materials in the environment, therefore the actual consequence of residues being deposited post-detonation is still an unexplored area of research. Three 155 mm artillery shells filled with an IHE mixture of 53 % NTO, 32 % DNAN, and 15 % RDX were detonated in an inert sand arena to collect and quantify residues. Post detonation, approximately 0.02 % NTO, and 0.07 % DNAN were deposited in the environment which may rapidly accumulate dependent on the number of rounds fired. This is of concern due to the toxicity of DNAN and its degradation products, and the potential for increased acidity of soil and discoloration of watercourses from NTO contamination.

The environmental risks from explosive manufacturing and testing activities are usually evaluated using a qualitative process such as environmental impact prioritisation as recommended by legislation and guidance. However, standard environmental management system (EMS) guidance rarely provides detailed information on how to objectively assess the significance of the environmental impacts based on a rational scientific evidence. Quantitative exposure and eco-toxicity assessments are frequently used in combination with environmental threshold limit guidelines, but these omit important environmental impacts such as physical damage to land, nuisance and contribution to climate change. These impacts are particularly relevant to the explosives industry where noise nuisance and physical damage are given high priority. In addition, contamination from explosive compositions may comprise mixtures of multiple legacy and new generation explosives such as 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazinane (RDX), 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), 5-nitro-1,2,4-triazol-3-one (NTO), 2,4-dinitroanisole (DNAN) and nitroguandine (NQ), which may have combined impacts not captured by conventional eco-toxicity assessments. Further, threshold limits for energetic materials in soil and water have not been established for most nations. Additionally, in the explosive industry wider concerns such as legislative compliance and stakeholder concerns may help to provide a more broadly applicable assessment of environmental impact. Therefore in this study a novel decision framework was developed to integrate empirical data with business risks to enable rational decision making for the environmental management of explosive manufacturing facilities. The application of the framework was illustrated using three case studies from the explosive manufacturing industry to demonstrate how the framework can be used to justify environmental management decision making. By linking the environmental impacts to business risks, we demonstrate that manufacturers are able to assess a wide spectrum of issues that might not be identified in the initial environmental assessment such as non-toxic pollution incidents, breaches in legislation and stakeholder perceptions.

Contamination of military ranges by the use of explosives can lead to irreversible environmental damage, specifically to soil and groundwater. The fate and effects of traditional explosive residues are well understood, while less is known about the impact of Insensitive High Explosives (IHEs) that are currently being brought into military service. Current research has focussed on the investigation of individual constituents of IHE formulations, which may not be representative of real-world scenarios when explosive residues will be deposited together. Therefore, this study investigated the fate and transport of the combined IHE constituents 2,4-dinitroanisole (DNAN), 1-nitroguanidine (NQ) and 3-nitro-1,2,4-triazol-5-one (NTO) in two UK soil types. Static experiments ran for 9 weeks to determine the fate of the combined explosive constituents in soil by monitoring the rate of degradation. Transport was examined by running soil column experiments for 5 weeks, with a watering regime equivalent to the average yearly UK rainfall. Both static and soil column experiments confirmed that DNAN and NTO started to degrade within twenty-four hours in soil with high organic content, and were both completely degraded within sixty days. NQ was more stable, with 80% of the original material recovered after sixty days. The major degradation product of DNAN in the test soils was 2-amino-4-nitroanisole (2-ANAN), with trace amounts of 4-amino-2-nitroanisole. NTO was rapidly degraded in soil with high organic content, although no degradation products were identified. Results supported work from literature on the individual constituents DNAN, NQ and NTO suggesting that the three explosives in combination did not interact with each other when in soil. This study should provide a useful insight into the behaviour of three combined Insensitive High Explosive constituents for the predication of soil and water contamination during military training.