Smaller sizes of ambient particulate matter (PM) can be more toxic and can be breathed into lower lobes of a lung. Children are particularly vulnerable to PM air pollution because of their adverse effects on both lung functions and lung development. However, it remains unknown whether a smaller PM has a greater short-term impact on childhood pneumonia.

We compared the short-term effects on childhood pneumonia from PM with aerodynamic diameters ≤1μm (PM

), ≤2.5μm (PM

), and ≤10μm (PM

), respectively.

Daily time-series data (2016-2018) on pneumonia hospitalizations in children aged 0-17years, records of air pollution (PM

, PM

, PM

, and gaseous pollutants), and weather conditions were obtained for Hefei, China. Effects of different PM were quantified using a quasi-Poisson generalized additive model after controlling for day of the week, holiday, seasonality and long-term time trend, and weather variables. Stratified analyses (gender, age, and season) were also performed.

For each 10μg/m

increasearison to PM2.5 and PM10. Given the serious PM pollution in China and other rapid developing countries due to various combustions and emissions, more investigations are needed to determine the impact of different PM on childhood respiratory health.The organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) is an appealing feedstock for bioethanol production due to its richness in cellulosic materials. After fermentation and distillation, the remaining residue constitutes a source of unconsumed carbohydrates, proteins and lipids. These macromolecules can be further used via anaerobic digestion (AD) for bioenergy purposes to offset bioethanol production costs. The present study evaluated the methanogenic potential of the whole fermented residue from a selective collection of OFMSW in a semicontinuous AD at 35 °C (HRT 40 days and OLR 2.09 g VS/Ld). The experimental results showed a methanogenic yield of 212 ± 5 mL CH4/g VSin (corresponding to a COD removal of 47 ± 1 %). Microbial analysis revealed key roles of species belonging to Firmicutes (65 %), Bacteroidetes (25 %) and Euryarchaeota (0.5-1 %). Methanosarcina archaea was highlighted as a robust methanogen crucial for methane production in a process in which the stability might be compromised by potential NH4+-N and VFAs inhibitions. This study indicated that the sequential combination of these two biochemical processes (fermentation and anaerobic digestion) allow to further exploit organic residues for their conversion into a marketable bioenergy product.Fish can be highly vulnerable to environmental pressures because they are exposed to oxidative stressors in the aquatic environment. Such stressors can affect the levels of antioxidant biomarkers against reactive oxygen species (ROS). With this study we investigated the oxidative stress ecology in Danube barbel (Barbus balcanicus) from the Barbucina creek (northeast Italy), a watercourse in the Collio winegrowing district. To do this, superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and glutathione S-transferase (GST) activity was measured in gills, liver, and muscle, while metallothioneins (MT) and trace and rare earth elements (REEs) levels were determined in muscle. The effect of environmental factors (physicochemical parameters of water, trace elements and REEs) on oxidative stress biomarkers was thus assessed. High concentrations were determined for cerium (Ce), scandium (Sc), neodymium (Nd), lanthanum (La), yttrium (Y), and praseodymium (Pr) among the REEs. Among the trace elements, arsenic (As), copper (Cu), and mercury (Hg) levels were higher compared to published data, suggesting their role as stressors. The multiple linear regression (MLR) model showed a statistically significant association (R2 = 0.858; F = 10.07; p = 0.015) between As, Cu, Hg, and Pr and SOD activity in the gills, indicating a functional relationship between them. Differently, CAT activity was significantly higher in the liver, probably in response to long-term Cu contamination of the watercourse. This was confirmed by the MLR model that showed a significant association (R2 = 0.638; F = 8.152; p = 0.02) between the concentration of MT and of Cu. Our data show a biochemical defensive response by Danube barbel to the disturbances in the aquatic ecosystem of the Barbucina creek. These insights advance our understanding of the role and the effects of environmental factors as trace elements and REEs on oxidative stress in fish.A comprehensive global inventory of past, present, and future steroid emissions was firstly developed based on the global 5′ × 5′ grids relevant data available. From 1970 to 2070, the growth rate of the annual global steroid emission was relatively stable around 10%. At present (in 2015), the global steroid emissions was 18,270 t, with 17% contributed by humans. Almost one-third of total animal emissions have been occurring in India and Brazil. India also had the highest value of human steroid emissions. Regions with highest steroid emissions were concentrated between 10° ~ 35° N and 70° ~ 90° E. The increase of sewage treatment rates can effectively reduce the total quantity of steroids entering the environment, especially for some developing countries. But the „technology bonus” from sewage treatment process will be exhausted until to 2030. Meanwhile, global surface water pollution was predicted based on steroid emissions into water compartment and on the digital river network with annual river discharge. The modelling results show that steroids are widely distributed across the globe, with concentrations mostly below 100 ng/L. However, if no proper treatment measures for animal excretions, in another 100 years, the range of the surface water contaminated by steroids will increase by 1.2 times. The Nile River resulted as the most polluted among the eight world’s longest and famous rivers during the whole period investigated. Various measured concentrations worldwide validated our modelling result. The global steroid emission inventory and surface water pollution from past to the future will stand as an important data and knowledge base for the management of pollution from different types of steroids at global and regional level.Nanoscale contaminants (including engineered nanoparticles and nanoplastics) pose a significant threat to organisms and environment. Rapid and non-destructive detection and identification of nanosized materials in cells, tissues and organisms is still challenging, although a number of conventional methods exist. These approaches for nanoparticles imaging and characterisation both inside the cytoplasm and on the cell or tissue outer surfaces, such as electron or scanning probe microscopies, are unquestionably potent tools, having excellent resolution and supplemented with chemical analysis capabilities. However, imaging and detection of nanomaterials in situ, in wet unfixed and even live samples, such as living isolated cells, microorganisms, protozoans and miniature invertebrates using electron microscopy is practically impossible, because of the elaborate sample preparation requiring chemical fixation, contrast staining, matrix embedding and exposure into vacuum. Atomic force microscopy, in several cases, cark-field and dark-field-based hyperspectral microscopy, covering the most important advances in this rapidly-expanding area of environmental nanotoxicology.Flood modeling provides useful information to support flood risk assessment and management and reduce flood impacts in urbanized area. The accuracy of urban flood simulation results is highly dependent on the quality of input data for which the appropriate values are generally difficult to determine for complex urbanized environment and from which various uncertainties are induced into the modeling procedure. In this study, variance-based global sensitivity analysis is applied for the hydrodynamic modeling of urban flood to explore the relative importance of the factors of interest as model inputs and their contributions to the final results of the numerical model for different outputs. The factors include the spatial resolution, the forcing condition and the characteristics of the underlying urbanized surface. The global sensitivity analysis results are examined in both spatially lumped and distributed perspective. Findings indicate that importance of the input factors varies with regard to different model output and the influence of the spatial resolution is more tightly related to the flood flow movements whereas that of the rainfall inputs is more relevant to the flood water volume. Spatial variability in the influence of the input factors is revealed to be hidden by the spatially lumped results and the importance of the factors describing the underlying urban surface is found to be largely dependent on the location of the analyzed model output associated with the land-use type. Improved understanding of sensitivity of hydrodynamic modeling of urban floods may help the modelers to decide which input factors to prioritize on according to which model outputs are assessed and where they are assessed.Phytoliths, silica structures derived from plant residues in silicon (Si)-accumulating plant species, have recently been recognized as a sink and source of nutrients and a hosting phase for carbon sequestration in soil. While the solubility of phytoliths in relation to their respective nature and solution chemistry has been intensively studied, the combined effects of CO2 and temperature, two highly variable parameters in soil, have not been fully understood. We hypothesized that changes in CO2 and temperature may affect the dissolution rate, thereby resizing the soil phytolith pool. Rice straw phytoliths were obtained from either open burning or controlled heating of straw from 300 to 900 °C and used to determine their batch incubation kinetics in a closed chamber at CO2 concentrations of 0 to 15% vol. and a temperature range of 20 to 50 °C for six days. The results revealed a contrasting effect in which temperature and CO2 were correspondingly found to accelerate or decelerate the dissolution rate of phytoliths. Under the most dissimilar conditions, i.e., 0% vol. CO2 and 50 °C and 15% vol. CO2 and 20 °C, the discrepancy in solubility was approximately six-fold, indicating a high vulnerability of phytoliths to CO2 and temperature changes. This finding also suggests that the soil phytolith pool can be diminished in the case of either increasing soil temperature or decreasing CO2 flux. Calculations based on these data revealed that the dissolution rate of phytoliths could be increased by an average of 4.5 to 7.3% for each 1 °C increase in temperature. This finding suggests a possible impact of current global warming on the global biogenic silica pool, and more insight into the relationship between this pool and climate change is, therefore, necessary to maintain the function of the phytolith phase in soil.For testing the effectiveness of air purification devices in regard to the reduction of virus-containing aerosols, a test method involving test viruses has been lacking until now. The use of bacteriophages (phiX174 phages) is a method to test the efficiency of air purification devices under experimental conditions. Using air purifiers with a HEPA filter H14, a 4.6-6.1 Log reduction of test viruses can be achieved if bacteriophages are directly aerosolised into the air purifier, which corresponds to a reduction of 99.9974-99.9999%. Due to the complexity and individuality of air flow, an experimental approach was used in which all outside influences were minimised. The experimental setup was practical and chosen to project a scenario of direct transmission by an emitting source to a recipient. The experiments were performed with and without the air purifier at a distance of 0.75 m and 1.5 m each. Using the air purifier at a setting of 1000 m3/h, the concentration of the phiX174 phages in the air could be reduced by 2.