Intensified Disinfection Amid COVID-19 Pandemic Poses Potential Risks to Water Quality and Safety
Published in Environmental Science & Technology
Quality Criteria for Microplastic Effect Studies in the Context of Risk Assessment: A Critical Review.
Published in Environmental science & technology
In the literature, there is widespread consensus that methods in plastic research need improvement. Current limitations in quality assurance and harmonization prevent progress in our understanding of the true effects of microplastic in the environment. Following the recent development of quality assessment methods for studies reporting concentratio...
Influence of the Sea Surface Microlayer on Oceanic Iodine Emissions
Published in Environmental Science & Technology
The influence of organic compounds on iodine (I2) emissions from the O3 + I– reaction at the sea surface was investigated in laboratory and modeling studies using artificial solutions, natural subsurface seawater (SSW), and, for the first time, samples of the surface microlayer (SML). Gas-phase I2 was measured directly above the surface of liquid s...
Direct and Indirect Effects of Increased CO2 Partial Pressure on the Bioenergetics of Syntrophic Propionate and Butyrate...
Published in Environmental science & technology
Simultaneous digestion and in situ biogas upgrading in high-pressure bioreactors will result in elevated CO2 partial pressure (pCO2). With the concomitant increase in dissolved CO2, microbial conversion processes may be affected beyond the impact of increased acidity. Elevated pCO2 was reported to affect the kinetics and thermodynamics of biochemic...
Measuring Environmental Exposure to Enteric Pathogens in Low-Income Settings: Review and Recommendations of an Interdisc...
...Published in Environmental science & technology
Infections with enteric pathogens impose a heavy disease burden, especially among young children in low-income countries. Recent findings from randomized controlled trials of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions have raised questions about current methods for assessing environmental exposure to enteric pathogens. Approaches for estimating s...
Assessing the Reactive Surface Area of Soils and the Association of Soil Organic Carbon with Natural Oxide Nanoparticles...
Published in Environmental Science & Technology
Assessment of the surface reactivity of natural metal-(hydr)oxide nanoparticles is necessary for predicting ion adsorption phenomena in soils using surface complexation modeling. Here, we describe how the equilibrium concentrations of PO4, obtained with 0.5 M NaHCO3 extractions at different solution-to-soil ratios, can be interpreted with a state-o...
Impact of U.S. Oil and Natural Gas Emission Increases on Surface Ozone Is Most Pronounced in the Central United States
Published in Environmental Science & Technology
Observations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from a surface sampling network and simulation results from the EMAC (ECHAM5/MESSy for Atmospheric Chemistry) model were analyzed to assess the impact of increased emissions of VOCs and nitrogen oxides from U.S. oil and natural gas (O&NG) sources on air quality. In the first step, the VOC observatio...
Solving the Nonalignment of Methods and Approaches Used in Microplastic Research to Consistently Characterize Risk
Published in Environmental Science & Technology
The lack of standard approaches in microplastic research limits progress in the abatement of plastic pollution. Here, we propose and test rescaling methods that are able to improve the alignment of methods used in microplastic research. We describe a method to correct for the differences in size ranges as used by studies reporting microplastic conc...
Source Quantification of South Asian Black Carbon Aerosols with Isotopes and Modeling
Published in Environmental Science & Technology
Black carbon (BC) aerosols perturb climate and impoverish air quality/human health—affecting ∼1.5 billion people in South Asia. However, the lack of source-diagnostic observations of BC is hindering the evaluation of uncertain bottom-up emission inventories (EIs) and thereby also models/policies. Here, we present dual-isotope-based (Δ14C/δ13C) fing...
Laboratory Insights into the Diel Cycle of Optical and Chemical Transformations of Biomass Burning Brown Carbon Aerosols...
Published in Environmental Science & Technology
Transformations of biomass burning brown carbon aerosols (BB-BrC) over their diurnal lifecycle are currently not well studied. In this study, the aging of BB tar proxy aerosols processed by NO3• under dark conditions followed by the photochemical OH• reaction and photolysis were investigated in tandem flow reactors. The results show that O3 oxidati...
