Ecological Risk Assessment: From Book-Keeping to Chemical Stress Ecology

Ecological risk assessment of heavy metals from cement factory dust

Background: The release of metals from industrial factories is one of the most important sources of environmental pollution. The present study aimed to determine the concentration of heavy metals like cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), manganese (Mn), nickel (Ni), and lead (Pb) in dust around the cement factory. Methods: A total of 22 dust samples were collected from areas around the cement factory...

Book-keeping

Books are my greatest weakness and collecting them and other printed material is something I have done all of my life. I still spend several hours a week wandering around in bookshops, and the reason I’m late for appointments in Cambridge is that I have a flat above a bookseller with a large stock of remaindered and second-hand books. My passion for the printed word began soon after I learnt to...

Probabilistic Ecological Risk Assessment Framework for Chemical Substances

The goal of probabilistic ecological risk assessment (PERA) is to estimate the likelihood and the extent of adverse effects occurring to ecological systems due to exposure(s) to substances. It is based on the comparison of an exposure concentration distribution (ECD) with a species sensitivity distribution (SSD) derived from chronic toxicity data. A PERA framework was proposed and illustrated w...

Studying Stress in Ecological Systems: Implications for Ecological Risk Assessment and Risk Management

Book Reviews Chemical Ecology for the next Generation

Chemical ecology, the study of chemically mediated species interactions, is an exciting and rapidly growing area of research. Recent advances involve the understanding of chemical mechanisms of interactions in the context of field experiments. This linkage is yielding fascinating insights into 1) the natural history of chemically mediated species interactions (i.e., the series of papers on chem...