The fate of trace elements in soils, sediments, and surface waters is largely determined by their binding to reactive components, of which organic matter, metal oxides, and clays are considered most important. Assemblage models, combining separate mechanistic complexation models for each of the reactive components, can be used to predict the solid-solution partitioning and speciation of trace e...

BACKGROUND Phytoextraction is an environmentally acceptable and inexpensive technique for mine tailing rehabilitation that uses metallophyte plants. These plants reduce the soil trace metal contents to environmentally acceptable levels by accumulating trace metals. Recently, whether more trace metals can be removed by species-rich communities of these plants received great attention, as species...

Dissolved organic matter (DOM), although highly variable and not very well characterized, plays a role in many important environmental reaction and transport processes, including trace metal mobilization. This study characterizes heterogeneous DOM from the pore-water of a restored urban tidal marsh, using chemical, optical, and electrochemical methods for dissolved organic carbon/nitrogen ratio...

Seasonal variation in trace metal contamination in surface sediments was studied through high resolution profiles assessed monthly by DGT probes in muddy sediments of the North Sea. General parameters such as pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen and sulfides were also recorded to estimate their role in the speciation of trace metals. Experimental data were included in a thermodynamic equilibrium m...

For this study, 34 water samples were collected along the Wei River and its tributaries. Multivariate statistical analyses were employed to interpret the environmental data and to identify the natural and anthropogenic trace metal inputs to the surface waters of the river. Our results revealed that Zn, Se, B, Ba, Fe, Mn, Mo, Ni and V were all detected in the Wei River. Compared to drinking wate...

The roles of organic matter in seawater have often been discussed from the aspect of metal toxicity and bioavailability in seawater. In fact, organic ligands, as part of the organic matter, can work as a trace metal ion buffer system. At the same time, however, the release of well-defined metal chelators as exudates by, for example, marine bacteria is necessary to compete with natural metal com...

A model cocontaminated system was developed to determine whether a metal-complexing biosurfactant, rhamnolipid, could reduce metal toxicity to allow enhanced organic biodegradation by a Burkholderia sp. isolated from soil. Rhamnolipid eliminated cadmium toxicity when added at a 10-fold greater concentration than cadmium (890 microM), reduced toxicity when added at an equimolar concentration (89...

Expanding fundamental understanding of the complex and far-reaching impacts anthropogenic climate change is essential for formulating mitigation strategies. There abundant evidence ongoing damage threat to plant health across both natural cultivated ecosystems, with potentially immeasurable cost humanity planet. Plant–soil systems are multi-faceted, incorporating key variables that individually...

Introduction: Earth's outer core is substantially less dense that pure Fe-Ni, requiring ~3-9% of the core to be composed of a "light" element or elements [1]. Taking into account their cosmochemical availability, the elements H, C, O, Si, and S have been proposed as significant light elements in Earth's core [2]. The iden-tity(ies) of the light element(s) in Earth's core have implications for u...

A study performed over 12 months with caged mussels Mytilus galloprovincialis in the coastal marine zone, which is under urban pressure, reveals a temporal variation of digestive gland mass, which causes "biological dilution" of cytosolic metallothionein (MT) and trace metal (Cd, Cu, Zn, Fe, Mn) concentrations. The dilution effect was corrected by expressing the cytosolic MT and metal concentra...