Selected physical and inorganic concepts and factors which might be important in assessing and/or understanding the fate and disposition of metal compounds in a biological environment are reviewed. The stereochemistry (geometry), thermodynamic stability, redox properties, and intrinsic reactivity/lability are properties of metal compounds which can have a major influence on metal-target binding...

Trace metal (Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb) concentrations in zooplankton from the mixed layer were investigated at 8 coastal and 20 offshore stations in the western Bay of Bengal during the summer monsoon of 2003. The ecotoxicological importance of trace metal uptake was apparent within the Bay of Bengal zooplankton. There was a distinct spatial heterogeneity of metals, with highest concentra...

The rapid economic development in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region in South China in the last three decades has had a significant impact on the local environment. Estuarine sediment is a major sink for contaminants and nutrients in the surrounding ecosystem. The accumulation of trace metals in sediments may cause serious environmental problems in the aquatic system. Thirty sediment cores were...

The effect of the absence of trace elements on the conversion of a mixture of volatile fatty acids by a distillery anaerobic granular sludge was investigated. Two UASB reactors were operated under identical operational conditions except for the influent trace metal concentrations, during 140 days. Experiments were carried out in three periods, where different organic loading rates (OLR) were ap...

Our study was based on the recent increase in wastewater pollution and its deleterious effects to the marine ecosystem. Using numerical simulation (DESCAR3.2 software program), we investigated the orientation and quantification of trace metals in wastewater discharges from permanent and semi-permanent drain outfalls constructed along the Kuwait Coastline encompassing six Kuwait Governorates (GI...

-The conditions under which an exchanger phase will behave as an ideal mixture are established from thermodynamic principles. It is shown that, if a stoichiometric cation-exchange reaction is reversible, the exchanger phase will exhibit ideal behavior if the Vanselow selectivity coefficient is independent of the exchanger composition. This criterion is applied to some recently published data fo...