Urban agglomerations are places of increased emissions of anthropogenic pollutants into the atmosphere. Since most of these pollutants are harmful to humans, reduction of their ambient concentrations is a major issue of environmental policy on international, national, and local levels. According to Wiederkehr and Yoon (1998), air pollutants can be grouped into major and trace or hazardous air p...

OBJECTIVES Persistent environmental pollutants, including heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants (POPs), have a ubiquitous presence. Many of these pollutants affect neurobiological processes, either accidentally or by design. The aim of this study was to explore the associations between assayed measures of POPs and heavy metals and depressive symptoms. We hypothesised that higher levels...

The hydroxyl radical induced decomposition of sulfonamide type antibiotics in dilute aqueous solutions was studied by a wide variety of analytical techniques. The degradation products were identified by LC/MS-MS, GC-MS, and ion chromatography. A new LC/MS-MS multiple reactions monitoring (MRM) database was set up for further identification purposes. ICP-MS, COD, BOD and TOC measurements were us...

During the last decades research all over the world has highlighted the deleterious effects of pollution on respiratory health of adults and children. Nevertheless, air pollution still represents a significant threat to health. Children are more sensitive than adults to pollutants for several factors: increased respiration relative to body size; physiologic immaturity of respiratory and immunol...

The disposal and dumping of toxic waste is a matter of growing concern in developing countries, including South Africa. Frequently these countries do not possess access to gas chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (GC-HRMS) for the determination of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). This publication describes an alternative approach to the investigation of toxic waste using compre...

Bentonite modified with short chain cationic surfactant might be the basis of a new approach to removing organic pollutants from water. The treatment process involves dispersing bentonite to the contaminated water and then adding a small cationic surfactant so as to result in flocs which are agglomerates of organobentonite and bound organic pollutants. The flocs are then removed from the soluti...

In recent years, photocatalytico oxidation processes with ultra violet (UV) radiation and semiconductor photocatalyst like titanium dioxide (TiO2) and zinc oxide (ZnO) have gained immense research interest as an effective wastewater purification method because of its efficacy in decomposing and mineralising the hazardous organic pollutants as well as the opportunity of utilizing the solar UV an...

Humic substances, the dark-colored, natural organic polyelectrolytes that are found in practically all soils, sediments, and natural water, strongly interact with both inorganic and organic pollutants. Inorganic cationic species generally undergo complexation reactions with humic substances. The binding of cations, such as cupric ions, by humic substances often markedly reduces their toxicity t...