Food contamination caused by radioisotopes released from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is of great public concern. The contamination risk for food items should be estimated depending on the characteristics and geographic environments of each item. However, evaluating current and future risk for food items is generally difficult because of small sample sizes, high detection limits, ...

Achromobacter xylosoxidans is an aerobic, nonfermenting gram-negative rod and described as a waterborne bacterium since it habits aquatic environments ubiquitously. It has frequently been isolated from aquatic surroundings in the hospital and from various human body sites. Although occasionally considered a non-pathogen, A. xylosoxidans has been associated with outbreaks of nosocomial infection...

Although freshwater insects are known to accumulate trace metals in the laboratory from both water and food, the relative importance of metal sources for these animals, as well as the rate at which they take up and eliminate their metal, has not been measured in nature. We describe a novel in situ approach that allowed us to determine that trophic transfer is the main source of cadmium for larv...

The papers presented during the first session have provided a useful introduction and a review of several important points that have been established during the past decade. Many carefully studied near shore marine environments and freshwater lakes are polluted with chemicals as indicated primarily by measurements of certain organics and metals in sediments. Fish and shellfish, including bivalv...

Benthic macroinvertebrates have many useful properties that make possible the use of these organisms as sentinel in biomonitoring programmes in freshwater. Combined with the characteristics of the water and sediment, benthic macroinvertebrates are potential indicators of environmental quality. Thus, the spatial occurrence of potentially toxic metals (Al, Zn, Cr, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn and Ni) in the wa...

The concentrations of toxic effluents released into freshwater aquatic environments are increasing day by day and affect the aquatic biota. The present study outlined the evaluation of physicochemical parameters such as water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), phosphates (PO42--P), nitrates (NO3--N), electrical conductivity (EC)...