Environmental Risk Assessment of the Zhengrunzhou Water Source under the Influence of Oil Spill Accidents at the Wharf Group

To compensate for the research defects of strong subjectivity in determining oil spill amount, insufficient consideration of wharf distribution, and incomplete indexes for reflecting the influence degree of oil spill accidents on water sources, and to enhance the supervision efficiency of the supervision department, this paper constructs a risk assessment system of water sources under the influence of the wharf group. The system includes a wharf group division method considering the wharf distribution situation;the calculation method of oil spill amount at wharves considering the oil tank capacity of main ship types and the production supervision risk at the wharves;the calculation method of the oil spill amount at the wharf group considering the wharf number, distribution density, production supervision risk and wharf oil spillage;the determination method for the influence degree of oil spill at the wharf group on the water sources and judgment method of supervision level at the wharf group, which takes the arrival time of oil slicks, the duration of over-standard petroleum concentration and the maximum over-standard multiple of petroleum concentration at the water intake as indexes;the method of determining the risk of oil spill accidents at the water source considering the cumulative effect of oil spill at the wharf group on the risk of the water sources;and the environmental risk assessment method of water sources considering oil spill accident risk and the anti-risk ability. Applying this system to the environmental risk assessment of the Zhengrunzhou water source in Zhenjiang City, we discovered that the flow field, wind field, oil spill location and oil spill amount were correlated with the influence degree of oil spill accidents on water sources, for which the flow field demonstrated the strongest correlation, while the wind field presented the weakest. The supervision level of the wharf group is mainly sub-key or non-key levels, but the level of the wharf group SD07 is approximate to the key supervision level during rising tide. Due to the strong anti-risk ability of the Zhengrunzhou water source, the environmental risks of the Zhengrunzhou water source under different working conditions are scarcely different and belong to the medium-risk level.

Occurrence of Pharmaceutically Active Compounds and Potential Ecological Risks in Wastewater from Hospitals and Receiving Waters in Sri Lanka.

The presence of pharmaceutically active compounds (PACs) in the environment and their associated hazards is a major global health concern; however, data on these compounds are scarce in developing nations. In the present study, the existence of 39 non-antimicrobial PACs and six of their metabolites in wastewater from hospitals and adjacent surface waters in Sri Lanka was investigated from 2016 to 2018. The highest amounts of the measured chemicals, including the highest concentrations of atorvastatin (14,620 ng/L) and two metabolites, mefenamic acid (12,120 ng/L) and o-desmethyl tramadol (8700 ng/L), were detected in wastewater from the largest facility. Mefenamic acid, gemfibrozil, losartan, cetirizine, carbamazepine, and phenytoin were detected in all the samples. The removal rates in wastewater treatment were 100% for zolpidem, norsertaline, quetiapine, chlorpromazine, and alprazolam. There was substantial variation in removal rates of PACs among facilities, and the overall data suggest that treatment processes in facilities were ineffective and that some PAC concentrations in the effluents were increased. The estimated risk quotients revealed that 14 PACs detected in water samples could pose low to high ecological risk to various aquatic organisms. Compounds such as ibuprofen, tramadol, and chlorpromazine detected in untreated and treated wastewater at these facilities pose a high risk to several aquatic organisms. Our study provides novel monitoring data for non-antimicrobial PAC abundance and the associated potential ecological risk related to hospitals and urban surface waters in Sri Lanka and further offers valuable information on pre-COVID-19 era PAC distribution in the country. Environ Toxicol Chem 2022;41:298-311. © 2021 SETAC.

Environmental risk assessment and comprehensive index model of disaster loss for COVID-19 transmission.

This paper focuses on the study of environmental risk assessment and comprehensive index model of disaster loss for COVID-19 transmission. Considering the five environmental vectors of carrier vulnerability, environmental instability of pregnancy and disaster, intensity of disaster-causing factors, disaster prevention and mitigation capacity and emergency prevention and control capacity and its 38 indicators, the correlation coefficient matrix and principal component expressions of each vector are established by principal component analysis, respectively, and the index model of each vector is established on the basis. Then, considering the index models of these five vectors, we established the disaster loss composite index model, which was used to conduct environmental risk assessment and disaster loss composite index analysis of the transmission of COVID-19 in Hubei Province during the period of January 21, 2020 to March 18, 2020. The empirical study showed that: (1) the risk index peaked from January 21 to January 23; (2) the risk index was at a low but volatile level from January 24 to March 14; (3) the risk index rose again slightly from March 15 and rose to another peak on March 16. These fluctuating, smooth and fluctuating processes of the comprehensive index of disaster losses of COVID-19 in Hubei Province are basically stable and consistent with the actual situation of the virus outbreak in the early stage, isolation and prevention and control in the middle stage, and resumption of work and production in the late stage. The study in this paper provides a scientific decision-making reference for the prevention and control of COVID-19 as well as emergency prevention and control measures.

Environmental Risk Assessment of Recombinant Viral Vector Vaccines against SARS-Cov-2.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative agent of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Over the past months, considerable efforts have been put into developing effective and safe drugs and vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. Various platforms are being used for the development of COVID-19 vaccine candidates: recombinant viral vectors, protein-based vaccines, nucleic acid-based vaccines, and inactivated/attenuated virus. Recombinant viral vector vaccine candidates represent a significant part of those vaccine candidates in clinical development, with two already authorised for use in the European Union and one currently under rolling review by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Since recombinant viral vector vaccine candidates are considered as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), their regulatory oversight includes besides an assessment of their quality, safety and efficacy, also an environmental risk assessment (ERA). The present article highlights the main characteristics of recombinant viral vector vaccine (candidates) against SARS-CoV-2 in the pipeline and discusses their features from an environmental risk point of view.