Recycling of Electrical and Electronic-Waste with the Help of Marx Power Pulse Generator

Electronic waste (E-wastes) includes obsolete electrical or electronic devices. With the expansion of telecommunications from the COVID-19 pandemic and the advancement of technology, it is expected that by 2025 the weight of this waste will increase to 4.3 billion tons per year. In addition to precious metals, E-waste contains hazardous substances such as mercury, lead, cadmium, barium, and lithium. Therefore, managing how to recycle them through healthy environmental processes is essential. In this paper, the removal of the CD-ROM cover with the help of the proposed device of Marx is investigated. The Marx generator is designed and manufactured with an input voltage of 50 volts, an output voltage of about 370 volts, and a pulse power of 24.5 J. The results indicate the possibility of short-term separation of the CD-ROM coating with the help of the proposed generator. © 2022 IEEE.

PREDICTION OF THE MAXIMUM WIND SPEED IN INDOOR ENVIRONMENTS FOR EFFICIENT NATURAL VENTILATION

The efficient natural ventilation in indoor environments is extremely important especially this period with the appearance of new hazardous viruses such as COVID-19. It is well known that the maximum wind speed causes the lowest individual exposure to hazardous substances in an environment (either indoor or outdoor) and as a result its reliable prediction by a numerical model (either simple or complex) becomes of utmost importance. In this study a deterministic model, that was developed for the outdoor environment, is examined as a possible candidate to predict the maximum wind speed in indoor environments. For the needs of the study a wind tunnel experiment is simulated by the LES methodology in order to acquire the maximum wind speed at various locations in an indoor environment. Then the deterministic model, without any change in its parameters, is validated successfully with the LES maximum wind speeds. The present deterministic model can be incorporated in simple methodologies (e.g. RANS) provided that the latest are able to predict the mean speed, the turbulent intensity and a hydrodynamic time scale. © British Crown Copyright (2022)

Current Issues in Combating Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Threats to Empower Sustainability: A Systematic Review

Featured ApplicationPotential application in innovations and management sciences, strategy for sustainable development.Combating chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats with novel solutions reduces disasters and accident risks and, at the same time, aids sustainability. This research aims to identify the innovations in combating CBRN threats and verify how they fall within the scope of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The study relies on mixed-method research, including bibliometrics and text-mining used to identify clusters, most frequent words, and codes. The material for the research was 156 publications from the Scopus database from 2017 to April 2022. From the analytical process, textual data served as the indicators of the innovations’ directions driven by SDGs. The research results indicated that innovations for combating CBRN threats support sustainability mainly in health and environmental areas, specifically in: SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being;SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation;SDG 14: Life Below Water;SDG 15: Life On Land. The research contributes to the landscape of innovations serving sustainable development. Further studies may focus on narrower perspectives, such as environmental protection and health innovations. There can also be concerns about the dark side of CBRN innovations and technologies of dual use.

NEHA Government Affairs Activities

The focus this year was on Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) appropriations, highlighting the importance of federal funding for food safety and other environmental health objectives to the state and local environmental health profession. Environmental Health Workforce Act It appears that the Environmental Health Workforce Act, a longstanding NEHA objective, will possibly be passed this year, with Representative Brenda Lawrence (D-Michigan) including language within the House of Representatives appropriations bill requesting a study on the environmental health workforce to be performed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Representative Wittman has shown a keen interest in ensuring that the nation's retail food safety system remains safe, well stocked, and provides a wide variety of foods to consumers in the U.S. NEHA looks forward to working with Representative Wittman on future public health and food safety efforts.

Significant variations of dangerous exposures during COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: a possible association with the containment measures implemented to reduce the virus transmission.

BACKGROUND: In response to the COVID-19 health emergency, mass media widely spread guidelines to stop the virus transmission, leading to an excessive and unaware use of detergents and disinfectants. In Italy and in other countries this tendency caused a significant increase of exposures to these products in 2020. Evaluating data collected by the Italian Pavia Poison Centre (PPC), this study intends to examine the relationship between the COVID-19 lockdown and the variations of exposures to specific product categories possibly associated to the containment measures implemented. Simultaneously, this work shows the effectiveness of the European Product Categorisation System (EuPCS) in surveillance activities of dangerous chemicals. METHODS: Exposure cases managed by the PPC during March-May 2020 (lockdown) and during the same months of 2017-2018-2019 were compared. Differences in categorical variables were tested with the Chi-square test. The level of significance was set at Alpha = .05. The study included all EuPCS groups but specifically focused on cleaners, detergents, biocides and cosmetics. RESULTS: During the lockdown, calls from private citizens showed a highly significant increase (+ 11.5%, p < .001) and occupational exposures decreased (- 11.7%, p = .011). Among Cleaners, exposures to Bleaches slightly increased while Drain cleaning products went through a significant reduction (- 13.9%, p = .035). A highly significant increase of exposures to Disinfectants was observed (+ 7.7%, p = .007), particularly to those for surfaces (+ 6.8%, p = .039). Regarding Cosmetics, both handwashing soaps and gel products significantly increased (respectively: + 25.0, p = .016 and + 9.7%, p = .028). Among children 1-5 years, the statistical significance is reached with exposures to Dishwashing detergents (+ 13.1%, p = .032), handwashing soaps (+ 28.6%, p = .014) and handwashing gel products (+ 16.8%, p = .010). Contrarily, Liquid Laundry Detergent Capsules decreased in a highly significant manner (- 25%; p = .001). The general severity of exposures showed a highly significant decrease (Moderate: - 10.1%, p = .0002). CONCLUSIONS: This study investigated the relationship between the COVID-19 lockdown and the variations of exposures to some product categories related to the containment measures. The results obtained support any action to be taken by Competent Authorities to implement measures for a safer use of cleaners/disinfectants. This paper shows the benefit in applying the EuPCS to categorize products according to their intended use, though an extension of this system to products not covered by CLP Regulation may be a further advantage.

Valorization of hazardous COVID-19 mask waste while minimizing hazardous byproducts using catalytic gasification.

This study proposes a method to valorize hazardous waste such as used COVID-19 face mask via catalytic gasification over Ni-loaded ZSM-5 type zeolites. The 25% Ni was found as an optimal loading on ZSM-5 in terms of H2 production. Among different zeolites (ZSM-5(30), ZSM-5(80), ZSM-5(280), mesoporous (m)-ZSM-5(30), and HY(30)), 25% Ni/m-ZSM-5(30) led to the highest H2 selectivity (45.04 vol%), most likely because of the highest Ni dispersion on the m-ZSM-5(30) surface, high porosity, and acid site density of the m-ZSM-5(30). The content of N-containing species (e.g., caprolactum and nitriles) in the gasification product was also reduced, when steam was used as gasifying agent, which is the source of potentially hazardous air pollutants (e.g., NOx). The increase in the SiO2/Al2O3 ratio resulted in lower tar conversion and lower H2 generation. At comparable conditions, steam gasification of the mask led to ~15 vol% higher H2 selectivity than air gasification. Overall, the Ni-loaded zeolite catalyst can not only suppress the formation of hazardous substances but also enhance the production of hydrogen from the hazardous waste material such as COVID-19 mask waste.

The National Institute of Health and the Italian Poison Centers Network: results of a collaborative study for the surveillance of exposures to chemicals.

Background: The Public Health Surveillance Systems are essential to improve and protect public health, as highlighted by the World Health Organization. According with this consideration, a systematic collaboration between the National Institute of Health and the Poison Centers of Northern, Central and Southern Italy was established. Its aim was to improve the national network for the surveillance of dangerous exposures to chemicals. The developed network provided harmonized data essential for evidence-based interventions and significantly ameliorated the data flow between the Poison Centers and the Central Health Institutions. Methods: The improvement of the system was obtained through several actions, such as the development of the "Online Surveillance Card" for the detection of sentinel events in real time and the harmonization of the data collection flow, including the product categorization according to the European Product Categorization System. Data analysis was carried out by Microsoft's IBM SPSS Statistics version 26, Access and Excel. Results: Important information was obtained, regarding also exposures to chemicals and their management in pediatric populations. The surveillance network was proved effective not only under "normal" conditions but also to promptly monitor changes during exceptional health emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. During the 2020 lockdown the surveillance system registered a significant increase in the frequency of exposures to disinfectants (p-value=0.002), an evidence that highlighted the need of tailored intervention. Conclusions: This Italian Project model proves to be reliable and suitable to be transferred to other European countries, in order to realize an European Poison Centers' Network, able to overcome unsolved health problems and to globally improve the "evidence-based" prevention of exposures to chemicals.