Assessment of calcium intake by adolescents.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the daily calcium intake of adolescents in schools from Chapecó, Santa Catarina, Southern Brazil, to check if calcium intake is in accordance with the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI), and to investigate variables associated with daily calcium intake. METHODS: Cross-sectional study approved by the Institutional Review Board and developed in 2010. Students of the 8th grade completed questionnaires with personal data and questions about the calcium-rich foods intake frequency. In order to compare students with adequate (1300mg) or inadequate intake of calcium/day (<1300mg), parametric and nonparametric tests were used. RESULTS: A total of 214 students with a mean age of 14.3±1.0 years were enrolled. The median daily calcium intake was 540mg (interquartile range - IQ: 312-829mg) and only 25 students (11.7%) had calcium intake within the recommendations of the DRI for age. Soft drink consumption ≥3 times/week was associated with a lower intake of calcium. CONCLUSIONS: Few students ingested adequate levels of calcium for the age group. It is necessary to develop a program to encourage a greater intake of calcium-rich foods in adolescence.

Photocatalytic degradation of brilliant red dye and textile wastewater.

The degradation of textile wastewater and brilliant red dye solutions in a coil photoreactor provided with recirculation, assisted by powdered TiO2 and medium-pressure mercury lamp irradiation, was investigated. Factorial design was used for the attainment of the best conditions for COD and color abatement. pH and TiO2 loading showed to be critical variables for the photocatalytic degradation process for both textile wastewater and aqueous reactive dye solutions (25 mg L(-1)). For both substrates, the optimized process conditions by factorial design were almost the same (pH 2-3, 444 mg TiO2 L(-1) loading, 5 L h(-1) recirculation flow-rate). A 41% COD abatement for textile wastewater was obtained with a 120 min treatment. For the Brilliant Red dye solutions, a 20 min treatment resulted in about 90% decolorization (517 nm, pH 5), as well as in a reduction of 66% of the integrated absorbance (200-600 nm, pH 5).