The first evidence of microplastic occurrence in mine water: The largest black coal mining area in the Czech Republic.

Climate change is creating new challenges for water supply worldwide, making the search for new sources of water vital. As mine water could serve as a potential source, this study investigated the presence of microplastics in water from terminated deep mines in the largest coal basin in the Czech Republic, as well as in water from nearby shallow wells. The particles found were analyzed for size, polymer composition, color and morphology using the ImageJ tool, infrared spectroscopy with Fourier transform (FTIR) and an optical stereomicroscope with a digital camera. Microplastics were detected in all tested sites. Their range accounted for 2.5-17.5 items/L for mine water samples and 2.5-20 items/L for well samples, with fibers being the dominant type. The average width of particles from mine water and wells amounted to 58 µm; 71 µm, length to 655 µm; 501 µm and area to 22,067 µm2; 28,613 µm2, respectively. Blue color was prevalent, among materials, in both cases, plastic coated paper was found dominant to Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), Polyester (PES), Tetrafluoroethylene-perfluoro (Propyl Vinyl Ether) - Copolymer (TFE-PPVE), and polypropylene (PP). The research provides the first evidence of microplastics' presence in underground waters from deep mines and shallow wells in the same area. The data suggest that it is almost impossible to find underground water sources free of microplastic contamination. In this context, atmospheric contamination from mine ventilation and infiltration through terminated mines were identified as potential sources, while infiltration through soil and rock formations is unlikely given the geological composition. The results of this study can serve as a relevant basis for further research on microplastics in mine waters. Additionally, the conclusions can advance the development in remediation technologies of microplastics from deep underground waters and their implementation in practice, particularly in light of upcoming legislation.

Disparities in Methods Used to Determine Microplastics in the Aquatic Environment: A Review of Legislation, Sampling Process and Instrumental Analysis.

Plastic particles smaller than 5 mm, i.e., microplastics, have been detected in a number of environments. The number of studies on microplastics in marine environments, fresh water, wastewater, the atmosphere, and the human body are increasing along with a rise in the amounts of plastic materials introduced into the environment every year, all contributing to a range of health and environmental issues. Although the use of primary microplastics has been gradually reduced by recent legislation in many countries, new knowledge and data on these problems are needed to understand the overall lifecycle of secondary microplastics in particular. The aim of this review is to provide unified information on the pathways of microplastics into the environment, their degradation, and related legislation, with a special focus on the methods of their sampling, determination, and instrumental analysis. To deal with the health and environmental issues associated with the abundance of microplastics in the environment, researchers should focus on agreeing on a uniform methodology to determine the gravity of the problem through obtaining comparable data, thus leading to new and stricter legislation enforcing more sustainable plastic production and recycling, and hopefully contributing to reversing the trend of high amounts of microplastics worldwide.

Language lateralization in children with pre- and postnatal epileptogenic lesions of the left hemisphere: an fMRI study.

Functional MRI was used to evaluate factors influencing hemispheric dominance for language in 34 children suffering from intractable focal epilepsy due to left hemispheric lesion of pre- (n = 19) or postnatal (n = 15) origin. Nineteen children (56%) exhibited pronounced left-hemispheric language dominance. Significant co-activation of the right hemisphere or a complete language shift to this hemisphere was present in 15 children (44%). Atypical language representation was detected in 6 children (31,6%) with developmental pathology and in 9 patients (60%) with acquired epileptogenic lesion. Younger age at epilepsy onset and longer duration of epilepsy correlated significantly with atypical language presentation (p < 0,017 and p < 0,025). Whereas lesser tendency of prenatal lesions to displace cortical language centers did not reach statistical significance in simple paired tests, multiple logistic regression analysis viewed positive interaction between language shift, etiology and age at epilepsy onset. In conclusion, the language network reorganization was strongly influenced by both, the age at epilepsy onset and duration of epilepsy, and to a lesser degree by the character of the epileptogenic lesion, either developmental or acquired postnatally.