Author Archive

Issue 2 now online – including a collection of articles from AIRMON 2011

Welcome to our second issue of the year, which includes a collection of articles from AIRMON 2011 – the Symposium on Modern Principles of Air Monitoring and Biomonitoring held in Norway last June.  Professor Yngvar Thomassen introduces papers in the issue which cover topics from bioaerosol exposure in the workplace to beryllium exposure, to interlaboratory studies to understand method performance in trace element determination.

The images on the cover both have an aerosol theme, the first highlighting the article from Nils Petter Skaugset et al. presented at AIRMON 2011 on the exposure of aluminium production workers to beryllium,

Occupational exposure to beryllium in primary aluminium production
Nils Petter Skaugset, Dag G. Ellingsen, Kari Dahl, Ivar Martinsen, Lars Jordbekken, Per Arne Drabløs and Yngvar Thomassen
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10539F

The second is from Subbarao V. Ravva et al. on the sampling and influence of environmental conditions on airborne bacteria:

Bacterial communities in urban aerosols collected with wetted-wall cyclonic samplers and seasonal fluctuations of live and culturable airborne bacteria
Subbarao V. Ravva, Bradley J. Hernlem, Chester Z. Sarreal and Robert E. Mandrell
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10753D

The issue also includes our regular Environmental Digest from Mike Sharpe, collating the latest environmental news including the Durban talks, a new directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment and the EU ban on phosphate detergents.

Other hot papers in this issue:

Interlaboratory evaluation of trace element determination in workplace air filter samples by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry
Kevin Ashley, Stanley A. Shulman, Michael J. Brisson and Alan M. Howe
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10695C

Occurrence and fate of androgens, estrogens, glucocorticoids and progestagens in two different types of municipal wastewater treatment plants
Shan Liu, Guang-Guo Ying, Jian-Liang Zhao, Li-Jun Zhou, Bin Yang, Zhi-Feng Chen and Hua-Jie Lai
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10783F

Enantioselective aquatic toxicity of current chiral pesticides
Quan Zhang, Cui Wang, Xiaofeng Zhang, Daqing Jin, Changjiang Huang and Meirong Zhao
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10687B

View the issue

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Meet the Editorial Board: Shinsuke Tanabe

Ps. This is our favourite photo!

Dr Shinsuke Tanabe is a Professor at the Center for Marine Environmental Studies (CMES), Ehime University, Japan and is the Program Leader of the Global Center of Excellence (G-COE) Program. He established the Environmental Specimen Bank at Ehime University and his lab are currently involved in global monitoring of trace and radioactive elements, classic and novel persistent organic pollutants (POPs), and pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs), especially in developing countries in Asia and Africa. They are also involved in measuring the in situ, in vivo and in ovo toxic implications of persistent chemicals like dioxins and related chemicals (DRCs) on wildlife and humans.

As you can see, his research covers the “Source, Transport and Fate” and “Exposure and Impacts” areas of our scope:

Silver speciation in liver of marine mammals by synchrotron X-ray absorption fine structure and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopies
Emiko Nakazawa, Tokutaka Ikemoto, Akiko Hokura, Yasuko Terada, Takashi Kunito, Takahito Yamamoto, Tadasu K. Yamada, Fernando C. W. Rosas, Gilberto Fillmann, Shinsuke Tanabe and Izumi Nakai
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10115C

Spatial and temporal evolution of imposex in dogwhelk Nucella lapillus (L.) populations from North Wales, UK
Isabel Benta Oliveira, Christopher Allan Richardson, Ana Catarina Sousa, Shin Takahashi, Shinsuke Tanabe and Carlos Miguez Barroso
DOI: 10.1039/B906766C

Brominated flame retardants in the environment of Asia-Pacific: an overview of spatial and temporal trends
Shinsuke Tanabe, Karri Ramu, Tomohiko Isobe and Shin Takahashi
DOI: 10.1039/B709928B

Environmental Specimen Bank in Ehime University (es-BANK), Japan for global monitoring
Shinsuke Tanabe
DOI: 10.1039/B602677J

We asked him what he thinks will be future environmental issues:
“Emerging POPs are exclusively man-made but extremely toxic to humans, present in all our organs and tissues. The effect of POPs on humans is well known but their toxic implications will become a hot cake for scientists to deal with in the future. Also, radioactivity is actively making human life bright at present but may make it gloomy in future if emissions from atomic power plants are not controlled. There will be a need for continuous assessment of pollution from the thousands of such plants in the future.”

View the profiles for the rest of the Editorial Board here.

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Meet our Editorial Board: Wunmi Sadik

Wunmi Sadik is Professor of Chemistry & Director, Center for Advanced Sensors & Environmental Systems, at State University of New York at Binghamton (SUNY-Binghamton). Her research areas include interfacial molecular recognition processes, sensors, and new measurement approaches and their application to solving problems in biological systems, energy and the environment. Professor Sadik was the Guest Editor for our Environmental Nanotechnology themed issue in 2011.

Her expertise covers the “Emerging Contaminants and Nanotechnology” area of our scope and you may also be interested in some of her recent articles:

Sensors as tools for quantitation, nanotoxicity and nanomonitoring assessment of engineered nanomaterials
O. A. Sadik, A. L. Zhou, S. Kikandi, N. Du, Q. Wang and K. Varner
DOI: 10.1039/B912860C

Foreword: JEM Spotlight: Environmental monitoring of airborne nanoparticles
Omowunmi (Wunmi) A. Sadik
DOI: 10.1039/B917248N

Environmental nanotechnology
Wunmi Sadik
Editorial From themed issue Environmental Nanotechnology

And her thoughts on the future of environmental nanotechnology? “The last decade has witnessed an explosion of interest in the science and technology of engineered nanomaterials. Research and development in the next decade will focus on the overall sustainability of nanotechnology including the need to develop standardized nanomaterials, characterization parameters, metrological tools and protocols for a better understanding of the interactions of nanomaterials with biological and environmental systems.

View the profiles for the rest of the Editorial Board here.

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Meet our Editorial Board: Kristopher McNeill

Professor Kristopher McNeill is a professor at ETH Zurich and chairs the Environmental Chemistry group where his research is focussed on environmental organic chemistry, with a particular emphasis on developing a molecular-level understanding of environmentally important processes.  His group have current projects on the fate of emerging contaminants, natural organic matter photochemistry, the environmental chemistry of proteins, and metal-mediated defluorination reactions.

His research covers the “Source, Transport and Fate” area of our scope, and his latest article in the journal is on developing a probe to investigate the production and fate of the OH. radical in sunlit waters:

Terephthalate as a probe for photochemically generated hydroxyl radical
Sarah E. Page, William A. Arnold and Kristopher McNeill
DOI: 10.1039/C0EM00160K

We asked him what he thought would be a challenge for environmental chemists in the coming years:
The challenge that environmental organic chemists face going into the future is that problems are moving out of our comfort zone of small, charge-neutral, hydrophobic molecules to large, polyfunctional, and/or less well-defined species. The rule book of how one approaches the environmental chemistry of things like biomacromolecules or carbon nanomaterials still needs to be written.”

View the profiles for the rest of the Editorial Board here.

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Meet our Editorial Board: Liang-Hong Guo

Professor Liang-Hong Guo is a principal investigator and group leader at the Center for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His current research interests include biosensors and bioassays for quantitative determination of environmental chemicals and chemical toxicity testing, interactions of environmental chemicals with biological molecules and their toxicological implications, and nanomaterials for water purification.

Professor Guo’s expertise covers the “Novel Analytical Tools and Measurement Technologies” area of our scope, and he of course thinks this will be an important development area for the future, “Newly developed research tools in the life science fields will gain popularity in the study of environmental toxicology. Nanotechnology-based devices for large-scale water purification will also be demonstrated“.

Professor Guo will also be providing regular updates on the latest environmental news from China, read his first two columns here:

News from China
Liang-Hong Guo
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM90044G

News from China
Liang-Hong Guo
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM90029C

View the profiles for the rest of the Editorial Board here.

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Meet our Editorial Board: Beate Escher

Professor Beate Escher is Deputy Director of the National Research Centre for Environmental Toxicology (Entox) in Brisbane, Australia, where she researches mode-of-action based environmental risk assessment, including methods for initial hazard screening and risk assessment of pharmaceuticals and pesticides with an emphasis on mixtures, and especially effect assessment of transformation products and disinfection by-products. One of her goals is to close the gap between exposure and effect assessment through approaches linking bioavailability to internal exposure and effects via understanding and modelling of toxicokinetic and toxicodynamic processes.

Her research expertise covers “Exposure and Impacts” and “Novel Analytical Tools and Measurement Technologies” areas of our scope.  Take a look at some of her recent research in these areas:

Recovery of a freshwater wetland from chemical contamination after an oil spill
Haipu Bi, David Rissik, Miroslava Macova, Laurence Hearn, Jochen F. Mueller and Beate Escher
DOI: 10.1039/C0EM00406E

Advantages of toxicokinetic and toxicodynamic modelling in aquatic ecotoxicology and risk assessment
Roman Ashauer and Beate I. Escher
DOI: 10.1039/C0EM00234H

JEM Spotlight: Monitoring the treatment efficiency of a full scale ozonation on a sewage treatment plant with a mode-of-action based test battery
Beate I. Escher, Nadine Bramaz and Christoph Ort
DOI: 10.1039/B907093A

We asked her what areas of environmental science she thought would gain significance in the next few years:
“Areas of growing significance will be the disinfection by-products and transformation products of organic micropollutants.”

View the profiles for the rest of the Editorial Board here.

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Have you seen our collection of review articles? Topics discussed range from nanomaterials in the environment to climate change

During 2011 we published a number of topical reviews on a wide range of topics by expert researchers in their fields.  We’ve collected some of them below but take a look here for the whole list, we hope you’ll find something interesting in your area.

The release of engineered nanomaterials to the environment
Fadri Gottschalk and Bernd Nowack

Polyfluoroalkyl compounds in the aquatic environment: a review of their occurrence and fate
Lutz Ahrens

Relationship of polychlorinated biphenyls with type 2 diabetes and hypertension
Charles Jay Everett, Ivar Frithsen and Marty Player

Global climate change and contaminants—an overview of opportunities and priorities for modelling the potential implications for long-term human exposure to organic compounds in the Arctic
James M. Armitage, Cristina L. Quinn and Frank Wania

Persistent organic pollutants in Antarctica: current and future research priorities
Susan Bengtson Nash

The antibacterial effects of engineered nanomaterials: implications for wastewater treatment plants
Ndeke Musee, Melusi Thwala and Nomakhwezi Nota

Molecular-level methods for monitoring soil organic matter responses to global climate change
Xiaojuan Feng and Myrna J. Simpson

If you have an idea for a review article that hasn’t been covered and you would like to see included, contact the Editorial Office – we’d love to hear from you.

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Meet our Editorial Board: Jon Ayres

Jon Ayres is Professor of Environmental & Respiratory Medicine at the University of Birmingham and a respiratory physician.  He has advised the Government and a variety of learned societies on air pollution and health issues related to the environment for a number of years.  His clinical interests are focussed on occupational and environmental lung disease and his research is directed towards understanding the health effects of indoor and outdoor air pollution and the health risks of nanomaterial exposure.

“The only way we can understand the true risks from exposure to environmental hazards is to construct robust exposure–response functions for a range of exposure–outcome pairings. This is somewhat easier for outcomes which follow closely on exposures but much harder for those where the relevant exposures precede outcomes by long periods of time. We therefore have to define better ways of determining those exposures in objective rather than subjective ways – a huge challenge!”

– Jon Ayres

Professor Ayres’ expertise covers the “Exposure and Impacts” category of the scope of JEM. For Board members covering other areas of our scope check out the profile article of our Editorial Board.

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Only 7 days left to nominate for the Environment, Sustainability & Energy Prizes and Awards

Our Prizes and Awards recognise achievements by individuals in advancing the chemical sciences. Do you know someone who has made an outstanding contribution to the chemical sciences in the areas of environment, sustainability, energy or toxicology?

Environment, Sustainability & Energy Prizes and Awards being presented in 2012 are:

Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prizes
Corday-Morgan Prizes
Tilden Prizes
Centenary Prizes
Interdisciplinary Prizes
Beilby Medal and Prize
Green Chemistry Award
Sustainable Water Award
John Jeyes Award

Showcase inspiring science and gain the recognition deserved – Nominate now

Closing date for nominations is Sunday 15 January 2012

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Meet our new Editorial Board Chair: Frank Wania

Frank Wania is Professor of Environmental Chemistry at the University of Toronto, where his research is focussed on the environmental fate and transport of organic contaminants, with a view to gaining a mechanistic understanding of contaminant enrichment processes through a combination of field work, laboratory experimentation and model simulations. Current projects he is working on deal with the development and application of passive air sampling techniques for semi-volatile organic contaminants, the interaction of contaminant fate and climate, the identification of new environmental contaminants by theoretical means, and the quantification of the role of snow in the environmental fate of pollutants.

Professor Wania’s expertise covers the following categories of the scope of JEM: “Source, Transport and Fate” and “Novel Analytical Tools and Measurement Technologies”, with a growing interest in aspects of “Exposure and Impacts”.

For some examples of his latest research in these areas why not try these hot papers:

Mercury fate in ageing and melting snow: Development and testing of a controlled laboratory system
Erin Mann, Torsten Meyer, Carl P. J. Mitchell and Frank Wania
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10297D

Visualising the equilibrium distribution and mobility of organic contaminants in soil using the chemical partitioning space
Fiona Wong and Frank Wania
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10109A

Global climate change and contaminants—an overview of opportunities and priorities for modelling the potential implications for long-term human exposure to organic compounds in the Arctic
James M. Armitage, Cristina L. Quinn and Frank Wania
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10131E

We asked Professor Wania what he thinks the future holds for environmental chemistry:
I expect some of the most interesting work to arise from collaborative projects, e.g. when modellers and field researchers join forces to design clever field experiments, or when environmental scientists work across the boundaries that have developed over the years, e.g. between the atmospheric science community and the environmental organic chemists.”

You can also read his Editorial for his ambitions for the journal as “the periodical of choice for cutting-edge research on environmental processes and impacts here or view the profiles for the rest of the Editorial Board here.

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