Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts blog

A study by US scientists has highlighted the need for new respirators for firefighters.

Although firefighters usually wear self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) when tackling structural fires, this is a much less common practice when dealing with vehicle fires. The potential health risk from vehicle fire fumes is considered minimal, as the fires are outdoors and are usually extinguished rapidly. In addition, SCBA is cumbersome to wear and takes a long time to put on.

However, Kenneth Fent and his team at the US Public Health Service and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Cincinnati, have shown that firefighters are actually exposing themselves to almost ten times the acceptable level of 75 volatile organic compounds, including benzene, acetonitrile and acetone.

 

The measure of risk to a mixture of chemicals was found to be 9.2 times the acceptable amount

Link to journal article
Assessing the risk to firefighters from chemical vapors and gases during vehicle fire suppression
Kenneth W. Fent and Douglas E. Evans, J. Environ. Monit., 2011
DOI: 10.1039/c0em00591f

Hope may be in sight for the Deepwater Horizon clean up operation as Spanish researchers show the rapid recovery of wild mussel populations following a similarly disastrous oil spill.

In November 2002, the tanker Prestige split in two, disgorging over 60 000 tonnes of oil into the Atlantic Ocean. The Galician coastline, Europe’s largest producer of mussels, was one of the worst affected areas. Miren Cajaraville led a team at the University of the Basque Country, Leioa, to assess the impact of the spill on the reproductive capabilities of wild mussel populations.

Mussels are commonly used as a gauge of marine pollution levels as they are inactive and do not move to feed, so accumulate high levels of contaminants from their environment. Cajaraville monitored the levels of a protein that control the development of sex cells in females along with other indicators of abnormality, such as premature cell death and abnormal reproductive organ development to determine the effect of the oil-contaminated waters on the mussels.

Mussels are commonly used as a gauge of marine pollution

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Link to journal article
Effects of the fuel oil spilled by the Prestige tanker on reproduction parameters of wild mussel populations
Maren Ortiz-Zarragoitia, Larraitz Garmendia, María Carmen Barbero, Teresa Serrano, Ionan Marigómez and Miren P. Cajaraville
J. Environ. Monit., 2010, DOI: 10.1039/c0em00102c

A sensitive probe to monitor hydroxyl radicals in water has been developed by a team of Swiss and US scientists.

Hydroxyl radicals are high-energy oxidants that are important in the biology of ageing and radiation damage, as well as in environmental chemistry. In natural water systems, the radicals are produced photochemically from nutrients such as nitrates or nitrites and pollutants such as dissolved organic matter. And accurately measuring hydroxyl radical concentrations can help understand the fate of pollutants.

Current hydroxyl radical probes, such as benzoic acid, often have limited sensitivity, require long irradiation times or high concentrations of the probe, which can affect the sample. Now Kristopher McNeill at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and colleagues at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis have discovered that terephthalate is a more sensitive probe for hydroxyl radicals in aquatic environments.

Terephthalate picks up an OH radical to form fluorescent hydroxyterephthalate

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Link to journal article:
Terephthalate as a probe for photochemically generated hydroxyl radical
Sarah E. Page, William A. Arnold and Kristopher McNeill, J. Environ. Monit., 2010, 12, 1658
DOI: 10.1039/c0em00160k