Soil and Water Pollution Monitoring, Protection and Remediation

Only in the late 1970’s did the industrialized countries begin to comprehend the enormity of the damage brought about by pollution of the geosphere. Although the harm caused by the use of DDT and other organochlorine pesticides was already noted by Rachel Carson in her 1962 seminal book ‘Silent Spring’, the first major institutional move to stop pollution and reclaim polluted land was in 1978, when the Love Canal neighborhood was evacuated and the U.S. Superfund program initiated.

The level of knowledge concerning the state of the environment increases continually. Selected examples of activities of the Department of Analytical Chemistry, Chemical Faculty, Gda sk University of Technology (Gda sk, Poland) are presented.

Measurements in soils of the effective metal concentration using DGT (diffusive gradients in thin-films) generally correlate very well with the concentrations of metals in plants grown in the same soil. While the goodness of fit varies, depending on the metal, plant species and soil type, it is generally better than the fit to other soil measurements.

An innovative series of optical fiber sensors for water monitoring, based on spectroscopic interrogation, is presented. Two types of custom-design instrumentation were developed, both making use of LED light sources and low-cost detectors to perform broadband spectral measurements in the visible spectral range. The first was designed especially to perform direct absorption spectroscopy, while the second provided turbidity measurements. Designed for water analysis and industrial process control, the proposed instruments can be used by operators with little or no technical skills.

Transport models based on calibrated flow models may often yield wrong predictions unless recalibrated with the aid of environmental tracers because migration velocity depends on the ratio of hydraulic conductivity to porosity whereas flow rates depend on transmissivity.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Research and Development (ORD) is the scientific research arm of EPA. ORD conducts research on ways to prevent pollution, protect human health, and reduce risk. Much of the research related to demonstration and evaluation of innovative cleanup technologies is conducted in ORD’s National Risk Management Research Laboratory.

An overview of permeable reactive barrier (PRB) performance for field sites in the U.S. was evaluated over the last 10 years by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development (EPA-ORD) in collaboration with other U.S. federal agencies, consulting companies and academic institutions under activities sponsored by the EPA’s Remedial Technology Development Forum (RTDF).

Sewage sludge (biosolids) application on land as a fertilizer and soil improver, and high-volume sulfidic mining waste disposal and use as a common fill are anthropogenic activities that increasingly contribute to heavy metal enrichment of soil and ground water.

A new concept for the mediating action of humic substances (HS) in the contaminated environment is developed. It defines three scenarios of mitigating activity of HS in the system “living cell-ecotoxicant”.

Organic matter is able to bind heavy metals. Enrichment of soil with organic matter could reduce the content of bioavailable metal species as a result of complexation of free ions of heavy metals.

Composting of MSW is of great importance for both developed and developing countries. It can be applied with the aim of reducing the total volume of MSW, thus lowering landfilling costs, and if properly treated after careful source separation it can be a source material for substrate used in greenhouses or to amend soils with OM.

Over the past few decades, scientists around the world have revealed the sinister impacts that persistent organic pollutants (POPs) could inflect on man and his environment.

The use of activated carbon may help overcome the toxicity of organic pollutants to microbes and plants during soil bioremediation. Experiments were conducted with 3,4-dichloroaniline (DCA), 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) to demonstrate that activated carbon (AC) can reduce the toxicity of readily available chemicals in soil by transferring them to a less toxic soil fraction.

The original sol-gel method developed at the Institute, which allows the sorbents to be obtained from non-traditional, easily available, and cheap raw materials, was used to synthesize the novel ion exchangers based on double hydrous oxides

Applied research data on advanced photocatalytic methods aimed at treatment of contaminated aqueous phase is presented. Phenol and chloroorganic pesticides (as model compounds) besides actual wastewater samples were UVphotodegraded using suspended TiO

2

or UV/H

2

O

2

/air systems. Titanium dioxide catalysts modified with non-metal elements were used to photodegrade phenols in visible light. Laboratory and pilot scale reactors were used and the effect of process scale-up investigated.

The aim of this work was to investigate the sun light induced photodegradation as well as the photocatalytic degradation of pharmaceuticals and X-ray diagnostic agents (PhaDAs), and to follow their degradation pathways. The influence on the photolytic and photocatalytic degradation of the selected PhaDAs in the absence and presence of natural organic matter was investigated. Technical systems suitable for photocatalytic degradation and adsorption were developed and their applicability was checked. The advanced oxidation processes and adsorption experiments led to promising data for the elimination of the PhaDAs.

The effective, affordable removal of hazardous molecules, viruses and bacteria from water is of paramount importance. In this paper, we investigate the use of various novel colloidal and interfacial strategies for such removal. The objective of this work is to develop methodologies for the removal, in a costeffective manner, of bacteria and viruses from water, with the implication that such methodologies will be applicable to poorer countries which may not be able to afford the more expensive water treatments such as reverse osmosis.

Research on phytoremediation and phytotechnologies is proceeding at a different pace in the EU than in the USA. In fact although EU researchers have closed the gap on basics and fundamentals of phytoremediation with overseas researchers, a large gap of application exists in the extent of cases to which phytotechnologies are applied.

Greenhouse studies were conducted to assess the potential of fly ash-organic waste co-disposal to enhance crop production.

This study investigated the removal mechanisms of arsenic and heavy metals in constructed wetland systems. The biotic and abiotic processes in the wetlands and the influences of plants, soil and micro-organisms on arsenic and heavy metal removal were examined. Various small-scale constructed wetlands were set up in order to study and compare the removal efficiency of laboratory-scale wetland models and small-scale field test systems. In the field test systems, acid mine drainage (AMD) was used as an example of acidic wastewater contaminated with heavy metals.

Reduced soil leaching under nutrient-rich sewage effluent irrigation and biosolids compost application was tested as means to control leaching of nutrients, organic carbon, heavy metals and enteric bacteria.

Selected emergent plants (helophytes)

Phragmites australis, Juncus glaucus, Carex gracillis and Typha latifolia

were successfully used for degradation of TNT (2,4,6-trinitrotoluene) under

in vitro

conditions.

Plant capability to lower antimicrobial drug concentration, such as sulfonamide (Sulfadimethoxine) and a quinolone (Flumequine), widely used in intensive farming, has been tested in laboratory models already set up in previous experiments.

Sorption of organic contaminants to natural particles plays a fundamental role in their biological availability. This paper considers the influence of sorption thermodynamics and kinetics on contaminant bioavailability, with emphasis on the author’s prior work.

There is a duality in plant tolerance and response to heavy metal stress. On one hand tolerant plants having heavy metal hyper accumulation potential could be beneficial in phytoremediation for clean-up of soil and water; on the other hand tolerant food crops, if exposed to heavy metals in their growth medium, may be dangerous as carriers of toxic metals in the food chain leading to food toxicity.

In terrestrial ecosystems, higher plants are organized in two quite different spatial parts: a) a photosynthetic compartment, developed in the atmosphere, under light, and b) a soil compartment, specialized in the absorption of water and mineral salts, in the dark.

Microbial remediation has been used mainly for treatment of two types of pollutants - organic compounds (such as hydrocarbons originating from petroleum or solvents originating from various industries) and heavy metals.

Remediation of sediments contaminated with toxic chemicals is one of the greatest challenges for restoration of estuaries. Halogenated organic compounds constitute one of the largest groups of environmental pollutants and their use has resulted in widespread dissemination and environmental contamination, with freshwater, estuarine and marine sediments as significant sinks.

The chapter summarizes research carried out within the last 15 years on the role of mycorrhizal fungi in phytoremediation of zinc wastes located in southern Poland.

The chapter reviews available data on the ability of keratinolytic fungi to remove hydrocarbons from different media and on the ecology of these fungi in oil-contaminated environments.

To manage complex groundwater problems at the so-called megasites, a riskbased Integrated Management Strategy (IMS) of the European WELCOME project is currently applied to three megasites in Tarnowskie Góry (PL), Bitterfeld (D) and Port of Rotterdam (NL).

Large-scale contaminated megasites like Bitterfeld in eastern Germany are characterized by a regional contamination of soil, surface water and groundwater as a result of a long and varied history of chemical production.

Ecotoxicological effects of metals in aquatic and terrestrial environments often do not correlate well to the total concentration of metal. Environmental quality criteria and standards based on total concentration of a metal may over or under predict actual effects.

In the first part of this paper an overview is provided of the various phenomena that anthropogenic organic pollutants (AOPs) of various nature and origin are subjected in soil and of the specific role exerted by soil humic substances (HS) in these processes.

A review is proposed on various types of sensoristic approaches to biological damage and risk assessment. The traditional analytical approach to toxicity evaluation of a matrix is replaced by a sensor based one. Some sensor models are so presented able to offer an opportune solution to the problem to be solved. Some sensors are able to detect risky and dangerous situations and to evaluate them by measuring integral indexes such as total organic carbon, ecopermanence, total radical concentration, integral toxicity. Finally also a sensor based on human tissue is presented as example of a new generation biosensor.

Fish living in polluted waters tend to accumulate heavy metals in their tissues. Generally, accumulation depends on metal concentration, time of exposure, way of metal uptake, environmental conditions (water temperature, pH, hardness, salinity), and intrinsic factors (fish age, feeding habits). Various metals show different affinity to fish tissues. Most of them accumulate mainly in liver, kidney and gills. Fish muscles, comparing to the other tissues, usually contain the lowest levels of metals. Metal distribution in various organs is time-related. Accumulation of metals in various organs of fish may cause structural lesions and functional disturbances.

The protection of water resources and the secure delivery of clean water to consumers are important tasks for humans in the future. Therefore, it is necessary to have novel analytical systems to control water quality. Here we give a review on the performance of the AWACSS (Automated Water Analyser Computer Supported System) biosensor and describe the results obtained during a field test and for a validation with drinking water.

At the heart of every biosensor is a biological entity, the purpose of which is to react with the target analyte(s) and generate a readily quantifiable signal. Traditional biosensors are based on the unique specificity of enzymes to their substrates, antibodies to antigens or that of nucleic acids to their complementary sequences.