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Assessment of Industrial and Man-Made Hazards Due to Chemicals

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Chemical Engineering and Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2022) | Viewed by 7658

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Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Ombretta Paladino

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Guest Editor

Department of Civil, Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Genoa, 16145 Genova, Italy
Interests: waste-to-energy; sustainable processes; biofuels; risk assessment; industrial hazards
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Pollution and its related impact on the planet is increasing and can seriously damage human health, biodiversity, and the entire life on the planet. Chemicals can be released into the environment by natural events, but in the last century, chemical pollution has been mainly caused by human activities (industry, intensive agriculture and farming, waste disposal, and transports). Generalized chemical pollution has been always considered the unavoidable consequence of industrial development, and today, high levels of generalized pollution are also impacting developing countries. Localized pollution can be due to industrial accidents, natural events affecting industrial plants, anthropic activities, or can be the result of organized crime.

Hazard refers to any source of potential damage, harm or adverse effects on something or someone, such as humans, animals, and environmental organisms. Hazard assessment is the procedure of identification of hazards, detection of their potential receptors, and determination of their potential consequences on living beings.

Hazard Identification can be considered the first step of a risk assessment procedure and mainly consists in the characterization/identification of sources. As regards chemicals, hazard assessment also requires the quantitative evaluation of contamination, by characterization/identification of the pollutants in each environmental compartment and the detection of correlations among them. It finally requires the comparison of field or inferred/calculated concentrations at the receptor, with defined law limit values in order to assess the potential mortality, inhibition or toxicologic effects.

The aim and scope of this Special Issue is to attract works where new insights for the assessment of industrial and man-made hazards due to chemicals are proposed.

Papers on methods and solutions dealing with both direct and inverse problems are encouraged: Simplified dynamic models (analytical approximated or surrogate, stochastic or data-based) to predict the fate and transport of reactive chemicals (PAH, heavy metals, pesticides, PCBs, particulate, emerging contaminants) in the environmental compartments as groundwater and soil, seawater, surface water and air are welcome; methodologies for the identification of pollutant sources using field data analysis and clustering (operating databases of oil and gas and chemical plants, remote sensing data and data coming from monitoring campaigns) and statistical methods to treat and reduce uncertainty in evaluating potential damage and adverse effects are particularly encouraged. This Special Issue also seeks original contributions on mapping and characterization of contaminated sites and optimal design of monitoring campaigns, also with low-cost sensors and biosensors; monitoring activities in intensive farming and agriculture sites, in harbors and seawater, and prior/post monitoring for new industrial settlements. Works on early warning detection, low-cost sensor networks, and automatic samplers to detect and manage hazardous chemicals are also encouraged. Papers on complex solved cases of hazard assessment where results are apparently difficult to explain are also welcome, as are case studies on interesting contaminants as nanoparticles and microplastics.

Prof. Dr. Ombretta Paladino
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Polluting source identification
Polluting source characterization
Mapping of contaminated sites
Monitoring techniques
Design of monitoring campaigns
Field data analysis
Field data clustering
Effects on organisms
Sensor networks
Intensive farming
Intensive agriculture
Harbour contamination
Dynamic models
Fate and transport
Reacting chemicals
Early warning
PAH
Heavy metals
PCBs
PCDDs
Pesticides
Emerging contaminants
Nanoparticles
Microplastics

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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16 pages, 5033 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Assessment of Potentially Toxic Elements in the Urban Soil and Plants of Kirkuk City in Iraq

by Chrow Ahmed Khurshid, Karrar Mahdi, Osamah Ibrahim Ahmed, Rima Osman, Mostafizur Rahman and Coen Ritsema

Sustainability 2022, 14(9), 5655; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14095655 - 7 May 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1827

Abstract

Kirkuk city is known for its industrial activities, especially oil and cement production, as well as its road traffic. The aim of this study was to assess potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in the soil and plants from urban areas by measuring pollution indices and estimating the effect that this pollution has on the environment. Leaf and soil samples were taken from 10 different locations in Kirkuk. These samples were pre-treated using the acid digestion method and concentrations of 12 elements were determined using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The results indicate a high content of aluminum and magnesium (mg/kg) in the soil samples from all study sites. For leaf samples, the results showed a moderate to low amount of magnesium and aluminum. Based on our results, the PTE concentrations were found in the following order—Mg > Al > Ni > Cu > Cr > Pb > Co > As > Se > Cd > Hg > Ti—in leaf samples from all 10 study sites. However, in the soil samples, PTE concentrations were in the following order—Mg > Al > Cr > Ni > Cu > Pb > Co > As > Se > Ti > Cd > Hg—from all study sites. Pollution indices showed a moderate level of contamination of Pb, Cd, and Ni, and a high level of contamination of As and Hg in plant and soil samples from all study sites in Kirkuk city. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Assessment of Industrial and Man-Made Hazards Due to Chemicals)

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26 pages, 7835 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Assessment of Nitrate Hazards in Umbria Region (Italy) Using Field Datasets: Good Agriculture Practices and Farms Sustainability

by Ombretta Paladino, Marco Massabò and Edoardo Gandoglia

Sustainability 2020, 12(22), 9497; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12229497 - 15 Nov 2020

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1963

Abstract

The Nitrates Directive, EU 91/676/EEC, obliged all European Union member states to introduce laws that guarantee the use of proper agriculture and farm methods, with the aim to reduce pollution resulting from the excessive use of nitrates. In this work, we estimated the potential and effective nitrogen load from agriculture, farms, civil, and industrial sources in Umbria region, Italy, and assessed the previous (and actual) contamination by nitrates at different scales. The adopted methodology uses databases of the sources, such as the type of fertilizer (inorganic or manure), the type of industrial site, the census of livestock and field data at a local, basin, and regional scale. Hydrological and geological models are used to compute infiltration. The study shows that the contribution of farms to nitrate pollution is in the order of swine > cattle > sheep and goats; while the highest agricultural load is due to arable land, followed by olive and grape. The study also shows that municipalities that have values of nitrates over the threshold for both groundwater and surface water can rapidly change their status during consecutive years. This means that rules for farm sustainability, complying with the Nitrates Directive, EU 91/676/EEC, should be defined at a sub-basin scale, where the hydrogeological conditions strongly influence infiltration. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Assessment of Industrial and Man-Made Hazards Due to Chemicals)

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Review

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24 pages, 2802 KiB

Open AccessReview

A Comparative Assessment of Analytical Fate and Transport Models of Organic Contaminants in Unsaturated Soils

by Maria Grazia Stoppiello, Giusy Lofrano, Maurizio Carotenuto, Giacomo Viccione, Claudio Guarnaccia and Leonardo Cascini

Sustainability 2020, 12(7), 2949; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072949 - 7 Apr 2020

Cited by 124 | Viewed by 3368

Abstract

Analytical models for the simulation of contaminants’ fate and transport in the unsaturated zone are used in many engineering applications concerning groundwater resource management and risk assessment. As a consequence, several scientific studies dealing with the development and application of analytical solutions have been carried out. Six models have been selected and compared based on common characteristics to identify pros and cons as well as to highlight any difference in the final output. The analyzed models have been clustered into three groups according to the assumptions on contaminant source and physico-chemical mechanisms occurring during the transport. Comparative simulations were carried out with five target contaminants (Benzene, Benzo(a)pyrene, Vinyl Chloride, Trichloroethylene and Aldrin) with different decay’s coefficient, three types of soil (sand, loam and clay) and three different thicknesses of the contaminant source. The calculated concentration at a given depth in the soil for the same contamination scenario varied greatly among the models. A significant variability of the concentrations was shown due to the variation of contaminant and soil characteristics. As a general finding, the more advanced is the model, the lower the predicted concentrations; thus, models that are too simplified could lead to outcomes of some orders of magnitude greater than the advanced one. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Assessment of Industrial and Man-Made Hazards Due to Chemicals)

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