Special Issue "Statistical Assessment, Modeling, and Mitigation of Water and Soil Pollution"

A special issue of Toxics (ISSN 2305-6304). This special issue belongs to the section "Risk Assessment and Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2021.

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Lucica Barbes
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Ovidius University of Constanța, Constanța 900527, Romania
Interests: novel methods and monitoring techniques of water and soil; analysis of inorganic and organic compounds in drinking water, wastewater, sewage and soil (including toxic species); bioremediation and ecosystem restoration models

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As we move into the 21st century, we face more critical levels of physical, chemical, or biological stress on planetary resources. Meantime, significant climate changes are occurring, severely affecting the entire natural ecosystems. Environmental pollution, by harmful anthropogenic substances and the uncontrolled use of natural resources, has become a global problem that requires substantial efforts to develop and implement effective control for reducing and mitigating the pollution effects. Therefore, urgent forecasts of possible risks and impacts for future environmental planning are needed.

Most environmental quality models focus on certain isolated parts of the geosystem, although a certain component's damage usually affects the other parts. There is a great need to move towards an integrated approach to water, soil, and air pollution treatment. It is also imperative to develop and apply modern monitoring methods and control the pollution risk to optimally support mitigation measures.

The purpose of this special issue on "Statistical assessment, modeling, and mitigation of water and soil pollution" is to assess the water and soil pollution by different statistical methods and to apply the finding for possible mitigation measures. The articles selected for this special issue will provide an overview of the actual research stage in the field, aiming to assess the risks and impact on the environment.

Besides the solutions to the practical problems of cleaning the water and soil, the selected topics will directly answer questions related to selecting different mathematical tools that best emphasize the environmental quality changes and their impact on society's future.

We are pleased to invite you to submit the research that aims to respond to the following questions: (1) Statistical assessments can realistically meet ecological risk analyses for different environmental systems, including sources and receptors from drinking water, wastewater, or contaminated soil? (2) To what extent different levels of environmental systems screening could be quantified and correlated with the risks generated in-situ by pollutants/contaminants, including metallic species, biocides, pesticides, and plastics, and whether bioassays can support projected risk-taking.

In this Special Issue, original research articles, short communications, and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following:

  • Statistical methods for pollutants’ series analysis
  • Assessing the spatial distribution of pollutant’s at regional scale
  • Modeling the pollutant’s adsorption
  • Modeling the pollutants’ dissipation and transport
  • Pollutants’ detection and monitoring
  • Methods for soil remediation
  • Pollutants’ adsorption and oxidation
  • Filtration and separation technologies
  • Electrochemical processes
  • Related topics

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Lucica Barbes
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 papers will be 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. Toxics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1600 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

  • contaminants
  • indicators
  • hazardous substances
  • pathogens
  • models
  • statistical analysis

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

Article
Full Factorial Design for Gold Recovery from Industrial Solutions
Toxics 2021, 9(5), 111; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics9050111 - 20 May 2021
Viewed by 461
Abstract
Gold is one of the precious metals with multiple uses, whose deposits are much smaller than the global production needs. Therefore, extracting maximum gold quantities from industrial diluted solutions is a must. Am-L-GA is a new material, obtained by an Amberlite XAD7-type commercial [...] Read more.
Gold is one of the precious metals with multiple uses, whose deposits are much smaller than the global production needs. Therefore, extracting maximum gold quantities from industrial diluted solutions is a must. Am-L-GA is a new material, obtained by an Amberlite XAD7-type commercial resin, functionalized through saturation with L-glutamic acid, whose adsorption capacity has been proved to be higher than those of other materials utilized for gold adsorption. In this context, this article presents the results of a factorial design experiment for optimizing the gold recovery from residual solutions resulting from the electronics industry using Am-L-GA. Firstly, the material was characterized using atomic force microscopy (AFM), to emphasize the material’s characteristics, essential for the adsorption quality. Then, the study showed that among the parameters taken into account in the analysis (pH, temperature, initial gold concentration, and contact time), the initial gold concentration in the solution plays a determinant role in the removal process and the contact time has a slightly positive effect, whereas the pH and temperature do not influence the adsorption capacity. The maximum adsorption capacity of 29.27 mg/L was obtained by optimizing the adsorption process, with the control factors having the following values: contact time ~106 min, initial Au(III) concentration of ~164 mg/L, pH = 4, and temperature of 25 °C. It is highlighted that the factorial design method is an excellent instrument to determine the effects of different factors influencing the adsorption process. The method can be applied for any adsorption process if it is necessary to reduce the number of experiments, to diminish the resources or time consumption, or for expanding the investigation domain above the experimental limits. Full article
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Article
Assessment of Metals Concentrations in Soils of Abu Dhabi Emirate Using Pollution Indices and Multivariate Statistics
Toxics 2021, 9(5), 95; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics9050095 - 25 Apr 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 556
Abstract
The aim of this study was twofold. Firstly, we performed a land capability class determination of the agricultural soils from the Abu Dhabi Emirate, the United Arab Emirates, based on the concentrations of 17 chemical elements determined in the soil samples collected from [...] Read more.
The aim of this study was twofold. Firstly, we performed a land capability class determination of the agricultural soils from the Abu Dhabi Emirate, the United Arab Emirates, based on the concentrations of 17 chemical elements determined in the soil samples collected from 84 locations. Secondly, we assess the soil pollution with different metals, using several pollution indices. The results of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) shows that four principal components (PCs) are responsible for describing the total metals concentrations’ variance, the highest contribution on PC1 being that of Mn, and Cr, on PC2 that of Fe, on PC3 that of Cu, and on PC4 that of Al. After determining the optimal number of clusters, we classified the sites into three clusters, while the studied metals were grouped function on their concentrations. Then, we used five indices to assess the pollution level of the soil at the study sites and in the clusters. The geo—accumulation index (Igeo) indicates uncontamination/moderately contamination with Cu in cluster 1, uncontaminated/moderately contaminate soils with Cd, Cu, and Ni in cluster 2, and uncontaminated/moderately contaminated soil with Cu and moderately contaminated with Pb, Zn, and Ni in cluster 3. By comparison, the enrichment factors overestimate the pollution of the studied sites. The pollution load index (PLI) indicates a baseline level of pollution at 14 sites and the deterioration of the soil quality at four sites. The Nemerow pollution index provides similar results as PLI. Full article
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Article
Contamination Assessment of Heavy Metals in Agricultural Soil, in the Liwa Area (UAE)
Toxics 2021, 9(3), 53; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics9030053 - 10 Mar 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 752
Abstract
The Liwa area is a primary food production area in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has intensively been used for agriculture. This study investigates the pollution levels with heavy metals in agricultural soils from the Liwa area. Thirty-two soil samples were analyzed [...] Read more.
The Liwa area is a primary food production area in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has intensively been used for agriculture. This study investigates the pollution levels with heavy metals in agricultural soils from the Liwa area. Thirty-two soil samples were analyzed for Mn, Zn, Cr, Ni, Cu, Pb, Cd, Co, and As. Results revealed that heavy metal levels varied in the ranges 220.02–311.21, 42.39–66.92, 43.43–71.55, 32.86–52.12, 10.29–21.70, 2.83–8.84, 0.46–0.69, 0.03–0.37 mg/kg for Mn, Zn, Cr, Ni, Cu, Pb, Cd, Co, and As, respectively. All samples presented low As concentrations with an average of 0.01 mg/kg. The variations in bulk metal contents in the soil samples were related to multiple sources, including agrochemicals, atmospheric dust containing heavy metals, and traffic-related metals. Enrichment factor analysis indicates that Cd, Ni, Zn, and Cr were highly enriched in soils, and they could originate from non-crustal sources. Based on the geo-accumulation index (Igeo), the soil samples appeared uncontaminated with Mn, Cr, Zn, Pb, Co, As, Cu, uncontaminated to moderately contaminated with Ni and moderately contaminated with Cd. The contamination factors suggest low contamination, except for Ni, which showed moderate contamination. The average pollution load index (PLI) revealed unpolluted to low pollution of all soil samples. The ecological risk assessment (PERI) showed that all heavy metals posed a low risk, except for Cd which exhibited a high ecological risk. Full article
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Planned Papers

The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.

Title: Contamination assessment with heavy metals in a region from UAE

Title: Assessing the correlation between the groundwater and soil pollution. A case study

Title: Study of elements' bioaccumulation for different mushroom species

Title: Statistical analysis of radioactive elements for three Romanian lakes

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