Lermen, Dominik; Weber, Till; Göen, Thomas; Bartel-Steinbach, Martina; Gwinner, Frederik; Mueller, Sabine C.; Conrad, André; Rüther, Maria; von Briesen, Hagen; Kolossa-Gehring, Marike International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health 231 (2021), 113665; online 19 November 2020 Lead is a ubiquitous pollutant with well-known effects on human health. As there is no lower toxicological threshold for lead in blood and since data gaps on lead exposure still exist in many European countries, HBM data on lead is of high importance. To address this, the European Human Biomonitoring Initiative HBM4EU classified lead as a priority substance. The German Environmental Specimen Bank (German ESB) has monitored lead exposure since more than 35 years. Using data from the early 1980s to 2019 we reveal and discuss long-term trends in blood lead levels (BLLs) and current internal exposure of young adults in Germany. BLLs in young adults decreased substantially in the investigated period. As results from the ESB sampling site Muenster demonstrate, the geometric mean of BLLs of young adults decreased from 1981 (78,7 μg/L) to 2019 (10.4 μg/L) by about 87%. Trends in human exposure closely correlate with air lead levels (ALLs) provided by the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP). Hence, the decrease of BLLs largely reflects the drop in air lead pollution. Known associations of sex, smoking, alcohol consumption, and housing situation with BLLs are confirmed with data of the German ESB. Although internal lead exposure in Germany decreased substantially, the situation might be different in other European countries. Since 2010, BLLs of young adults in Germany levelled out at approximately 10 μg/L. The toxicity of lead even at low levels is known to cause adverse health effects especially in children following exposure of the child or the mother during pregnancy. To identify current exposure sources and to minimize future lead exposure, continuous monitoring of lead intake and exposure levels is needed. doi: 10.1016/j.ijheh.2020.113665
Das Projekt "Pre-treatment and safe disposal of municipal solid wastes" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg, Technologie-Gesellschaft durchgeführt. Objective: Russian municipal solid waste and wastewater sludges generally become disposed at landfills without any protective barriers. These landfills have a significant hazardous potential especially since most of them contain also hazardous waste. High organic contents lead to a considerable pollution of the surrounding environment caused by gas- and leachate emissions. Within this project a broad monitoring program for the determination of the current status will be carried out including a risk assessment for several Russian landfills. In parallel investigations on work effective solutions for the collection, analysis and treatment of gas- and leachate emissions for a representative landfill in St.-Peters-burg will be done. In order to avoid significant emissions in the future pre-treatment of MSW and WWS shall be applied. Investigations in lab and pilot scale shall be performed and developed to a new aerobic/anaerobic process with limited emissions. Prime Contractor: TUHH-Technologie GmbH, Department of Waste Mangement; Hamburg; Germany.
Das Projekt "Studie 'Eintragspfade für Blei in den menschlichen Organismus'" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung durchgeführt. A) Ausgangslage: Blei wirkt schädlich auf das menschliche zentrale Nervensystem. Besonders bei Kindern kann die Exposition gegenüber Blei zu Einschränkungen der Intelligenz, der Aufmerksamkeit, der Reaktionsleistung sowie zu Verhaltensstörungen und Hörschwellenverschiebungen führen. Studien belegen, dass es für diese gesundheitlichen Auswirkungen keinen Schwellenwert gibt. Somit können auch niedrige Bleikonzentrationen im Blut zu gesundheitlichen Belastungen führen. Neben den neurotoxischen Wirkungen weist eine Bleibelastung zudem endokrine und kanzerogene Effekte sowie negative Effekte auf das kardiovaskuläre System, ebenfalls bereits bei niedrigen Bleigehalten im Blut, auf. Selbst geringe Aufnahmemengen können langfristig zu einer chronischen Bleivergiftung führen, da es in den Knochen eingelagert wird. Daten aus der Umweltprobenbank zeigen einen deutlichen Rückgang der Bleibelastung in den letzten 26 Jahren um circa 83 % auf rund 11 myg/L Blei im Blut im Jahr 2015. Jedoch stagniert dieser Wert seit 2002 auf einem Niveau knapp über 10 myg/L Blei im Blut. Basierend auf den Erkenntnissen hinsichtlich einer fehlenden Wirkungsschwelle ist es erstrebenswert, diese Belastung mit Blei weiter zu reduzieren und so niedrige wie möglich zu halten. B) Zielsetzung: Um hierfür geeignete Minderungsmaßnahmen ableiten zu können, sind Informationen über die verschiedenen Eintragspfade von Blei in den menschlichen Organismus zu recherchieren. c) Vorgehen: Für Blei sind Daten zu den aktuellen Eintragspfaden in der Fachliteratur zu recherchieren und auszuwerten. Die identifizierte Literatur soll hinsichtlich ihrer Qualität bewertet werden. Dabei ist die Bleikontamination von Lebensmitteln (auch Trinkwasser) sowie von Zusatzstoffen, Nahrungsergänzungsmitteln und Bedarfsgegenständen mit Lebensmittelkontakt zu berücksichtigen. Darüber hinaus sollen die Innenraum- und Außenluft sowie der Hausstaub untersucht werden. Schlussendlich soll das Vorhaben eine Gewichtung der Relevanz der Pfade für die Gesamtbelastung des menschlichen Organismus ermöglichen.
Lead is a ubiquitous pollutant with well-known effects on human health. As there is no lower toxicological threshold for lead in blood and since data gaps on lead exposure still exist in many European countries, HBM data on lead is of high importance. To address this, the European Human Biomonitoring Initiative HBM4EU classified lead as a priority substance. The German Environmental Specimen Bank (German ESB) has monitored lead exposure since more than 35 years. Using data from the early 1980s to 2019 we reveal and discuss long-term trends in blood lead levels (BLLs) and current internal exposure of young adults in Germany. BLLs in young adults decreased substantially in the investigated period. As results from the ESB sampling site Muenster demonstrate, the geometric mean of BLLs of young adults decreased from 1981 (78,7 (my)g/L) to 2019 (10.4 (my)g/L) by about 87%. Trends in human exposure closely correlate with air lead levels (ALLs) provided by the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP). Hence, the decrease of BLLs largely reflects the drop in air lead pollution. Known associations of sex, smoking, alcohol consumption, and housing situation with BLLs are confirmed with data of the German ESB. Although internal lead exposure in Germany decreased substantially, the situation might be different in other European countries. Since 2010, BLLs of young adults in Germany levelled out at approximately 10 (my)g/L. The toxicity of lead even at low levels is known to cause adverse health effects especially in children following exposure of the child or the mother during pregnancy. To identify current exposure sources and to minimize future lead exposure, continuous monitoring of lead intake and exposure levels is needed. © 2020 The Authors
Das Projekt "Minimierung der Schadstoffbelastung von Abwaessern aus dem Textildruck in Europa durch den Einsatz natuerlicher Verdickungsmittel und Additive" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Deutsche Institute für Textil- und Faserforschung Stuttgart, Institut für Textilchemie durchgeführt. General Information: In reactive printing usually sodium alginates or mixtures with carboxymethylated polysaccharides are used as thickening agent, but in some cases (using Viscose and bifunctional reactive dyes) reaction takes place resulting in unacceptable fabric handle. To prevent this, it is necessary to use synthetic thickeners (polyacrylic acids, polymaleic acids), which do not react with reactive dyes. Using these polymers two big problems occur: the outline sharpness is bad and also the biodegradability of the synthetic thickener is not given, leading to persistence in the effluent. Printing trials with natural thickeners have shown, that different additives can prevent the disaster of fabric stiffness. Therefore the use of additives and biodegradable natural thickeners will lead to an environmental-friendly printing process with reduced wastewater pollution. Since the effluents of more than one-hundred European printing houses are still polluted with a total of 450.000 t of washed out paste in every year, the benefits of non persistent thickeners to the European water quality become obvious. The aim of the proposed project is the research and development of environmental-friendly additives for their use in reactive printing in an innovative way. Wastewater might become minimized and presumably reduced at least twice by the common application of natural and biodegradable thickeners with additives. The R and D-work will start with the investigation of additives with different chemical structure. It should be possible to classify the compounds in a list of efficiency according to their chemical structure by analytical methods. Based on this screening/results new and more effective chemical compounds have to be synthesized and tested. The most effective compounds should be used for further investigations and applications in pastes with respect to wastewater pollution. The next step is the application of the additives with different natural thickeners and variable mixtures, because most of the printers want to mix thickeners. This work will result in concrete values for additives depending on substitution degree of the thickeners. The theology of these paste have to be measured including the influence on printing quality, fixation rate and coloration. In addition to this fastness and wastewater depollution has to be determined. After these basic tests in laboratory printing trials will be done in pilot plants and bulk production to improve paste recipes and to show the application spectrum of these basic compounds. Project results will be profitable for textile auxiliary producers and thickener manufacturer as well as for end-users like printing houses in every country of Europe. Particularly, the European water quality will benefit most. Prime Contractor: Deutsches Institut für Textil- und Faserforschung Stuttgart; Denkendorf; Germany.
Das Projekt "Ein Rahmen fuer Innovationen: Unternehmensreaktionen auf Energieverbrauchs-/CO2-Steuern in Daenemark und den Niederlanden" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Trier, European Association for Environmental Management Education - Focal Point Trier -, Europäisches Diplom in Umweltwissenschaften durchgeführt. The aim of the project is to develop an understanding of the process taking place within companies after energy/CO2 taxes have been introduced by their national government. For this an integrated approach develops a framework for the decision-making process companies use when faced with energy/CO2 taxes. A description of energy/CO2 taxes in Denmark and the Netherlands exemplifies how nations encourage companies to become more energy-efficient through innovation. The framework is a structure for how decisions are made in a continual improvement cycle of identification, development, selection and implementation. Main contextual variables that determine the decision-making process of a company are identified as economic and financial background, organisational culture, environmental policy, planning, and implementation and operation. Case studies of companies in Denmark and the Netherlands are used to test the validity of the framework. The framework will help policy makers to better understand how energy/CO2 taxes lead to less pollution in the corporate world.
Das Projekt "Ecohydrological process studies and model development to evaluate the impact of land-use change and vegetation dynamics on the hydrological cycle and the biogeochemical cycling" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Technische Universität Berlin, Institut für Ökologie, Fachgebiet Ökohydrologie und Landschaftsbewertung durchgeführt. Many ecosystems around the globe are affected by the impacts of land-use or vegetation change, which have become necessary to comply with food demand, raising crop prices and lately the demand for bioenergy production and the effects of climate change. Extreme land-use changes often lead to manifold adverse effects on the land and water resources such as land degradation and desertification, increased soil erosion, nutrient depletion, pesticide and nutrient contamination of water resources and changes in runoff regimes. For the state Brandenburg in Germany, for example, an intensification of agricultural production is predicted for the near future due to an increased demand for biofuel production, however the impacts of intensive farming methods with e.g. maize and rape monocultures on the water and biogeochemical cycle and land resources are uncertain and potentially lead to increased use of fertilisers, pesticides and nitrification of water resources. The Central parts of Brazil, in the Mato Grosso region within the Amazon Basin, is another example where large areas of natural forests were replaced by cropland for food and bioenergy production, resulting in a major shift in ecosystem stability. A third example of unsustainable land-use change is the south-western part of the United States, where massive overgrazing led to an irreversible, ongoing desertification and land degradation from productive grassland to desert shrubland. The increasing recognition of the importance of ecohydrological processes in understanding the link between the hydrologic cycle and vegetation and land-use change dynamics has enforced the need for future research to consider the interdependence, interactions and feedback mechanisms between ecological and hydrological processes. In this project, ecohydrological process understanding will be derived through detailed temporal and spatially distributed field sampling in different ecosystems around the globe. An integrated ecohydrological modelling tools at the micro- and meso-scale will be developed and applied to vegetation dynamics and land-use change scenarios for study sites in Brandenburg (Germany), Mato Grosso (Brazil) and Jornada (New Mexico, USA). It is expected that the development and application of the novel ecohydrological, process-based modelling tools at the interface between hydrology and ecology will provide valuable insights for the understanding, controlling and water and land-use management of emerging problems and crises related to climate, vegetation and land-use change.
Das Projekt "Integrated standard transportation unit for self-guided freight container transportation systems on rail (ISTU)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Innovative Trade and Product Strategies GmbH durchgeführt. Objective: ISTU STREP proposal intends to investigate, develop and demonstrate a cost effective integrated propulsion unit for individual self-driven container rail platform wagons for freight container transport between ports and cargo distribution centres. Although the proposal is an R&D project focussing on technical and innovative methods to integrate all main propulsion components like motor, power converter, cooling and embedded controllers in one unit, the project coordinator has defined clear demonstrator targets. In particular, the propulsion unit, with rated power of ca. 25 kais expected to deliver cost improvements of 30Prozent, efficiency improvements of 2Prozent (up to 96Prozent) and system availability improvement of 3Prozent (up to 98Prozent). A prototype integrated drive system will demonstrate these improvements. The project will aim at developing an integrated switched reluctance drive which uses integrated power electronic conversion modules and advanced direct torque digital control enabling the use of low cost sensors. Long-term approach of ISTU expects that this STREP project will lead to an IP project, integrating further the outer vehicle guidance control, i.e. a GSM telemetric system with vision capabilities, which would lead to an unmanned automatic piloted transport system able to be applied also as the self-propelled and self-guided container wagon to dense industrial areas in order to reduce road traffic, pollution and noise. As Objectives the ISTU STREP project will aim at: -developing an electrical integrated low-cost: propulsion and cooling systems, control and power electronic components, simple producible rail transportation motor - demonstrating the proposed low-cost propulsion system-designing and specifying all requirements for a direct freight logistic application, i.e. a container wagon. -Defining interfaces and showing implementation of such propulsion units and its interfaces for a self-guided self-propelled application.
Das Projekt "Entgiftung toxischer Industrieabfaelle: Mikrobielle Degradation polychlorierter Biphenyle (PCBs) durch sequentielle anaerobe-aerobe Prozesse" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Bergische Universität-Gesamthochschule Wuppertal, Fachbereich 9 Naturwissenschaften II, Lehrstuhl für Chemische Mikrobiologie durchgeführt. Prior to the 1970s, PCBs were widely used for a variety of industrial purposes, including fluid-filled capacitors and transformers, hydraulic fluids, heat transfer fluids, plasticizers, and carbonless copy paper. The commercial mixtures used were complex mixtures of many homologs and isomers. 300,000 tonnes have entered the environment in widely disseminated form, 450,000 tonnes are either still in service or in landfills. Although storage in landfills has been used for PCBs in the past, their long environmental life has lead to the contamination of water, soil, air and even biological tissues. The proposed project consists of four parts: 1) Establishment of anaerobic microbial populations from polluted soil/sediments, capable of reductive dechlorination of highly chlorinated biphenyls to lower chlorinated biphenyls. Research is focused on the occurrence of this process in polluted soils and sediments, the kinetics of the process and the influence of various (environmental) factors, and the bacteria involved. 2) Establishment of aerobic bacterial cultures, capable of mineralizing low chlorinated biphenyls, by isolation from polluted soils/sediments or by in vivo-construction. Research is focused on the biochemistry and kinetics of degradation. 3) Genetic analysis of the isolated and in vivo-constructed aerobic PCB-degrading organisms and genetic engineering of these strains which includes i.e. the introduction of heavy metal resistance genes and marker genes. Research is focused on the molecular biology of PCB-degradation pathways and genes of heavy metal resistance. 4) Investigations on the biotechnology of the anaerobic/aerobic process. Research is focused on the procedure to clean contaminated soils and wastes in bioreactors. The goal of this project is to obtain information on: 1) the feasibility of a process to mineralize highly chlorinated biphenyls (formation of inorganic compounds like CO2, HCl) by a suitable sequential anaerobic-aerobic process and 2) its application (especially the factors which are determining the kinetics of the degradation process in a bioreactor).
Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) are an abundant anseriform migratory wild bird species worldwide and an important reservoir for the maintenance of low pathogenicity (LP) avian influenza viruses (AIV). They have also been implicated in the spread of high pathogenicity (HP) AIV after spill-over events from HPAIV-infected poultry. The spread of HPAIV within wild water bird populations may lead to viral contamination of natural habitats. The role of small shallow water bodies as a transmission medium of AIV among mallards is investigated here in three experimental settings. (i) Delayed onset but rapid progression of infection seeded by two mallards inoculated with either LP or HP AIV to each eight sentinel mallards was observed in groups with access to a small 100 L water pool. In contrast, groups with a bell drinker as the sole source of drinking water showed a rapid onset but lengthened course of infection. (ii) HPAIV infection also set off when virus was dispersed in the water pool; titres as low as 102 TCID50 L-1 (translating to 0.1 TCID50 mL-1) proved to be sufficient. (iii) Substantial loads of viral RNA (and infectivity) were also found on the surface of the birds' breast plumage. "Unloading" of virus infectivity from contaminated plumage into water bodies may be an efficient mechanism of virus spread by infected mallards. However, transposure of HPAIV via the plumage of an uninfected mallard failed. We conclude, surface water in small shallow water bodies may play an important role as a mediator of AIV infection of aquatic wild birds. © 2022 The Author(s)