A screening method for ranking chemicals by their fate and behaviour in the environment and potential toxic effects in humans following non-occupational exposure

A large number of chemicals are released intentionally or unintentionally into the environment each year. These include thousands of substances that are currently listed worldwide and several hundred new substances added annually (Mücke et al., 1986). When these compounds are used, they can reach microorganisms, plants, animals and man either in their original state or in the form of reaction and degradation products via air, water, soil or foodstuffs. Hence environmental chemicals can occur in practically all environmental compartments and ecosystems. It is not feasible to conduct assessments of human exposure and possible associated health effects for all chemicals. Even if the necessary resources were available, reliable data for a quantitative evaluation are likely to be absent in most cases. This has led to the development of schemes for prioritising compounds likely to be of environmental significance. Such schemes can be used to direct future research efforts towards the prioritised compounds. This study was commissioned by the Department of Health (DH) as part of a broader research activity that aims to identify key priority chemicals of concern to human health at routine levels of environmental exposure. The main pathways of human exposure are shown in Figure 1.1. A review of the principal prioritisation schemes used by different organisations to assess the significance of chemical release into the environment has been conducted by the MRC Institute for Environment and Health (IEH, 2003). This review showed that the approaches used by different organisations vary widely, depending on the initial reasons for which the schemes were developed. The basic information presented in the review was used to develop a simple screening method for ranking chemicals. The model used in this prioritisation scheme is outlined in Figure 1.2. The main purpose in developing the prioritisation scheme for DH was to develop a dedicated priority setting method capable of identifying chemicals in air, water, soil and foodstuffs that might pose a significant risk to human health following low level environmental exposure. The methodology was developed in order to identify compounds that required further assessment and those that had data gaps. More detailed risk assessments were conducted at a later stage on those compounds prioritised as being of high importancea. The screening methodology was developed for ‘existing chemicals’ as these are of greatest concern because data on their toxicity and/or fate and behaviour are often unknownb. The production of a priority list was designed to highlight compounds that required further regulatory measures to reduce exposure of the general population and for which an in-depth risk characterisation would be necessary to assist in the evaluation and implementation of activities for reducing environmental risks. This might include an assessment of the costs of such risks to human health and the costs of reduction measures. As the scheme also aimed to identify data gaps that might warrant further investigation, the application of default categories for chemicals with no data was also considered. The overall aim was to develop a screening methodology that is quick, clear and simple to use and that can easily be revised to take into account new information on compounds as and when it becomes available. a Benzene (IEH Report on Benzene in the Environment, R12); 4,6-dichlorocresol, hexachloro-1,3-butadiene, tetrachlorobenzene, 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (reports to DH; available from MRC Institute for Environment and Health b ‘Existing Substances’ are those that were placed in the European Union (EU) market before 1981. Prior to 1981 regulatory requirements were related to products intended for certain uses (e.g. veterinary medicines) and did not require assessment of the hazardous properties of any substance before they were released into the market. For substances placed on the market after 1981 (classified as ‘New Substances’) there is a legal requirement to conduct such assessments. Regulatory agencies require the collection of extensive documentation for safety before a chemical, for example, can be used in foods or commercial products. IEH Web Report W14, posted March 2004 at http://www.le.ac.uk/ieh/ 4 This report describes how physicochemical properties and toxicological data were incorporated into a screening model to assess the potential fate and transfer of chemicals between different environmental compartments and to predict the potential human exposure to toxic chemicals through the inhalation of contaminated air and the ingestion of water and food. It must be stressed, however, that the method devised is a simple screening process and that a more detailed assessment is necessary to determine the potential transfer through the foodchain of a chemical and the full extent of any adverse health effects. Sections 2 and 4 present the physicochemical properties, toxicological data and algorithms used to screen the compounds. Section 3 summarises the groups of chemicals that were included in the screening process. The results of the prioritisation scheme and comments on their limitations and constraints are presented in Section 5

A compact spectroradiometer for solar simulator measurements

Compact spectral irradiance probe has been designed and built which uses wedge filter in conjunction with silicon cell and operational amplifier. Probe is used to monitor spectral energy distribution of solar simulators and other high intensity sources

Education alignment

This essay reviews recent developments in embedding data management and curation skills into information technology, library and information science, and research-based postgraduate courses in various national contexts. The essay also investigates means of joining up formal education with professional development training opportunities more coherently. The potential for using professional internships as a means of improving communication and understanding between disciplines is also explored. A key aim of this essay is to identify what level of complementarity is needed across various disciplines to most effectively and efficiently support the entire data curation lifecycle

Strange quark asymmetry in the nucleon and the NuTeV anomaly

The NuTeV anomaly of a non-universal value of the fundamental parameter sin^2\theta_W in the electroweak theory has been interpreted as an indication for new physics beyond the Standard Model. However, the observed quantity depends on a possible asymmetry in the momentum distributions of strange quarks and antiquarks in the nucleon. This asymmetry occurs naturally in a phenomenologically successful physical model for such parton distributions, which reduces the NuTeV result to only about two standard deviations from the Standard Model.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, RevTex4. Updated with new references and extended discussion. v.3: Minor corrections mad

A predictive formulation of the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model

A novel strategy to handle divergences typical of perturbative calculations is implemented for the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model and its phenomenological consequences investigated. The central idea of the method is to avoid the critical step involved in the regularization process, namely the explicit evaluation of divergent integrals. This goal is achieved by assuming a regularization distribution in an implicit way and making use, in intermediary steps, only of very general properties of such regularization. The finite parts are separated of the divergent ones and integrated free from effects of the regularization. The divergent parts are organized in terms of standard objects which are independent of the (arbitrary) momenta running in internal lines of loop graphs. Through the analysis of symmetry relations, a set of properties for the divergent objects are identified, which we denominate consistency relations, reducing the number of divergent objects to only a few ones. The calculational strategy eliminates unphysical dependencies of the arbitrary choices for the routing of internal momenta, leading to ambiguity-free, and symmetry-preserving physical amplitudes. We show that the imposition of scale properties for the basic divergent objects leads to a critical condition for the constituent quark mass such that the remaining arbitrariness is removed. The model become predictive in the sense that its phenomenological consequences do not depend on possible choices made in intermediary steps. Numerical results are obtained for physical quantities at the one-loop level for the pion and sigma masses and pion-quark and sigma-quark coupling constants.Comment: 38 pages, 1 figure, To appear in Phy.Rev.

Parametrization of the octupole degrees of freedom

A simple parametrization for the octupole collective variables is proposed and the symmetries of the wave functions are discussed in terms of the solutions corresponding to the vibrational limit. [PACS: 21.60Ev, 21.60.Fw, 21.10.Re]Comment: 14 page

Unitary ambiguity in the extraction of the E2/M1 ratio for the γN↔Δ\gamma N\leftrightarrow\Delta transition

The resonant electric quadrupole amplitude in the transition $\gamma N\leftrightarrow\Delta(1232)$ is of great interest for the understanding of baryon structure. Various dynamical models have been developed to extract it from the corresponding photoproduction multipole of pions on nucleons. It is shown that once such a model is specified, a whole class of unitarily equivalent models can be constructed, all of them providing exactly the same fit to the experimental data. However, they may predict quite different resonant amplitudes. Therefore, the extraction of the E2/M1($\gamma N\leftrightarrow\Delta$) ratio (bare or dressed) which is based on a dynamical model using a largely phenomenological $\pi N$ interaction is not unique.Comment: 10 pages revtex including 4 postscript figure

SpMyb functions as an intramodular repressor to regulate spatial expression of CyIIIa in sea urchin embryos

The CyIIIa actin gene of Strongylocentrotus purpuratus is transcribed exclusively in the embryonic aboral ectoderm, under the control of 2.3 kb cis-regulatory domain that contains a proximal module that controls expression in early embryogenesis, and a middle module that controls expression in later embryogenesis. Previous studies demonstrated that the SpRunt-1 target site within the middle module is required for the sharp increase in CyIIIa transcription which accompanies differentiation of the aboral ectoderm, and that a negative regulatory region near the SpRunt-1 target site is required to prevent ectopic transcription in the oral ectoderm and skeletogenic mesenchyme. This negative regulatory region contains a consensus binding site for the myb family of transcription factors. In vitro DNA-binding experiments reveal that a protein in blastula-stage nuclei interacts specifically with the myb target site. Gene transfer experiments utilizing CyIIIa reporter constructs containing oligonucleotide substitutions indicate that this site is both necessary and sufficient to prevent ectopic expression of CyIIIa. Synthetic oligonucleotides containing the myb target site were used to purify a protein from sea urchin embryo nuclear extracts by affinity chromatography. This protein is immunoprecipitated by antibodies specific to the evolutionarily conserved myb domain, and amino acid sequences obtained from the purified protein were found to be identical to sequences within the myb domain. Sequence information was used to obtain cDNA clones of SpMyb, the S. purpuratus member of the myb family of transcription factors. Through interactions within the middle module, SpMyb functions to repress activation of CyIIIa in the oral ectoderm and skeletogenic mesenchyme

Evidence for prelocalization of cytoplasmic factors affecting gene activation in early embryogenesis

Differentiation begins early in embryogenesis as different genes become active in different cells. Within the closed system of the early embryo, equal genomes thus direct the creation of diverse cell types. Though the nuclei of these cells contain complete copies of the same genome,(1,2) the nucleoplasmic and cytoplasmic environments of these genomes are not the same, as a result of the distribution of cleavage nuclei into diverse areas of egg cytoplasm early in the cleavage process. In some cases the fate of these nuclei, i.e., the type of differentiated cell to which they or their descendants give rise, has been seen to depend on the area of cytoplasm in which they come to lie

A framework for efficient wastewater treatment and recycling systems

Water reuse / Wastewater / Recycling / Pricing / Water allocation / Cost benefit analysis / Wastewater irrigation / Developing countries / Developed countries / Case studies