Biomonitoring of Maternal and Fetal Mercury Exposure in Sabzevar City and Affecting Risk Factors

Background: Increase in industrial pollution exposes human being to environmental pollution such as heavy metals, hydrocarbons and various pesticides. Mercury is an important pollutant affecting on fetus evolution. The goal of this work was determining the mercury levels of blood and body in mothers and newborns in Sabzevar city and relationship of these levels with living area, filled tooth, abortion and feeding regime. Methodology: Samples were prepared from 90 pregnant mothers referring to Shahidan Mobiny hospital for delivery. The samples were containing placenta, placenta blood, umbilical cord and blood of umbilical cord. Samples were analyzed by an ICP-OES (Inductively Coupled Plasma -OES) instrument to determine the exact values of mercury levels. Stata 12 software was used to statistical investigations. Results and conclusion: The average age of mothers was 27.11 and the average levels of mercury in placenta, placenta blood, umbilical cord and blood of umbilical cord were 10.64, 10.64, 12.16 and 9.09 µg/g, respectively. There was a strong and significant correlation between blood mercury of mothers and newborns (p<0.000). Findings revealed that the living area has a significant effect on mercury levels in mothers and infants. Filling teeth with amalgam had just a significant effect on the mercury level of umbilical cord blood (p<0.019). We concluded that fruits and vegetables feeding decrease the mercury levels in mothers and their infants

Removal of mercury(II) and cadmium(II) ions from synthetic wastewater by a newly synthesized amino and thiolated multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Functionalization of multi-walled carbon nanotubes can be carried out by introducing amino and thiol functional groups onto the nanotube sidewalls. This functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes can be used as a new type of efficient metal ions adsorbent from aqueous solutions. In this study, batch and column adsorption experiments were carried to evaluate the adsorption capacities of single and binary system mercury and cadmium. In the single system, the maximum adsorption capacity of 204.64 and 61.10 mg/g were obtained for mercury and cadmium, respectively, while for binary systems, the values of 35.89 and 14.09 mg/g were achieved for mercury and cadmium, respectively. Column breakthrough curves were obtained and described by Yan and Thomas models. The bigger Thomas rate constant (kTh) (120.77 ml/min/mg for Cd(II) and 9.44 ml/min/mg for Hg(II)) indicated that the intensity of adsorption of Cd(II) onto thiolated MWCNTs was higher compared to Hg(II). However, the value of maximum adsorption capacity (qe) for Hg(II) (39.75 mg/g) was bigger than that of Cd(II) (9.72 mg/g) in continuous system.No Full Tex