Environmental chemical exposures and breast cancer

As a hormone-sensitive condition with no single identifiable cause, breast cancer is a major health problem. It is characterized by a wide range of contributing factors and exposures occurring in different combinations and strengths across a lifetime that may be amplified during periods of enhanced developmental susceptibility and impacted by reproductive patterns and behaviours. The vast majority of cases are oestrogen-receptor positive and occur in women with no family history of the disease suggesting that modifiable risk factors are involved. A substantial body of evidence now links oestrogen-positive breast cancer with environmental exposures. Synthetic chemicals capable of oestrogen mimicry are characteristic of industrial development and have been individually and extensively assessed as risk factors for oestrogen-sensitive cancers. Existing breast cancer risk assessment tools do not take such factors into account. In the absence of consensus on causation and in order to better understand the problem of escalating incidence globally, an expanded, integrated approach broadening the inquiry into individual susceptibility breast cancer is proposed. Applying systems thinking to existing data on oestrogen-modulating environmental exposures and other oestrogenic factors characteristic of Westernisation and their interactions in the exposure, encompassing social, behavioural, environmental, hormonal and genetic factors, can assist in understanding cancer risks and the pursuit of prevention strategies. A new conceptual framework based on a broader understanding of the “system” that underlies the development of breast cancer over a period of many years, incorporating the factors known to contribute to breast cancer risk, could provide a new platform from which government and regulators can promulgate enhanced and more effective prevention strategies

Water reuse from a circular economy perspective and potential risks from an unregulated approach

Considerations including water scarcity in arid and semi-arid regions, water security concerns in areas where water demand exceeds water availability, and rigorous and costly requirements to remove nutrients and emerging contaminants from effluent discharge to surface waters have driven water reuse as an alternate water supply in some parts of the world. However, the potential of reusing treated wastewater has not yet been exploited in many areas. A transition to a circular economy could create significant synergies for the wide adoption of water reuse as an alternate water supply. This paper therefore examines opportunities and risks with the transition to such an economy. Findings show that although many of the barriers water reuse is facing, ranging from public perception to pricing and regulatory challenges, could be addressed more effectively through a wider circular economy perspective, care must be taken with regulating and monitoring levels of contaminants in the recycled water according to its use. A review of existing reuse schemes and regulations across the world, found variation, demonstrating the need for assessing benefits and risks on a case by case basis. Recycling and reuse are central to a circular economy approach and offer a strategy to improve water supply by managing wastewater better. Such strategy should also ensure the safety of water reuse, and therefore apply water quality standards appropriate to the specific use, but also ensure adequate and reliable operation of water reuse systems and appropriate regulatory enforcement

The transition of EU water policy towards the Water Framework Directive’s Integrated River Basin Management paradigm

Introduced in 2000 to reform and rationalise water policy and management across the European Union (EU) Member States (MS), the Water Framework Directive (WFD), the EU’s flagship legislation on water protection, is widely acknowledged as the embodiment and vessel for the application of the Integrated River Basin Management (IRBM) paradigm. Its ecological objectives, perhaps even more challenging than the prospect of statutory catchment planning itself, were for all EU waters to achieve ‘good status’ by 2015 (except where exemptions applied) and the prevention of any further deterioration. In support of the upcoming WFD review in 2019, the paper reviews the transition of EU policies that led to the adoption of the WFD, to identify the reasons why the Directive was introduced and what it is trying to deliver, and to place progress with its implementation into context. It further investigates reasons that might have limited the effectiveness of the Directive and contributed to the limited delivery and delays in water quality improvements. Findings reveal that different interpretations on the Directive’s objectives and exemptions left unresolved since its negotiation, ambiguity and compromises observed by its Common Implementation Strategy and lack of real support for the policy shift required have all been barriers to the harmonised transposition of the IRBM paradigm, the key to delivering good ecological status. The 2019 WFD review offers a unique opportunity to realign the implementation of the Directive to its initial aspirations and goals

The contribution of Higher Education to sustainability: The development and assessment of sustainability competences

Universities can make a significant contribution to sustainability, and the development of sustainability competences in their graduates should be a key outcome of their courses. We propose an assessment framework for enabling and evaluating the attainment of sustainability competences in University students. We outline its six steps, offering tools on how to assess the alignment of University programs’ Learning Outcomes (LOs) to sustainability and how translate them into competences for sustainability. We provide approaches to evaluate existing assessment methods in terms of enabling students to develop and apply their competences, guidance on how to conduct the assessments to collect data on student performance and eventually how to use the data, and evidence collected to evaluate if the students are developing the intended competences. We illustrate the application of the assessment tool in a University case study and we draw conclusions on the evidence it offers to how higher education practitioners can benefit from its use

Environmental management for dredging sediments - The requirement of developing nations

Scientific research has characterized the effects of dredging, an underwater excavation process for navigational purposes or material extraction, and has shown its association with a number of chemical, physical and biological impacts. Due to this, much environmental management has been applied in the dredging industry in order to manage its detrimental effects. However, developing nations may have different approaches towards their dredging environmental management to compare to their companions with higher economic strength. Moreover, scientific evidence to make an informed decision is often lacking, hence affecting the number of research executed at these nations, limiting their efforts to preserve the environment. This paper reviews the dredging environmental impacts and its two important factors, dredging technology and sediment characteristic, that determine the magnitude of impacts through literature review, and discusses the need for a more integrated dredging environmental management to be developed for developing nations

Defective spermatogenesis: Martin et al. respond

This is an Open Access article - Copyright @ National Institute of Environmental Health Science.BACKGROUND: Male reproductive tract abnormalities such as hypospadias and cryptorchidism, and testicular cancer have been proposed to comprise a common syndrome together with impaired spermatogenesis with a common etiology resulting from the disruption of gonadal development during fetal life, the testicular dysgenesis syndrome (TDS). The hypothesis that in utero exposure to estrogenic agents could induce these disorders was first proposed in 1993. The only quantitative summary estimate of the association between prenatal exposure to estrogenic agents and testicular cancer was published over 10 years ago, and other systematic reviews of the association between estrogenic compounds, other than the potent pharmaceutical estrogen diethylstilbestrol (DES), and TDS end points have remained inconclusive. OBJECTIVES: We conducted a quantitative meta-analysis of the association between the end points related to TDS and prenatal exposure to estrogenic agents. Inclusion in this analysis was based on mechanistic criteria, and the plausibility of an estrogen receptor (ER)-α–mediated mode of action was specifically explored. RESULTS: We included in this meta-analysis eight studies investigating the etiology of hypospadias and/or cryptorchidism that had not been identified in previous systematic reviews. Four additional studies of pharmaceutical estrogens yielded a statistically significant updated summary estimate for testicular cancer. CONCLUSIONS: The doubling of the risk ratios for all three end points investigated after DES exposure is consistent with a shared etiology and the TDS hypothesis but does not constitute evidence of an estrogenic mode of action. Results of the subset analyses point to the existence of unidentified sources of heterogeneity between studies or within the study population

Combined sewer overflows: relating event duration monitoring data to wastewater systems' capacity in England

Water pollution caused by the frequent use of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) has been attracting increased media and political coverage in England as in other places in the world. Considering that each of the country's 14 346 CSOs has been assessed for their environmental risk potential, as defined by the Environment Agency, and they have each been permitted to act as a storm overflow is indicative of a more systemic problem than currently perceived. While looking at the duration and frequency of discharges from individual CSOs not much can be said about their causes nor about what needs to be done to reduce them, here through an extensive investigation of event duration monitoring (EDM) data for 2021 and 2020, CSO spills are shown to be an issue across all sewerage companies related to how they operate their systems. By analysing EDM data considering the type and location of CSOs, and the sewerage networks they are connected to, our findings reveal the chronic under capacity of the English wastewater systems as a fundamental cause behind the increased frequency and duration of CSO spills. Other than pumping stations, 82% of the CSOs with the maximum spill duration per system were located at storm tanks and inlets of treatment works and had on average significantly higher spill durations in systems with insufficient hydraulic capacity both in 2020 and 2021, suggesting that CSOs are used to protect the works under peak dry weather flow conditions. Such frequent, and in some cases independent of rainfall, use of CSOs, could have detrimental effects for the receiving environment, as well as put thousands of water users at risk

A participatory ecosystems services approach for pressure prioritisation in support of the Water Framework Directive

Research data for this article: The data are provided as supplementary material available online at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041618303486?via%3Dihub#s0050 .Copyright © 2018 The Authors. The pressure and impact analysis is an important process in integrated river basin management and a key procedural element of the EU Water Framework Directive. It aims to inform both the assessment of water body status and the development of management responses. However, the Directive does not provide prescriptive guidance on how it should be carried out and during the 1st river basin cycle, its application proved to be a real challenge. Incorporating ecosystem services as indicators of impacts, a participatory framework for pressure prioritisation is presented here. While various methods exist for engaging stakeholders in river basin management, the framework allows for the ecosystem approach to be operationalised through a risk assessment perspective, in the context of the pressure impact analysis. Applying this to a case study in England, we demonstrate how a ranking of pressures can be delivered based on stakeholders’ perception of how the delivery of ecosystem services is affected by each pressure and incorporating their value as indicator of the magnitude of the impact. This approach allows for a more systematic way to effectively prioritise significant pressures and therefore select appropriate programmes of measures in line with the Directive’s integrated river basin management paradigm.European Union’s Seventh Programme for research, technological development, and demonstration under grant agreement no. 603629-ENV-2013-6.2.1-Globaqua and the NERC funded project A Novel Framework for Predicting Emerging Chemical Stressor Impacts in Complex Ecosystems, NERC Reference: NE/S000348/1

Education for sustainable development: A systemic framework for connecting the SDGs to educational outcomes

The UN 2030 agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) envisions a future of inclusive equity, justice and prosperity within environmental limits, and places an important emphasis on education as stated in Goal 4. Education is acknowledged as a means for achieving the remaining Goals, with sustainability as a goal for education in target 4.7. However, the interconnectedness of the SDGs and the complexity of sustainability as a concept make it difficult to relate the SDGs to educational learning outcomes, with what Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) aims to achieve, left in ambiguity. Using systems thinking, we developed a framework that redefines ESD as a tool that can deliver the transformation required for society to reach a sustainable state. Using the SDGs as end points for this state, and through a participatory approach, education stakeholders and learners work together to construct a common vision of sustainability, identify the competences needed, and develop appropriate pedagogies and learning strategies. The framework allows for the development of evaluation tools that can support educational institutions to monitor and manage their progress in transforming societies towards sustainability