Egy észak-magyarországi téglagyár fluorleválaszójának környezetásványtani vizsgálata

A fluorid fogszuvasodásra gyakorolt pozitív hatását már a 19. század óta ismerjük, ám a 20. század során felismerték a túlzott bevitel egészségkárosító hatásait is. Bár a fluorid elsősorban vulkáni tevékenység és kigőzölgések során kerül a környezetbe, különböző antropogén tevékenységek (pl. alumínium-feldolgozás, téglaés kerámiaipar) is jelentős forrást jelenthetnek. Mivel ez egészségügyi kockázatot okozhat, az egyes ipari tevékenységek megengedett fluoridkibocsátásának mértékét jogszabályban rögzítik. Kutatásunk során egy olyan téglagyárat vizsgáltunk, ahol – feltehetőleg geológiai okok miatt – korábban határérték fölötti volt a fluoridkibocsátás. Ennek megoldására egy olyan fluorleválasztó készüléket helyeztek üzembe, amely mészkőgranulátummal köti meg a füstgáz fluortartalmát. A reakció során fluorit (CaF2) keletkezik. Vizsgálataink során az itt végbemenő ásványtani folyamatokat kívánjuk feltérképezni. Ezek egy része technológiai szempontból kívánatos, ezáltal jól ismert, de ezeken kívül több mellékfolyamat is végbemegy, amely kevésbé vizsgált. Ehhez a fluorleválasztó belsejéből üzemen kívül vettünk mintákat, üzemelés során pedig a leválasztóból kikerülő maradék anyagot mintáztuk. Ezeket a mintákat pedig röntgendiffrakcióval és pásztázó elektronmikroszkóppal vizsgáltuk. Célunk, hogy pontosabb képet kapjunk a fluor eredetéről és a fluorleválasztóban lejátszódó konkrét ásványtani folyamatokról

The Importance of Protein Fingerprints in Bacterial Identification: The Maldi-Tof Technique

The available literary sources suggest the general applicability and benefits of the Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometry (MS) in the field of microbiological identification including food quality and safety, and the clinical field.  Due to its high reliability, MALDI-TOF might generally be the alternative to the sequence-based and serological-based methods. The essence of the technique is to map the unique protein pattern of microbes that contributes to characterizing a wide variety of microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi, and viruses. On the other hand, these applications only have reliable results under certain conditions (homogeneous infection, adequate cell count, appropriate separation technique). In this review, we focused on the application of MALDI-TOF MS for the environmental field where it has significant potential in the identification, differentiation, and categorization of environmental samples which includes (soil, water, and air), furthermore, some challenges, especially in case of the extreme conditions environment and summarize developments that have been enabled for routine application in the field of environment

Thermal baths as sources of pharmaceutical and illicit drug contamination

Despite the fact that there are tens of thousands of thermal baths in existence, knowledge about the occurrence of pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) in untreated thermal wastewater is very limited. Because used thermal water is typically legally discharged into surface waters without any treatment, the effluent poses environmental risks for the receiving water bodies. The aim of this study was to show the occurrence patterns and spatiotemporal characteristics of 111 PhACs in thermal wastewater. Six thermal water outflows of different thermal baths were tested in different seasons in the Budapest metropolitan region (Hungary), and diurnal analysis was performed. After solid-phase extraction, the samples were analysed and quantified by coupling supercritical fluid chromatography and mass spectrometry to perform simultaneous multi-residue drug analysis. The results confirm that water discharge pipes directly transport pharmaceuticals into surface water bodies; 34 PhACs were measured to be over the limit of quantification at least once, and 21 of them were found in more than one water sample. The local anaesthetic drug lidocaine, antiepileptic carbamazepine, analgesic derivative tramadol and illicit drug cocaine were detected in more than half of the samples. Caffeine, metoprolol and bisoprolol (cardiovascular drugs), benzoylecgonine (cocaine metabolite), diclofenac (NSAID), citalopram (antidepressant) and certain types of hormones also have a significant frequency of 30-50%. However, the occurrence and concentrations of PhACs vary according to the season and number/types of visitors. As demonstrated by the diurnal fluctuation, drug contamination of thermal waters can significantly vary, even for similar types of baths; furthermore, the quantity and types of some pollutants rapidly change in the discharged thermal wastewater

Investigation of the sorption of 17α-ethynylestradiol (EE2) on soils formed under aerobic and anaerobic conditions

A study was conducted on the sorption of 17 alpha-ethynylestradiol (EE2) on five soils formed under different redox conditions: an Arenosol (A_20) with fully aerobic conditions, two Gleysol samples (G_20 and G_40) with suboxic and anoxic conditions and two Histosols (H_20 and H_80) with mostly anoxic conditions. The soils were characterized on the basis of total organic carbon (TOC), specific surface area (SSA) and the Fourier transform infrared spectra of the humic acid and humin fractions (the soil remaining after alkali extraction) of the soil. The maximum adsorption capacity of the soils (Q(max)) ranged from 10.7 to 83.6 mg/g in the order G_20 > H_20 > G_40 > A_20 > H_80, which reflected the organic matter content of the soils. The sorption isotherms were found to be nonlinear for all the soil samples, with Freundlich n values of 0.45-0.68. The strong nonlinearity found in the adsorption of the H_80 samples could be attributed to their high hard carbon content, which was confirmed by the high aromaticity of the humin fraction. The maximum sorption capacity (Q(max)) of the soils did not increase indefinitely as the organic carbon content of the soils rose. There could be two reasons for this: (i) the large amount of organic matter may reduce the number of binding sites on the surface, and (ii) the decrease in SSA with increasing soil OC content may limit the ability to adsorb EE2 molecules. In anaerobic soil samples, where organic matter accumulation is pronounced, the amount of aromatic and phenolic compounds was higher than in better aerated soil profiles. Strong correlations were found between the amount of aromatic and phenolic compounds in the organic matter and the adsorption of EE2 molecules, indicating that pi-pi interaction and H-bonding are the dominant sorption mechanisms. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd