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Background: In developing countries, due to improper segregation and management of health care waste (HCW), the environmental effects of these infectious components are becoming a major challenge. The purpose of this study was to evaluate quantity and quality of HCW, and current status of waste management in four educational hospitals of Abadan School of Medical Sciences, Iran. Methods: This descriptive study was conducted in four educational hospitals of Abadan School of Medical Sciences to evaluate the amount of production rate, type of hospital waste, and the current status of HCW management. These HCW of hospitals were selected and sampled daily in four seasons in 2018. The waste was manually segregated by the hospital staffs into 8 components (according to WHO manual) and weighted. Proposed questionnaires of WHO for developing countries was used to evaluate HCW management system of studied hospitals. Results: The average of hospital waste produced was 604.75 kg/day including 217 kg/day of infectious and 387.75 kg/day of non-infectious waste, respectively. The per capita of hospital waste generated in all studied hospitals was 4.13 kg/bed-day. The main part of infectious and non-infectious wastes was food waste and plastics which are recyclable. In addition, 70% of the separation sources were performed correctly, which facilitates segregation. All hospitals used autoclave and hydro-clave treatment for disinfection before final disposal. However, the current management status was poor and underdeveloped. Conclusion: According to the waste management hierarchy, waste minimization can be considerable if carried out in an effective, safe and sustainable manner. But in studied hospitals, this strategy was very weakly managed. There was no management program (waste minimization, separation, reuse and recycling) in the hospitals.

Natural organic matter reacted with chlorine used for disinfection, and finally, trihalomethanes (THMs) are formatted. The main purpose of this study was to determine four THM concentrations and human health cancer risk and non-cancer risk assessment from exposure through oral ingestion, dermal contact, and inhalation for males and females in Abadan. Two sampling sites were selected, and five samples before and after treatment by two different water treatment systems (RO and ion exchange) were collected every week. Results showed that total THM concentrations before and after treatment by RO were 98.1 and 8.88 μg/L, and ion exchange ranged between 101.9 and 14.96 μg/L, respectively, that before treatment was upper than the maximum of 80 mg/L recommended by USEPA. Inhalation was the primary route of exposure by around 80–90% of cancer risk. Total cancer risk was higher than the USEPA acceptable limit of 10−6 via three exposure routes. Oral route has the higher hazard index values than dermal ways.

Black pomfret Parastromateus niger is a commercially important fishery resource in the Persian Gulf but harvesting its stocks lacks genetic identification of populations. AFLP technique was applied to analyze genetic diversity and population structure of 32 fish from coastal waters of Bandar Abbas, Bushehr and Abadan with 7 EcoRI/MseI primer pair combinations. In total, 381 bands were produced of which, 46 were polymorphic (12.07%). Percentage of polymorphic bands was higher in Bushehr samples (91.30%) than in Abadan (84.78%) and Bandar Abbas (73.91%) samples. The highest level of heterozygosity based on Nei’s coefficient and Shannon’s index was observed in Bushehr fish (0.38±0.16 and 0.54±0.21). Observed and effective alleles ranged from 1.73±0.44 and 1.53±0.40 in Bandar Abbas samples to 1.91±0.28 and 1.70±0.34 in Bushehr samples. The average Fst was 0.19 indicating high genetic differentiation among the three locations. Gene flow with mean of 1.93 was the lowest level between Bandar Abbas and Abadan (1.24). Nei's genetic identity revealed the least genetic similarity between the samples of Bandar Abbas and Abadan (0.77). AMOVA analysis demonstrated 81% of the genetic variation within populations and 19% among populations. The UPGMA dendrogram clustered all 32 individuals into 3 groups. In some cases individuals from the same region were grouped together but in most cases, gene exchange was observed to be common among the groups. Analyses provided evidence for genetic differentiation among the three locations, indicating separate populations of black pomfret in the northern Persian Gulf.