Search

• RCC reduction techniques in the houses like load bearing constructions address EW. • Exposed brick masonry and speedy constructions boost EW management. • Steel, cement, and brick are not the prime-most embodied water consumers. • The results seek attention as it finds embodied and operational water almost equal. • Energy related embodied water is negligible in post material production phase. • The study identifies various EW impacting parameters much beyond A+D only. The study assesses the embodied water (EW) of conventional masonry houses in Jammu, India. The research uses material inventory, site investigations, and hybrid EW coefficients in the hybrid process-based ISO 14046 LCA study. It carries improvised system boundary analysis to infer the disaggregated, aggregated results using descriptive statistics (frequency analysis) and regression. The study finds high aggregated EW at 43.7 KL/m2 with materials EW (EW MAT.), in-direct water (IDW), and direct water (DW) components of 51.26%, 40.34%, and 8.38%. The study infers (i) EW is equally important (97%) as the operational water, (ii) sand, aggregates, DW, and finishing materials impact EW more than typical cement, brick, and steel (iii) The unprioritized labor meals and DW are significant and seeks construction management (iv) off-site (pre-cast) construction, and transportation is not a barrier to EW as energy-related EW is negligible. The results identify EW as a multi-faceted issue requiring a collaborative stakeholders' approach than Architecture + Design (A+D) and construction optimizations. The analysis implies the importance of load-bearing constructions in low-rise houses, exposed masonry, alternatives to wall finishes and aggregates, adaptive reuse, and RCC reduction-based A+D. The four houses based solitary study breakthrough a canvas of issues to capitalize EW agenda further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive literature search to identify and collect studies related to the toxicity of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) and brominated phenols (BPs) was performed in the three databases PubMed, Web of Science and SciFinder® for four Areas. After combination of the searches from the three databases and removal of the duplicates, the total number of references for Area 1 was 6,231, for Area 2 was 8,236, for Area 3 was 4,994 and for Area 4 was 6,363. The evaluation of all retrieved references for relevance by screening the title and abstract (if available) and applying eligibility criteria (inclusion/exclusion) resulted in a total number of relevant references for Area 1 of 378 (PBDEs), 46 (TBBPA) and 29 (BPs), for Area 2 of 188 (PBDEs), 37 (TBBPA) and 4 (BPs), for Area 3 of 518 (PBDEs), 180 (TBBPA) and 49 (BPs), and for Area 4 of 717 (PBDEs), 59 (TBBPA) and 18 (BPs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]