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This study aims to provide numerous environmental research approaches to understand the formation of mineral and organic mercury compounds in self-heating coal waste dumps of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin (USCB). The results are combined with environmental and health risk assessments. The mineralogy comprised accessory minerals in the fine fraction of thermally affected waste, i.e., Hg sulfides, most likely cinnabar or metacinnabar. Moreover, other metals, e.g., Pb, Zn and Cu, were found as sulfide forms. Apart from Hg, the ICP-ES/MS data confirmed the high content of Mn, Zn, Pb, Hg, Cr and Ba in these wastes. The high concentration of available Hg resulted in elevated MeHg concentrations in the dumps. There were no correlations or trends between MeHg concentrations and elemental Hg, TS, TOC, and pH. Furthermore, we did not detect microbial genes responsible for Hg methylation. The organic compounds identified in waste and emitted gases, such as organic acids, or free methyl radicals, common in such burn environments, could be responsible for the formation of MeHg. The concentration levels of gases, e.g., benzene, formaldehyde, NH 3 , emitted by the vents, reached or surpassed acceptable levels numerous times. The potential ecological and human health risks of these dumps were moderate to very high due to the significant influence of the high Hg concentrations., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Levoglucosan, an anhydrosaccharide, is commonly used as an organic tracer for biomass burning, but has also been identified from coal smoke particulate matter (PM) including lignites. Here we showed that stable carbon isotope analysis specifically of levoglucosan may be one possible way to determine the relative contributions from coal combustion versus biomass burning sources. PM samples were collected from low-temperature burning/smoldering of Miocene lignites from Poland and basket willow (Salix viminalis L.) representative of biomass. The calculated levoglucosan δ 13 C values of xylites varied from -23.6 to -21.6‰, while for detritic coal samples they ranged from -24.2 to -23.1‰, with means of -22.7 and -23.7‰, respectively. The calculated levoglucosan δ 13 C value of basket willow wood was -27.1‰. Values of willow wood mixtures with xylite varied from -25.8 to -23.4‰ (with an increasing proportion of xylite), while values of mixtures of willow and detritic coal ranged from -26.9 to -24.6‰ (with an increasing proportion of detritic coal). The δ 13 C values for the mixtures changed proportionally to the contents of individual components with R 2  = 0.88 and 0.89 for willow with xylite and detritic coal, respectively. The hopanoid distributions characteristic for low-temperature lignite/peat burning, with a predominance of 22R-α,β-homohopane, ββ-hopanes and hopenes, as well as low or very low values of the homohopane index, were observed in smoke PM from most lignite samples and absent in the basket willow sample. Thus, the relatively high content of hopanes (with the occurrence of 22R-α,β-homohopane, ββ-hopanes and hopenes) in atmospheric PM samples can be treated as additional tracers of lignite combustion., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Biomarkers are widely known to occur in the fossil record, but the unaltered biomolecules are rarely reported from sediments older than Paleogene. Polar terpenoids, the natural products most resistant to degradation processes, were reported mainly from the Tertiary conifers, and the oldest known are Cretaceous in age. In this paper, we report the occurrence of relatively high concentrations of ferruginol derivatives and other polar diterpenoids, as well as their diagenetic products, in a conifer wood Protopodocarpoxylon from the Middle Jurassic of Poland. Thus, the natural product terpenoids reported in this paper are definitely the oldest polar biomolecules detected in geological samples. The extracted phenolic abietanes like ferruginol and its derivatives (6,7-dehydroferruginol, sugiol, 11,14-dioxopisiferic acid) are produced only by distinct conifer families (Cupressaceae s. l., Podocarpaceae and Araucariaceae), to which Protopodocarpoxylon could belong based on anatomical characteristics. Therefore, the natural product terpenoids are of great advantage in systematics of fossil plant remains older than Paleogene and lacking suitable anatomical preservation.