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Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are released from multiple anthropogenic sources and thus have a ubiquitous presence in the environment. The environmental exposure and potential effects of PPCPs on biota and humans has aroused concern within the scientific community and the public. Risk assessments are commonly conducted to evaluate the likelihood of chemicals including PPCPs that pose health threats to organisms inhabiting various environmental compartments and humans. Because thousands of PPCPs are currently used, it is impractical to assess the environmental risk of all of them due to data limitations; in addition, new PPCPs are continually being produced. Prioritization approaches, based either on exposure, hazard, or risk, provide a possible means by which those PPCPs that are likely to pose the greatest risk to the environment are identified, thereby enabling more effective allocation of resources in environmental monitoring programs in specific geographical locations and ecotoxicological investigations. In the present review, the importance and current knowledge concerning PPCP occurrence and risk are discussed and priorities for future research are proposed, in terms of PPCP exposure (e.g., optimization of exposure modeling in freshwater ecosystems and more monitoring of PPCPs in the marine environment) or hazard (e.g., differential risk of PPCPs to lower vs. higher trophic level species and risks to human health). Recommended research questions for the next 10 years are also provided, which can be answered by future studies on prioritization of PPCPs. Environ Toxicol Chem 2024;43:488–501. © 2022 SETAC [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to study the pollution characteristics, sources, and health risks of heavy metals in urban atmospheric PM2.5, samples were collected in Huangshi City from June 2021 to May 2022. The contents of 16 kinds of metal elements were analyzed by XRF, and the pollution degree and sources of elements were analyzed by the enrichment factor method, correlation analysis, and cluster analysis. The health risk of heavy metal elements was evaluated by the USEPA health risk assessment model. The results of enrichment factor analysis show that the metal elements carried by PM2.5 were affected by human emissions except for Ti. Heavy metals mainly come from industrial sources, motor vehicle sources, mixed combustion sources, and dust sources, according to correlation analysis and cluster analysis. Mn had a non-carcinogenic risk to children, and the non-carcinogenic risk of other elements to the human body was generally acceptable. The carcinogenic risks of Cr, As, Cd, and Co exceeded the acceptable carcinogenic risk threshold (10−6 ~10−4), and there were potential carcinogenic risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a group of highly toxic organic pollutants. At present, there has only been limited research into PAH contamination in Tangxun Lake and Dong Lake, which are the first and second largest urban inland lakes in China, respectively. This study investigated the concentration, spatial distribution, sources, and ecological risks of PAHs in the water from Dong Lake and Tangxun Lake. The focus of this study is to use models to analyze the sources of PAHs, as well as their potential toxicity to humans, in the water bodies of Dong Lake and Tangxun Lake. This study performed liquid–liquid extraction to extract PAHs from lake water samples using dichloromethane and then used gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to quantitatively analyze the PAHs in the samples. The total concentration of the ∑16PAHs showed high variability among different sampling points, ranging from 12.92 to 989.09 ng/L, with an arithmetic mean of 121.97 ng/L. The composition of the ∑16PAHs was mainly concentrated at a low molecular weight (>70%). The molecular distributions of PAH studies, combined with positive matrix factorization (PMF), indicate that oil and coal combustion are the main sources of PAHs in Dong Lake and Tangxun Lake. The model of PMF succeeded in identifying and quantifying five sources with similar contributions: the combustion of petroleum products, heavy oil burning, coal combustion, traffic emissions, and natural gas and oil combustion mixed. According to toxicity equivalency (TEQ) and lifelong cancer risk (ILCR) research, PAHs from traffic sources in the environment may be more toxic, and the potential carcinogenic risk of PAH pollution to humans in Tangxun Lake and Dong Lake water bodies is relatively inferior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Loess Plateau has been a focus of public discussion and environmental concerns over the past three decades. In this study, in order to investigate the effect of OCP pollution in water of the Beiluo River, concentrations of 25 OCPs at 17 locations in the water were examined. The results showed that the concentration of ∑OCPs in the water ranged from 1.76 to 32.57 ng L−1, with an average concentration of 7.23 ng L−1. Compared with other basins in China and abroad, the OCP content in the Beiluo River was at a medium level. Hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) pollution in the Beiluo River was mainly from the mixed input of lindane and technical HCHs. Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) pollution was mainly from the mixed input of technical DDTs and dicofol. Most of the OCP pollution came from historical residues. The risk assessment results showed that hexachlorobenzene (HCB) and endosulfan had high ecological risks in the middle and lower reaches of the Beiluo River. Most residual OCPs were not sufficient to pose carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic health risks to humans. The results of this study can provide a reference for OCP prevention and control and watershed environmental management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]