Halda River (HR), the lone natural carp breeding ground in Bangladesh as well as in Southeast Asia is an economically important river and its water quality is deteriorating due to unplanned industrialization and various anthropogenic activities. The present research work has been conducted to assess the characteristics of HR water. Eighteen water quality parameters were studied including pH, temperature, Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Total Dissolved Solids, Electrical Conductivity, Hardness, Turbidity, Total Alkalinity, SO42-, PO43-, NO3-, Cl-, NH4+, Cr (VI), Mn (II) and Arsenic. This study shows that water in HR is regularly alkaline and its pH lies between 7.08-7.65. The DO value varies from 5.9-8.4 mgL-1, BOD ranged from 0.3-2.8 mgL-1 and COD from 24-96 mgL-1. According to the Water Quality Index study, the river is being intensely polluted due to the unscrupulous industrial wastes discharge into the HR through various canals.

Increasing land demands for food production has led to large-scale soil degradation in the hilly regions of south-eastern Bangladesh. An intensification of slash-and-burn techniques, where fallow intervals have shortened considerably in recent years, has led to widespread losses in soil quality. Here we sought to test to what extent do current agroforestry practices in the area, compared with current reforestation efforts, can ameliorate different physicochemical soil properties after the abandonment of slash-and-burn practices. We observed that concentrations of soil organic matter (4.75%), available phosphorous (12.17 μg g −1 ) and exchangeable potassium (0.39 mg kg −1 ) in agroforestry plots were significantly higher than in reforestation (3.18%, 6.50 μg g −1 and 0.21 mg kg −1 , respectively) or slash-and-burn plots (1.83%, 5.90 μg g −1 and 0.03 mg kg −1 , respectively). While reforestation and agroforestry may both serve to restore soil functions but we observed higher benefits in the latter system. Thus, agroforestry systems may be a suitable land management system for replacing ancestral slash and burn techniques but care should be taken to diminish soil compaction.

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A total of 37 elements were determined in tap and bottled water samples from six counties of Middle Tennessee (USA) by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES). The overarching goal of the study is to dispel the myth that bottled water is better than tap water or vice versa. Other parameters analyzed were pH, conductivity, and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS). The results were compared with the Maximum Contaminant Limit (MCL) reported by the US Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA). The concentrations of phosphorus, silicon, fluoride, and chloride conformed to the established values by US-EPA maximum contaminant level corresponding value. The level of Aluminum (Al), Boron (B), Chromium (Cr), Cobalt (Co), Copper (Cu), Iron (Fe), Lithium (Li), Manganese (Mn), Nickel (Ni), Titanium (Ti), Vanadium (V), and Zinc (Zn) conformed to the established values by governmental agencies (USEPA). Heavy metals such as Arsenic (As), Cadmium (Cd), Cobalt (Co), Lead (Pb), Mercury (Hg), and Silver (Ag) were detected in the tap water of the urban (Davidson) and urbanizing (Rutherford and Williamson) counties; suggesting that rural counties had a less heavy metal concentration in their drinking water sources than urban counties (P < 0.05). However, the values were below the Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs).

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