The present study aims to analyze the temporal variations of PM10 and to assess the health risk indexes caused by trace elements from particulate matter (PM10) via inhalation, ingestion, and dermal absorption by adults and children in Copșa Mică (Romania) during 2009–2019. The results revealed a high multi-annual mean concentration of PM10 and trace elements. The analyzed air pollutants showed a decreasing trend during the studied years, therefore 44.11%, 43.48%, 36.07%, 16.02%, and 15.80% lower values were observed for As, Cd, Ni, PM10, and Pb, respectively, due to environmental regulations. The daily exceedance percentage of Pb and Cd was very high, representing 21.74% and 11.26%, followed by PM10 and As concentrations with 4.72% and 3.92%. The ratio between the trace element concentration measured in Copșa Mică and the country average was 2.46, 4.01, 2.44 and 10.52 times higher for As, Cd, Ni and Pb. The calculated Hazard Quotient values via inhalation were higher than the safe limit (1), which accounted 1.81, 3.89 and 4.52, for As, Cd and Ni, respectively, indicating that the trace elements might present a non-carcinogenic risk to both adults and children. Furthermore, the concentration of all studied trace elements in Copșa Mică showed cancer risk for adults via inhalation and dermal absorption as well.

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Romania has many mineral water sources due to its geological features. In the present study, bottles of 26 Romanian mineral water brands were purchased from the market to make a characterization based on the pH, conductivity, and fixed residue content. Focusing on the total fixed residue, the distribution of low, medium, and highly mineralized water was 43.9%, 41.46%, and 14.63% respectively. The mean of fixed residue concentration was 763.3 mg/L, ranging from 40.37 mg/L to 2,603 mg/L. The pH values of the still mineral waters varied between 6.86 and 7.91, while the pH values of the sparkling mineral waters were the lowest (4.7). The conductivity was strongly related to the concentration of the ions, so the maximum measured conductivity for the still waters was 573 μS/cm, for the partially sparkling waters 2,133 μS/cm, and for the sparkling mineral waters 3,079 μS/cm. The chemical composition of the mineral waters was highly dependent on the rock types. Using the hierarchical cluster analysis, two different clusters were detected according to the main characteristics of mineral waters.

The caraway (Carum carvi L.) samples were collected from little meadows situated in Harghita Mountain (Mădăraş Ciuc, Harghita Băi, Jigodin, Tuşnadu Nou), where a relatively small area was covered by a group of rich populations of wild cumin. The harvested plants are dried by: a) convective laboratory dryer in thick layer, b) static outdoors in sunshine, and (c) static in a warm indoor place in darkness. The hand-picked seeds were separated from debris by sieving and elutriation. The essential oil was obtained with electrically heated Clevenger-type laboratory steam distillation equipment both with and without microwave pretreatment. The variation of the obtained essential oil volume in time was measured and the final yield was determined. For comparison the composition, supercritical fluid extraction of the caraway essential oil with carbon dioxide in a laboratory scale batch supercritical extractor was made. Each sample was analyzed by gas chromatography, following the influence of drying and extraction method on the carvone/limonene ratio. The investigation shows that the essential oil yield is around 7 mL/100 g, less in the case of green plant (6 mL/100 g) and higher in case of the mature plant (10 mL/100 g). The results show that by batch supercritical fluid extraction with CO 2 (at first purge) lowest carvone/limonene ratio was obtained.

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