Chemicals in the environment: implications for global sustainability

Abstract

The impact of chemicals on the environment and human health is a cause of increasing concern. Although many studies continue to be carried out on this subject, most address only individual chemicals or particular groups of chemicals, such as metals or radioactive substances. In this paper, we consider the availability of data and knowledge about potentially harmful chemicals from the national to international scale and suggest a strategy to help prevent chemical pollution or deficiencies damaging global sustainability into the 21st century. The main groups of chemicals considered are: (i) Potentially harmful inorganic elements such as As, Cd, Hg and Pb known to have adverse physiological effects at low levels, and elements and species such as Se, I and NO x that can be essential or harmful depending on their concentration, speciation and bioavailability. Chemical elements such as Ga, In and the PGEs that are increasingly used in the development of new materials, including nanotechnology applications, are also discussed briefly. (ii) Radioactive substances, including naturally occurring radioisotopes, such as 238 U and its decay products 226 Ra and 222 Rn, and processed materials, such as depleted uranium (DU), which affect the environment and human health because of their radiological and chemical toxicity. Data on isotopes from the nuclear industry, such as the relatively short-lived isotopes 137 Cs and 90 Sr, are also discussed, including from accidental releases such as Chernobyl in 1986. Isotopes with longer half-lives such as 243 Am and 240 Pu, which are important in the development of nuclear waste management strategies are also considered. (iii) Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) including many synthetic chemicals such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), flame retardants and their metabolites, which are characterised by their persistence, bioaccumulation (lipophilicity) and toxicity (PBT) properties. Other synthetic chemicals such as perfluorooctane sulphonate (PFOS), which have different bioaccumulation properties, are considered briefly.(iv) Human and veterinary pharmaceuticals, of which there is increasing evidence of their presence in the environment. These substances are of particular concern because many are designed to target specific biological receptors and hence can have potentially deleterious effects at exceptionally low concentrations. All these groups of chemicals include endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), capable of disrupting animal and human hormone systems (including sex and thyroid).Geochemical databases such as those prepared by the Forum of European Geological Surveys (FOREGS) and the British Geological Survey (BGS) provide systematic information on levels of inorganic chemicals in the environment. Similarly, airborne radiometric databases provide systematic information on the distribution of radioactive substances. Examples of such data are used to demonstrate how the distribution of chemicals in ...

Towards the development of a multidisciplinary understanding of the effects of toxic chemical mixtures on health

“…In spite of all this activity, interactions between chemical pollutants with one another and between a cocktail of pollutants and organisms are only rarely considered (Plant et al 2005). There is no doubt that the potential complexity of combined effects is a huge deterrent to such investigation, as is the complexity of the changing composition of some mixtures, the resource costs, and the lack of funding, but there is a further reason why geochemists are disinclined to study mixtures.…”

“…It would not be helpful to classify most mixtures as coincidental; further work is needed on the determinants of the transformation of mixtures beyond that undertaken regularly by geochemists on concurrent chemicals (Plant et al 2005). There is a need to characterize more clearly how much a mixture can be transformed and still remain a defined mixture.…”

“…Optical sensors, for example, allow the simultaneous measurement of over 30 organic pollutants in river Environ Geochem Health (2009) 31:239-251 241 water (Hua et al 2005). National geological surveys, such as the British Geological Survey, have long been engaged in geochemical mapping of multiple trace elements in sediments and soils (Plant et al 2005), and multiple pollutants in the air are routinely measured by local government, environmental protection agencies and others. In addition to measuring multiple pollutants in different media, geochemists also make such measurements at widely different scales, from individual grains of less than a micron in size, to cross-continent measurements.…”

Environmental pollution: corporate crime and cancer mortality

“…Other carcinogens include PAHs, while produced naturally in some cases, also result from the release of petroleum hydrocarbons in marine seeps and from the combustion of fossil fuels, metal cleaning products used in the military, petroleum processing, aluminum smelting, and coke ovens (Blatt, 2006;Plant et al, 2005;Swartz-Nobel, 2007). Other research substantiates that particulate matter is carcinogenic and explains about 15% of the cancers that are not explained by cigarette smoking (Blatt, 2006).…”

High geochemical background of potentially harmful elements in soils and sediments: implications for the remediation of contaminated sites

“…Soils originate from the alteration, disaggregation and transformation of parent rock, whose characteristics determine their primary mineralogical composition and the derived geochemical inhomogeneity leads to areas with enhanced or depressed element levels that may cause biological effects due to either toxicity or deficiency [1][2][3]. As an example, potentially harmful inorganic elements such as As, Cd, Hg and Pb are known to have adverse physiological effects at low levels, and elements and species such as Se, I and NO x can be essential or harmful depending on their concentration, speciation and bioavailability [4].…”