Volume 21, Issue 2, March 2025

Key points  

• The study reveals that poor workmanship, inadequate planning and scheduling, and frequent design changes are the primary causes of defect-related waste.

• The study proposes industrial practices such as enhanced training for construction workers, more rigorous project planning, and stricter adherence to design and specifications to mitigate defect-related waste.

• The study also identifies the growing financial implications of construction defects, particularly in the context of rising waste disposal costs and increased complexities in building insurance claims.

• The study reveals the link between construction defects and waste generation, laying a foundation for future research.

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• This review maps the challenges to operationalize the Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) framework.

• Cooperation among the scientific community, policymakers, and industries is key to address those challenges.

• Possible actions accompany the mapped challenges in order to guide research toward the operationalization of the SSbD framework.

• Two priority actions are the addition of the scoping analysis in the SSbD framework, and the integration between risk assessment and life cycle assessment.

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• A set of comprehensive criteria and guidelines for conducting field-based biomagnification studies is compiled.

• A weight of evidence meta-analysis for evaluating field-based biomagnification studies and their reported biomagnification metrics is developed for assessing the biomagnification potential of difficult substances.

• The weight of evidence meta-analysis is applied todecabromodiphenyl ethane (DBDPE), which belongs to a class of super-hydrophobic substances that are difficult to assess for their bioacummulation potential.

• The weight of evidence meta-analysis indicates with a high level of confidence that DBDPE does not biomagnify within food webs.

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• The findings indicate a need for the adoption of a more standardized and integrative approach to valuation of regulating ecosystem services.

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• This article’s central thesis is that addressing water scarcity must focus on people and their ability to lead healthy and productive lives.

• The predominant theme is to empower water users for decision-making roles in water management, made possible through Water Partnerships where trusted partners and stakeholders help inform water users’ decision-making.

• A discussion on the barriers and opportunities for resilient water systems begins by reframing water scarcity as a “pathway to water bankruptcy,” which allows for alternative decision-making approaches for water management.

Key points  

• The virtual workshop gathered 13 experts from four disciplines not commonly included in environmental health risk assessment to review informational materials and to provide their responses using a Delphi method to charge questions about technical aspects of cumulative impact assessment.

• The experts’ opinions were used to frame a set of future research objectives to advance the development of cumulative impact assessment and to improve its use in the environmental justice context.

• The future research objectives identified from the virtual workshop included: the appropriate use of screening tool information and indexes, the role and measurement of nonchemical stressors, relevance of a risk modifier approach to cumulative impact assessment, inclusion of uncertainty and causality, metrics for interventions and regulatory impact analysis.

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• This work sought the opinion of members of the public who have experienced flooding to understand their perceptions of climate change.

• This was particularly pertinent as climate change has been linked to the flooding they experience.

• The participants in this research believed climate change is occurring but opinions differed in how it was manifesting

There is a need to modify the agricultural structure in the Gaza Strip according to the results of the water footprint by expanding the cultivation of nonwater-consuming crops and reducing the cultivation of water-depleting crops.The blue and green water footprint of agricultural crops amounted to 116 mm³ and was divided into 82 mm³ of blue water and 34 mm³ of green water.The sustainability of the water in the Gaza Strip was evaluated and found to exceed international standards. It is necessary to depend on alternative sources and develop irrigation methods. There is an estimated loss of 40 mm³ in conventional water withdrawal compared to the application of the Water Footprint Index. Some crops require importing from abroad rather than growing locally because they consume much water and have little production.

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• Accurate estimation of key nutrients (total nitrogen, ammonia nitrogen, Kjeldahl nitrogen, total phosphorus, and orthophosphate) in surface waters was achieved by exploration and comparison of different machine learning (ML) models.

• The random forest model, optimized with genetic algorithms and Bayesian approach, achieved the best performance (R² > 0.90) for predicting the water quality using simple physicochemical parameters such as pH, temperature, and conductivity.

• Implementing ML in water quality offers an alternative tool for rapid detection of changes in key nutrients of the eutrophication phenomenon, taking the approach of a future monitoring and early warning system

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• When applied under specific alum and pH conditions, rhamnolipid effectively removed approximately 74% of microplastics from aquatic environments.

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• From 2000 to 2020, the carbon emissions of the territorial space functional areas in Chongqing (CQ-TSFA) increased from 48.87 million tons to 148.05 million tons.

• The main expansion areas of the urban living sub-areas are the central urban area and the vicinity of the seats of various district and county governments.

• The main expansion areas of the urban production sub-areas are the edges of the central urban area around the Yangtze River Basin within Chongqing, including many industrial parks.

• The contributions to carbon emissions in descending order are the economic development effect, the carbon emission intensity of CQ-TSFA, and the population size effect, and the utilization rate of CQ-TSFA plays a strong inhibitory role.

Key points  

• An inclusive approach was used to survey a broad selection of views and perspectives through multiple engagements, over a 10-plus-year period, with Māori partners, scientists, regulators, and members of the wider community that informed a strategy to manage contaminants.

• Strategy goals were developed to enable influence and leadership and not exclusively on research need and direction; the strategy is seen as an opportunity to be inclusive of Indigenous knowledge and provide holistic approaches for the management of contaminants.

• Inappropriate and ineffective management of chemicals and waste continues to pose a risk to exposed biota and humans; Indigenous knowledge, practice, and values provide a credible alternative to innovate and develop more effective management frameworks.

• An inclusive approach was taken during the development of the strategy, but we recognize that this was still nested in a colonial-based design; commitment to carrying out a true partnership approach would further enhance and guide future approaches underpinned by Indigenous and other knowledge.

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• We have outlined a process that combines weight of evidence assessments of model risk with decision risk tolerance to increase confidence in the application of population models in regulatory decisions for rare species with varying amounts of available data.

• Acknowledging and managing model risk increases the confidence of using models in regulatory contexts.

• Model risk, defined as the possibility the model is wrong or the output is misapplied, may stem from data limitations, parameter estimation uncertainty, model misspecification, or inappropriate use of a model.

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• There are six potentially significant mercury sources present in the upper Mackenzie River watershed with sufficient data to be included in a Bayesian Network relative risk model.

• Across five fish species, the highest fish mercury concentrations were observed in the southern Mackenzie River, while highest water mercury concentrations are observed in the northernmost Mackenzie Delta.

• Sensitivity analysis of the Bayesian Network models revealed that mining proximity and nonpoint mercury release had the greatest influence on fish mercury levels, while the presence of permafrost thaw slumps had the biggest impact on water mercury levels.

• The models were used to perform a counterfactual analysis of how fish mercury levels would respond to a 35–60% reduction in atmospheric mercury assuming successful implementation of the Minamata Treaty, and predicted that this would translate to a 1.2-fold reduction in fish mercury concentrations.

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• Our results highlight that other metals in the mixture may not be as concerning to adjacent riparian ecosystems, but copper remains a contaminant of concern in Torch Lake 60 years after mining ceased.

• Copper mining activities adjacent to lakes may consider using biosentinel spiders for monitoring the risk of elevated Cu exposure for riparian insectivores such as songbirds.

• Riparian spiders (Tetragnathidae and Araneidae) seem well-suited for monitoring aquatic sourced Cu, Cd, and Zn exposure to terrestrial insectivores.

• We may have observed an exposure-dependent transfer of Cu, where aquatic insect larvae in Torch Lake lost proportionally more Cu through metamorphosis compared to Gratiot Lake because of the elevated exposure in the larval life stage.

We evaluated the direct costs and health benefits of implementing the Three-Year Action Plan for Winning the Blue Sky Defense Battle in Chengdu City. From 2018 to 2020, the abatement costs totaled 8.77 billion yuan and the health benefits amounted to 9.79 billion yuan. The estimations of direct costs and health benefits, along with Monte Carlo simulation, confirm the economic efficiency of the Three-Year Action Plan. Measures such as the development of transportation infrastructure generate co-benefits in terms of industry development and CO₂ abatement in addition to reducing pollutant emissions, making it highly likely that the actual benefits exceed the costs.

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• Children’s exposure to lead in a historical Pb–Zn smelter site in Yunnan province (southwestern China), characterized by heavy environmental pollution conditions, was investigated.

• Two exposure modeling tools, the USEPA Integrated Exposure Uptake Bio-Kinetic (IEUBK) and MERLIN-Expo, were applied, using measured Pb concentrations in environmental media and food items from a local field campaign as input data.

• Model results for the simulated exposure scenario indicated significantly high blood lead levels (>10 µg/dl) in children, reflecting the elevated Pb concentrations measured in environmental matrices and mostly resulted in agreement with previous biomonitoring data from the region.

• Quantitative tools for internal exposure modeling can contribute to Pb exposure assessment as complementary tools to demanding and invasive biomonitoring studies and can help identifying priority exposure routes for improving risk management.

Key points  

• A cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment was conducted on copper concentrate production.

• The impact of copper concentrate production on marine ecotoxicity was highlighted.

• Sodium hydroxide was the largest contributor to environmental impacts.

• Substantial savings were obtained by tailing reuse for cement production and road construction.