Principles of Environmental Toxicology, Second Edition
A
n ideal introductory text in environmental toxicology that otters broad coverage of the field. This latest edition reviews basic pharmacology, basic physiology, and chemical carcinogenesis and mutagenesis, and includes a chapter on risk assessment. It also covers occupational toxicology, air pollution, including urban, industrial, and indoor air pollutants, and the effect of pollutants on human health and the environment. The depletion of stratospheric ozone and global warming are discussed. The book describes the hazards of water and land pollution and provides examples of polluted water, such as the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay. There are also chapters on pollution control and radioactive pollution, and a new chapter on population, environment, and women's issues. U.S. regulatory policies and international marine treaties are documented. This title is especially valuable for undergraduate and graduate students, toxicologists, environmental scientists, chemical and industrial engineers, and regulatory personnel. S i g m u n d F. Z a k r z e w s k i ACS Professional Reference Booh ISBN 0-8412-3380-2 February 1997 350 pages; Cloth
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explained. "With our model you can see the resulting cost and performance consequences." Also included is a comprehensive model showing how the volume separation treatment for contaminated sediments works, based largely on information developed from laboratory research at the Coleraine Minerals Research Laboratory in Coleraine, Minn. Researchers collected large samples from contaminated Great Lakes harbor sites, tested them, and compiled a spreadsheet indicating how the contaminants separated out into different parts. Conspicuously lacking from the software, however, are modules that deal with the other two methods of treating contaminated sediments, thermal desorption and solvent extraction. According to Keillor, pilot studies that demonstrate a method in a particular situation often don't generate enough information to determine how the method could work in a different setting. He and colleagues plan to develop modules that account for the physics and chemistry of thermal desorption and solvent extraction treatment Keillor thinks that computer modeling could optimize water use in facilitating the transport of sticky sediments during thermal desorption. Adding water augments sediment mobility, but it also inflates processing costs by increasing the amount of heat needed to liberate contaminants. Keillor said that the software might be available by mid1998 —K.S.B.
Getting to the root of phytoremediation Plant metabolism can contribute to the organic contaminant reductions associated with phytoremediation, but it is indistinguishable from the activities of fungi and bacteria in in situ evaluations. Jacqueline Vanni Shanks, of Rice University's Cox Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering in Houston, Tex., argues that hairy root cultures can serve as a surrogate for demonstrating the "phyto" contribution in phytoremediation of contaminated soil. At this fall's Estuarine Research Federation International Conference in Providence, R.I., Shanks discussed how hairy root cultures can be used to identify transformation products,
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metabolic pathways, and intrinsic growth and kinetic relationships, which are necessary for determining how plant metabolism contributes to phytoremediation. The use of the surrogate system contributed significantly to the proof-of-concept paper on the phytoremediation of trinitrotoluene that Shanks published last year [Environ. Sci. Technol. 1997, 31, 266). Hairy roots are a specialized kind of plant organ culture made by transforming plants with Agrobacterium rhizogenes, from which T-DNA is put into the plant genome. The roots at this infection site become immortal. An organ culture, such as a hairy root culture, contains no bacteria and yet still grows quickly. Culturing plant roots provides a way to elucidate plant metabolism; the roots appear to be where much phytoremediation occurs. Rice scientists are using them to study various reaction phases of the phytoremediation process Compounds of interest labeled with carbon-14 allowing reaction pathways to be monitored Shanks commented that results are reproducible and correlate with those from an intact aquatic plant "Plants don't necessarily cause the same types of metabolic reactions that bacteria or fungi do," Shanks pointed out. Rather than mineralizing a contaminant the way a bacteria would, plants typically interact with a xenobiotic compound in three phases. Oxidation-reduction reactions are followed by reactions that conjugate redox products into sugars or amino acids. Additional reactions then occur that cause subsequent products to be incorporated into plant biomass. Use of hairy root cultures enables study of the first two phases of these reactions "We know a lot about this system, and we have it characterized really well," she summarized. "When we are looking at the effects of TNT on growth, I know what the control case is, and I know what it's doing." The research into hairy root cultures as a model for investigating the phytoremediation of explosives has received funding from government organizations, including the EPA Hazardous Substances Research Center, the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program and the Department of Defense. K.S.B.
