No abstract

The market of cosmetic and personal care products is continuously growing its impact. In particular, the products that are currently driving this growth have a strict connection with fragrances (e.g., perfumes, detergents, body creams, and softeners). Since the fragrances are volatile molecules, very often, they are encapsulated in polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) that mediate their release and hence prolong the fragrance perception. Toward this aim, it is highly desirable to maximize the interaction between the carrier and the substrate, which would avoid the NP desorption following scrubbing and repeated washing. In the case of laundry products, limited NP desorption is also crucial to prevent the accumulation of nanoplastics in the environment, which is nowadays strictly regulated. Therefore, a thorough study highlighting the influence of the different physicochemical properties of the NPs on their adsorption behavior is urgently required. In this work, we synthesized polymer NPs with different sizes, surface charges, glass transition temperatures, and degrees of cross-linking through emulsion free-radical polymerization to investigate how these parameters affect the NP adsorption onto a textile substrate (composition: 90% cotton/10% elastane). This study can provide interesting guidelines in the design of new fragrance delivery systems as well as in the optimization of those already adopted in the market. Finally, we investigated the possibility of loading and mediating the release in air of limonene, one of the most common odorous molecules in the cosmetic field, overcoming its wellknown volatility.

This work aims to evaluate the non-carcinogenic health effects related to landfill odor emissions, therefore focusing on workers involved in dynamic olfactometry. Currently, the most common technique to quantify odor emissions is dynamic olfactometry, a sensorial analysis involving human assessors. During the analysis, assessors are directly exposed, at increasing concentrations, to odor samples, and thus to the hazardous pollutants contained therein. This entails the need to estimate the associated exposure risk to guarantee examiners’ safety. Therefore, this paper evaluates the exposure risk for olfactometric examiners to establish the minimum dilution level to be adopted during the analysis of landfills’ odorous samples to guarantee panelists’ safety. For this purpose, an extensive literature review regarding the pollutants emitted by landfill odor sources was conducted, comparing compounds’ chemical concentrations and threshold limit values (TLVs) to calculate the Hazard Index (HI) and thus establish a minimum dilution value. The data collected indicate that a non-negligible non-carcinogenic risk exists for all landfill emissions considered. However, from the data considered, the minimum dilution factor to be adopted is lower than the typical odor concentration observed for these sources. Therefore, the olfactometric analysis of landfill samples can be generally conducted in safe conditions.

No abstract

Refineries are a major source of atmospheric emissions, which typically include CO, SO2, NOX, particulates, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). There has been an increasing level of attention toward the emissions of VOCs related to their environmental impact as well as their potential to cause adverse effects on human health and the discomfort associated with their unpleasant odor. In general, an emission factor (EF) represents a model for a first order estimate of emissions, which correlates the quantity of pollutant released into the atmosphere with a so-called “activity index” related to the release of that pollutant. Based on the study of the scientific and technical literature regarding the Italian and European refining scenarios, an attempt was made to verify the existence of a correlation between the size of a refinery and the related total VOC emissions. Once this correlation was evaluated, it was possible to develop an emission factor for VOC emissions considering the plant capacity as the related activity index. After collecting and analyzing data concerning operative capacity and total VOCs emitted from 15 refineries in 2018, the resulting emission factor turned out to be equal to 188 ± 166 g per ton of crude oil processed. This value is in agreement with the range of 50–1000 g/ton reported in the European Best Available Techniques Reference Document for the Refining of Mineral Oil and Gas.