Due to the growing of environmental pollution with heavy metals and organochlorine compounds it is necessary to determine the levels of these contaminants in milk due to the possible risk on human population. This paper reports the concentrations of heavy metals (Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn) and organochlorine compounds (polychlorinated bipenyls and organochlorine pesticides) in raw, pasteurized milk and infant formula samples collected in Cluj-Napoca, NW Romania. The analytical methods consist of liquid-liquid extraction and capillary gas chromatography with electron-capture detection (GC-ECD) for determination of organochlorine compounds and microwave acid digestion followed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for determination of heavy metals. The obtained results showed that the lowest mean concentrations were determined in infant formula samples. The organochlorine compounds obtained at the highest mean concentrations were α-HCH, 4,4'-DDE and PCB28.
The environmental impact assessment of mining sites represents nowadays a large interest topic in Romania. Historical pollution in the Rosia Montana mining area of Romania caused extensive damage to environmental media. This paper has two goals: to investigate the environmental pollution induced by mining activities in the Rosia Montana area and to quantify the environmental impacts and associated risks by means of an integrated approach. Thus, a new method was developed and applied for quantifying the impact of mining activities, taking account of the quality of environmental media in the mining area, and used as case study in the present paper. The associated risks are a function of the environmental impacts and the probability of their occurrence. The results show that the environmental impacts and quantified risks, based on quality indicators to characterize the environmental quality, are of a higher order, and thus measures for pollution remediation and control need to be considered in the investigated area. The conclusion drawn is that an integrated approach for the assessment of environmental impact and associated risks is a valuable and more objective method, and is an important tool that can be applied in the decision-making process for national authorities in the prioritization of emergency action.
To assess the influence of pollution degree on the heavy metals (Cu, Cd, Zn, Pb) mobility in soil, total metals content obtained by extraction in aqua regia and extractable contents in a buffered diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA) solution were measured using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Soil samples were collected from two areas from NW Romania with different pollution levels: a mining area (Baia Mare) and a rural area (Iclod). High pollution level with heavy metals was found in Baia Mare area, whereas contents of metals in Iclod did not exceed the alert limits established by Romanian legislation. The percentages of extractable metals were calculated, and correlations between soils pollution levels and heavy metals mobility were made. The results showed that despite the significant difference between the total metal content in soil from the two regions, estimated as the aqua regia extractable content, the percentages of DTPA extractable metals were comparable for Pb and Zn, while those for Cu and Cd were higher in the polluted region. However, significant correlation coefficients were found between total and mobilisable metals content in unpolluted site compared to the polluted site.
Nowadays, the use of social media by public institutions involved in disaster management is starting to become common practice. However, despite scientific interest in the effect of social media on disaster risk and crisis communication, data exploring emergency management agencies' round-the-clock Facebook usage and the impact of their content and media choices on stakeholder engagement is limited. This study set out to investigate Romanian local emergency agencies' Facebook usage patterns and stakeholders' engagement with their content. The data is comprised of 7810 messages posted between the 1st January and 25th October 2017 by 32 County Inspectorates for Emergency Situations. First, using content analysis techniques, the topics of the posts were summarized to illustrate how these agencies use Facebook. Second, stakeholder engagement was investigated using social media marketing techniques. Third, messages related to natural hazards were analyzed in greater depth to reveal disaster risk communication patterns. The results suggest that Romanian emergency agencies mainly promote transparency and their institutional image on Facebook. Stakeholders were most likely to engage with brand-oriented posts, especially if these also offered rich multimedia feature. Meanwhile, stakeholders were less likely to interact with messages about natural hazards, particularly if they incorporated educational content. These observations suggest that, while at the moment Romanian local emergency management agencies take advantage of Facebook to create and maintain relationships with their stakeholders, they bypass opportunities to implement communication strategies for effective disaster risk reduction.Emergency management agencies are encouraged to leverage SM in order to engage with their stakeholders, especially considering the citizens' growing demand for their permanent SM presence [9,10]. Recently, numerous recommendations have emerged from research and practice to guide emergency managers through the process of implementing and maintaining SM pages. These recommendations cover a wide range of topics, such as the identification of the most suitable SM tools/applications to fulfil specific communication objectives [7,11]; the development of policy documents [12] or best practices in order to establish an active presence on SM; and the establishing of a network of stakeholders [13,14].There is a wide range of different SM applications, such as blogs, social networking sites, media-sharing services, web map services and wikis, that can be used for risk and crisis communication in unique ways [15]. In each of these SM applications, stakeholder engagement can be measured in different ways, giving valuable insight on their interactions. These measures can serve as metrics for evaluating SM effectiveness in risk and crisis communication [16]. However, only a handful of studies examine how factors such as content or media type influence stakeholder engagement in the field of disaster management. For example, Sutton et al. [17] examin...
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