Estimation of the residual total mercury in marine sediments of Minamata Bay after a pollution prevention project

Determination of dissolved gaseous mercury in seawater of Minamata Bay and estimation for mercury exchange across air–sea interface

“…From 1977to 1990, environmental pollution controls, including a reclamation project in which sediment containing more than 25 ppm (μg g −1 ) of total Hg was dredged from the bay and deposited along the coastline (Kumamoto Prefecture, 1998). However, the average concentration of total Hg in the surface sediment of the bay in 2010 remained high at 3.1 μg g −1 (Tomiyasu et al, 2014). This value is higher than the average concentration in the surface sediment in Tokyo Bay (0.43 ± 0.09 μg g −1 ), which receives inflow from the largest metropolitan area .…”

Persistent Hg contamination and occurrence of Hg-methylating transcript (hgcA) downstream of a chlor-alkali plant in the Olt River (Romania)

“…Nevertheless, the burial of Hg released from chloralkali plant in the other impacted reservoirs having low sedimentation rates might be a longer process than here and does not necessarily eliminate the risk of food chain contamination by Hg. For example, in the infamous Minamata Bay (Japan), in which no river flows in, the highest THg concentrations in sediments as well as highest Hg methylation concentration were reported at 10-and 35-cm depth, although Hg discharges have been discontinued for over 30 years (Tomiyasu et al 2006(Tomiyasu et al , 2014. Moreover, Hg concentrations in mussels were also reported to be higher than background concentration, which demonstrate that sediments remain a source of MeHg for several decades (Tomiyasu et al 2006).…”

An innovative method to functionalize textiles for the remediation of polluted media

“…Indeed, the high concentration of heavy metals such as Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn in a geographic area leads to famous catastrophic events [1,2]. One potential solution to this problem would consist in the filtration of wastewater containing these hazardous components using functionalized geotextiles.…”

“…Acrylic acid grafting has already been realized in our laboratory on polypropylene nonwoven [6] and polyethylene terephthalate [7] using a low pressure cold plasma process. However, this process requires many steps: (1) activation of the textile sample by low pressure argon cold plasma process; (2) immersion in an acrylic acid solution; and (3) graft-polymerization of the acrylic acid by low pressure cold plasma again. Moreover, this method is difficult to transfer to industrial scale due to the grafting conditions at low pressure.…”