Characteristics of PM2.5-bound metals in Japan over six years: Spatial distribution, health risk, and source analysis.

Air sampling campaigns were conducted at 100 survey sites across Japan from April 2014 to February 2020, and a comprehensive database of atmospheric particles was obtained. In this study, the characteristics of PM2.5 and 26 metals were investigated in depth. Spatially, the concentration of PM2.5 gradually increased from the northeast to the southwest of Japan. The pollution in Kitakyushu City was the most serious, reaching 19.8 µg m-3. As an important particle component, metals did not show obviously spatial variation in Japan, with a sum concentration of 0.4 µg m-3. Anthropogenic metals only accounted for about 8% of the total metals, but they could pose a serious threat to public health. For children, the non-carcinogenic risk and carcinogenic risk due to exposure to anthropogenic metals could not be neglected in Japan; the corresponding HI and CR values at 100 survey sites ranged from 2.7 to 15.0 and 4.1 × 10-5 to 3.4 × 10-4, respectively. Adults faced lower health risks than children, with HI values ranging from 0.2 to 2.0 and CR values ranging from 2.0 × 10-5 to 1.6 × 10-4. The integrated health risk assessment results showed that the coastal region of the Seto Inland Sea and the north Tohoku Region were the most heavily polluted areas of Japan; in this study, 20 survey sites were finally determined to be high-risk sites, among which pollution control for Niihama City, Kitakyushu City, Hachinohe City, and Shimonoseki City were of first priority. With further combination with a positive matrix factorization model, it can be known that these four cities mainly had five to seven metal sources, and their heavy pollution was mainly caused by ship emissions, industrial emissions, biomass burning, and coal combustion. Overall, our study comprehensively revealed the regional patterns of PM2.5-bound metal pollution across Japan, which can help in making cost-effective risk management policies with limited national/local budgets.

Homogenisation of Biocultural Diversity: Plant Ethnomedicine and Its Diachronic Change in Setomaa and Võromaa, Estonia, in the Last Century.

When studying the evolution of the use of medicinal plants, it is important to identify what role, and to what extent, external factors and local biocultural diversities play in shaping cultural changes. We chose as a case study, which forms part of a larger project, a religiously and linguistically distinct group, the Seto, and compared their current and past plant use with that of the surrounding Võro. Ethnobotanical fieldwork was conducted in the summers of 2018 and 2019. Current uses of plants constituted 34% of the total registered use reports and 41% of those were used to treat general diseases or used as prophylactics. In total, the medicinal use of 86 taxa was recorded, and of these 48 were prevalent. Strong erosion (the abandonment of 43, mainly wild taxa used historically) and valorisation of the uses shared with neighboring as well as distant regions once part of the Soviet Union, were evident, signalling the potential influence of the centralised distribution of knowledge. The results clearly show that the plant medicine-related biocultural diversities of the two groups have been considerably homogenised, eroded and influenced by the knowledge spread through various means during the Soviet era and over the last 30 years.

Language of Administration as a Border: Wild Food Plants Used by Setos and Russians in Pechorsky District of Pskov Oblast, NW Russia.

Socio-economic changes impact local ethnobotanical knowledge as much as the ecological ones. During an ethnobotanical field study in 2018-2019, we interviewed 25 Setos and 38 Russians in the Pechorsky District of Pskov Oblast to document changes in wild plant use within the last 70 years according to the current and remembered practices. Of the 71 botanical taxa reported, the most popular were Vaccinium vitis-idaea, Vaccinium oxycoccos, Vaccinium myrtillus, Betula spp., and Rumex acetosa. The obtained data was compared with that of 37 Setos and 35 Estonians interviewed at the same time on the other side of the border. Our data revealed a substantial level of homogeneity within the plants used by three or more people with 30 of 56 plants overlapping across all four groups. However, Seto groups are ethnobotanically closer to the dominant ethnic groups immediately surrounding them than they are to Setos across the border. Further study of minor ethnic groups in a post-Soviet context is needed, paying attention to knowledge transmission patterns.

New direction for environmental water management.

Japan experienced severe environmental problems including water pollution and damages to aquatic organisms and fishery industry through and after the high economic growth period in the 1960s. One of the countermeasures to address these problems was the Total Pollutant Load Control System (TPLCS), which has been implemented with the aim of reducing the total amount of pollutant loads, specifically targeting Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), total nitrogen and total phosphorus. The TPLCS has significantly improved the quality of the coastal sea water. However, while the accumulated pollutant loads from the past industrialization have still remained, new environmental concerns have arisen. Our new environmental policies are thus to deal with conservation of biological diversity and other related marine environmental issues. Japan has entered a new phase of environmental management, setting the new direction and framework toward a beautiful, bio-diverse, bustling-with-people and bountiful sea.