The degradation of paraben preservatives: Recent progress and sustainable approaches toward photocatalysis.

Parabens are a class of compounds primarily used as antimicrobial preservatives in pharmaceutical products, cosmetics, and foodstuff. Their widely used field leads to increasing concentrations detected in various environmental matrices like water, soil, and sludges, even detected in human tissue, blood, and milk. Treatment techniques, including chemical advanced oxidation, biological degradation, and physical adsorption processes, have been widely used to complete mineralization or to degrade parabens into less complicated byproducts. All kinds of processes were reviewed to give a completed picture of parabens removal. In light of these treatment techniques, advanced photocatalysis, which is emerging rapidly and widely as an economical, efficient, and environmentally-friendly technique, has received considerable attention. TiO2-based and non-TiO2-based photocatalysts play an essential role in parabens degradation. The effect of experimental parameters, such as the concentration of targeted parabens, concentration of photocatalyst, reaction time, and initial solution pH, even the presence of radical scavengers, are surveyed and compared from the literature. Some representative parabens such as methylparaben, propylparaben, and benzylparaben have been successfully studied the reaction pathways and their intermediates in their degradation process. As reported in the literature, the degradation of parabens involves the production of highly reactive species, mainly hydroxyl radicals. These reactive radicals would attack the paraben preservatives, break, and finally mineralize them into simpler inorganic and nontoxic molecules. Concluding perspectives on the challenges and opportunities for photocatalysis toward parabens remediation are also intensively highlighted.

Global challenges in microplastics: From fundamental understanding to advanced degradations toward sustainable strategies.

Currently, the global production and usage of plastics have increased rapidly with the expansion of synthetic polymers. Since plastics' degradation processes are prolonged and thus microplastics (MPs) potentially persist for very long periods in the environment. To date, there is a need for knowledge on the relevance of different potential entry pathways and the number of MPs entering the environment via different routes. Despite the vast quantity of studies that have been undertaken, many unanswered issues remain about the environmental impacts of MPs. The real impacts on a population subjected to many MPs of different structure, dimensions, and shapes over a lifetime are still hard to elucidate. Significantly, MPs can accumulate toxic substances, such as persistent organic pollutants, on their material surface. Hence, it represents a potential concentrated source of environmental pollution or acts as a vector of toxic pollutants in the food chain's interconnection with some severe health implications. Herein, we mainly discussed the global challenges in MPs, including the current production and use status of plastics and their impact on the environment. Additionally, finding the degradation of tiny fragment plastics (MPs level) is essential to remove plastics altogether. Some of the approaches to methods, including biodegradation, physical degradation, physicochemical degradation, have been successfully reviewed. More importantly, the sustainable concepts of using microorganisms and photocatalysis for MPs' degradation have been successfully proposed and demonstrated.

Optimization of sampling frequency for coastal seawater quality monitoring.

The selection of an appropriate sampling frequency is very important in monitoring coastal seawater quality. The present study sought to optimize the sampling frequency for coastal seawater quality monitoring. We combined mathematical models with natural and human activities by the analytic hierarchy process method. The study was designed to consider historical monitoring data, regulated seawater quality standard, tide, land use, and ship activities in optimizing coastal seawater sampling frequency in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. The study results indicated that monitoring activities should focus in points having high human activities as well as high concentration of TSS, ammonium, and oil. Points S1-S8 should have high sampling frequency (16-30 samples/year), whereas points S23-S28 can have low sampling frequency (3-5 samples/year). In a year, monitoring activities should be focused in June, July, and August with the number of samples of 42, 54, and 44 pear year (weighting values 0.120, 0.161, and 0.112), respectively. It should consider the mathematical aspects associated with natural and human factors when calculating sampling frequency for coastal seawater quality monitoring. Proposed optimization method can be applied for other coastal regions.

Enhancing decomposition rate of perfluorooctanoic acid by carbonate radical assisted sonochemical treatment.

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is a recalcitrant organic pollutant in wastewater because of its wide range of applications. Technologies for PFOA treatment have recently been developed. In this study, PFOA decomposition by sonochemical treatment was investigated to determine the effects of NaHCO3 concentrations, N2 saturation, and pH on decomposition rates and defluorination efficiencies. The results showed that PFOA decomposition by ultrasound treatment only (150 W, 40 kHz), with or without saturated N2, was <25% after 4 h reaction. The extent and rate of PFOA decomposition and defluorination efficiencies of PFOA, however, greatly increased with the addition of carbonate radical reagents. PFOA was completely decomposed after 4h of sonochemical treatment with a carbonate radical oxidant and saturated N2. Without saturated N2, PFOA was also decomposed to a high (98.81%) degree. The highest PFOA decomposition and defluorination efficiencies occurred in N2 saturated solution containing an initial NaHCO3 concentration of 30 mM. Sonodecomposition of PFOA with CO3(-) radical was most favorable in a slightly alkaline environment (pH=8.65). There isn't any shorter-chain perfluorinated carboxylic acids detected except fluorine ions in final reaction solution.

Calculating of river water quality sampling frequency by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP).

River water quality sampling frequency is an important aspect of the river water quality monitoring network. A suitable sampling frequency for each station as well as for the whole network will provide a measure of the real water quality status for the water quality managers as well as the decision makers. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is an effective method for decision analysis and calculation of weighting factors based on multiple criteria to solve complicated problems. This study introduces a new procedure to design river water quality sampling frequency by applying the AHP. We introduce and combine weighting factors of variables with the relative weights of stations to select the sampling frequency for each station, monthly and yearly. The new procedure was applied for Jingmei and Xindian rivers, Taipei, Taiwan. The results showed that sampling frequency should be increased at high weighted stations while decreased at low weighted stations. In addition, a detailed monitoring plan for each station and each month could be scheduled from the output results. Finally, the study showed that the AHP is a suitable method to design a system for sampling frequency as it could combine multiple weights and multiple levels for stations and variables to calculate a final weight for stations, variables, and months.