Belfast, United Kingdom

Environmental Toxicology and Pollution Monitoring

Master's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: physical science, environment
Qualification: MSc
Studies online Studies online
Master of Science (MSc)
University website: www.ulster.ac.uk
Monitoring
Monitoring may refer to:
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light. Pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants. Pollution is often classed as point source or nonpoint source pollution. In 2015, pollution killed 9 million people in the world.
Toxicology
Toxicology is a discipline, overlapping with biology, chemistry, pharmacology, and medicine, that involves the study of the adverse effects of chemical substances on living organisms and the practice of diagnosing and treating exposures to toxins and toxicants. The relationship between dose and its effects on the exposed organism is of high significance in toxicology. Factors that influence chemical toxicity include the dosage (and whether it is acute or chronic), route of exposure, species, age, sex, and environment. Toxicologists are experts on poisons and poisoning.
Pollution
Net-based surveys are less subjective than direct observations but are limited regarding the area that can be sampled (net apertures 1–2 m and ships typically have to slow down to deploy nets, requiring dedicated ship's time). The plastic debris sampled is determined by net mesh size, with similar mesh sizes required to make meaningful comparisons among studies. Floating debris typically is sampled with a neuston or manta trawl net lined with 0.33 mm mesh. Given the very high level of spatial clumping in marine litter, large numbers of net tows are required to adequately characterize the average abundance of litter at sea. Long-term changes in plastic meso-litter have been reported using surface net tows: in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre in 1999, plastic abundance was 335 000 items/km2 and 5.1 kg/km2, roughly an order of magnitude greater than samples collected in the 1980s. Similar dramatic increases in plastic debris have been reported off Japan. However, caution is needed in interpreting such findings, because of the problems of extreme spatial heterogeneity, and the need to compare samples from equivalent water masses, which is to say that, if an examination of the same parcel of water a week apart is conducted, an order of magnitude change in plastic concentration could be observed.
Ryan, P. G.; Moore, C. J.; Van Franeker, J. A.; Moloney, C. L. (2009). "Monitoring the abundance of plastic debris in the marine environment". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 364 (1526): 1999–2012. doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0207. JSTOR 40485978. PMC 2873010 Freely accessible. PMID 19528052.
Pollution
Waste-water from the houses collected in the gutters running alongside the curbs and emitted a truly fearsome smell. There were no public toilets in the streets or squares. Visitors, especially women, often became desperate when nature called. In the public buildings the sanitary facilities were unbelievably primitive....As a metropolis, Berlin did not emerge from a state of barbarism into civilization until after 1870.
August Bebel cited in David Clay Large, Berlin (2000) pp 17-18
Pollution
By examining conditions in China and experimenting in a lab, the scientists suggest that a combination of weather patterns and chemistry could have caused London fog to turn into a haze of concentrated sulfuric acid.
Domonoske, Camila (2016-11-23). "Research On Chinese Haze Helps Crack Mystery of London's Deadly 1952 Fog". NPR. Retrieved 23 November 2016
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