Biodiversity surveys are essential but challenging to conduct at scale, prompting this study to evaluate soil-extracted eDNA as a proxy for traditional field-based surveys for describing plant commun...

Exclusive: Report says public ownership will mean cheaper bills, less pollution and more investment in infrastructure

Campaigners say that farmers' fields are being contaminated by chemicals and microplastics in sewage sludge.

Exclusive: ‘Ransom note’ requests would leave Environment Agency unable to prosecute company or management

ALT: a woman is eating popcorn while sitting on a couch and says `` the show begins '' .

Tracking measles through wastewater is giving health officials a new window into where the virus is spreading.

This document sets out NERC’s medium-term vision for environmental science, providing a framework to guide our investments and partnership decisions.

Firms among England and Wales suppliers facing record 81 investigations as sources say ‘polluter will pay’ for their cost

Wastewater-based surveillance (WBS) is a complementary approach that overcomes some of the limitations of human biomonitoring, such as sampling biases…

Biodegradation is one of the most important processes influencing the fate of organic contaminants in the environment. Quantitative understanding of the spatial variability in environmental biodegradation is still largely uncharted territory. Here, we conducted modified OECD 309 tests to determine first-order biodegradation rate constants for 97 compounds in 18 freshwater river segments in five European countries: Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and Greece. All but two of the compounds showed significant spatial variability in rate constants across European rivers (ANOVA, P < 0.05). The median standard deviation of the biodegradation rate constant between rivers was a factor of 3. The spatial variability was similar between pristine and contaminated river segments. The longitude, total organic carbon, and clay content of sediment were the three most significant explanatory variables for the spatial variability (redundancy analysis, P < 0.05). Similarities in the spatial pattern of biodegradation rates were observed for some groups of compounds sharing a given functional group. The pronounced spatial variability presents challenges for the use of biodegradation simulation tests to assess chemical persistence. To reflect the variability in the biodegradation rate, the modified OECD 309 test would have to be repeated with water and sediment from multiple sites.

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology - Human norovirus (HuNoV) GII RNA in wastewater solids at 145 United States wastewater treatment plants: comparison to positivity rates...

Grailey et al. investigate the impact of different terminologies used to describe AMR, testing terms co-designed with the public. Terminology that is familiar, such as the inclusion of ‘antibiotics’ c...