9% of the outdoor entrances, in 29.1% smell of smoke, in 43.2% people smoking, in 75.0% discarded butts, and in 14.6% ashtrays. Median nicotine concentration was below the laboratory's limit of quantification <0.06μg/m
(Interquartile range<0.06-0.119). We found higher SHS levels in countries with lower TCS scores, higher national smoking prevalence, and in the Southern and Eastern European regions. People smoking were more common in schools from lower area-level SES and in countries with lower TCS scores (p<0.05).
Smoking at school outdoor entrances is a source of SHS exposure in Europe. These findings support the extension of smoking bans with a clear perimeter to the outdoor entrances of schools.
Smoking at school outdoor entrances is a source of SHS exposure in Europe. These findings support the extension of smoking bans with a clear perimeter to the outdoor entrances of schools.In recent years, the impacts of biomass energy consumption on the environment have attracted the attention of policymakers and scholars. Although empirical studies have been conducted on this topic, the relationship between biomass energy production and the ecological footprint has been overlooked in the literature. This study seeks to fill this gap by investigating the effects of biomass energy production on the ecological footprint of the G7 countries for the period 1980-2016. For this purpose, we use a set of methods, that help overcome the problem of cross-sectional dependence in panel data analysis. The findings from dynamic seemingly unrelated regression (DSUR) estimation show that biomass energy production increases the ecological footprint of the G7 countries. Meanwhile, a Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test provides evidence that unidirectional causality runs from biomass energy production to the ecological footprint. Based on these empirical results, several policy recommendations are proposed for the G7 countries.The main land use/land cover changes (LULCC) have been associated with population growth and energy policies in the São Paulo State, Brazil, since 1970. The LULCC can alter the behavior of trace elements in different environmental systems, with the riverbed sediments being the main reservoirs or sinks for trace elements, and thus become a valuable environmental archive on temporal changes. Thus, the main purpose of the study was to apply a multi-tracer analysis to estimate the historical evolution of pollution in riverbed sediment of a subtropical watershed, the lower course of the Piracicaba River, São Paulo, Brazil. 210Pb measurements done on river sediment core samples allowed estimating a sedimentation rate of 9 mm yr-1 between 1971 and 2001. Zn was the most abundant trace element in the sediment core, followed by Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, Sc and Cd. The total concentrations of Cd, Cr, Ni, Sc and Pb presented practically no variations in the sediment core, with a continuous excess of ca. 0.27 μg g-1 yr-1 of Cu and of ca. 0.54 μg g-1 yr-1 of Zn between 1971 and 2001. The excess of Cu and Zn was associated with labile fractions, in particular with carbonate bound to Zn and organic matter bound to Cu. The assessment of trace metal pollution indicated that most of the trace elements were of geogenic origin, except for Cu and Zn. 1-Thioglycerol According to the sediment quality guidelines used in Brazil, Pb showed no potential toxic effect, Cu, Cr and Zn were intermediate to Threshold Effect Level (TEL) and Probable Effect Level (PEL) and the Cd and Ni concentrations were above the PEL limits. The elemental and isotopic analysis of C and N and the C/N ratio indicated that the anthropogenic origin of POM found in the sediment core is related mainly to domestic sewage.Can intraspecific diversity functionally supersede interspecific diversity? Recent studies have established the ecological effects of intraspecific variation on a number of ecosystem dynamics including resilience and productivity and we hypothesised that they may functionally exceed those of species diversity. We focused on a coastal ecosystem dominated by two coexisting bioengineering mussel species, one of which, Perna perna, displays two distinct phylogeographic lineages. A manipulative field experiment revealed greater habitat structural complexity and a more benign microscale environment within beds of the eastern lineage than those of the western lineage or the second species (Mytilus galloprovincialis); the latter two did not differ. Similarly, while infaunal species abundance and biomass differed significantly between the two lineages of Perna, there was no such difference between Mytilus and the western Perna lineage. The evenness and diversity of associated infaunal assemblages responded differently. Diversity differed relatively weakly between species, while evenness showed a very strong difference between conspecific lineages. Our results show that variation within a species can functionally supersede diversity between species. As the two P. perna lineages have different physiological tolerances, we expect them to react differently to environmental change. Our findings indicate that predicting the ecosystem-level consequences of climate change requires an understanding of the relative strengths of within- and between-species differences in functionality.Despite increasing interest in hydrological effects on riverine ecosystems, few studies have documented the impact of hydrology on biofilm community functions, and those existing have typically focused on annual-based hydrological indices. In this study, we conducted monthly samplings during a year in five lowland streams with different flow regimes and investigated the impacts of hydrological conditions and physico-chemical variables on the trait composition of diatoms growing on artificial substrates, biomass (chlorophyll a and ash free dry weight), and biofilm community functions (biochemical processes, i.e., biofilm metabolism and nutrient uptake rates measured in the laboratory). Instead of the commonly used annual-based hydrological indices, we calculated indices for shorter periods (14 and ~28 days) of the hydrological regimes. Results of species-based variation partitioning showed that short-period hydrological indices (10.10 ± 7.18%) contributed more to explain species distribution than physico-chemical variables (5.1-Thioglycerol
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