Are local authority green infrastructure strategies in England addressing climate and environmental risks to public health? A policy review

Effect of Lactation Stage and Behavioral Activity on Enteric Methane Emissions in Dairy Cows.

The emissions of exhaust gas and wastewater from non-ferrous metal enterprises (NMEs) pose a significant threat to surrounding agricultural land. Accurately assessing the long-term pollutant emissions from these enterprises and the associated relative risks to nearby agricultural areas present a substantial challenge. This study, based on multi-source data, focuses on the spatial distribution of NMEs in Gejiu City, China, from 1990 to 2020. It systematically analyzes the evolution patterns, pollutant emissions, and pollution extent over three decades, innovatively developing a grid-scale long-term risk assessment framework for agricultural land surrounding these enterprises. Key findings reveal that: (1) Multi-scale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) uncovered scale-dependent effects of driving factors, with metal mineral resource density being the dominant factor (mean coefficient: 0.5766), operating at a much broader spatial scale than secondary factors like topography and traffic. (2) Non-ferrous metal smelting enterprises, particularly Pb-Zn smelters, were the predominant emission sources, contributing to over 90% of the total heavy metal (HM) load. (3) The relative risk assessment identified intensely localized high-risk hotspots in townships with dense NMEs clusters, such as Shadian, Jijie, and Datun. The integrated relative risk from both pathways identified Jijie and Shadian as extreme-risk zones. Notably, atmospheric deposition contributed to a larger area of multi-HM relative risk than wastewater discharge, highlighting it as a priority control pathway. The methodological innovation of this study lies in the integration of dynamic enterprise emissions with grid-scale receptor vulnerability, providing a precise and actionable scientific basis for targeted environmental management and risk mitigation in industrial regions.

MXene-bridged S-scheme C₃N₅/SrTiO₃ heterojunction integrating photothermal effect and interfacial charge transfer for lomefloxacin mineralization.

The expansion of agricultural and livestock production has increased environmental and health concerns for rural communities living near these activities. The aim was to assess odor perception, health conditions, household pesticide use, and the presence of chlorpyrifos residues in flies in rural communities located near a swine production facility in the Maule Region, Chile. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 82 adults residing within approximately 10km of the "El Arbolillo" area in Maule Region, Chile. Structured questionnaires assessed odor perception, health conditions, and domestic pesticide use. Flies were collected in a subsample of households (n = 17), and chlorpyrifos residues were analyzed using gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. A total of 61% of participants rated odors as extremely strong. Household pesticide use was reported by 69% and was more frequent in homes located closer to the facility (p = 0.001), and associated with higher odor discomfort (p = 0.006). Chlorpyrifos residues were detected in 68% of sampled households (median: 0.106 ng mg⁻¹). After adjustment for age and sex, higher odor discomfort was associated with hypertension (OR = 3.28; 95% CI: 1.46-9.39), reflux/gastritis (OR = 3.34; 95% CI: 1.23-9.08), shortness of breath (OR = 2.72; 95% CI: 1.05-7.05), and loss of appetite (OR = 2.91; 95% CI: 1.08-7.81). Household pesticide use was associated with migraine (OR = 5.06; 95% CI: 1.40-18.3), gastritis/ulcer (OR = 6.09; 95% CI: 1.53-24.3), and allergic contact eczema (OR = 5.31; 95% CI: 1.22-23.1). These findings describe co-occurring environmental exposures, including odor, domestic pesticide use, and pesticide residues in flies. The results support the need for strengthened environmental surveillance and mitigation measures in affected communities. Not applicable.

ABSTRACT Regional and strategic assessments (RAs/SAs) can influence the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of subsequent project impact assessments (IAs) in various ways. This can include improving project proposals by affecting the nature, intensity and distribution of future development, by addressing important issues through larger effects management approaches, or by contributing information, analysis, mitigation and context to these later assessments. This article presents the findings of two workshops held in late 2025 with federal government personnel that are involved in project IAs in Atlantic Canada. Through questions about overall RA/SA objectives and their various potential outputs, the workshops sought participants’ views on whether, how and to what degree these may be influential in project IA scoping decisions by government. RAs/SAs are viewed largely as foundational and contextual pieces for later project IAs, rather than replacing or significantly streamlining most aspects of these assessments due to issues of scale, and the need to still consider environmental conditions, potential effects and mitigation in a project-, site- and time-specific context. RA/SA outputs are therefore seen primarily as a means of ‘scoping better’ rather than ‘scoping out’, and for informing project IA conduct by proponents.

Liquid ammonia-induced stress corrosion cracking of steels: A comprehensive review of mechanism, metallurgical and environmental factors, testing protocols, and mitigation challenges

Greenhouse gas sequestration in poultry farming: Strategies for sustainable production and environmental impact mitigation.

Integrating phosphorus sustainability and environmental burden mitigation through systemwide-optimized strategy in China's Yangtze River Economic Belt

Environmental benefits and cost assessment of transition to a circular paper cup recycling system in China.

Evaluating the potential of thermal catalysis for environmental methane mitigation

The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 represents one of the most significant reforms to the English planning system in recent decades, with profound implications for infrastructure delivery. This paper critically examines the Act, focusing on how legislative reform reshapes governance arrangements, professional practice, and infrastructure outcomes. Using a qualitative doctrinal and comparative methodology, the study analyses the Act alongside previous UK planning reforms and selected European planning systems, highlighting how legislative change influences infrastructure delivery through governance arrangements and professional practice. The paper develops a conceptual framework linking law, governance mechanisms, and built environment outcomes, demonstrating that legislative change influences infrastructure performance indirectly through institutional structures and professional practice. The analysis identifies key opportunities arising from the Act, including accelerated infrastructure delivery, improved project certainty, enhanced investment confidence, and the potential for strategic environmental mitigation. However, it also highlights significant challenges relating to environmental integrity, public trust, and skills and capacity constraints within local authorities. While the Act may improve delivery efficiency, its success will depend on complementary governance reforms, sustained investment in professional capacity, and the ethical engagement of engineers in balancing efficiency with sustainability. The findings offer practical insights for engineers, policymakers, and regulators navigating planning reform.

Organic and inorganic pollutants increasingly threaten reproductive health in indicator species by inducing oxidative stress, endocrine disruption, gonadal damage, and reduced fertility. This review highlights how machine-learning guided engineering can advance controlled-release delivery systems for mitigating such toxicity. It discusses the use of artificial intelligence in formulation design, predictive release-kinetics modelling, nanocarrier optimization, and Quality by Design to improve carrier selection, encapsulation efficiency, stability, and sustained release of protective agents. The review also examines biomarker-based efficacy assessment, including oxidative stress markers, endocrine indicators, and gonadal histopathology. Integrating machine learning with delivery engineering offers a predictive, scalable, and applicationoriented strategy for developing next-generation systems for environmental toxicology mitigation and translational drug delivery research.

Environmental degradation threatens rapidly urbanising developing cities, with Lagos exemplifying these challenges. While landscape design is theorised as a mitigation strategy, empirical evidence in high-density tropical African contexts remains scarce. This study evaluates landscape design effectiveness in Lagos, examining relationships between green infrastructure characteristics and environmental quality outcomes. Using a descriptive survey design, researchers analysed 150 sample plots across five districts through spatial analysis, environmental measurements (air temperature, PM2.5, noise), and 750 household surveys. Stratified random sampling captured variation across core urban, semi-urban, and urban fringe areas, with data analysed via spatial statistics and regression modelling. Results showed green coverage significantly correlated with lower ambient temperature (r=-0.67), PM2.5 (r=-0.58), and noise (r=-0.44). Integrated softhard landscape designs achieved 3.2°C temperature reduction, 34% lower PM2.5, and 12 dB noise reduction versus unvegetated areas. Multivariate regression identified tree canopy coverage, green space connectivity, and soil permeability as significant environmental quality predictors (R²=0.71). Community perception recognised benefits (78%), though maintenance deficiencies limited outcomes. Landscape design proves effective and scalable for environmental mitigation in Lagos, with integrated approaches yielding superior results. Full potential realisation requires governance reforms addressing maintenance, community participation, and climate-adaptive species selection.

Under the dual challenges of global climate change and agricultural sustainability, spatially precise characterization of agricultural nitrogen surplus has become a key technical bottleneck in balancing food security and water environmental protection. Existing global and national nitrogen datasets remain restricted to individual nitrogen species or loss pathways, with no unified, long-term, spatially continuous gridded product for total agricultural nitrogen surplus-particularly at the national scale for China. Compounding these limitations, current modeling approaches are plagued by coarse statistical resolution, short temporal coverage, and overly simplified process representations that distort realistic nitrogen migration and cycling pathways. To address these critical gaps, this study constructs a 0.5° spatial resolution dataset of agricultural nitrogen surplus in China for the period 2000-2022 (CANSD v1.0). The grid-scale nitrogen surplus (NS) is operationally defined as a spatially continuous variable that quantifies agricultural nitrogen cycling heterogeneity at 0.5° resolution. Gridded values are post-processed by rescaling to align with prefecture-level total nitrogen surplus accounting, while realizing spatially continuous characterization based on the inherent spatial heterogeneity of agricultural nitrogen cycling. This approach overcomes the scale mismatch between administrative statistics and field-scale processes by integrating machine learning with spatial downscaling, thereby mitigating potential circular causality and enhancing the characterization of cross-scale transfer patterns. Our framework provides a practical basis foundation for evidence-based agricultural nitrogen management and environmental risk mitigation.

Nano-pesticides in agroecosystems: Environmental fate, ecotoxicological impacts, and sustainable risk mitigation strategies.

Predicting nitrogen surplus in agricultural lands of China using a hybrid machine learning approach with smaller datasets and fewer features.

The vast majority of large Haitian urban areas are coastal cities and draw their water from groundwater. Located downstream from their watersheds, these aquifers are receptacles for multiple downward materials, including oocysts, which threaten the One Health preservation. Cryptosporidiosis infection from livestock is one of the most important health issues. This study investigates the environmental contamination risk posed by Cryptosporidium oocysts from animal faeces in Les Cayes, Haiti, with a particular focus on water resources quality. A total of 129 stool samples from six animal species were collected, with Cryptosporidium coproantigens detected in 27 samples, supporting previous findings from the same locations. Groundwater samples from wells and boreholes also showed significant concentrations of Cryptosporidium oocysts. To better understand oocyst transmission from soil to groundwater, soil samples were analysed for granulometric properties, physico-chemical characteristics, and percolation behaviour. No oocysts were detected in leachates from percolation tests. This may be explained by the soil’s high content of fine particles, which likely interact with and retain oocysts. Environmental transmission was assessed through a tripartite analysis of water, soil, and seasonal climatic factors. These findings contribute to understanding Cryptosporidium transmission pathways and offer a foundation for environmental risk assessment and mitigation strategies in the perspective of a One Health approach.

The article examines the essence and substantive characteristics of circular business models (CBMs) as a conceptual foundation for transitioning from linear to closed-loop value creation systems. CBMs are defined by their focus on preserving the resource value of products, materials, and components throughout their lifecycle through reuse, refurbishment, remanufacturing, and recycling. Unlike traditional business models, which primarily generate profit through the sale of new products, CBMs prioritize resource efficiency, lifecycle optimization, and environmental risk mitigation. The study highlights the integration of environmental principles into value creation, the transformation of supply chains into closed-loop systems, and the development of service-oriented business formats such as product-as-a-service and extended producer responsibility frameworks. A central focus of the article is tactical planning as a key managerial tool for operationalizing strategic objectives of circular transformation. Tactical planning translates broad strategic goals–resource efficiency, closed loops, decarbonization, and servitization– into actionable programs, budgets, projects, and performance indicators. The article identifies five interrelated components of tactical planning: target-oriented, organizational-structural, investment-financial, innovationtechnological, and monitoring-analytical blocks, which collectively ensure coordinated implementation of circular initiatives. The study concludes that the integration of circular business models with systematic tactical planning strengthens enterprise competitiveness, economic resilience, and investment attractiveness. By enabling stepwise, controlled transformation, CBMs facilitate adaptation to regulatory, market, and environmental challenges. Thus, circular business models, operationalized through tactical planning, provide a methodologically and managerially robust foundation for sustainable enterprise development in the contemporary economic and ecological context.

The global energy transition toward sustainable systems demands biological hydrogen and methane production as clean alternatives to fossil fuels. This comprehensive review examines recent advances in bio-hydrogen and bio-methane production through the synergistic integration of genetically engineered microorganisms with functional nanomaterial catalysts. We analyze breakthrough studies from 2024–2025 demonstrating how synthetic biology approaches, particularly CRISPR-Cas9-mediated metabolic engineering, coupled with strategically deployed nanomaterials, have revolutionized biofuel production efficiency. Conjugated polymer-bacterial biohybrid systems have achieved hydrogen evolution rates exceeding 3.4 mmol g− 1h− 1 , representing over 30-fold improvements compared to conventional systems. Similarly, nanomaterial supplementation in anaerobic digestion systems has enhanced methane yields by 35–80% depending on nanoparticle composition and concentration. We examine the mechanistic foundations of electron transfer enhancement, metabolic pathway optimization through genome editing, and the catalytic roles of metallic, metal oxide, and carbon-based nanomaterials. Critical challenges including nanomaterial biotoxicity, scale-up limitations, and regulatory frameworks are addressed alongside future research directions. This review provides a comprehensive roadmap for developing commercially viable integrated biological-nanomaterial systems for sustainable energy production, directly contributing to renewable energy advancement and environmental impact mitigation.