Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
SEGH celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2021; a special issue of Environmental Geochemistry & Health marked this event. We now look forward to the next 50 years. In 2022 we welcomed our new president. As we emerge from a global health crisis, and with conflict, economic insecurity and climate change clouding our horizons, the activities of SEGH were never more relevant. Our Fellows provide a core to SEGH. This status is awarded by the SEGH board to individuals who have made significant personal contributions to the promotion of the Society. Many have served as board members, Chair, hosted SEGH conferences and many other areas of contribution. They are also recognised for their contribution to the scientific knowledge base across the SEGH landscape and advancing understanding of the interaction between the environment and human health.
In 2022 we are launching a series of SEGH Live (online) presentations by SEGH Fellows which will share experience and knowledge and strive to transfer the ethos of the collaborative nature of our group.
The sessions will be invaluable to Early Career Researchers but also enable each of us to step into areas of expertise of other members of the society, which has a very broad reach.
These 35 minute presentations, with a 15 minute Q&A, will be held approximately monthly. The time of day is intended to enable as many people across the global time zones to attend as possible. However, for those unable to attend a live session, the recordings will be available to access after the event via the website.
Please refer to the website on a regular basis to see what has been added to the schedule.
Environmental Research and Citizen Science to Monitor the Hellenic Volcanic Arc Marine Geoenvironment- The Nexus MonARC project
Ariadne Argyraki
Department of Geology and Geoenvironment National & Kapodistrian University of Athens Panepistimiopolis Zographou 15784 Athens, Greece
In recent years, there has been a notable trend towards integrating citizen science into environmental research projects. This innovative approach harnesses the collective power of enthusiastic individuals to contribute meaningfully to scientific research. Involvement of citizen scientists not only expands the pool of available data but also fosters a sense of shared responsibility and empowerment among participants. The talk will focus on the paradigm of nexus-monARC, a primarily capacity building project aiming to a holistic approach towards environmental monitoring for the marine environment of the Hellenic Volcanic Arc in the Mediterranean Sea. The study area represents an environment that is influenced by multiple stressors of anthropogenic and natural origin, such as maritime transport, fisheries, industrial tourism, volcanic activity, hydrothermal venting, and others. Practices for establishing networks of citizen scientists, for developing frugal tools such as easy-to use scientific instruments and sensors to record data and training activities organised by the project team will be presented and discussed.
Use this link to access the seminar
Meeting ID: 828 3091 4836
Passcode: 413685
Alecos Demetriades
With an ever-growing world population and drastic global climatic changes, groundwater will become a valuable resource for our well-being. Clean and safe water is important for our health. According to Ritchie et al. (2019) “One in four people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water. This is a major health risk. Unsafe water is responsible for more than a million deaths each year.”
The EuroGeoSurveys Geochemistry Expert Group (EGS-GEG) carried out a unique and novel project for the assessment of the chemical quality of European groundwater, known by the acronym ‘EGG’, European Groundwater Geochemistry. It is interesting to report how this project was put together. The European Environmental Agency contacted in 2007 the EGS-GEG whether there was a harmonised geochemical data set for groundwater, similar to the stream water geochemical data set produced during the multi-sample media project of the Geochemical Atlas of Europe (Salminen et al., 2005; De Vos, Tarvainen et al., 2006). Of course, the reply was negative. However, there were discussions among the members of EGS-GEG. Collecting representative evenly-spaced groundwater samples at the European scale is not an easy task, and may be prohibitively expensive if done at a high sampling density.
In the attempt to find a cost-effective solution, a colleague, Manfred Birke from the German Geological Survey, came up with the idea that ‘bottled mineral water’ can be used as a proxy for the geochemistry of groundwater. Though the idea met some resistance, it was in the end decided that it was worth a try, because of the low sampling cost by the EGS-GEG network purchasing ‘bottled mineral water’ from local markets, and sending them to Germany for analysis.
The atlas ‘Geochemistry of European Bottled Water’ (Reimann and Birke, 2010) includes the results from the detailed analysis of 1785 ‘bottled mineral water’ samples collected from 38 European and neighbouring countries, representing 1247 different sources at 884 locations. The ‘bottled mineral water’ samples were analysed in a single laboratory for 71 determinands by ICP-MS, ICP-OES and IC, including pH, EC, alkalinity, thus producing the first fully harmonised and quality-controlled geochemical data set for European groundwater. The ‘bottled mineral water’ data set, therefore, provides a first impression of variability and the regional distribution of groundwater chemistry at the continental scale.
Many processes affect the hydrochemical fingerprint of groundwater – important factors include: rainfall chemistry, climate, vegetation and soil zone processes, mineral-water interactions, groundwater residence time and the mineralogy and chemistry of the aquifer (and contamination). The influence of geology in determining element concentrations in ‘bottled mineral water’ can be observed for a significant number of elements. Examples include: high values of chromium (Cr) clearly related to the occurrence of ophiolites; beryllium (Be), caesium (Cs), germanium (Ge), potassium (K), lithium (Li) and rubidium (Rb) showing unusually high values in areas underlain by Hercynian granites, while high values of aluminium (Al), arsenic (As), fluorine (F), potassium (K), rubidium (Rb) and silicon (Si) in ‘bottled mineral water’ are related to the occurrence of alkaline volcanic rocks.
A further key observation is that knowledge of geology alone is inadequate to predict the hydrochemistry of ‘bottled mineral water’: natural variation is enormous, usually three to four and for some elements up to seven orders of magnitude. Such variation may reflect, among other factors, groundwater residence time and mixing with deep brackish formation waters. It has also been found that bottled materials can influence ‘bottled mineral water’ chemistry. For antimony (Sb), leaching from the bottle material is so serious that the results for ‘bottled mineral water’ cannot be used as an indication of natural concentrations in groundwater.
Some elements, as observed in the ‘bottled mineral water’, are not representative of typical, shallow, fresh groundwater; rather, they tend to exhibit unusually high concentrations, typical for ‘bottled mineral water’: examples are boron (B), beryllium (Be), bromine (Br), caesium (Cs), fluorine (F), germanium (Ge), lithium (Li), rubidium (Rb), tellurium (Te), and zirconium (Zr).
Very few analysed samples (in general less than 1%) returned values exceeding maximum admissible concentrations (MACs) for ‘bottled mineral water’, as defined by the European Commission.
In conclusion, this unusual project produced interpretable and useful results at the continental scale.
References & Bibliography
Birke, M., Demetriades, A. & De Vivo, B. (Guest Editors), 2010. Mineral Waters of Europe. Special Issue, Journal of Geochemical Exploration, 107(3), 217−422, https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-geochemical-exploration/vol/107/issue/3.
Demetriades, A., Cullen, K., Reimann, C., Birke, M. & The EGG Project Team, 2015. EGG: European Groundwater Geochemistry. European Geologist, No. 40, 19−27, https://eurogeologists.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Towards-2020-groundwater-research-in-Europe.pdf; https://egsnews.eurogeosurveys.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Demetriades_et_al_2015_EGG_European_Groundwater_Geochemistry_EGJ40_p20-28.pdf.
De Vos, W., Tarvainen, T., Salminen, R., Reeder, S., De Vivo, B., Demetriades, A., Pirc, S., Batista, M.J., Marsina, K., Ottesen, R.T., O’Connor, P.J., Bidovec, M., Lima, A., Siewers, U., Smith, B., Taylor, H., Shaw, R., Salpeteur, I., Gregorauskiene, V., Halamic, J., Slaninka, I., Lax, K., Gravesen, P., Birke, M., Breward, N., Ander, E.L., Jordan, G., Duris, M., Klein, P., Locutura, J., Bel-lan, A., Pasieczna, A., Lis, J., Mazreku, A., Gilucis, A., Heitzmann, P., Klaver, G. & Petersell, V., 2006. Geochemical Atlas of Europe. Part 2 - Interpretation of Geochemical Maps, Additional Tables, Figures, Maps, and Related Publications. Geological Survey of Finland, Espoo, 692 pp., http://weppi.gtk.fi/publ/foregsatlas/.
Reimann, C. & Birke, M. (Editors), 2010. Geochemistry of European bottled water. Borntraeger Science Publishers, Stuttgart, 268 pp. +CD rom, http://www.schweizerbart.de/publications/detail/isbn/9783443010676/Geochemistry_of_European_Bottled_Water.
Ritchie, H., Spooner, F. & Roser, M., 2019. Clean Water. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/clean-water.
Salminen, R. (Chief-editor), Batista, M.J., Bidovec, M., Demetriades, A., De Vivo, B., De Vos, W., Duris, M., Gilucis, A., Gregorauskiene, V., Halamic, J., Heitzmann, P., Lima, A., Jordan, G., Klaver, G., Klein, P., Lis, J., Locutura, J., Marsina, K., Mazreku, A., O’Connor, P.J., Olsson, S., Ottesen, R.T., Petersell, V., Plant, J.A., Reeder, S., Salpeteur, I., Sandström, H., Siewers, U., Steenfeldt, A. & Tarvainen, T., 2005. FOREGS Geochemical atlas of Europe, Part 1: Background information, methodology and maps. Geological Survey of Finland, Espoo, 525 pp., http://weppi.gtk.fi/publ/foregsatlas/.
Use this link to access the seminar
Meeting ID: 821 8606 4177
Passcode: 312282
Muhammad Zaffar Hashmi
Department of Chemistry, COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are persistent organic pollutants and emitted during e-waste activities. Once enter into the environment, PCBs could pose toxic effects to environmental compartments and public health. Bioremediation is a reassuring technology for elimination of PCBs from the environment. The talk will focus on anaerobic and aerobic biodegradation of PCBs in e-waste contaminated soils from Pakistan; Identification of active PCB-degrading bacteria in soil and to determine the role of soil physico-chemical properties on PCBs degradation.
Unnatural Cycles: Anthropogenic Disruption to Health and Planetary Functions
Gillian Gibson
Gibson Consulting and Training, UK
Isotope-Based Early-Warning Model: an example of high-resolution site characterization (HRSC)
Maurizio Barbieri & Stefania Franchini
Professor at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
The FOREGS multi-media geochemical atlas
Alecos Demetriades
Chair of the Sampling Committee of the IUGS Commission on Global Geochemical Baselines
Rare Earth Elements and Radiogenic Isotopes from Mineral Dust in East Antarctica: Sensitive Tracers of the Atmospheric Circulation and Climate Variability Through Time
Nadine Mattielli
Professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
GEMAS: Geochemistry of Agricultural and Grazing land soil for healthy food production in Europe
Alecos Demetriades
Chair of the Sampling Committee of the IUGS Commission on Global Geochemical Baselines
Environmental Research and Citizen Science to Monitor the Hellenic Volcanic Arc Marine Geoenvironment- The nexusmonARC project
Ariadne Argyraki
Department of Geology and Geoenvironment National & Kapodistrian University of Athens Panepistimiopolis Zographou, Greece
European groundwater chemistry
Alecos Demetriades
Chair of the Sampling Committee of the IUGS Commission on Global Geochemical Baselines
Sequential Anaerobic/Aerobic Biodegradation of Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Pakistani Soils
Muhammad Zaffar Hashmi
Department of Chemistry, COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan
Status of heavy metals contamination in environmental compartments from Pakistan
Muhammad Zaffar Hashmi
Department of Chemistry, COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan
Corresponding: zaffar.hashmi@comsats.edu.pk
Example of environmental geochemistry research at the Anthropocene - Air PM pollution and human health
Xiang-dong Li
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong; Email: cexdli@polyu.edu.hk; http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4044-2888
International Union of Geological Sciences Manual of Standard Methods for Establishing the Global Geochemical Reference Network
Alecos Demetriades
Chair of the Sampling Committee of the IUGS Commission on Global Geochemical Baselines
Iodine environment-human deficiency
Alex Stewart
Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Geography, College of Life & Environmental Science, University of Exeter, UK
The Anthropocene – are we in a new geological epoch?
Andrew Cundy
School of Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton, National Oceanography Centre (Southampton), Southampton, U.K.
Corresponding: A.Cundy@soton.ac.uk
Tall tales from a “lopsided” Geochemist” -navigating interdisciplinary research in environmental geochemistry and health
Andrew Hursthouse
Professor of Environmental Geochemistry
School of Computing, Engineering & Physical Sciences
University of the West of Scotland
Monitoring indoor air quality, health and wellbeing: application of low- cost sensors and validated questionnaires
Jane Entwistle
Deputy Faculty Pro Vice-Chancellor, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Air pollution and health
Sanja Potgieter-Vermaak
Senior Lecturer in Analytical Chemistry at Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, UK.
GEMAS: Geochemistry of Agricultural and Grazing land soil for healthy food production in Europe
Past and Modern Mineral Dust in East Antarctica: Rare Earth Elements and Radiogenic Isotopes from Mineral Dust in East Antarctica: Sensitive Tracers of the Atmospheric Circulation and Climate Variability Through Time
Isotope-Based Early-Warning Model: an example of high-resolution site characterization (HRSC)
Unnatural Cycles: Anthropogenic Disruption to Health and Planetary Functions
Air pollution and health: Halton Borough Council case study
Monitoring indoor air quality, health and wellbeing: application of low-cost sensors and validated questionnaires
Tall tales from a “lopsided” Geochemist: navigating interdisciplinary research in environmental geochemistry and health.
IUGS Manual of Standard Methods for Establishing the Global Geochemical Reference Network
Example of environmental geochemistry research at the Anthropocene - Air PM pollution and human health
Status of heavy metals contamination in environmental compartments from Pakistan
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.