B O Ğ A Z İ Ç İ U N I V E R S I T Y

A P R I L 1 2 - 1 3 , 2 0 1 7

A S S T. P R O F. M . F I R AT İ L K E R

B O Ğ A Z İ Ç İ U N I V E R S I T Y

C H E M I S T R Y D E PA R T M E N T

SCI 102ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

Environmental Science:

A multidisciplinary science – Chemistry, Physics, Biology/Microbiology/Genetics, Medical Sciences, Statistics/Mathematics/Computation.

Study of various natural environments, their chemical and biological compositions, and assessment of human impact (industrial production, technology, etc.) on natural balances.

The word ‘Environment’ (surrounding...) more accurately refers to the Nature, an extremely complex organisation between a huge diversity of living creatures and Earth’s matter.

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Environmental Science – ‘Two faces’

Natural Elemental Cycles / Anthropogenic Contributions

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The path atoms take from the living (biotic) to the non-living (abiotic) world and back again is called a ‘biogeochemical cycle’.Very high quantities of petroleum products disrupts the Carbon Cycle’s balance...Very high quantities of pesticides disrupts the Phosphorus Cycle’s balance...

Examples: Carbon cycle, Phorphorus cycle, Nitrogen cycle…

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Nitrogen Cycle, along with other elemental cycles is a strong indication of

how interdependent the life on Earth’s Nature is.

Very high quantities of nitrogen based fertilizers and pesticides

(agrochemicals) disrupt the balance of Nitrogen Cycle....

❖Today global production of anthropogenic substances (man-made chemicals) is more than 500 million tons/year (OECD and other references). 50 years ago it was 5 million ton/year.

(As a comparison, Thames River (in UK, 350 km long) contains about 20 million tonnes of water)

❖There are more than 100.000 synthetic chemicals used in everyday products (Solvents, detergents, dyes, hormones, antibiotics/drugs, surfactants, pesticides, plastics and plastic additives, mineral oil products, etc… ).

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What is Anthropogenic Impact: Let’s look at numbers...What is the current state of environmental chemical pollution?

❖ Global annual production of petroleum based liquid fuel oil is about 3 billiontonnes. Some of this quantity is released to nature through spectacular accidents and leaks. The rest converted into combustion products.

Along with transport vehicles (cars, ships, planes, etc.) all industrial facilities (factories) consume fossil fuels...

❖ There are more than 200 man-made chemicals found in the blood stream of all people tested around the world.

Within those there are several pesticides (including those that were banned 20-30 years ago), plastic additives (softeners, flame retardants, fillers, etc.), polyfluorinated organic substances, medicinal compounds, hormone derivatives, surfactants (soap, detergent-like chemical substances), etc.

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Comments:

Practice of Physical Sciences brings the power of partially understanding and manipulating very basics of nature such as creating a new entity.

A synthetic chemical compound may possibly be coming to existence first time in Earth’s history…

What do we call them?: Exhaust gas, an adhesive, a paint, a medicine, etc. Scientists or engineers who create them call them more specific names like carbon tetrachloride, dioxin, DDT, kevlar, etc.

According to what do we call them? Mostly according to their chemical structure or their use in research or market….

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These chemicals are released to nature through common ways such

as partial degradation and leakage from waste products (e.g. Trash,

industrial waste), everyday leaks during production, use and

transport of chemicals, accidental spills (Today in Trakya region a

fire in a paint factory resulted in 40 workers to be hospitalized, and

release of a set of chemicals (combustion products) to the

atmosphere…)

Not only producing synthetic chemicals but also extracting and

displacing large quantities of minerals and natural chemicals, play a

role in changing Nature’s own chemical balance.

Once these chemicals are out of their containment site (laboratory,

factory, industrial reserve or natural reserve) some may undergo

chemical, biochemical (enzymatic) or photolytic transformation

(degradation), producing an even greater diversity of chemical

pollutants.

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What is the impact of these chemicals to

Nature, to human body?

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❖AIR POLLUTION and CLIMATE• Ozone Depletion

• Photochemical Smog

• Acid Rain

• Greenhouse Gases

• Global Warming and Dimming

❖Liquid and Solid Pollutants- LAND and WATER POLLUTION• Polymers and Plastic Pollution

• Toxic Metals

• Organic Anthropogenic Chemicals

❖ENDOCRINE DISRUPTING CHEMICALS

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Some of the important titles to look at in order to answer the above question: What is the impact of chemical pollution?..

Some key terms to understand the extend of pollution

❖Persistent pollutant: Resistant to environmental degradation through chemical, biological, orphotolytic processes.

❖ Bioaccumulation: Bioaccumulation occurs when an organism absorbs a toxic substance at a rate greater than that at which the substance is lost.

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❖Biomagnification: Persistent pollutant concentration increases progressively as it moves up a food chain. For example many small fishes are exposed to some types of pollution that is absorbed in their body, when a big fish eats lots of those contaminated small fishes it accumulates a coolection of chemical pollution. If then people eat that big fish they absorb all harmful chemical chemical pollutants through digestion...

❖Global Distillation: Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), are transported from warmer to colder regions of the Earth (Poles and mountain tops).

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Some examples from above topics

Harmful effects of Ozone Depletion

Thinner ozone leads to more UV-B radiation reaching Earth and it is suspected to result in:

Increase in skin cancer occurrence.

Increase in cataracts.

Damage to plants.

Large scale loss of phytoplanktons (especially in polar regions)

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Examples for Health Hazards of Photochemical Smog (Industrial and city air pollution)

❖Today smog is considered to be responsible of more than 600.000 premature deaths each year.

❖In 1952, Great Smoke killed about 4000 people in 4 days and another 8000 poeple died in the following months in London.

❖1600 people were taken to hospitals in Tehran, in 2005.

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Global Patterns of Climate Change includes the effects of Artificial Clouds (Less Sun Light), which counteract the

global warming trend (!!!), still may have adverse effects on the ongoing climate change

❖Global Dimming is the gradual reduction in the amount of global direct irradiance at the Earth’s surface that was observed since 1950s. Today there is an average of 10% to 30% less solar radiation reaching Earth’s surface.

Artificial clouds are formed by aerosols which are industrial dust, mainly consisting of SO2 particulates. SO2 is mainly release by coal burning.

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Polymers and Plastic Pollutants

❖Plastics are man-made, most generally non-degredable or very slowly degrading high molecular weight, chain like macromolecules.

❖Plastics are persistent, they accumulate and reach places that they can have negative effects over time.

❖While global annual plastic consumption was 5 million tonnes in 1950, today it reaches to 300 million tonnes. An estimated 56% of plastics are used in packaging.

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❖During plastic production, small molecular chemicals are used as feedstock or additives. Most of these additives have not undergone toxicology assessments. As plastic decompose over decades it slowly releases harmful additives and decomposition products to the environment.

❖ Where plastics go?

• 80% of plastics : sent into landfills

• 8% : incinerated (potentially producing harmful chemicals)

• 7% : recyled

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❖ ≈ 10% of the World’s plastic waste goes to the oceansand seas. In Pacific Ocean, 100 – 500 million tonnes of plastics exist.

Pacific Garbage Patch : Plastics are broken down into plastic dustwhere marine wildlife mistakes for food.

(6 kilos of plastics for every kilo of plankton)

❖ Not all plastics float, some sinks to the bottom of sea.More than 600.000 tonnes of plastics have been found to have

accumulated in the bottom of North Sea.

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ENDOCRINE DISRUPTING CHEMICALS (EDCs)

❖ Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that, at certain doses, can interfere with the endocrine (or hormone system) in mammals. These disruptions can cause cancerous tumors, birth defects, and other developmental disorders such as learning disabilities, severe attention deficit disorder, cognitive and brain development problems; deformations of the body(including limbs); obesity; immune disorders; breast cancer, prostate cancer, thyroid and other cancers; sexual development problems such as feminizing of males or masculinizing effects on females, etc.

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ENDOCRINE DISRUPTING CHEMICALS (EDCs)Some medical indications that lead to understanding

of EDCs

❖ Nearly 8 % of human births in 2007 were the result of artifical insemination, that is, in vitro fertilisitaion, insemination and donor insemination.

❖ Sperm quality decrease is widespread.

❖High rate of testicular cancer which have actually quadrupled in 60 years. It is shown to be caused by events in the feotal stage.

❖ Analyses in umbilical cord and mother milk show presence of antropogenic chemicals that can be transferred from mother to baby. Fat soluable POPs go into the baby’s growing body and brain.

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An important remark from a well known expert of the field:

Ake Bergman, Professor in Environmental Chemistry, Board Member of International Panel on Chemical Pollution, in his 2010 press release on the web about Brominated Flame Retardants (known EDCs):

«...society did not comprehend the serious threat that the persistent and reactive BFRs pose to life.

Independent of the corpus that all chemicals are toxic if the dose is high enough, as first presented by Paracelsus almost 500 years ago, only accidents with severe human symptoms or casualties make societies able to act. What did we then learn from the PCBs, DDT, HCB, PBBs, PCDDs, PCDFs, the «drins», toxaphen, mirex, chlordane, heptachlor...?»

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What happens when foreign chemicals in the body act together? Cocktail Effect!!

Several published experiments show:

Four chemicals are tested individually for toxicity at concentrations that is below their LD50 : No harmful effect

Same four chemicals at the same doses, when tested in combination: Very harmful health effects

Cocktail effect is a phenomena that scientist are just beginning to study in the last years and we have very little knowledge about it....

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Severe consequences of multi-faced alteration of natural environmental conditions:

In its 2014 Living Planet Report, WWF has recently announced that Living Planet Index (LPI), which measures more than 10,000 representative populations of vertebrates including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, has declined by 52 per centsince 1970! Today in 2017 the decline is estimated to be near 60%...

Three out of nine planetary boundaries were declared to be over the limit for the continuation of life on Earth, genetic biodiversity, biogeochemical flows of nitrogen and phosphorus. Three boundaries, namely functional biodiversity, aerosol loading and novel entities (e.g. Anthropogenic chemicals) are not measurable yet...

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THANK YOU

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