Hidrocarbonetos policíclicos aromáticos em sedimentos de fundo do estuário do rio Potengi, região da grande Natal (RN): implicações ambientais

Estuaries are environments prone to the input of chemical pollutants of various kinds and origins, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Anthropogenic PAHs may have two possible sources: pyrolytic (with four or more aromatic rings and low degree of alkylation) and petrogenic (with two and three aromatic rings and high degree of alkylation). This study aimed to evaluate the levels, distribution and possible sources of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the estuary of the Potengi river, Natal, Brazil. Samples of bottom sediments were collected in the final 12 km of the estuary until its mouth to the sea, where the urbanization of the Great Natal is more concentrated. Sampling was performed on 12 cross sections, with three stations each, totaling 36 samples, identified as T1 to T36. The non alkylated and alkylated PAHs were analyzed by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC / MS). PAHs were detected in all 36 stations with total concentration on each varying 174-109407 ng g-1. These values are comparable to those of several estuarine regions worldwide with high anthropogenic influence, suggesting the record of diffuse contamination installed in the estuary. PAHs profiles were similar for most stations. In 32 of the 36 stations, low molecular weight PAHs (with 2 and 3 ring: naphthalene, phenanthrene and their alkylated homologues) prevailed, which ranged from 54% to 100% of the total PAH, indicating that leaks, spills and combustion fuels are the dominant source of PAH pollution in the estuary. The level of contamination by PAHs in most stations suggests that there is potential risk of occasional adverse biological effects, but in some stations adverse impacts on the biota may occur frequently. The diagnostic ratios could differentiate sources of PAHs in sediments of the estuary, which were divided into three groups: petrogenic, pyrolytic and mixing of sources. The urban concentration of the Great Natal and the various industrial activities associated with it can be blamed as potential sources of PAHs in bottom sediments of the estuary studied. The data presented highlight the need to control the causes of existing pollution in the estuary

Design gráfico da pluma de contaminação por compostos orgânicos voláteiss utilizando software CAD na investigação de passivo ambiental em um posto revendedor de combustíveis em Natal/RN

Among the potentially polluting economic activities that compromise the quality of groundwater are the gas stations. The city of Natal has about 120 gas stations, of which only has an environmental license for operation. Discontinuities in the offices were notified by the Public Ministry of Rio Grande do Norte to carry out the environmental adaptations, among which is the investigation of environmental liabilities. The preliminary and confirmatory stages of this investigation consisted in the evaluation of soil gas surveys with two confirmatory chemical analysis of BTEX, PAH and TPH. To get a good evaluation and interpretation of results obtained in the field, it became necessary three-dimensional representation of them. We used a CAD software to graph the equipment installed in a retail service station fuel in Natal, as well as the plumes of contamination by volatile organic compounds. The tool was concluded that contamination is not located in the current system of underground storage of fuel development, but reflects the historical past in which tanks were removed not tight gasoline and diesel

Effects of dredging operations on sediment quality: contaminant mobilization in dredged sediments from the Port of Santos, SP, Brazil

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Ecotoxicological assessment of sediments from the Santos and São Vicente estuarine system- Brazil

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Análise de qualidade da atenção à criança na estratégia saúde da família: o óbito infantil evitável como referência

Alma-Ata declaration bring the Primary Attention to the Health (PAH) as first level of health attention for individuals, family and community, which considers infant group as priority. Several initiatives that gave bases to integral attention to the children health formalized in the principles of Unique Health System. Family Health Strategy (FHS) comes to strengthen this attention, instituting new ways of work organization and professional practices that gave impact in their quality indicators. One of them is children mortality, showing decline in their values. Though, studies indicates persistence of avoidable infant deaths. In Natal RN, this reality is also perceptible leading to inquietudes, mainly at the space of services production, it means, which motivated the accomplishment of the present study intending to analyse the way that the organizational and structural processes as long as the professional practices in FHS interfered in the quality of children s health attention who died by avoidable death in the year of 2007 in municipal district of Natal-RN. It treats, therefore, to an exploratory and descriptive survey of cases study type, thar had as primary sources the oficial documents of MH, the family prontuary, pregnant card, child card and testimony obt ined from instrument of research elaborated based in investigation form of infant death by MH, applied to 10 mothers of children who had avoidable death. In analysis it was appealed silmultaneous triangulation of methods and sources, allowing a bigger aproximation from obtained informations. To elucidate the cases, the aspects studied were analyzed to the light of explicative model of Social Determinants of Health. Among individual and family aspects were highlighted the related to age, schooling, family habits and customs and mother s economic condition, besides of pregnancy age, newborn weight and associated diseases, which don t differ from literature about the theme. Reffering to the factors organizational and structural processes and professionals practice, highlihgted, the treatment given by the professionals, the territorialization and adscription of areas, the difficulty of having access to the services or sleepers and the reference and counterreference. But also, the ausence or few greet, the lack of communication, few assiduity and ponctuality by professionals in service, among others. In a general way mothers considers the attendance received in the hospital good and very good , opnions that in the Basic Attention weren t so favorable, in spite of many of predictible actions in this level have been performed in the studied cases. It is observed, therefore, that the social determinants of health has a strong influence in ocurrence of infant deaths, what implicates in a large actuation by Infant Mortality Committee from municipal district. This way, it becomes fundamental the reflection and evaluation about the effectiveness and execution by the processes of vigilance to health in FHUs; the rethink about the social determinants of health in a wide and articulate way to the services quality, to permanent education, to management in service, to the given attention and to the way how it is installed the popular participation and social control. To the professionals it is presented the great challenge to review their daily practice, their values, behaviors and commitment, which ones must be guided by logical of sharing, work in team, humanescence and alterity, not only by the accomplishment of a professional duty

Análise de critérios de decisão em estratégia de arranjos produtivos locais: um estudo aplicando o processo de hierarquia analítica (AHP) no setor de cerâmica

This master thesis has the objective of investigating the strategic decision criteria of participants of Local Production Arrangements (LPA) in Brazil. The LPA s are an initiative of support agents to enterprises with the purpose of organizing joint actions for the development of groups (clusters) of enterprises. The choice of the actions is a decision of the participating enterprises and this paper aims at applying a Multi-criteria Analysis Method to analyze the criteria of entrepreneurs that are participating of a LPA. The used method is the Process of Analytical Hierarchy (PAH) and an application is presented along with questionnaires to participants of a ceramic LPA in the northeast of Brazil. The main results show that, in first place, from the implicit strategy of each enterprise there is only one objective for the LPA group and so, at the beginning, an action decided by all of them tends to favor some more than others. In second place, it was observed that there are general inconsistencies between the strategic objectives and the importance as to criteria, even though there have been cases of coherency. As the main conclusion it is pointed that the use of Methods of MCDA is useful to improve the decision making process and to bring more transparency to the logic of the found results

Avaliação de diferentes processos oxidativos avançados no tratamento de resíduos de petróleo

The petroleum industry deals with problems which are difficult to solve because of their relation to environmental issues. This is because amounts of residue are generated which vary in type and danger level. The soil contamination by non aqueous liquid phase mixtures, specifically hydrocarbon petroleum has been a reason for great concern, mainly the aromatic and polycyclic aromatic, which present risk to human health due to its carcinogenic and mutagenic character. The Advanced Oxidative Processes (AOP) are efficient technologies for destruction of organic compounds of difficult degradation and, often, they are present in low concentrations. They can be considered clean technologies, because there is no formation of solid by-products or the transfer of pollutor phases. This work focuses on the study of the degradation of petroleum industrial waste, by Advanced Oxidation Processes. Treatments tackling petroleum residues, contaminated soil, and water occurring in the production of petroleum reached the following Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) degradation levels: solid residues 100% in 96 treatment hours; water residue - 100% in 6 treatment hours; soil contamination (COT degradation) - 50.3% in 12 treatment hours. AOP were effective in dealing with petroleum residues thus revealing themselves to be a promising treatment alternative

Layer by layer TiO2 thin films and photodegradation of Congo red

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Taking Advantage of Electrostatic Interactions To Grow Langmuir-Blodgett Films Containing Multilayers of the Phospholipid Dipalmitoylphosphatidylglycerol

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Incorporation of Ag nanoparticles into membrane mimetic systems composed by phospholipid layer-by-layer (LbL) films to achieve surface-enhanced Raman scattering as a tool in drug interaction studies

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Phytase immobilization on modified electrodes for amperometric biosensing

Phytase (myo-inositol hexaphosphate phosphohydrolase) and phytic acid (myo-inositol hexaphosphate) play an important environmental role, in addition to being a health issue in food industry. Phytic acid is antinutritional due to its ability to chelate metal ions and may also react with proteins decreasing their bioavailability. In this work, we produced biosensors with phytase immobilized in Layer-by-Layer (LbL) films, which could detect phytic acid with a detection limit of 0.19 mmol L-1, which is sufficient to detect phytic acid in seeds of grains and vegetables. The biosensosrs consisted of LbL films containing up to eight bilayers of phytase alternated with poly(allylamine) hydrochloride (PAH) deposited onto an indium-tin oxide (ITO) substrate modified with Prussian Blue. Amperometric detection was conducted in an acetate buffer solution (at pH 5.5) at room temperature, with the biosensor response attributed to the formation of phosphate ions. In subsidiary experiments with the currents measured at 0.0 V (vs. SCE), we demonstrated the absence of effects from some interferents, pointing to a good selectivity of the biosensor. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Iron phthalocyanine in non-aqueous medium forming layer-by-layer films: growth mechanism, molecular architecture and applications

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Study of the interaction between cardiolipin bilayers and methylene blue in polymer-based Layer-by-Layer and Langmuir films applied as membrane mimetic systems

An increase of the reports involving mimetic systems has been observed. Briefly, these systems use biological phospholipids to exploit specific interactions between membrane-models and drugs. Here, the Layer-by-Layer (LbL) and Langmuir techniques were used to investigate the interaction between cardiolipin (CLP-negative phospholipid) and a cationic-like drug methylene blue (MB). Supported by a cationic polyelectrolyte (PAH), LbL films containing PAH/(CLP + MB) and PAH/(CLP + MB + AgNP) were grown up to 14 bilayers. The optical microscopy analysis revealed a decrease of the CLP vesicle sizes in the presence of MB as a possible consequence of the MB action onto the mechanical properties of the CLP membrane. From FTIR spectra, changes mainly related to peak position and band intensity and shape were observed in the spectra from PAH/CLP when in the presence of MB. The latter supports that the interactions between the phosphate and amine charged groups from CLP and PAH, respectively, established during the LbL film fabrication, besides the CLP hydrocarbon environment, are influenced by the presence of MB. Using the micro-Raman technique, a chemical mapping was build based on MB spectrum by resonance Raman scattering (RRS) and surface-enhanced resonance Raman scattering (SERRS). The later phenomenon was activated by Ag nanoparticles (AgNPs) trapped within the LbL film allowing collecting spectra for a single bilayer of PAH/(CLP + MB + AgNP). A rough estimation showed a SERRS amplification of 10(3) in comparison to RRS spectra. As a complementary approach, Langmuir films of CLP in the presence of co-spread MB were investigated through surface pressure vs mean molecular area (pi-A) isotherms. The results showed that for concentrations of MB below 100 mol%, the drug is expelled to water subphase for high values of surface pressure (condensed phase). For concentration at 100% and higher, the MB keeps bound to CLP floating monolayer. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Spray layer-by-layer films based on phospholipid vesicles aiming sensing application via e-tongue system

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Nanostructured hybrid films containing nanophosphor: Fabrication and electronic spectral properties

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)