• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.93-101
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• 2024

Background: As pollutants caused by non-point sources flow into rivers, river water quality monitoring for fecal pollution is becoming increasingly important. Objectives: This study was conducted to investigate the distribution of microbial communities in the Yeongsangang River water system and sewage treatment plants in Gwangju and to evaluate their antibiotic resistance. Methods: In the experiment, samples were distributed to five selective media at each point and then cultured for 18 to 24 hours. When bacteria were observed, they were sub-cultured by size and shape and identified using MALDI-TOF MS equipment. When identification was completed, 17 types of antibiotic susceptibility tests were performed using VITEK II equipment, focusing on gram-negative dominant species among the identified strains. Results: During the study period, a total of 266 strains were isolated from 39 samples. Gram-positive bacteria were 37 strains in four genera, or 13.9% of the total, and Gram-negative bacteria were 229 strains in 23 genera, or 86.1% of the total. Antibiotic susceptibility testing of 23 strains, the major dominant species, showed that one strain (4.3%) was resistant to only one antibiotic, and two strains (8.7%) were 100% susceptible to the 17 antibiotics tested. The other 20 strains (87.0%) were multidrug resistant bacteria resistant to two or more antibiotics. There were various types of multidrug resistance. Among them, penicillin and cephalosporin series showed the highest resistance. Conclusions: Based on the results of this study, it was found that the bacterial community structure changed according to regional and environmental factors, and it was judged that continuous research such as genetic analysis of antibiotic-resistant bacteria present in natural rivers is necessary.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.260-265
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• 2024

During the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, wastewater-based epidemiology was used for surveying infectious diseases. In this study, wastewater surveillance was employed to monitor COVID-19 outbreaks. Wastewater influent samples were collected from four sewage treatment plants in Ulsan (Gulhwa, Yongyeon, Nongso, and Bangeojin) between August 2022 and August 2023. The samples were concentrated using the polyethylene glycol-sodium chloride pretreatment method. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA was extracted and detected using real-time polymerase chain reaction. Next generation sequences was used to perform correlation analysis between SARS-CoV-2 concentrations and COVID-19 cases and for COVID-19 variant analysis. A strong correlation was observed between SARS-CoV-2 concentrations and COVID-19 cases (correlation coefficient, r = 0.914). The COVID-19 variant analysis results were similar to the clinical variant genomes of three epidemics during the study period. In conclusion, monitoring COVID-19 via analyzing wastewater facilitates early recognition and prediction of epidemics.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.708-718
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• 2020

Offensive odor is recognized as a social environmental problem due to its olfactory effects. Ammonia(NH₃), hydrogen sulfide(H₂S) and benzene(C₆H₆) are produced from various petrochemical plants, public sewage treatment plants, public livestock wastes, and food waste disposal facilities in large quantities. Therefore efficient decomposition of offensive odor is needed. In this study, the removal efficiency of atmospheric-pressure plasma operating at an ambient condition was investigated by evaluating the concentrations at upflow and downflow between the plasma reactor. The decomposition of offensive odor using plasma is based on the mechanism of photochemical oxidation of offensive odor using free radical and ozone(O₃) generated when discharging plasma, which enables the decomposition of offensive odor at ordinary temperature and has the advantage of no secondary pollutants. As a result, all three odor substances were completely decontaminated within 1 minute as soon as discharging the plasma up to 500 W. This result confirms that high concentration odors or mixed odor materials can be reduced using atmospheric-pressure plasma.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.99-110
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• 2023

Non-point source (NP) pollutants in an agricultural landuse are discharged from a large area compared to those in other land uses, and thus effective source control measures are needed. To develop appropriate control measures, it is necessary to quantify discharge load of each source and evaluate the degree of water quality improvement by implementing different options of the control measures. This study used Hydrological Simulation Program-FORTRAN (HSPF) to quantify pollutant discharge loads from different sources and effects of different control measures on water quality improvements, thereby supporting decision making in developing appropirate pollutant control strategies. The study area is the Gyeseong river watershed in Changnyeong county, Gyeongsangnam-do, with agricultural areas occupying the largest proportion (26.13%) of the total area except for the forest area. The main pollutant sources include chemical and liquid fertilizers for agricultural activities, and manure produced from small scale livestock facilities and applied to agriculture lands or stacked near the facilities. Source loads of chemical fertilizers, liquid fertilizers and livestock manure of small scale livestock facilities, and point sources such as municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), community WWTPs, private sewage treament plants were considered in the HSPF model setup. Especially, NITR and PHOS modules were used to simulate detailed fate and transport processes including vegitation uptake, nutrient deposition, adsorption/desorption, and loss by deep percolation. The HSPF model was calibrated and validated based on the observed data from 2015 to 2020 at the outlet of the watershed. The calibrated model showed reasonably good performance in simulating the flow and water quality. Five Pollutants control scenarios were established from three sectors: agriculture pollution management (drainge outlet control, and replacement of controlled release fertilizers), livestock pollution management (liquid fertilizer reduction, and 'manure management of small scale livestock facilities) and private STP management. Each pollutant control measure was further divided into short-term, mid-term, and long-term scenarios based on the potential achievement period. The simulation results showed that the most effective control measure is the replacement of controlled release fertilizers followed by the drainge outlet control and the manure management of small scale livestock facilities. Furthermore, the simulation showed that application of all the control measures in the entire watershed can decrease the annual TN and TP loads at the outlet by 40.6% and 41.1%, respectively, and the annual average concentrations of TN and TP at the outlet by 35.1% and 29.2%, respectively. This study supports decision makers in priotizing different pollutant control measures based on their predicted performance on the water quality improvements in an agriculturally dominated watershed.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.472-487
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• 2020

With the emergence of abnormal climate due to the rapid industrialization, the importance of water quality management and management costs are increasing every year. In Korea, for the management of total phosphorus and total nitrogen, the major materials causing the water quality pollution, coagulants are injected in sewage treatment plants to process organic compounds. However, if the coagulant is injected in an excessive amount to PAC (Poly Aluminium Chloride), a secondary pollution problem might occur. As such, a study on the applicability of natural material-based coagulant is being conducted in Korea. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the applicability of a mixed coagulant developed by analyzing water quality pollutants T-P, T-N as well as their turbidity, in order to derive the optimum mixing ratio between PAC and torrefied wood flour for the primary settling pond effluent. Under the condition where the content of PAC (10%) and torrefied wood flour is 1%, T-P showed the maximum removal efficiency of 92%, and T-N showed approximately 22%. This indicates that removal of T-N which includes numerous positively charged organic compounds that are equivalent to mixed coagulant is not well accomplished. Turbidity showed the removal efficiency of approximately 91%. As such, 1% of torrefied wood flour was determined to be the optimum addition. As a result of analyzing the removal efficiency for organic compounds by reducing PAC concentration to 7%, T-P showed a high maximum removal efficiency of 91%, T-N showed 32%, and turbidity showed the maximum of 90%. In addition, a coagulation process is performed by using the mixed coagulant based on 1% content of torrefied wood flour produced in this study by performing a coagulation performance comparative experiment with PAC (10%). As a result, PAC concentration was reduced to 30-50%, a similar performance with other coagulants in market was secured, PAC injection amount was reduced that an economic effect can be achieved, and it is considered to perform a stable water treatment that reduces the secondary pollution problem.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.154-160
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• 2017

BACKGROUND:This study was carried out to establish an efficient sample preparation for the simultaneous determination of bisphenols (BPs) in river water samples using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Sample preparation was examined with conventional extraction methods, such as solid-phase extraction (SPE) and liquid-liquid extraction (LLE), and their efficiency was compared with validation results, including linearity of calibration curve, method detection limit (MDL), limit of quantification (LOQ), accuracy, and precision. METHODS AND RESULTS:The BPs (bisphenol A, BPA; bisphenol B, BPB; bisphenol C, BPC; bisphenol E, BPE; bisphenol F, BPF; bisphenol S, BPS) were analyzed using GC-MS. The range of MDLs by SPE and LLE methods was $0.0005{\sim}0.0234{\mu}g/L$ and $0.0037{\sim}0.2034{\mu}g/L$, and that of LOQs was $0.0015{\sim}0.0744{\mu}g/L$ and $0.0117{\sim}0.6477{\mu}g/L$, respectively. The calibration curve obtained from standard solution of $0.004{\sim}4.0{\mu}g/L$ (SPE) and $0.016{\sim}16{\mu}g/L$ (LLE) showed good linearity with $r^2$ value of 0.9969 over. Accuracy was 93.2~108% and 97.4~120%, and precision was 1.7~4.6% and 0.7~6.5%, respectively. The values of MDL and LOQ resulted from the SPE method were higher than those from the LLE method, particularly those values of BPA were highest among the BPs. Based on the results, the SPE method was applied to determine the BPs in river water samples. Water samples were collected from mainstream, tributary and sewage wastewater treatment plants (SWTPs) in the Yeongsan river basin. The concentration of BPB, BPC, BPE, BPF and BPS were not detected in all sites, whereas BPA was ranged $0.0095{\sim}0.2583{\mu}g/L$, which was $0.0166{\sim}0.0810{\mu}g/L$ for mainstreams, $0.0095{\sim}0.2583{\mu}g/L$ for tributaries, $0.0352{\sim}0.1217{\mu}g/L$ for SWTPs. CONCLUSION: From these results, the SPE method was very effective for the simultaneous determination of BPs in river water samples using GC-MS. We provided that it is a convenient, reliable and sensitive method enough to monitor and understand the fate of the BPs in aquatic ecosystems.