Themed collection Best Papers 2018 – Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts

The Editors-in-Chief of the Environmental Science journals introduce the Best Papers of 2018.

We outline a research strategy that will deliver more effective theory and models for environmental risk assessment of chemicals.

We compare and make recommendations for the use of different climate metrics and time horizons with respect to methane emissions, applying to a case study of LNG as a shipping fuel.

Inactivation occurs via direct and indirect processes in sunlit waters.

Suspended particle–water and sediment–water interfaces, where oxic and suboxic microenvironments coexist, are the hotspots of nitrogen transformation in river systems.

Criegee intermediates (CIs), carbonyl oxides formed in ozonolysis of alkenes, play key roles in the troposphere.

Twenty-five years of progress in modeling the environmental fate and exposure of organic contaminants is reviewed, and a strategy for more rapidly adopting scientific progress into regulatory models is proposed.

Algorithm to fit whispering gallery modes retrieves biphasic properties.

Cation micelle-forming surfactants can contribute to the formation of carcinogenic and mutagenic N-nitrosamines by catalysing the nitrosation of secondary amines.

Challenges for detecting sub-decadal policy-related changes in mercury wet deposition in the Great Lakes are identified through modelling.

Estrogen photolysis is strongly influenced by the extent of halogenation and pH.

Inter-individual, inter-city, and temporal trends (1972–2016) in PFAS concentrations were examined in human milk from Sweden.

Perfluorooctanoic acid present in the atmosphere stems from both telomer and electrochemical fluorination manufacturing.

This is an assessment of the reactivity of 4-carboxybenzophenone under steady-state irradiation.

The mineral properties that govern the detection of surface-bound As(V) by bacterial bioreporters are identified.

This study compares winter-time herbicide yields, concentration patterns, and transport pathways in urban versus agricultural streams five to six years after a ban on cosmetic pesticide use.

Modeled global concentrations of PCB-153 in human milk agree with measurements within a factor 4 for 49 of 78 observations.

A geographic enigma is that atmospheric deposition of mercury is low and declining in the Upper Peninsula although total mercury (THg) and (MeHg) levels are high in waters and fish.

Reduction processes and inputs of hyporheic pore water influence Hg cycling and flux in Hg-contaminated headwater stream.

Experimental and computational evidence show that dimethylmercury is produced from decomposition of bis(methylmercury(II)) sulfide.

Temporal and spatial trends of total air concentrations (gas + particle) of halogenated flame retardants at the Canadian Great Lakes Basin were assessed (2005–2014).

Effect recovery for bioassays was evaluated and was similar to recovery by chemical analysis for the studied SPE methods, providing support of bioassay use for water quality monitoring.

Hydraulic fracturing coupled with horizontal drilling (HDHF) involves the deep-well injection of a fracturing fluid composed of diverse and numerous chemical additives designed to facilitate the release and collection of natural gas from shale plays.

We report on the geochemical legacy of the liming of acidified lakes in Norway. We document the occurrence of Fe–Mn nodules and the diagenetic redistribution of trace-elements at the sediment–water interface of limed boreal lakes.

The effect of policy on fish mercury levels varies spatially, even within the Great Lakes Basin.

Applying passive sampling to reactive species may be a way to obtain information about in situ reactivity of compounds in sediments that occur on timescales of days to months.

Physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models are considered useful tools to describe the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion of xenobiotics.

Here we present and evaluate a method to determine PUF-PAS sampling rates (R_S), and the effective sampling volume (V_eff), for gas-phase chemical compounds deployed anywhere in the world.