Publications by authors named "Aino Ahvo"

Article Synopsis
  • The industrialization of agriculture has increased reliance on non-locally sourced inputs, making food production vulnerable to supply shocks.
  • Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are under pressure to be reduced, but their impact on crop yields during input shocks has not been thoroughly analyzed.
  • Using a machine learning model, the study reveals that a 50% shock in agricultural inputs could reduce global maize production by 26% and wheat by 21%, particularly affecting high-yield regions, highlighting the need for resilience in the global food system.
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Oil spills pose significant environmental risks, particularly in cold seas. In the Baltic Sea, the low salinity (from 0 to 2 up to 18) affects the behaviour of the spilled oil as well as the efficiency and ecological impacts of oil spill response methods such as mechanical collection and the use of dispersants. In the present study, mussels (Mytilus trossulus) were exposed under winter conditions (5 °C) to the water-accommodated fraction (WAF) of Naphthenic North Atlantic crude oil prepared by mechanical dispersion or to the chemically enhanced fraction (CEWAF) obtained using the dispersant Finasol OSR 51 at salinities of 5.

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Recent studies have found primary degradation products of phenylarsenic chemical warfare agents (CWAs) accumulating in fish tissues, while the potential effects of these dumped phenylarsenic CWAs, such as Clark I and II, in the Baltic Sea biota are poorly understood. In this study, the metabolism and cytotoxicity of diphenylarsinic acid (DPA), a primary degradation product of phenylarsenic CWA, was studied by incubating rainbow trout cell line RTL-W1 cells in media with 100 mg/L DPA. Previously undescribed metabolites were identified by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (UPHLCHRMS).

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Baltic mussels (Mytilus spp.) were exposed to the explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT) for 96 h (0.31-10.

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Recently, sea-dumped chemical weapons (CWs) containing toxic chemical warfare agents (CWAs) have raised international attention. It is well known that CWAs are leaking from corroded munitions causing a risk to the surrounding marine environment, while the impact on marine biota is still unknown. In this study, cod (Gadus morhua) was used as a model species to study the possible bioaccumulation of phenylarsenic CWAs and their negative effects at multiple levels of biological organization on fish living in the vicinity of a major CWs dumpsite in the Bornholm Basin in the Baltic Sea.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aims to establish reliable mussel monitoring programs by understanding biomarker variability in two distinct regions of the Baltic Sea, taking into account factors like salinity and temperature.
  • Mussels were collected seasonally from Kiel (Germany) and Tvärminne (Finland) to analyze various biochemical, cellular, and tissue-level biomarkers in relation to environmental changes.
  • The findings indicated that biochemical markers showed seasonal changes influenced by environmental conditions, while tissue-level biomarkers at Tvärminne were affected mainly by reproductive energy demands, highlighting the importance of local ecological conditions for future pollution assessments.
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Survival rate, frequency of malformed embryos, and antioxidant defense system responses in the benthic amphipod Gmelinoides fasciatus from the Baltic Sea were measured to examine the effects of toxic sediments, and to assess the usefulness of these endpoints in sediment toxicity biotesting. A highly contaminated sediment sample from the Baltic Sea was diluted with sediment from a clean site to come up with a series of 5 test sediments with dilutions from 1:32 to 1:1024, and the reference sediment. The 1:32 dilution of the test sediment was analyzed for organotins (2862 µg tin [Sn] kg dry wt ), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (6064 µg kg dry wt ), and selected trace metals (e.

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