Toxicity prediction: An application of alternative testing and computational toxicology in contaminated groundwater sites in Taiwan.

Groundwater contamination remains a global threat due to its toxic effects to humans and the environment. The remediation of contaminated groundwater sites can be costly, thus, identifying the priority areas of concern is important to reduce money spent on resources. In this study, we aimed to identify and rank the priority groundwater sites in a contaminated petrochemical district by combining alternative, non-animal approaches - chemical analysis, cell-based high throughput screening (HTS), and Toxicological Priority Index (ToxPi) computational toxicology tool.

Food safety and bioavailability evaluations of four vegetables grown in the highly arsenic-contaminated soils on the Guandu Plain of northern Taiwan.

Arsenic contamination in a large area of agricultural fields on the Guandu Plain of northern Taiwan was confirmed in a survey conducted in 2006, but research concerning the relationship between bioavailable As concentrations in contaminated soils and crop production in Taiwan is not available. Pot experiments were conducted to examine the growth and accumulation of As in four vegetable crops grown in As-contaminated soils and to assess As intake through consumption. The phytotoxic effects of As in soils were not shown in the pot experiments in which vegetable crops were grown in soils contaminated with different As levels in situ collected from Guandu Plain (120-460 mg/kg) or artificially spiked As-contaminated soils (50-170 mg/kg).

Baseline concentrations of ten metals in the freshwater sediments of a watershed in Taiwan.

Freshwater sediments and water samples were quarterly collected at different sampling stations from August 1996 to April 1998 in the Fei-Tsui reservoir watershed (FTRW) of northern Taiwan. The sediment and soil samples were digested using mixture of inorganic acids to analyze the total concentration of ten metals. The baseline concentrations of ten metals in the sediments of FTRW were calculated from the geometric mean (GM) values and the geometric standard deviation (GSD).