Publications by authors named "Posthuma L"

Ecotoxicological impacts of chemicals released into the environment are characterized by combining fate, exposure, and effects. For characterizing effects, species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) estimate toxic pressures of chemicals as the potentially affected fraction of species. Life cycle assessment (LCA) uses SSDs to identify products with lowest ecotoxicological impacts.

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With increasing numbers of chemicals used in modern society, assessing human and environmental exposure to them is becoming increasingly difficult. Recent advances in wastewater-based epidemiology enable valuable insights into public exposure to data-poor compounds. However, measuring all >26,000 chemicals registered under REACH is not just technically unfeasible but would also be incredibly expensive.

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Background: Vital signs measurements on the ward are performed intermittently. This could lead to failure to rapidly detect patients with deteriorating vital signs and worsens long-term outcome. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that continuous wireless monitoring of vital signs on the postsurgical ward improves patient outcome.

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Purpose Of Review: This study indicates that there are differences between hospitals in detection, as well as in adequate management of postsurgical complications, a phenomenon that is described as 'failure-to-rescue'.In this review, recent initiatives to reduce failure-to-rescue in the perioperative period are described.

Recent Findings: Use of cognitive aids, emergency manuals, family participation as well as remote monitoring systems are measures to reduce failure-to-rescue situations.

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Article Synopsis
  • Bridging applied ecology and ecotoxicology is crucial for ecosystem protection, as there is often a disconnect between how these fields assess environmental pressures.
  • The study introduces taxonomic-group-specific Species Sensitivity Distributions (SSDs) for algae, invertebrates, and vertebrates based on data from 180 chemicals, suggesting that these tailored assessments enhance pollution impact evaluations, especially for certain chemicals.
  • The findings propose a new framework for using split SSDs, which could significantly improve decision support in environmental protection and management of freshwater ecosystems worldwide.
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Ecosystems are strongly influenced by multiple anthropogenic stressors, including a wide range of chemicals and their mixtures. Studies on the effects of multiple stressors have largely focussed on nonchemical stressors, whereas studies on chemical mixtures have largely ignored other stressors. However, both research areas face similar challenges and require similar tools and methods to predict the joint effects of chemicals or nonchemical stressors, and frameworks to integrate multiple chemical and nonchemical stressors are missing.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Current methods lack a systematic way to connect ecotoxicity data with real-world impacts on species diversity, functional diversity, and ecosystem services, particularly in tools like life cycle assessment (LCA).
  • * The authors propose a framework to link ecotoxicity effects to ecosystem damage, outlining potential methods for connecting species loss and functional diversity to quantifying ecosystem service impacts, while discussing the strengths and limitations of each approach.
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How can data on the occurrence of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the environment and the quality of ecosystems exposed to PPCPs be used to determine whether current regulatory risk assessment schemes are effective? This is one of 20 "big questions" concerning PPCPs in the environment posed in a landmark review paper in 2012. Ten years later, we review the developments around this question, focusing on the first P in PPCPs, that is, pharmaceuticals, or more specifically the active ingredients included in them (active pharmaceutical ingredients, APIs). We illustrate how extensive data on both the occurrence of APIs and the ecotoxicological sensitivity of aquatic species to them can be used in a retrospective risk assessment.

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Unlabelled: The use of chemicals by society has resulted in calls for more effective control of their emissions. Many of these chemicals are poorly characterized because of lacking data on their use, environmental fate and toxicity, as well as lacking detection techniques. These compounds are sometimes referred to as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs).

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Chemicals emitted to the environment affect ecosystem health from local to global scale, and reducing chemical impacts has become an important element of European and global sustainability efforts. The present work advances ecotoxicity characterization of chemicals in life cycle impact assessment by proposing recommendations resulting from international expert workshops and work conducted under the umbrella of the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative in the GLAM project (Global guidance on environmental life cycle impact assessment indicators). We include specific recommendations for broadening the assessment scope through proposing to introduce additional environmental compartments beyond freshwater and related ecotoxicity indicators, as well as for adapting the ecotoxicity effect modelling approach to better reflect environmentally relevant exposure levels and including to a larger extent chronic test data.

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In this study, 56 effluent samples from 52 European wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) were investigated for the occurrence of 499 emerging chemicals (ECs) and their associated potential risks to the environment. The two main objectives were (i) to extend our knowledge on chemicals occurring in treated wastewater, and (ii) to identify and prioritize compounds of concern based on three different risk assessment approaches for the identification of consensus mixture risk drivers of concern. Approaches include (i) PNEC and EQS-based regulatory risk quotients (RQs), (ii) species sensitivity distribution (SSD)-based hazard units (HUs) and (iii) toxic units (TUs) for three biological quality elements (BQEs) algae, crustacean, and fish.

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The chemical pollution crisis severely threatens human and environmental health globally. To tackle this challenge the establishment of an overarching international science-policy body has recently been suggested. We strongly support this initiative based on the awareness that humanity has already likely left the safe operating space within planetary boundaries for novel entities including chemical pollution.

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Background: Standardized risk assessment tools can be used to identify patients at higher risk for postoperative complications and death. In this study, we validate the PreOperative Score to predict Post-Operative Mortality (POSPOM) for in-hospital mortality in a large cohort of non-cardiac surgery patients. In addition, the performance of POSPOM to predict postoperative complications was studied.

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Article Synopsis
  • Current chemical safety assessments often overlook that humans and ecosystems are exposed to multiple chemicals simultaneously, leading to potentially harmful unintentional mixtures that can endanger the environment.* -
  • The study utilized the NORMAN database to analyze cumulative environmental risks in European freshwater ecosystems, finding that a significant percentage (39%) of monitored sites exhibited mixture risks exceeding safety thresholds.* -
  • The findings suggest that even small reductions in chemical concentrations can significantly improve the protection of water bodies, highlighting the importance of integrating mixture assessments into regulatory frameworks for better environmental safety.*
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Continuous vital signs monitoring in post-surgical ward patients may support early detection of clinical deterioration, but novel alarm approaches are required to ensure timely notification of abnormalities and prevent alarm-fatigue. The current study explored the performance of classical and various adaptive threshold-based alarm strategies to warn for vital sign abnormalities observed during development of an adverse event. A classical threshold-based alarm strategy used for continuous vital signs monitoring in surgical ward patients was evaluated retrospectively.

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Article Synopsis
  • Chemical pollution harms water quality and the natural benefits (called ecosystem services) we get from water systems.
  • The study created a new method to measure how pollution affects these services by looking at how many species might be harmed.
  • The results showed that pollution leads to a loss of these valuable services, and the study offers a way for water managers to make better choices to fix pollution problems.
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We investigate the magnetic properties of LiYbO, containing a three-dimensionally frustrated, diamond-like lattice via neutron scattering, magnetization, and heat capacity measurements. The stretched diamond network of Yb ions in LiYbO enters a long-range incommensurate, helical state with an ordering wave vector that "locks-in" to a commensurate phase under the application of a magnetic field. The spiral magnetic ground state of LiYbO can be understood in the framework of a Heisenberg Hamiltonian on a stretched diamond lattice, where the propagation vector of the spiral is uniquely determined by the ratio of .

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As filter-feeders, freshwater mussels provide the ecosystem service (ES) of biofiltration. Chemical pollution may impinge on the provisioning of mussels' filtration services. However, few attempts have been made to estimate the impacts of chemical mixtures on mussels' filtration capacities in the field, nor to assess the economic benefits of mussel-provided filtration services for humans.

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The biota of European rivers are affected by a wide range of stressors impairing water quality and hydro-morphology. Only about 40% of Europe's rivers reach 'good ecological status', a target set by the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) and indicated by the biota. It is yet unknown how the different stressors in concert impact ecological status and how the relationship between stressors and status differs between river types.

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Background And Purpose: High-serum glucose on admission is a predictor of poor outcome after stroke. We assessed the association between glucose concentrations and clinical outcomes in patients who underwent endovascular treatment.

Methods: From the MR CLEAN Registry, we selected consecutive adult patients with a large vessel occlusion of the anterior circulation who underwent endovascular treatment and for whom admission glucose levels were available.

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Aquatic ecosystems are affected by man-made pressures, often causing combined impacts. The analysis of the impacts of chemical pollution is however commonly separate from that of other pressures and their impacts. This evolved from differences in the data available for applied ecology vis-à-vis applied ecotoxicology, which are field gradients and laboratory toxicity tests, respectively.

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Climate and land-use change drive a suite of stressors that shape ecosystems and interact to yield complex ecological responses (that is, additive, antagonistic and synergistic effects). We know little about the spatial scales relevant for the outcomes of such interactions and little about effect sizes. These knowledge gaps need to be filled to underpin future land management decisions or climate mitigation interventions for protecting and restoring freshwater ecosystems.

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