Tackling water contamination by oncologic drugs: Supported ionic liquids as sustainable adsorbents for cyclophosphamide removal.

Due to the increasing incidence of cancer, the consumption of highly toxic oncological drugs is continuously growing. Given the current lack of efficient technologies to remove/treat these toxic drugs in wastewater treatment plants, the environmental quality is compromised, and aquatic organisms are at risk. To address this critical environmental burden, a new strategy based on supported ionic liquids (SILs) for the simultaneous removal of oncologic drugs and toxicity reduction of aqueous samples is here proposed.

Contributions towards the hazard evaluation of two widely used cytostatic drugs.

Cytostatic drugs are one of the most important therapeutic options for cancer, a disease that is expected to affect 29 million individuals by 2040. After being excreted, cytostatics reach wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), which are unable to efficiently remove them, and consequently, they will be released into the aquatic environment. Due to the highly toxic properties of cytostatics, it is particularly relevant to evaluate their potential ecological risk.

High Performance of Ionic-Liquid-Based Materials to Remove Insecticides.

Neonicotinoids are systemic insecticides commonly used for pest control in agriculture and veterinary applications. Due to their widespread use, neonicotinoid insecticides (neonics) are found in different environmental compartments, including water, soils, and biota, in which their high toxicity towards non-target organisms is a matter of great concern. Given their widespread use and high toxicity, the development of strategies to remove neonics, while avoiding further environmental contamination is of high priority.

A new species of the genus Apollophanes O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1898 (Araneae: Philodromidae) with the first record to the Atlantic rainforest.

Apollophanes has a wide distribution, with some species in Asia and most of the species recorded from North and Central America (World Spider Catalog 2016). New species described from the Galapagos Islands by Baert (2013) have extended the genus range to South America. According to Dondale and Redner (1975) and Dondale and Redner (1978), the species of Apollophanes have a moderately low prosoma, usually of yellow to orange-brown color and with black or brown spots on the lateral margins.