Engineering Commons^™

A Risk Assessment Of The Health Liabilities From Exposure To Toxic Metals Found In The Composted Material Of Air Force Municipal Solid Waste, Timothy L. Merrymon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis assesses the risk of the health liabilities from exposure to toxic metals found in the composted material of Air Force municipal solid waste (MSW). The goal is to determine the probability that the composted MSW could be a health hazard if it were used as a soil amendment. The research limited the assessment of the exposure risk to heavy metals found in raw MSW and its resulting compost. The thesis uses reviews of present literature to examine the food and soil ingestion exposure pathways. These pathways are assessed using the heavy metal concentrations found in MSW compost and …

Competitive Enzyme Immunoassay By Polyclonal Antibodies Against Organophosphorus Pesticides, Kuo-Lan Wen

Theses and Dissertations in Biomedical Sciences

Organophosphorus compounds (OPs) comprise one of the major classes of pesticides in use today because they are highly effective and less toxic. Because of their extensive use, there is a need for monitoring OPs in water and vegetables. Gas chromatography (GC) is the usual method for OPs screening, but it is time-consuming and has the high cost of instrumentation. The goal of this project was to find an easy method which was sensitive and had less instrumentation required to test OPs.

Microwells and microtubes were utilized as the solid-phase immobilization for the development of an enzyme immunoassay for OPs. A …

Longitudinal Study Of Plasma And Erythrocyte Selenium Levels In Type I Diabetic Children During Development And Treatment Of Ketoacidosis, Pi-Hsia Fan

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses & Dissertations

Most studies on the biological activity of selenium have focused on its role at the active site in the ubiquitous enzyme, glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) which catalyzes the removal of hydrogen peroxide and organic hydroperoxides (1). A connection between selenium deficiency and a wide range of diseases in animals and humans has been reviewed (2). Development of various forms of human cancer (3), failure of the immune system (4), as well as some cardiovascular diseases (5) have been reported or suspected to correlate with selenium deficiency. However, the physiological function of selenium in these different diseases is not fully understood, and …