Volume 29 (2018): Issue 1 (March 2018)

In urban areas, the most pressing adaptation challenges are associated with the problem of poor retention of rainstorm water. Hence, recommended actions focus on improving rainwater retention in the landscape. One of the strategic direction of adaptation to climate change is including green infrastructure solutions like green roofs, green walls, water reservoirs along streets – supplying high vegetation, permeable ground cover and rain gardens. Due to a variety of proposals, the costs and benefits resulting from the implementation of a chosen solution should be regarded when selecting an appropriate action. Considering the above, the article attempts to show the costs and benefits of one of the solutions – a green garden. When analysing the cost of green garden implementation, account should be taken of the cost of investment and upholding, as well as the alternative cost of land use. Then again, the benefits of the rain garden comprise the losses avoided by limiting the effects of rainstorm as well as improving the quality and quantity of water in the urban landscape. The cost and benefit monetization makes it possible to decide on the financial viability of implementing rain gardens in the city.

The production of clinical waste is an inevitable consequence of rendering health services, including hazardous infectious clinical waste containing live pathogenic microorganisms, which can be the potential source of infections and infectious diseases. For this reason, the management of waste collected during rendering health services most of all requires responsibility for the security of both patients and staff on the part of the managers of healthcare-institutions. The results of hospital inspections in the field of clinical-waste management conducted by the Voivodeship Sanitary Inspection in Lublin, which were made available for the purpose of this paper, have shown numerous irregularities concerning the management of hazardous clinical waste. Most of the irregularities involved the condition of premises and the temporary storage of clinical waste.

The paper focuses on the present legal requirements regarding the quality of coke wastewater resulting from coal coking and coke-oven gas treatment before discharge to water, ground or sewage of an external entity. Characteristics of coke wastewater were carried out and the methods of coke wastewater treatment currently used in installation in Poland were presented.

The high level of heavy metals is one of the main indicators of soil contamination, which is a significant risk to ecological and health safety. Lack of regulations requiring the examination of the level of contamination in the areas where recreational facilities for children are located directly translate into the lack of preventive or corrective actions and leads to the persistence of a permanent threat connected with a high level of heavy metals concentration in soils. The aim of the study was to identify significant sources of exposure of children to heavy metals depending on the location of recreational areas (sports fields). The results show a high concentration of cadmium, lead and zinc in the analysed soils. Of all samples, more than 70% of them have values exceeding the limit values of cadmium in soils. In the case of lead and zinc, the normative values were exceeded, respectively, in 44% and 64% of soil samples. Practical solutions introduced in the framework of regulations related to environmental protection do not correlate in practice with an extensive obligation to protect the health of children and adolescents, whose performance is clearly focused on medical problems, disregarding the risk resulting from environmental factors.

Depending on climate conditions, bathymetry, basin morphology, management practices and other factors, some reservoirs are more or less prone to stratification, which can strongly affect both chemical and biological status of water. In the Goczalkowice Reservoir (the biggest dam reservoir in the south of Poland), water quality parameters, such as chlorophyll a concentration, change very dynamically. In the presented study, the Estuary, Lake and Coastal Ocean Model (ELCOM) was applied to simulate water thermodynamics in a period of summer and autumn when the highest concentrations of chlorophyll a were observed, based on the continuous water monitoring in the ZiZOZap project (Łaszczyca et al., 2011). The purpose of the application of ELCOM was to simulate the thermal stratification in the reservoir and to prepare a basis for analyses of the relationship between water thermodynamics and quality. Simulations allowed the identification of several short water mixing events in summer and the final mixing event at the end of summer. The study also included the first application of model results to analyse the relation of changes in water temperature with observed concentration of chlorophyll a (ChlA). Analysis confirmed that each water mixing event was followed by a significant increase in ChlA concentration.

Human activity leads to environmental transformations, frequently on a large scale. There are places where anthropogenic consequences are unprecedented and disadvantageous to the extent that can be perceived in terms of an ecocatastrophe that goes beyond the local range. The article presents three anthropogenically degraded areas that pose danger for ecosystems in various parts of the world.