Principal Investigator:
Prof. Xiaorong WANG
ekxr@nju.edu.cn
Research Content & Progress:
Pollution caused by chemical substances in the environment poses serious health risks for ecosystem and human, and it becomes one of the important environmental concerns on human survival and development. Understanding and revealing the change processes and toxic mechanisms of chemical pollutants in the complicated environmental media and method establishments of early diagnosis for ecological risks are the important scientific problems on pollution prevention and control of chemical substances and also major strategic demands of environmental protection in China. Our team carried out a long-term systemic research on molecular structure, environmental chemical behaviours, toxic effects and early diagnosis of ecological risk of selected organic contaminants, heavy metals and rare earth elements (REEs) specifically used as fertilizers in China and obtained innovative achievements on photochemical reactivity, bioavailability, toxic effects and mechanisms and early diagnosis of ecological risks.
We have made a series of breakthroughs on some key scientific issues: computational prediction of environmental chemical behaviour, toxicological mechanism of oxidative damage, and interaction between contaminants and biomacromolecules. Our achievements have been highly regarded by the international counterparts and published as 316 peer-reviewed papers, of which 149 papers have been indexed in SCI database as well as 89 papers in EI database, cited by other studies for 1666 times. Eight representative papers have been positively cited by SCI for 204 times. Our studies were awarded the first prize (in 2003 and 2009) and the second prize (in 2008) in natural science by the Ministry of Education of China. We set up early diagnosis methods of ecological risks based on biomarkers, gained critical threshold values of early damage for some selected contaminants and their criteria values in aquatic ecosystems and resolved the environmental safety issue on long-term application of REEs in agriculture. The works provide theory and method for prevention and control of toxic chemical substances and push forward the development of environmental chemistry and ecological risk assessment.
