On April 25th, the 1st Symposium on Metal Biogeochemistry was held by the College of Resources and Environment (CRE) in conference room 204, which was presided over by Prof. Liu Yurong from the college. It attracted 22 scholars from 10 universities and research institutes like Nanjing University, East China Normal University and Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences(IHEP, CAS). The symposium started by the speech given by Tan Wenfeng, vice dean of CRE. He first extended his warm welcome to all attendees, then expanded on discipline characteristics and Double First-Class construction of HZAU and finally hoped that this symposium would promote mutual exchanges.
Bioenvironmental behavior of metal has been of broad concern. Heavy metal pollution in soil and water can not only damage environment but also threaten people’s health, as in the case of Rhine River pollution event, Japan minamata disease events and Cadmium rice in Hunan province. Centered on the global heavy metal pollution, 22 scholars reported on edge-cutting scientific topics such as the impact of metal pollution in soil, lakes and other water areas on biology and environment, pollution prevention and control, and the remediation strategies for such environmental pollution.
Gao Yuxi, researcher of IHEP, CAS, used rice synchrotron radiation technology in his research on toxic effects of mercury-selenium antagonism. He elaborated on the application of selenium in reducing mercury content in rice root and the demethylation of methyl mercury. Prof. Feng Xionghan from CRE reported on the mechanism of Fe-Mn oxides and transition metals, and found that birnessite had a strong enrichment capacity on transition metals. Prof. Zhong Huan from Nanjing University demonstrated the effect of organic material on mercury in soil. He indicated that organic material was a double-edged sword for it could both passivate mercury and provide electron donors and bioactive substances, thus increasing the ecological risks of mercury. Dang Fei, associate researcher from Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences explained the formation mechanism of silver nanoparticles mediated by solid-phase organic matter in soil, which indicated that silver nanoparticles was mostly formed in solid phase and the superoxide radical in such phase was conducive to its formation. Further reporters were made by Prof. Qiu Guohong, Prof. Cai Peng, Prof. Dai Kefu from CRE, Zhang Hong, associate researcher from Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof. Liu Peng from China University of Geosciences.
It was announced that Nanjing University would be the host of the 2nd Symposium on Metal Biogeochemistry in next April.
Translated by: Yin Ruixuan
Supervised by: Guo Haiyan
