There are plenty of studies on pesticide exposure among people who tend and harvest crops grown in treated environments. But John M. Clark and colleagues couldn’t find much comparable information about individuals who play sports, including soccer and golf, in the great outdoors. So, his team designed a study to investigate golfers’ potential risks from four pesticides, which have low volatilities and relatively low toxicities for humans, and are commonly used on golf course turfgrass: cyfluthrin (insecticide), chlorothalonil (fungicide), MCPP-p (herbicide) and 2,4-D (herbicide).

For the study, the researchers created what they deemed a “worst-case-scenario” 18-hole course: All areas of a simulated golf course were treated with the manufacturers’ suggested maximum amount of all four pesticides. Then they recruited eight volunteer golfers to play a full round on the treated turf one hour after pesticide application and to remain on the course for four hours. To measure pesticide exposure, four of the volunteers wore cotton full-body suits with veils, socks and gloves that would pick up contact residues and personal air samplers that would capture airborne residues. The other four volunteers wore cut-off cotton suits over their own golfing clothes and submitted urine samples after the round.

After the volunteers finished golfing, Clark’s team measured pesticide residues on the dosimetry suits and air samplers and found that the hand and lower leg segments picked up the most residue while airborne residues contributed little to exposure. The researchers also measured the volunteers’ exposure risk from the levels of pesticides found on the suits and in the urine samples by calculating the hazard quotient (HQ). The team found that the HQ values from the golfers’ exposure indicated little risk to the four pesticides used in this study.

Finally, Clark and colleagues compared the insecticide cyfluthrin results to their 2008 Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry study with older, neurotoxic insecticides at the same simulated golf course site — and using the same protocols. Both studies’ HQ values were well below 1.0, the level that indicates potentially unsafe exposure. However, in the prior work, the volunteers’ urinalysis HQ values of 0.0318 and 0.054 for chlorpyrifos and carbaryl, respectively, were an order of magnitude greater than the volunteers’ urinalysis HQ of 0.0043 from this 2024 study with the insecticide cyfluthrin. The researchers say this comparison shows the potential benefit of using modern, lower volatility and less toxic pesticides, which could further reduce golfers’ risk of adverse effects from exposure.

The authors acknowledge funding from the United States Golf Association and the New England Regional Turf Foundation.

But by improving on a well-known electrochemical reaction and orchestrating a “symphony” of lithium, nitrogen and hydrogen atoms, University of Illinois Chicago engineers led by Meenesh Singhhave developed a new ammonia production processthat meets several green targets.

The process, called lithium-mediated ammonia synthesis, combines nitrogen gas and a hydrogen-donating fluid such as ethanol with a charged lithium electrode. Instead of cracking apart nitrogen gas molecules with high temperature and pressure, nitrogen atoms stick to the lithium, then combine with hydrogen to make the ammonia molecule.

The reaction works at low temperatures, and it’s also regenerative, restoring the original materials with each cycle of ammonia production.

“There are two loops that happen. One is regeneration of the hydrogen source and second is the regeneration of the lithium,” said Singh, associate professor of chemical engineering at UIC. “There is a symphony in this reaction, due to the cyclic process. What we did was understand this symphony in a better way and try to modulate it in a very efficient way, so that we can create a resonance and make it move faster.”

The process, described in a paper published and featured on the cover of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, is the latest innovation from Singh’s lab in the quest for cleaner ammonia. Previously, his group developed methods to synthesize the chemical using sunlight and wastewater and created an electrified copper mesh screen that reduces the amount of energy needed to make ammonia.

Their latest advance is built on a reaction that is hardly new. Scientists have known about it for nearly a century.

“The lithium-based approach can actually be found in any organic chemistry textbook. It’s very well-known” Singh said. “But making this cycle run efficiently and selectively enough to meet economically feasible targets was our contribution.”

Those targets include high energy efficiency and low cost. If scaled up, the process would produce ammonia at roughly $450 per ton, which is 60% cheaper than prior lithium-based approaches and other proposed green methods, according to Singh.

But selectivity is also important, as many attempts to make ammonia production cleaner have ended up creating large quantities of unwanted hydrogen gas instead.

The Singh group’s results are among the first to achieve levels of selectivity and energy use that could meet Department of Energy standards for industrial-scale production of ammonia. Singh also said the process, which can be performed in a modular reactor, can be made even greener by powering it with electricity from solar panels or other renewable sources and feeding the reaction with air and water.

The process also could help meet another energy goal — the use of hydrogen as fuel. Reaching that goal has been stymied by the difficulties of transporting the highly combustible liquid.

“You want hydrogen to be generated, transported and delivered to hydrogen pumping stations, where hydrogen can be fed to the cars. But it’s very dangerous,” Singh said. “Ammonia could function as a carrier of hydrogen. It’s very cheap and safe to transport, and at the destination you can convert ammonia back to hydrogen.”

Currently, the scientists are partnering with the General Ammonia Co. to pilot and scale up their lithium-mediated ammonia synthesis process at a plant in the Chicago area. UIC’s Office of Technology Management has filed a patent for the process.

The research was funded by grants from General Ammonia Co. Co-authors of the paper are Nishithan C. Kani and Ishita Goyal of UIC, Joseph A. Gauthier of Texas Tech University and Windom Shields and Mitchell Shields of General Ammonia Co.

A research team led by Professor Yong-Tae Kim from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), in collaboration with Professor Kyu-Young Park from the Graduate Institute of Ferrous & Eco Materials Technology and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at POSTECH, and the research team of Dr. Woochul Jung from the Research Institute of Industrial Science and Technology (RIST), has discovered that the purity specifications for cathode materials, as set by cell manufacturers, are overly stringent. Their research demonstrates that streamlining the lithium refining process could substantially reduce the unit cost of batteries. The research findings are published in ‘Nature Communications’, one of international scientific journals.

In this research, the team delved into the impact of lithium raw material purity on the production and performance of secondary battery cathode materials. Conventionally, it’s assumed that impurities in lithium materials hamper secondary battery performance. Therefore, the goal is to manufacture lithium materials with purity of at least 99.5%. Nevertheless, the team uncovered that the presence of approximately 1% magnesium (Mg) impurity in the lithium raw material actually enhances process efficiency and prolongs the secondary battery’s lifespan. Through their experiments, they demonstrated that utilizing low-purity lithium, not entirely rid of impurities, could reduce secondary battery production costs and carbon dioxide emissions by up to 19.4% and 9.0%, respectively.

Professor Yong-Tae Kim who led the research stated, ” Secondary battery cell manufacturers need to reassess whether their current cathode material specifications are too stringent.” He further remarked, “Considering unconventional approaches could offer a fresh strategy against China’s aggressively low prices.”