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Due to the increasing growth of economy in the last few years, environmental problems have become a prominent difficulty in Chinese economic growth and social development. Therefore, in order to respond to the environmental protection policy of Anhui Province, all prefecture-level cities need to be evaluated for their environmental efficiency. A study of environmental efficiency in Anhui Province is presented in this paper. The time period is from 2015 to 2020. By exploiting MaxDEA software, the input–output system in different years is taken as the decision-making unit, and slacks-based model (SBM-DEA) which is based on an unexpected output is used to construct the index system by selecting two output indexes and four input indexes, so as to calculate the environmental efficiency of Anhui Province, including 16 prefecture-level cities, under the condition of constant non-radial and non-angle scale benefits. In addition, based on the persistence and anti-persistence theory of fractal theory, in this paper, we have analyzed the future trend of environmental efficiency of prefecture-level cities in Anhui Province by rescaled range analysis (R/S). The results show that Anhui province has 16 prefectures that have not achieved an optimal level of environmental performance and fluctuates downward from 2015 to 2020. The average value of comprehensive efficiency is 0.846. As for technical efficiency, the mean value is 0.954, and scale efficiency has an average value of 0.887. The technical progress of environmental efficiency development in Anhui Province is small and the room for improvement is large. Finally, according to the results of the study, some suggestions on environmental technology are put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal mine and coal-fired power plant are the main sources of selenium (Se) and mercury (Hg) for the collapsed lakes derived from mining subsidence. However, whether and how Se and Hg impact the bacterial communities in the artificial aquatic ecosystems is barely known. The bacterial communities, physicochemical properties, and Se/Hg concentrations of the overlying water and surface sediment from Nanhu Lake, a typical collapsed lake in Huaibei city, Anhui province, were characterized through high-throughput sequencing and chemical analysis. The lake was enriched with N and P, and the surface sediment contained extremely high Se (6.90–30.37 mg/kg). The composition and structure of bacterial communities in the overlying water were different from that in the surface sediment. Alpha diversity indices in the surface sediment were higher than that in the overlying water, and they increased with TP, TN, and NH3-N. Overall, redundancy analysis indicated that Se, Hg, and physicochemical properties co-mediated the bacterial community in Nanhu Lake. The results highlighted the necessity to reduce the input of exogenous nutrients and to reconsider the environmental and health risks of receiving Se- and Hg-containing mine water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil, rock, potable water, animal food and human hair samples were collected from the Dashan village, a typical selenium (Se)-rich area of China. Se content and fraction distribution were determined to trace the source of soil Se and evaluate the potential health risk to humans. Total Se contents in soils ranged from 0.60 to 10.46 mg kg− 1. The fractions of soil Se followed the order: residual Se (R-Se) > organic–bound Se (O-Se) > acid soluble Se (A-Se) > exchangeable Se (E-Se) > water soluble Se (W-Se). Total Se contents in rocks ranged from 0.07 to 24.8 mg kg− 1. The dietary Se intake of local residents was estimated to be 261.2 µg day− 1 and hair Se content varied from 0.34 to 1.35 mg kg− 1, suggesting that the potential health risk should be concerned. Weathering of carbonaceous rock was speculated to be the primary source of soil Se according to the contents of Se in rocks, the distribution of Se in soil profiles and the relationships between Se and other elements in soils and parent rocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]