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Emerging contaminants and their pervasive presence in freshwater ecosystems have been widely documented, but less is known about their prevalence and the harm they cause in marine ecosystems, particularly in developing countries. This study provides data on the prevalence and risk posed by microplastics, plasticisers, pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), and heavy metal(loid)s (HMs) along the Maharashtra coast of India. The sediment and coastal water samples were collected from 17 sampling stations, processed, and subjected to FTIR-ATR, ICP-MS, SEM-EDX, LC-MS/MS, and GC-MS for further analysis. Higher MPs abundance, combined with the pollution load index, indicates that the northern zone is a high-impact zone with pollution concerns. Plasticisers in extracted MPs and HMs adsorption on MPs surface from surrounding waters reveal their roles as a source and vector for contaminants, respectively. The mean concentration of metoprolol (53.7-306 ng L -1 ), tramadol (16.6-198 ng L -1 ), venlafaxine (24.6-234 ng L -1 ), and triclosan (211-433 ng L -1 ) in Maharashtra's coastal waters were several folds higher than in other water systems, raising major health concerns. The hazard quotient (HQ) scores revealed that >70 % of study sites pose a high to medium (1 > HQ > 0.1) ecological risk to fish, crustaceans and algae, indicating serious concern. Fish and crustaceans (35.3 % each) show a higher level of risk than algae (29.5 %). Metoprolol and venlafaxine could represent greater ecological risks than tramadol. Similarly, HQ suggests that bisphenol A has larger ecological risks than bisphenol S along the Maharashtra coast. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first in-depth investigation into emerging pollutants in Indian coastal regions. This information is crucial for better policy formulation and coastal management in India in general, and Maharashtra in particular., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The detection and quantification of nematode eggs using fecal egg count techniques have an irreplaceable role in equine parasitic control. The reliability, particularly precision and accuracy, of individual techniques have been described only for strongylid infections. The aim of this study was to compare three fecal egg count techniques used for the detection of the two most common equine nematode infections: strongylid and ascarid. The Simple McMaster, Concentration McMaster and Mini-FLOTAC techniques were tested on spiked fecal samples with various levels of egg concentration (50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 and 3000 eggs per gram) and naturally infected mixed strongylid-ascarid samples with 30 replicates. The Simple McMaster, Concentration McMaster and Mini-FLOTAC techniques had precision coefficients of variation of 44.33, 35.64 and 18.25% for the strongylid infection and 62.95, 35.71 and 18.95% for the ascarid infection, and percent accuracies (mean count/number of eggs spiked) of 97.53, 88.39 and 74.18% for the strongylid infection and 65.53, 83.18 and 90.28% for the ascarid infection, respectively. Accuracy depended greatly on the type of nematode, but precision did not. The Mini-FLOTAC technique was more precise than the Simple and Concentration McMaster techniques regardless of nematode type. Simple McMaster was the most accurate technique for detecting strongylid eggs, and Mini-FLOTAC was the most accurate technique for detecting ascarid eggs. Our results indicated that none of the current techniques were universally and sufficiently reliable for the simultaneous quantification of both of these common equine nematodes., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Acanthocephalans belonging to the species Acanthocephalus lucii were found in the colon of a lamb from ecological farms in the Czech Republic. The main determination features used for these acanthocephalans are the shape and size of the hooks as well as the number of hooks on the proboscis. Three immature specimens measured 5.0-13.2mm in length; the appearance of the acanthocephalan body (in the studied material) suggests that passage through this unusual host causes the cystacanths to slightly increase in length. In the case of the lambs examined, the infection may be acquired through the accidental ingestion of the intermediate host - waterlouse (Asellus aquaticus)., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

We monitored concentrations of Cd, Cu, Mn and Zn in acantocephalan parasites (Acanthocephalus lucii) and its final host (Perca fluviatilis). The concentrations in parasites were found to be significantly higher than those found in the muscle, gonads and liver of fish host. The bioaccumulation factor values (BF=C(parasite)/C(host muscle)) were 194, 24.4, 2.2 and 4.7 for Cd, Cu, Mn and Zn, respectively. This suggests a benefit for the host due to the high accumulation of toxic cadmium., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)