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Fly ashes generated by municipal solid waste incinerator (MSWI) are classified as hazardous waste and usually landfilled. For the sustainable reuse of these materials is necessary to reduce the resulting impact on human health and environment. The COSMOS-rice technology has been recently proposed for the treatment of fly ashes mixed with rice husk ash, to obtain a low-cost composite material with significant performances. Here, aquatic biotoxicity assays, including daphnidae and zebrafish embryo-based tests, were used to assess the biosafety efficacy of this technology. Exposure to lixiviated MSWI fly ash caused dose-dependent biotoxic effects on daphnidae and zebrafish embryos with alterations of embryonic development, teratogenous defects and apoptotic events. On the contrary, no biotoxic effects were observed in daphnidae and zebrafish embryos exposed to lixiviated COSMOS-rice material. Accordingly, whole-mount in situ hybridization analysis of the expression of various tissue-specific genes in zebrafish embryos provided genetic evidence about the ability of COSMOS-rice stabilization process to minimize the biotoxic effects of MSWI fly ash. These results demonstrate at the biological level that the newly developed COSMOS-rice technology is an efficient and cost-effective method to process MSWI fly ash, producing a biologically safe and reusable material., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Establishing the prevalence of people living in the Suba district of Bogotá using medication at their own risk and determining the factors related to it., Methods: A guided survey was applied to a random sample. Demographic variables were measured and inquires were made about health problems related to self- medication, the reasons for not seeing a doctor and the medications consumed during the last two weeks., Results: Self-medication reached 27,3 % (19,2-35,3 % 95 % CI) and self-prescription was 7,7 % (2,8-12,5 % 95 % CI). Being affiliated to the Social Health Security's beneficiaries system (OR=2,61: 1,4-4,8 95 % CI) was related to such behaviour. No relationship with other variables was found. The medications most consumed by people indulging in self-medication were analgesics (59,3 %), anti-flu medicine (13,5 %) and vitamins (6,8 %). The main problems for which people resorted to self-medication were pain, fever and flu. The main reasons mentioned for not seeing a doctor were lack of time (40 %) and lack of economic resources (43 %), in addition to other arguments, such as the people s perception that the problem was mild and emergency rooms are always congested., Conclusions: Although still worrying from the public health point of view, self-medication figures were lower than those encountered in similar studies; self-medicated drugs were the over-the-counter medication type. The rate of consuming self-medicated antibiotics dropped, probably due to the spreading of the restriction on the sale of antibiotics without a medical prescription which came into force a few months before the survey took place.