Prof. ZENG Yongping, president of College of Environment at Jinan University, gives a lecture at IHB. (Credit: IHB)

Prof. ZENG Yongping, president of College of Environment at Jinan University, visited the Institute of Hydrobiology (IHB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on May 19, 2021. During his visit, he gave a lecture on the risk assessment of human exposure to typical organic pollutants.    

Zeng based his lecture on three scenarios - indoor environment, environmental smoke, and barbecue smoke.    

He introduced his team’s assessment of the risk of indoor and outdoor environmental pollutants to people of different ages.    

He said the low tar cigarettes produced more fine particle-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). “Low tar doesn’t mean low risk.”   

As for the barbecue, he said the intake of PAHs are mainly through dietary, respiration and dermal contact.    

Zeng is currently doing research mainly on regional environmental geochemistry and hazardous electronic waste. He was a candidate for the Hundred Outstanding Young Chinese Scientists, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2003, and achieved the National Outstanding Young Science Fund in 2005.    

He won the honorary title of the Third Chinese Academy of Sciences Innovative Culture Construction Advanced Individual in 2007, and became an academic leader of the National Innovative Research Group Science Foundation in 2008. He was named to the Hundred Talents Training Program for south Guangdong in 2015.