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Perfluoroalkyl substance pollution: detecting and visualizing emerging trends based on CiteSpace

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Abstract

In recent years, perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) have been detected in all kinds of environmental media and can harm animals and human beings. They have attracted the attention of environmental workers worldwide and have become another research hotspot in the field of environment. However, analyses of PFASs have seldom been studied systematically. Therefore, this study summarizes the available data in 6756 publications (2000–2022) using the CiteSpace software to provide insights into the specific characteristics of PFASs and consequently shows global development trends that scientists can use for establishing future research directions. As opposed to traditional review articles by experts, this study provides a new method for quantitatively visualizing information about the development of this field over the past 23 years. Results show that the countries with more research in this field are mainly the USA and China. The research on PFASs is mainly concentrated in environmental sciences and ecology. Zhanyun Wang and Robert C. Buck’s research has the highest influence rate in this field, and their research group is worthy of attention. Through the analysis of hot keywords, we conclude that the research hotspots are mainly focused on PFASs’ transmission media and pathways, human exposure and the mechanism of toxicity, and degradation and remediation measures. Collectively these results indicate the major themes of PFAS research are as follows: (1) transmission media and pathways, (2) human exposure and the mechanism of toxicity, (3) degradation and remediation measures. This study maps the major research domains of PFAS research; explanations and implications of the findings are discussed; and emerging trends highlighted.

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All relevant data are within the manuscript and available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province (1908085MD103).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lake Basin Management, National Engineering Laboratory for Lake Pollution Control and Ecological Restoration, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, People’s Republic of China

    Jiahao Huang, Song Xiang & Yan Pang

  2. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, 215009, People’s Republic of China

    Jiahao Huang, Wei Wu & Tianyin Huang

  3. College of Resources and Environment, Anqing Normal University, Anqing, Anhui, 246011, People’s Republic of China

    Shuqin Chen

Authors
  1. Jiahao Huang
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  2. Song Xiang
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  3. Shuqin Chen
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  4. Wei Wu
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  5. Tianyin Huang
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  6. Yan Pang
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Contributions

Huang Jiahao: conceptualization, methodology, software, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, visualization. Xiang Song: resources, validation, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. Chen Shuqin: resources, writing—review and editing, validation, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. Wu Wei: software, funding acquisition. Huang Tianyan: software, investigation. Pang Yan: formal analysis, funding acquisition.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yan Pang.

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Responsible Editor: Roland Peter Kallenborn

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Synopsis

This study used CiteSpace to analyze publications and offered unique insights on PFAS research landscape and opportunities.

Highlights

• For the first time, research status of PFASs is presented by bibliometrics method.

• China and the USA—leaders of general publication about PFASs.

• Relationships among cited authors, journals, and keywords were explained visually.

• Hot topics and developing trends in PFASs were identified.

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Huang, J., Xiang, S., Chen, S. et al. Perfluoroalkyl substance pollution: detecting and visualizing emerging trends based on CiteSpace. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 82786–82798 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20756-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-20756-3

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