Collection

Earth and Environmental Sciences: Emerging Environmental Pollutants in Water: Prioritization Advancement

Submission status
Closed
Ongoing advances in field chemical manufacturing and application results to continuous discovery and production of new chemicals, realisation of new applications, and advancing analytical capability. Consequentially, such chemicals are released into the environment at various life cycle phases whilst their environmental fate, behaviour, and effects are poorly known; resulting to emerging environmental pollutants (EEPs). The scope of EEPs also includes “old” or legacy chemicals whose environmental concerns are only recently being realised or raised, or were previously not fully realized or apprehended. Some EEPs that have recently received attention from scientists and regulatory authorities include the active ingredients and metabolites of pharmaceuticals, hormones, personal care products, plasticizers, surfactants, brominated and emerging flame retardants, algal toxins, engineered nanomaterials, perchlorate, artificial sweeteners, water disinfection by-products and prions. The EEPs are released into the water value chain, with waste water systems demonstrated to be significant recipients and carriers of EEPs. The occurrence of EEPs in the water value chain carries implications that cross cut human and environmental health, raising the need to prioritize certain EEPs for in-depth scientific scrutiny and regulation measures for cases where notable concern exists as means of mitigating potential risks. Whereas the phenomenon of EEPs is global, their prioritization should ideally spatially confined as sources, environmental fate and effects, and socio-economic priorities vary between regions and countries. The current topical collection calls for scientific papers that strongly demonstrates evidence of EEPs prioritization in the water value chain for a defined spatial boundary. The context could be EEPs’ source ranking, exposure potential, analytical, hazard, and risk informed. Preference will be for manuscripts that demonstrate build up from previous scientific literature, environmental and industrial regulation concerns/measures for a particular spatial boundary, e.g. region, country, state, province, or metropole.

Editors

Articles (5 in this collection)