Persistent Organic Pollutants: The Trade-Off between Potential Risks and Sustainable Remediation Methods

Dear Colleagues,

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), such as organochlorine pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated dibenzofurans/dibenzo-p-dioxins and brominated flame retardants, are now widely distributed in the environmental matrices and generally impose great risks on ecological systems and human health due to the high toxicity, bioaccumulativity, semi-volatility, long-range transportability and chemical persistence. In consideration of different contamination level and environmental risks of POPs, the development of sustainable remediation methods are of concern for scientific community. The Special Issue is an international forum that would contribute to the accurate evaluation of environmental risks based on toxicological insights and the application of remediation methods, including advanced oxidation-reduction process, biological process and cleaner technologies for sustainable removal of POPs. The in vivo or in vitro adverse effect of POPs in aquatic and terrestrial environment, the bioavailability and toxicological profiles, the toxicologcial mechansim studies by bioassay, omics or quantitative structure-activity relationsip analysis and the conceptual models developed for risk assessment of POPs in water, atmosphere, soil and sediment are within the scope of the Special Issue. To improve the sustainability and suitability of remediation, the research topics, e.g., the new development of potential chemical, physical or biological methods for the removal of light or heavy pollutants and the relationships with risk mitigation, the original insights into the elimination mechansim of pollutants, and the reuse and recycling treatments during remediation are equally included. However, the only report on the environmental occurrence, interfacial adsorption, phase-transfer or traditional remediation methods not relevant with POPs are not temporarily considered.

Research areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Traditionally defined or emerging persistent organic pollutants
• Environmental hazards of POPs in aquatic and terrestrial systems
• Bioavailability and biological effect of POPs
• Uptake/metabolism and toxicokinetics
• Environmental computational chemistry or quantitative structure-activity relationsips for toxicology
• In vivo/in vitro/in silico testing models or omics analysis
• Novel development or modification of models, molecular bioindicators for risk assessment
• Development of sustainable remediation methods or materials
• Degradation or biotransformation mechanism
• New strategies for reuse and recycling process
• Relationship between the classification of environmental risks and the choice of remediation methods

Dr. Chenggang Gu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• persistent organic pollutants (POPs)
• organochlorine pesticides
• polychlorinated biphenyls
• polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
• polychlorinated dibenzofurans/dibenzo-p-dioxins
• polybrominated diphenyl ethers
• perfluorinated compounds
• bioavailability
• uptake/metabolism
• molecular bioindicators
• biological effect
• toxicity
• enzyme induction
• computational chemistry
• QSARs
• toxicological mechanism
• adverse outcome pathway
• risk assessment
• principles and advanced oxidation/photolytic/microbial degradation/phytoremediation technologies
• reuse and recycle
• sutability evaluation of remediation methods