Exposure and Health Effects of Emerging Environmental Pollutants

Dear Colleagues,

The rapid and accelerating growth of the industries and economies and increasing globalisation pose threats to human society and the environment. Environmental contamination by chemical agents and related materials represent a serious health threat that can only be appropriately addressed by obtaining effective and rapid responses from different experts, health professionals and authorities to determine the appropriate resources and actions that are needed to address these threats. Thus, developing applicable knowledge regarding the exposure and health effects of emerging pollutants is of critical importance to respond to these new and concerning contamination phenomena. However, there is little information about the presence and distribution of emerging contaminants (both inorganic and organic) in urban environments despite the fact that chronic exposure to even low concentrations of some chemicals can increase morbidity and mortality. This new and unknown information is of critical importance not only to measure the presence and distribution of contaminants in the environment, but also to uncover their potential effects on human health and to develop the appropriate protocols and techniques needed to determine the exposure to these emerging environmental threats. Additionally, a complete characterisation of the risks posed by these emerging pollutants should be performed to implement the necessary actions to protect humans and the environment. This is particularly important in urban environments due to their unique characteristics, challenging remediation and high populations, which could be more exposed to these emerging threats.

As such, there is an increasing need for knowledge of the toxicity and health effects of emerging environmental pollutants to safeguard the use of chemicals in industry, public and private sectors. Current anthropogenic activities and recent advances in chemical/pharmaceutical creation, production, manufacturing and use can facilitate the release of new compounds into the environment. Moreover, the occurrence of emerging pollutants is generally unknown in urban ecosystems, despite their presence and distribution increasingly being reported; this could have severe and unknown short- and long-term consequences on humans. Recent chemical incidents and attacks using chemical substances as unconventional weapons have also highlighted the importance of using appropriate capabilities, resources and trained personnel to quickly measure and identify exposure to these hazards to respond to these events and protect humans and the environment.

The present Special Issue focuses on this public health concern by collecting, comparing and presenting leading studies and techniques that monitor exposure to emerging inorganic/organic chemical pollutants present in a wide range of ecosystems (including urban/suburban settings) and their effects on human health. This Special Issue will also provide an insight into cutting-edge decontamination techniques with a focus on risk characterisation and environmental recovery and restoration.

Dr. Antonio Peña-Fernández
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 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.

• emerging contaminants
• environmental monitoring
• exposure
• health effects
• in vitro techniques
• risk assessment
• environmental decontamination