Dear Colleagues,

A large variety of organic compounds generated by anthropic activities, belonging to different chemical families and with diverse physicochemical properties, are widely distributed in air, soil, and the aquatic environment, and urban and industrial areas. Classical contaminants include pesticides, fertilizers, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, and dioxins. Other chemical species, previously not monitored or not considered ecotoxicologically relevant, are nowadays under the attention of the scientific community and public opinion. Surfactants and their metabolites, pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs, personal care and disinfection products, and perfluorinated compounds, are, among others, the environmental contaminants of recent concern.

Pollution monitoring requires accurate analytical methods able to detect trace or subtrace levels of the anthropogenic contaminants in various environmental and biological matrices. In addition, understanding of the fate of micropollutants in the aquatic environment, in soil and throughout the food chains is also crucial to improve the efficiency of policies for the preservation of the natural and living resources and the safeguard of human health.

The chromatographic methods, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), ultra-high gas chromatography (UHPLC), gas chromatography (GC), and bidimensional chromatographic techniques play a pivotal role in the separation, identification, and quantification of classical and emerging pollutants in complex environmental and biological systems.

This Special Issue is intended to highlight recent developments regarding the chromatographic analysis of pollutants in environmental and biological matrices. Manuscripts describing innovative approaches for the pre-analytical sample treatment and chromatographic applications aimed at investigating persistency, mobility, and degradation pathways of organic contaminants in the environment and living organisms are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Angelo A. D'Archivio
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. Molecules 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 2700 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.

• classical and emerging organic pollutants
• environmental monitoring
• chromatographic techniques (HPLC, UHPLC, GC and others)
• photometric, mass spectrometric and other detection techniques
• sampling methods 
• optimisation strategies
• multi-residue analysis