Dear Colleagues,

This special issue comes because of the success of the previous call, which attracted numerous contributions. Although this topic was presented a few years ago, it is still very relevant and therefore stimulates the introduction of a new call for papers, updated with some recent developments in the area.

Analytical chemistry is increasingly playing a leading role in future challenges concerning the proper assessment of the exposome of living organisms. Indeed, owing to its advances, there is an increasing awareness of the real exposure to pollutants by humans and ecosystems. Although the development of sensitive and specific instrumental techniques has achieved remarkable results, sample preparation is still a fundamental step, often limiting the whole workflow, which often cannot be bypassed simply by using direct analysis techniques such as MS-ambient methods.

Almost pioneeringly, in analytical chemistry, we have been talking for some time about “green analytical chemistry”, its guiding principles, and the development of eco-friendly analytical approaches. However, the new still open challenge is to advance not only in eco-compatibility but mainly in eco-sustainability, rooting the future analytical chemistry on a new perspective aimed at minimizing the environmental impact of the analytical process by placing environmental cost as a priority aim on par with analytical performance. In this regard, a variety of metrics have been proposed over recent years to give a "quantitative" estimate of the environmental impact of protocols, each with different focuses and enhancements, and which knowledge helps the analyst to think about the multiple and often underestimated sources of "cost" when the currency is environmental protection.

This special issue aims to collect studies that show the progress in analytical chemistry based on the arguments previously raised and discussed, with a particular reference to eco-compatibility and sustainability. The expected contributions (original research papers and review articles) can include the development of low environmental impact methods and/or techniques or their applications, hyphenated technology, ambient-MS, but also interdisciplinary studies where the role of analytical techniques is well defined. In all the presented studies, it is appreciated that the environmental gain is clearly outlined.

Dr. Attilio Naccarato
Guest Editor

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• green analytical chemistry (GAC)
• sustainable analytical chemistry (SAC)
• microextraction techniques
• ambient mass spectrometry (Ambient MS)
• green sample preparation (GSP)
• reusable material
• circular economy
• natural products
• novel materials