Dear Colleagues,

Emerging contaminants, including pharmaceuticals, personal care products, pesticides, herbicides, and endocrine-disrupting compounds, have been detected in global water supplies at trace levels and there are currently no existing regulations requiring monitoring or public reporting of their presence in our water supply nor legislative limits.

All sources of drinking water can contain some contaminants. At low levels, most are not considered to be harmful. Some contaminants are naturally occurring in the environment though people, animals, and industry can also add contaminants into our water supplies. To add to the complexity, many ECs undergo biological and chemical degradation in the environment: thus, transformation products also need to be considered. These compounds have the tendency to accumulate in living tissues, thus entering the food chain. It is therefore an urgent requirement to not only develop reliable and cost-effective methods to analyze a wide range of EC compounds but, also, to find technoeconomically feasible options for their efficient removal from water. Currently, very limited information is available regarding exposure to trace levels of emerging contaminants in global drinking water supplies and their attributed health effects. The consensus in the scientific community is that the available data on these emerging contaminants are not yet sufficient enough to adequately address potential health effects at the trace levels found in waterbodies.

The present Special Issue entitled “Emerging Pollutants in Aquatic Environments and Chemical–Biological Remediation” aims to publish original research, review papers, and short communications on the identification, sampling, analysis, monitoring, and treatment protocols to measure and document the occurrence of emerging contaminants and to remediate such compounds in waterbodies. The overall scope includes up-to-date developments on the current state of knowledge of theoretical, applied, observational, and methodological studies in which novel approaches and robust results are presented and discussed as well as the urgent actions needed to understand their ultimate impact on human health and to develop a realistic exposure scenario.

Specifically, the topics of this Special Issue include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• 1. Systematic research of environmental occurrence, fate, and responses of ECs in aquatic ecosystems;
• 2. Understanding of the reactivity and interactions within biological systems;
• 3. Toxicological investigation to support risk assessment and to determine the level of risk they present;
• 4. Advanced analytical methodologies for their determination;
• 5. Targeted development of remediation technology, treatment methods for removal of ECs from waterbodies.

Prof. Dr. Oriana Motta
Dr. Concetta Pironti
Dr. Maria Ricciardi
Guest Editors

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.

• environmental occurrence of ECs
• ecotoxicological impacts
• risk to human health
• water treatments
• advanced analytical methodologies
• chemical and biological remediation