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Repozytorium publikacji
Politechniki Gdańskiej

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Analytical progress on emerging pollutants in the environment: An overview of the topics

This overview discusses the ideas behind a collection of articles by invited authors on a diverse range of complex chemical mixtures and analytical methods which represent some of the most relevant and interesting issues on emerging contaminants of environmental health concerns. These chemicals, including those in high volume production, are released on an ongoing basis as a result of various human activities. Moreover, these emerging contaminants are highly toxic to humans and ubiquitous in the environment. The terms “environmental pollution" and “food web contaminant" became widely known from the first decades of the XX century and as a historical background, they have an early link to the agricultural use of mercury fungicides and DDT. Surprisingly for chemists and society, the 1960s saw the emergence of the global problem of environmental and food contamination with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The environmental science paradigm has lost none of its importance in the meantime, although it has evolved to encompass a vast number of environmentally hazardous chemicals, many of which are termed as “emerging". To put it simply, air-water-soil/sediment are the first compartments affected and become reservoirs or sinks for environmental pollutants, the next is the food web, topped by the top animal predators and humans. Understanding the occurrence, environmental fate and biotoxicity of emerging contaminants is of interest to many areas of science.

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