New Analytical Methods for Environmental Contaminants and Their Metabolites

Dear Colleagues,

The widespread use of synthetic chemicals in industrial applications causes environmental contamination and constant public exposure to chemicals from various sources through inhalation, ingestion and dermal contact. The monitoring and biomonitoring of parent compounds/contaminants and their metabolites/transformation products in the environment and human samples are the approaches used to assess environmental contamination and human exposure to these chemicals. However, every year, hundreds of new chemicals, including the transformation products of legacy contaminants, appear in the environment, raising concerns of both environmental and human exposure. Additionally, the metabolism in human results in hundreds of metabolites, which increases challenges in monitoring. All these highlight new analytical methods to monitor these environmental contaminants in the environment and humans for the assessment of contamination and exposure. While new targeted analytical methods are needed to provide high sensitivity and quantitative information for risk assessment in both environmental contamination and human exposure, only a very small portion of the chemicals in the environment and humans can be targeted. Therefore, the need to detect and elucidate the structures of these chemicals for exposure assessment has led to the emergence of non-targeted analytical methods for the rapid screening and identification of new and unknown contaminants and metabolites. In addition to the development of new methods in non-targeted analysis to explore more contaminants and metabolites in the environment and humans, new quantitative, non-targeted analysis methods, without the use of authentic standards, are also urgently needed to provide the ability to both explore and provide quantitative information on environmental contaminants and their metabolites/transformation products in the environment and humans.

Dr. Yong-Lai Feng
Prof. Edward Lai
Guest Editors

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