Integrated Targeted and Non-targeted Omics Platforms for the Analysis of the Environmental Exposome

Dear Colleagues,

The synthesis of new and diverse chemicals of industrial interest (e.g., pesticides, fabric and plastic additives, pharmaceuticals) has significantly increased across the past decades. Anthropic activities promote their release into the environment, exposing living organisms (including humans) to a “cocktail” of known and unknown (e.g., transformation products) chemicals, with no evidence regarding their environmental and health impacts. For this reason, also at the regulatory level (e.g., EU Directive 2020/2184 and decision 2022/1307), there is an urgent demand for the extending of the qualitative and quantitative monitoring of these substances, also known as chemicals of environmental concerns (CECs), in sources where direct exposure to humans can occur (e.g., drinking water).

To this extent, external environmental exposomics aim at comprehensively characterizing the mixture of CECs occurring in environmental matrices and acting as sources of exposure to individuals.    

Chromatographic techniques (i.e., LC and GC) in combination with high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) have the potential to characterize and quantify CECs in exposure matrices, through the optimization and development of non-targeted (NTAs) and targeted (i.e., tandem mass spectrometry, MS/MS) analysis workflows. Even though relevant progress has been made in the development of exposome research approaches, the massive challenges in wet and dry laboratories (e.g., expensive equipment, analytical expertise, demanding data management) limit their applications, as well as the exploration of the chemistry space of the environmental exposome.

This Special Issue aims to collect innovative research which (i) develop novel HRMS-based LC or GC platforms and (ii) untangle external exposome complexities through integrated wet/dry lab targeted and NTA approaches. The presented results will contribute to increasing the knowledge concerning the latest analytical methodologies and their effectiveness in detecting CEC exposomes.

Dr. Lapo Renai
Dr. Massimo Del Bubba
Guest Editors

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