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

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Molecules is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 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.