Challenges and Trends in the Analysis of Compounds of Emerging Concern

Dear Colleagues,                

Regarding environmental contamination, focus has been giving to the so-called compounds of emerging concern (CECs). However, the prioritization of the investigated compounds requires a careful assessment of their occurrence and environmental persistence, potential ecological and health effects, and the appropriate level at which they should measuring. It is also necessary to understand the processes that control the contaminating sources of CECs, as well as their transport, behaviour, and fate in the environment, which has increased the need to study their environmental occurrence down to trace levels, with appropriate precision and accuracy. Therefore, it is mandatory to develop methods to improve our ability to measure CECs and their degradation by-products in several matrixes—both environmental and biological.

The technological development associated with the continuous improvement in equipment and analytical resources is a fundamental tool for monitoring these target compounds, and the quality of the obtained data is also an important issue, which supports the legislation or regulations regarding the use and release of these compounds into the environment. Because of the complexity of the environmental and biological matrices, the quantification of CECs requires advanced sample preparation technologies coupled with advanced hyphenate instrumentation. In this group, chromatographic techniques coupled with mass spectrometry are the ones most often used to quantify CECs.

This Special Issue is focused on trends and novel approaches in the separation and quantification methods for CEC monitorization. The discussion of the main advantages and disadvantages of different methodologies and the presentation of the full-validated methods for the monitorization of target compounds will be well come.

Prof. Dr. Cristina Almeida
Guest Editor

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