Special Issue "Wastewater-Based Epidemiology Biomarkers: Analysis, Occurrence and Fate in Wastewater"

A special issue of Toxics (ISSN 2305-6304). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Chemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 November 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Nikolaos I. Rousis
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1) Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Panepistimiopolis Zografou, 15771 Athens, Greece;
2) Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences (QAEHS), The University of Queensland, 20 Cornwall Street, Woolloongabba, QLD 4102, Australia
Interests: wastewater-based epidemiology; analytical chemistry; environmental chemistry; (high-resolution) mass spectrometry; emerging contaminants; human exposure; risk assessment
Prof. Dr. Nikolaos S. Thomaidis
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Athens, Panepistimiopolis Zografou, 157 71 Athens, Greece
Interests: emerging contaminants; (bio)transformation products; fate; ecotoxicology; analytical methods
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has developed into an innovative approach able to provide epidemiological and socio-economic information about lifestyle habits, substance use, exposure to toxicants present in the environment and food, as well as public health and wellbeing. WBE is based on the chemical analysis of specific human urinary excretion products (biomarkers) in untreated wastewater as indicators of consumption, providing crucial data on the activity of the population served by the specific wastewater treatment plant. Initially, WBE was applied to evaluate spatial and temporal illicit drug use trends across Europe, and then it was further expanded worldwide. WBE was also used to obtain evidence on other biomarkers such as tobacco, caffeine, pesticides, plasticizers, pharmaceuticals, and endogenous compounds. This well-established approach offers the possibility to collect near-real-time, cost-effective, and continuous data in contrast to other methodologies such as conventional population surveys and human biomonitoring studies. It can provide crucial information about public health that can be of interest for policy-making and national and international organizations and committees. In the future, WBE could serve as an “early warning system” to help the authorities to prevent the spread of epidemics and make effective interventions on use of illicit substances.

Dr. Nikolaos I. Rousis
Prof. Dr. Nikolaos S. Thomaidis
Guest Editor

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 papers will be 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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. Toxics is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1600 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.

Keywords

  • (illicit) drugs
  • new psychoactive substances
  • exposure biomarkers
  • population biomarkers
  • transformation products
  • sampling
  • stability experiments
  • monitoring
  • high-resolution mass spectrometry
  • site- and event-specific studies

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission, see below for planned papers.

Planned Papers

The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.

High resolution mass spectrometry non-target screening of new wastewater-based epidemiology biomarkers of exposure

Assessment of the health status of a community is of high importance to prevent, control and decrease potential risks and several approaches are used for this purpose. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has been used as a valuable tool on monitoring mainly the illicit drug consumption in communities. Other applications have underlined its strength to deliver crucial data on human exposure to various chemical classes, such as pesticides, phthalates and mycotoxins. However, all these applications are limited to a few target compounds of a specific class and others that are presented at higher levels are ignored. This study proposes a novel methodology based on the use of high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) and WBE for the identification of new exposure biomarkers. All the steps (sampling, sample pretreatment, instrumental analysis, data processing, WBE and risk assessment) of the proposed methodology are discussed, suggesting new features. The implementation of this approach will identify the mostly diffused and harmful compounds not yet controlled and monitored and will provide information useful to adopt decisions for putting them under control. The combination of HRMS with the innovative WBE approach will give the capability to provide valuable information for public health.

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