Analysis and Fate of Contaminants of Emerging Concern

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The research in my group is currently focused on the analysis and environmental fate on contaminants of emerging concern. Contaminants of emerging concern include both truly new contaminants for which little published scientific data are available (e.g., many pharmaceutical products, perfluorinated surfactants, plasticizers), along with legacy contaminants which are regaining “popularity” because of newly discovered issues and potential effects and problems (e.g., Pb and Mn in drinking water, As in rice). In most of these situations, the research work in my group is divided into the development of the appropriate analytical chemistry/sample preparation methods, environmental applications to real-world samples, and the studies of the fate and potential effects of those compounds in the environment. The work aims to be multidisciplinary to account for an excellent analytical chemistry development, combined with the ruggedness to cope real world sample and the risk analysis required to properly interpret the meaning of such results (analytical tools have attained such performances that detecting the presence of a contaminant is not enough to conclude about the potential risks that it may represent). We then follow with environmental fate of such contaminants across a variety of media (soil, water, sediments, air). We currently work, with most groups of pharmaceuticals drugs – including some more challenging compounds to measure such as chemotherapy agents, cyanotoxins, perfluorinated firefighting compounds (both “older” recently-banned compounds but including the alternatives which are now being sold), plasticizers, illicit drugs and steroid hormones. I remain on the watch for the next contaminants to gain emerging status but I have moved from a focus in water to better focus on analytical development to better cope which recalcitrant matrices. Trace mass spectrometry work is limited by its capacity to deal with dirty matrices and much of our recent work has focused on obtaining good analytical performances for tougher matrices such as perfluorinated compounds in sediments, cyanotoxins in fish tissue or antibiotics in manure. The final step to understanding of the fate and effects of both types of emerging contaminants is to properly evaluate the potential risks arising from their presence once they are released into the environment. This has been a sensitive issue and we try to carefully discern what portion of this is a true concern based on the scientific evidence and what is just useless scare.