Emerging Contaminants of Environmental Concern: Source, Transport, Fate, and Treatment

Abstract

Emerging contaminants (ECs) have been wildly distributed in the environment and attracted increasing attention over the past decades. In this paper, the contaminants including pharmaceuticals and personal care products, surfactants, and their degradation products, plasticizers, pesticides, and fire retardants are comprehensively reviewed. Their main categories, properties, followed by their occurrences and behavior (fate and transport) in natural and engineered systems are discussed. The fate of the nanomaterial in different environmental compartments as well as their effects on human health and other fauna are also presented in this paper. Furthermore, the emerging molecular biology techniques to enumerate microbes capable of degrading ECs are introduced. The study has clearly showed the presence of complex mixtures of ECs, having various origins, and raised concern about their potential interactive effects in the environment.