Dear Colleagues,

Over the last few decades, the uncontrolled development of human activities has drastically increased the pollution of the air, water and soil. Numerous contaminants present in the environment are still unregulated and have been referred to as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Over the last few decades, the term CECs has been increasingly used, incorporating not only new synthetic or natural compounds or microorganisms, but also other contaminants recently detected in the environment due to the development of new detection methods. CECs are diverse in terms of origin and chemical nature, encompassing a wide range of man-made chemicals/materials, such as pesticides, cosmetics, personal and household care products, pharmaceuticals, flame-retardant compounds, surfactants, plasticizers and industrial additives as well as nanoparticles and micro/nanoplastics. For many of these compounds, it is still unknown if they pose an ecological risk or present potential adverse health effects. However, they may be candidates for future regulation depending on the research conducted on their occurrence, impact on the environment and possible harmful effects on health.

This Special Issue of Applied Sciences invites the submission of original research, case studies or up-to-date review papers focusing on the (eco)toxicity mechanisms and environmental behavior of CECs and the remediation methods that can be used to address them. The aggregation of these papers will allow the knowledge on this topic to be increased and clarified, enabling better control and regulation of the release of CECs into the environment. In particular, potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• CEC (eco)toxicity assessed at different levels of biological organization. In vitro and human exposure studies are very welcome.
• CEC (eco)toxicity after long-term exposure with special attention to multigenerational and/or transgenerational effects.
• Advances in characterization and understanding of the environmental behavior of CECs.
• Challenges in the biomonitoring of CECs, ecological risks and bioremediation.
• Development of new methodologies for the remediation of CECs.
• Regulation of CECs and policies for CECs.
• New analytical methods to assess environmental samples, allowing the detection and quantification of CECs.

Dr. Ângela Barreto
Dr. Vera Lúcia Maria
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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. Applied Sciences 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 2400 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.

• emerging contaminants
• (eco)toxicological impact
• environmental fate
• mechanisms of (eco)toxicity
• risk assessment
• regulators
• remediation