Skip to main content
NCBI home page
Elsevier - PMC COVID-19 Collection logoLink to Elsevier - PMC COVID-19 Collection
editorial
. 2022 Aug 18;440:129768. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129768

Post-Global Pandemic Challenges and improvements in advanced detection and removal processes of toxic pollutants: Editorial

Jose Luis Capelo-Martínez a,b, Carlos Lodeiro a,b,⁎, Irene Man Chi Lo c, Joanna Burger d
PMCID: PMC9385602  PMID: 36027754

Abstract

Every two years, the Pollutant Toxic Ions and Molecules Conference, PTIM, meets the environmentalist, biologist, chemists and health researchers in Costa de Caparica, Portugal, to showcase the latest technologies, methodologies and research advances in pollution detection, contamination control, remediation, and related health issues, as well as policy implications.

Keywords: Advanced detection and removal processes, Conference, Environmental control, Pollutant toxic Ions and Molecules, Post global Pandemic Challenges, Remediation

Graphical Abstract

ga1

Open in a new tab

We are living on a Green Planet with multiple equilibria. Modifications on any of them drastically affect the entire globe. Humanity is confronted with a hazardous health situation induced by a virus, the SARS-CoV-2. This RNA nanocage is devastating to human lives on the five continents. The world was forced to stop for months, producing healthy benefits such as cleaner air, reduced gas emissions (e.g. CO2), and a break for wildlife in our lands, rivers, and oceans. These Effects brought us astounding images of a more prosperous planet. Many questions have already risen during and will further arise after this pandemic time.

Are these effects maintained for an extended period? How long have we to improve new methodologies for detection, quantification and recovery from the new pollutants? How will we develop the necessary control over our water, food, land, and air? Untreated wastewaters and solid residues from industries, hospitals, and households still result in the discharge of toxic pollutants to the environment and can affect our health. Eating wildlife animal products increases the risk of chaos and new diseases and zoonoses. We need to rethink and improve the oldest methodologies based on advanced oxidation processes, heterogeneous photocatalysis, application of nanomaterials, and new cost-effective and stable methods to provide safety again to our lives and the environment.

The main idea to organize this special issue entitled “Post-Global Pandemic Challenges and Improvements in Advanced Detection and Removal Processes of Toxic Pollutants” started during the last PTIM Edition in 2021, held from 1st to 4th November 2021. This conference was a continuation of the successful previous editions from 2015 in Costa de Caparica.

We decided during the last editions that all efforts should be aimed at developing new recovery and clean processes to restore the natural equilibria on our planet. Soil, Land, Water and Air are essential pieces to effectively control of our world.

This Special issue shows studies related to copper (Belbachir et al., 2022, Stala et al., 2022), mercury (Windisch et al., 2022), arsenic ( Jacukowicz-Sobala et al., 2022; Zaric et al., 2022; Carneiro et al., 2022), selenium (Parra-Martínez et al., 2022; Arias Borrego et al., 2022), and other heavy and radioactive metals (Irfan et al., 2022; Zeng et al., 2022; Germande et al., 2022; Krawczyk-Barsch et al., 2022) detection and speciation, organic matter and inorganic ions removal (Pidoux, . et al., 2022), quantitative analysis of metabolites (Wang et al., 2022), estrogens (Zdarta et al., 2022), uses and detection of nanomaterials (Kuo et al., 2022, Saravanakumar et al., 2022), nanoplastics (Arini et al., 2022), HCH derivatives (Alvarez et al., 2022), antibiotics (Zaheer Afzal et al., 2022), pesticides (Jevremovic et al., 2022), photodegradation processes (Kumar et al., 2022), cell internalization drugs (Ahmadi et al., 2022), dyes and pigments degradation (Jankowska et al., 2022), and bacteria studies (Arruda et al., 2022, Xiang et al., 2022) in a very long different group of samples, including fresh environmental water, seawater, wastewater, different soils, food, marine organism, bacteria, mice’s, etc. Solutions to the pressing problems facing humanity will involve not only technical data, experiments, and technologies, as well as changes in the attitudes of the public. It will require changes in public policy that must be backed up by sound science and solutions. PTIM is aimed at both providing technical data and technologies, as well as public policy to advance the goal of improving the environment round us.

The guest editors thank all outstanding contributions, including researchers from Austria, Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Slovenia, Spain, US and the UK for the 32 research paper included. We sincerely hope that this VSI may be helpful to researchers in the next generation in their different career stages to continue improving the human understanding of the intricate processes of monitoring the mobility, bioavailability, toxicity and degradation of various inorganic and organic contaminants.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

All authors have contributed with writing, reading and correction of the editorial.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability

No data was used for the research described in the article.

References

  1. Ahmadi S., Jajarmi V., Ashrafizadeh M., Zarrabi A., Haponiuk J.T., Saeb M.R., Lima E.C., Rabiee M., Rabiee N. Mission impossible for cellular internalization: when porphyrin alliance with UiO-66-NH2 MOF gives the cell lines a ride. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;436 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129259. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Alvarez A., Rodríguez-Garrido B., Cerdeira-Pérez A., Tomé-Pérez A., Kidd P., Prieto-Fernández A. Enhanced biodegradation of hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) isomers by Sphingobium sp. strain D4 in the presence of root exudates or in co-culture with HCH-mobilizing strains. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;433 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128764. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Arias Borrego A., Selma-Royo M., Collao M.C., Abril N., García-Barrera T. Impact of “chemical cocktails” exposure in shaping mice gut microbiota and the role of selenium supplementation combining metallomics, metabolomics, and metataxonomics. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129444. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Arini A., Venel Z., Tabueau H., Gigauld J., Baudrimont M. Early molecular responses of mangrove oysters to nanoplastics using a microfluidic device to mimic environmental exposure. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;436 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129283. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Arruda V., Simões M., Gomes I.B. The impact of synthetic musk compounds in biofilms from drinking water bacteria. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;436 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129185. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Belbachir I., López-López J.A., Herce-Sesa B., Moreno C. A liquid micro-extraction based one-step method for the chemical fractionation of copper in seawater. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;427 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128505. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Carneiro M.A., Pintor A.M.A., Boaventura R.A.R., Botelho C.M.S. Efficient removal of arsenic from aqueous solution by continuous adsorption onto iron-coated cork granulates. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;432 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128657. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Germande O., Gunkel-Grikllon P., Dominique Y., Feurtet-Mazal A., Bierque E., Dassie E., Daffe G., Pierron F., Baudrimont I., Baudrimont M. Impact of nickel mining in New Caledonia on marbled eels Anguilla marmorata. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;436 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129285. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Irfan M., Shafeeq A., Siddiq U., Bashir F., Ahmad T., Athar M., Tahir-Butt M., Ullah S., Mukhtar A., Hussein M., Shiung Lam S. A mechanistic approach for toxicity and risk assessment of heavy metals, hydroquinone and microorganisms in cosmetic creams. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;431 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128806. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Jacukowicz-Sobala I., Ciechanowska A., Kociolek-Balawejder E., Gibas A., Zakrzewski A. Photocatalytically-assisted oxidative adsorption of As(III) using sustainable multifunctional composite material – Cu2O doped anion exchanger. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;433 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128529. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Jankowska K., Su Z., Zdarta J., Jesionowski T., Pinelo M. Synergistic action of laccase treatment and membrane filtration during removal of azo dyes in an enzymatic membrane reactor upgraded with electrospun fibers. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;435 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129071. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  12. Jevremovic A., Stanojovic A., Arsenijevic D., Arsenijevic A., Arzumanyan G., Mamatkulov K., Petrovi J., Nedic-Vasilevic B., Bajuk-Bogdanovic D., Milojevic-Rakic M. Mitigating toxicity of acetamiprid removal techniques – Fe modified zeolites in focus. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;436 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129226. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  13. Krawczyk-Barsch E., Ramtke J., Drobot B., Muller K., Steudtner R., Kluge S., Hubner R., Raff J. Peptidoglycan as major binding motif for Uranium bioassociation on Magnetospirillum magneticum AMB-1 in contaminated waters. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;437 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129376. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  14. Kumar P., Verma S., Kaur R., Papac J., Kusic H., Lavrencic Stangar U. Enhanced photo-degradation of N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP): influence of matrix components, kinetic study and artificial neural network modelling. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;434 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128807. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  15. Kuo C.-S., Kuo D.T.F., Chang A., Wang K., Chou P.-H., Shih Y.H. Rapid debromination of tetrabromobisphenol A by Cu/Fe bimetallic nanoparticles in water, its mechanisms, and genotoxicity after treatments. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;432 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128630. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  16. Parra-Martínez C., Selma-Royo M., Callejón-Leblic B., Collado M.C., Abril N., García-Barrera T. Mice brain metabolomics after the exposure to a “chemical cocktail” and selenium supplementation through the gut-brain axis. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;438 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129443. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  17. Pidoux L., Shorney-Darby H., Vaudevire E., Martijn B., Carra I. Impact of resin loading on ion exchange equilibrium for removal of organic matter and inorganic ions. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;431 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128530. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  18. Saravanakumar K., SivaSantosh S., Sahiyaseelan A., Vishven Naveen K., AfaanAhamed M.A., Zhang X., Vishnu Priya V., Mubarak Ali D., Wang M.-H. Unraveling the hazardous impact of diverse contaminants in the marine environment: detection and remedial approach through nanomaterials and nano-biosensors. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;433 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128720. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  19. Stala L., Ulatowska J., Plowczyk I. Copper(II) ions removal from model galvanic wastewater by green one-pot synthesised amino-hypophosphite polyampholyte. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;436 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129047. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  20. Wang X., Zhao Y., Qi X., Zhao T., Wang X., Ma F., Zhang L., Zhang Q., Li P. Quantitative analysis of metabolites in the aflatoxin biosynthesis pathway for early warning of aflatoxin contamination by UHPLC-HRMS combined with QAMS. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;431 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128531. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  21. Windisch J., Plessl C., Zechmeister T., Jirsa F. Unexpected pathways of mercury in an alkaline, biologically productive, saline lake: a mesocosm approach. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;430 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.128163. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  22. Xiang Y., Li S., Rene E.R., Xiaoxiu L., Ma W. Enhancing fluoroglucocorticoid defluorination using defluorinated functional strain Acinetobacter. pittii C3 via humic acid-mediated biotransformation. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;436 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129284. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  23. Zaheer Afzal M., Zu P., Zhang C.-M., Guan J., Song C., Sun X.-F., Wang S.G. Sonocatalytic degradation of ciprofloxacin using hydrogel beads of TiO2 incorporated biochar and chitosan. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;434 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128879. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  24. Zaric N.M., Braeuer S., Goessler W. Arsenic speciation analysis in honey bees for environmental monitoring. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;432 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128614. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  25. Zdarta J., Jankowska K., Strybel U., Marczak L., Nguyen L.N., Oleskowicz-Popiel P., Jesionowski T. Bioremoval of estrogens by laccase immobilized onto polyacrylonitrile/polyethersulfone material: effect of inhibitors and mediators, process characterization and catalytic pathways determination. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;432 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128688. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  26. Zeng X., Zeng Z., Wang Q., Liang W., Guo Y., Huo X. Alterations of the gut microbiota and metabolomics in children with e-waste lead exposure. J. Hazard. Mater. 2022;434 doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.128842. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Data Availability Statement

No data was used for the research described in the article.

Articles from Journal of Hazardous Materials are provided here courtesy of Elsevier

RESOURCES