How to overcome environmental challenges with analytical chemistry?

 

Environmental chemistry is concerned with the consequences of chemical substances found in nature (air, water, soil, food chains and organisms).

Analyticalchemistry is concerned with the development of analytical methods for solving problems in environmental chemistry, such as environmental monitoring, water quality research, and effluent pollutants.

Human invention, particularly in the field of analytical chemistry, can also help to solve environmental problems, saving both the environment and populations from harmful health implications.

This year's Pittcon will focus on the use of analytical chemistry to environmental and human health issues. Pittcon will address the underlying scientific principles of climate change that affect everyone every day, especially during a global pandemic where health is at the forefront of research efforts and media attention, with a diverse group of researchers, health policy experts, and industry professionals.

Characterizing and identifying toxicants that cause environmental consequences is one of the most difficult tasks in environmental chemistry and ecotoxicology. Many of the present obstacles in the assessment of organic pollutants in our environment, on the other hand, are related to the difficulties of evaluating various chemical classes and biological impacts within complicated mixtures. Because a large variety of compounds, both "old" and "new" contaminants, as well as their transition products, can occur in the environment, traditional chemical-analytical approaches are frequently unable to meet this issue. Without prior knowledge of the toxicants contained in a sample, identifying them only by chemical analysis is either prohibitively expensive or becomes a guessing game.

The bioanalytical notion arose in the last decade to address these analytical issues. EDA, or the sequential combining of toxic syndrome-related bioassays, fractionation methods, and chemical analysis, is the most promising way to solve this problem.
In ecotoxicological investigations and environmental risk assessment, TIE and EDA techniques aimed at pinpointing the toxicant accountable for observed effects have recently attracted considerable interest.

Furthermore, combining such integrated bio analytical approaches with passive sampling instead of traditional spot water sampling could aid in improving environmental risk assessment; these integrative passive devices' ability to concentrate bioavailable sediment and waterborne pollutants (and thus account for pollutants undetectable by conventional methods) allows for increased environmental risk assessment. Prioritization of emerging substances, the inclusion of transformation products and chemical mixtures in environmental risk assessments, the long-term presence of xenobiotics bound to soils and sediments, and an understanding of the ecological relevance of Eco toxicological end points are all issues that need to be addressed.