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From invisible pollutants to visible impacts: Green solutions for contaminants of emerging concern
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Everyday pollutants like microplastics, drug residues, and pesticides are building up in our water and food chains, potentially disrupting hormones and harming health. This review summarizes existing research on "green" cleanup methods, like using plants and microbes, that remove these contaminants more affordably and sustainably than traditional treatments. Combining these approaches shows the most promise, though making them work at large scale remains a challenge.
Brief Introduction: Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs), such as nanoparticles, personal care products (PCPs), microplastics, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides, pose significant risks to ecosystems and human health. Driven by population growth, urbanization, and intensive agriculture, these pollutants enter the environment through wastewater runoff and waste disposal, causing bioaccumulation, synergistic toxicity, biodiversity loss, and endocrine disruption. Conventional remediation methods are often neither cost-effective nor effective. Aim and Objective: This review aims to cover the sources, transport, and toxicological profiles of major CECs while discussing sustainable green remediation strategies. It assesses bioremediation, phytoremediation, green adsorption, advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), and membrane technologies, together with their mechanisms, applications, barriers, and policy challenges. Key and Most Important Results: Green remediation techniques show high removal efficiencies with lower environmental footprints than traditional approaches. Bioremediation and phytoremediation stand out for their cost-effectiveness and ecosystem restoration, while AOPs and membranes achieve high removal rates for recalcitrant compounds. Hybrid systems are especially effective, though scalability, energy use, and mixture toxicity remain key limitations. Conclusion and Contribution to Knowledge: Sustainable green approaches, supported by policy reforms and interdisciplinary collaboration, are essential for effective CEC management. This review contributes by combining CEC science with practical remediation pathways to address the need for advanced detection and life-cycle solutions that protect ecosystems and ensure water security.
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Everyday pollutants like pesticide residue, pharmaceutical waste, and microplastics build up in our environment—and eventually our bodies—because current cleanup methods can't fully break them down. This review pulls together recent research showing how scientists are combining genetic analysis tools with specially engineered microbes, fungi, and algae to detect and destroy these contaminants more precisely and efficiently. While these technologies are still developing, they point toward more effective ways to clean up the pollutants we're regularly exposed to through water, food, and air.
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When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.