We can't find the internet
Attempting to reconnect
Something went wrong!
Hang in there while we get back on track
From Scientific Evidence to Regulatory Action: Emerging Contaminants and Adaptive Water Governance in Brazil
AI summary Read the abstract
This review summarizes existing research on drug residues, hormones, PFAS, antibiotic-resistance genes, and microplastics found in Brazilian waters, comparing this evidence to current regulations. It finds that Brazilian rules only partly address these contaminants, unlike the European Union, and proposes a new monitoring and review system for Brazil.
Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), including pharmaceuticals, synthetic hormones, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), bisphenol A, antibiotic-resistance determinants, and microplastics, are increasingly reported in Brazilian aquatic environments, yet the federal water-quality instruments examined here address them only in part. This review maps a structured, traceable body of evidence on CEC occurrence in Brazilian waters and examines how far that evidence has been translated into monitoring, standards, and treatment requirements. The search covered Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar, and was complemented by official regulatory and institutional sources and by an exploratory Bibliometrix/Biblioshiny analysis of a broader Web of Science corpus. Evidence was prioritised according to thematic relevance, traceability, environmental occurrence, relevance to antimicrobial resistance, applied treatment performance, and regulatory significance. Pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, endocrine-active compounds, PFAS, antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs), and microplastics have been documented in specific Brazilian surface waters, source waters, estuaries, coastal environments, and some drinking-water matrices. For some compounds, site-specific concentrations overlap with or exceed effect-based or resistance-selection benchmarks; for others, the more defensible conclusion is recurrent occurrence with no corresponding Brazilian requirement for routine monitoring. The EU, by contrast, has progressively connected watch lists, periodic review, drinking-water standards, antimicrobial-resistance surveillance, and quaternary wastewater-treatment requirements. This mismatch is described here as a science-to-regulation translation gap, and it frames a five-axis adaptive regulatory proposal for Brazil centred on a dynamic national watch list, periodic review, risk-based prioritisation, coastal and estuarine monitoring, and One Health integration for ARG-related hazards.
More Papers Like This
Science-Based Policy Recommendations for Managing Emerging Pollutants: Protecting Water Quality for the Health of People and the Environment
AI summary Read the abstract
This review provided science-based policy recommendations for managing emerging water pollutants, with particular focus on microplastics, PFAS, and pharmaceuticals—identifying the regulatory gap between scientific evidence and current water quality frameworks and calling for harmonized international standards to protect human and ecosystem health.
Environmental Policy and Governance of Emerging Contaminants in Drinking Water: A Comparative Analysis of Global Regulations and Remediation Strategies
AI summary Read the abstract
This review compares how different countries and international bodies regulate emerging contaminants in drinking water, including microplastics, pharmaceuticals, and endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Researchers found significant gaps and inconsistencies between regulatory frameworks, with many countries lacking specific standards for these newer pollutants. The study calls for more harmonized global policies and investments in advanced water treatment technologies to address these growing threats to drinking water safety.
Global Regulations on Emerging Contaminants
AI summary Read the abstract
This review surveys global regulations on emerging contaminants in water and soils, finding that international and national frameworks are beginning to address microplastics, PFAS, and pharmaceuticals but that regulatory coverage remains incomplete and enforcement inconsistent across jurisdictions.
Emerging Contaminants in Wastewater: Mitigation Approaches for Environmental Management and Future Sustainability
AI summary Read the abstract
Researchers synthesized five years of literature on emerging contaminants including microplastics, PFAS, and pharmaceuticals in wastewater, cataloguing detection advances from high-resolution mass spectrometry to AI-assisted sensors, and mapping regulatory gaps that leave most of these compounds unmonitored and untreated at global scale.
A Review of Global Occurrence of Emerging Pollutants in Wastewater: Present Status, Source/Pathway, Extraction and Detection Techniques
AI summary Read the abstract
This review surveyed global occurrence data for emerging pollutants — including microplastics, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and PFAS — in wastewater from 1998 to 2021, examining detection methods and contamination levels. The review highlights that many of these compounds are inadequately regulated and poorly removed by conventional wastewater treatment, allowing them to persist in water systems.
Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.