Current and emerging techniques for the detection of environmental contaminants

The burden to public health of diseases and deaths linked to environmental contamination is evolving as a worldwide challenge. Industries and natural and artificial human activities are the key contributors to generating ecological contaminants in wastewater, microplastics, pathogenic contaminants, electronic waste (e-waste), etc. These contaminants contain a plethora of hazardous organic groups, synthetic chemicals, heavy metals, and so on. Their generation has raised a serious concern in recent years because of their potential threats and continuous output. Often, the level of exposure to these contaminants is unknown and the lack of monitoring makes it difficult to select further treatment methods. The cumulative exposure and long latency period of these materials create hurdles in separating the contaminants from the environment. The existing methods to determine the contaminants quantitatively are sophisticated and bulky. Hence, researchers are developing new generations of sensors for the analytical estimation of these contaminants. This chapter presents a holistic picture of environmental contaminants, their current existing detection methods, and new developing methods. Further, we discuss the integration of these sensing mechanisms with futuristic technologies for better monitoring.