Preceding this study, a global meta-analysis of pharmaceuticals in 91 estuaries in 6 continents established a disturbing link between pharmaceutical pollution and socioeconomic factors. Our findings advocated for a passive sampler as a paradigm-shifting tool, enabling standardized, global monitoring to inform regulatory actions and mitigate ecological risks. Monitoring contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) is hindered by high costs, matrix effects, high technical know-how requirement, global application limitations, and their low environmental concentrations in the environment. Confronting the analytical challenge of monitoring contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), this study developed and field-validated a novel, cost-effective, simple to use passive sampler, the novel "smart sponge.
This sampler effectively sampled a wide spectrum of pharmaceuticals (19) and pesticides (26), demonstrating robustness across varying environmental conditions, with minimal performance interference from variable pH, salinity, and temperature. Deployed in Hong Kong estuaries, it provided time-weighted average concentrations that reasonably aligned with grab sampling while offering integrated exposure and revealing pollution hotspots. This work paves the way for a standardized, global monitoring of CECs, which is very crucial for accurate environmental risk assessment.
Preceding this study, a global meta-analysis of pharmaceuticals in 91 estuaries in 6 continents established a disturbing link between pharmaceutical pollution and socioeconomic factors. Our findings advocated for a passive sampler as a paradigm-shifting tool, enabling standardized, global monitoring to inform regulatory actions and mitigate ecological risks. Monitoring contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) is hindered by high costs, matrix effects, high technical know-how requirement, global application limitations, and their low environmental concentrations in the environment. Confronting the analytical challenge of monitoring contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), this study developed and field-validated a novel, cost-effective, simple to use passive sampler, the novel "smart sponge".
This sampler effectively sampled a wide spectrum of pharmaceuticals (19) and pesticides (26), demonstrating robustness across varying environmental conditions, with minimal performance interference from variable pH, salinity, and temperature. Deployed in Hong Kong estuaries, it provided time-weighted average concentrations that reasonably aligned with grab sampling while offering integrated exposure and revealing pollution hotspots. This work paves the way for a standardized, global monitoring of CECs, which is very crucial for accurate environmental risk assessment.
 

Contaminants of emerging concern, passive sampling, pollution monitoring, pharmaceuticals, pesticides