Contaminants of Emerging Concern in the Environment: Ecological and Human Health Considerations

Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) pose new and grave challenges to public health and the health of the ecosystem on which we depend for safe water, air, soil, and food. On the horizon looms a perfect storm. The production of new chemicals stretches and often exceeds the capacity of current safety monitoring and risk assessment technologies. Population growth and expectations for improved living standards puts more demand on finite resources. As documented by U.S. Geological Survey studies of the past decade, surface, ground, and drinking waters are already significantly contaminated. The authors of this volume document the current science of CECs with important new data on the risks associated with a broad range of persistent organic pollutants. These include pharmaceutical and personal care products, natural and synthetic hormones, agricultural pesticides, perfluorinated compounds, and other organohalogens. The volume is organized in three sections: 1) environmental sources, occurrences, and fates of CECs; 2) ecotoxicological and human health risks of CECs; and 3) modeling tools, research needs and policy options for managing CECs. This organization provides a very useful terrain map of the field that will guide scientists and policy makers as they grapple with the serious problems described in each of the chapters. Recent advances in genomics and epigenomics underscore the extraordinary sensitivity of cellular structures and metabolic pathways to modification by CECs at concentrations once thought to be safe. The very qualities of stability and persistence that are desirable from a pharmacokinetic perspective, whether in drugs for human or veterinary medicine or pesticides and herbicides for agricultural use, now must be viewed as potential threats to the health of the ecosystem. The authors of this volume alert readers to issues revealed by the application of new methods of measurement. How successful we are in coping with these issues has profound implications for the health of the public.