Transformation Products of Emerging Pollutants in the aquatic environment

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

  Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton 

STATE OF THE ART

In a prophetic review in 2004, Daughton stressed the need for a drastic change of view of the current environmental analysis that focuses on known chemical stressors, paraphrasing Einstein’s view: ‘‘Not everything that can be measured is worth measuring, and not everything worth measuring is measurable’’ (2004). It is true that the so-called priority pollutants that are regulated under EU legislation represent a very small fraction of the universe of chemicals that occur in the environment as a result of human activities. As the power of analytical chemistry increases, the types of chemicals detected increase, and the detection limits are continually lowered. The term “emerging pollutants” (EP) refers to compounds that are not currently covered by existing water-quality regulations, have not been studied before and are thought to be potential threats to the environment. They encompass a diverse group of compounds, including pharmaceuticals, drugs of abuse, EDCs, many industrial chemicals, and many more, as well as their transformation products (TPs).

 Dr Nikolaos S. Thomaidis, Associate Professor

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Department of Chemistry