Emerging Pollutants 2: Chemical CECs and the Regulation Gap

Chemicals dominate modern life. They’re in the air we breathe, the food we eat, the products we use daily, and the rivers and soils that sustain us. Many are harmless or even helpful, but some present risks. For regulators, it’s a daunting task to figure out which of the millions of compounds that swirl around us are potentially harmful. In this series of articles, 3E will help you navigate emergent pollutants to examine which substances are likely to attract regulatory attention in the future.

Chemical contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are an increasingly urgent concern for regulators, scientists, and industry alike. Unlike biological CECs, such as antibiotic-resistance genes, or physical CECs, such as microplastics, chemical CECs are synthetic compounds at the molecular scale. They include pesticides, solvents, liquid crystal monomers, and many other substances that were not traditionally part of environmental monitoring but are now being detected in soil, water, and even human blood.

This is the second article in 3E’s CEC series, and it looks specifically at chemical CECs: it discusses how scientists are tracking chemical CECs, the body of evidence behind their potential dangers, and the efforts of regulators and public health bodies to address the issue.

“Everything you put into your body, everything you clean your kitchen with, everything you spray on your pet — it all leaves a fingerprint,” analytical chemist Leon Barron, who leads the Emerging Chemical Contaminants team at Imperial College London, told 3E. “We live on a chemical planet. And yet, for most of the compounds we’re exposed to every day, we just don’t know what they’re doing to us or to wildlife.”