Toxicological Endpoints and Bioavailability of Emerging Contaminants and their Impacts on Marine Nutrient Cycles

Due to population increase and economic development, wide use and incomplete elimination, emerging contaminants (ECs) have been frequently detected in many marine environments. The impacts of climate change and water resource development on the biochemical cycles of ECs and pollutants, in general, have attracted great attention. Although the concentrations of ECs are often found at low levels, they pose threat to marine organisms. Information about the ecological risks of ECs and the combined impacts of environmental factors (such as climate change and hydrological processes) are still largely unknown. There is also limited information available on the transportation and transformation of ECs and their impacts on nutrient cycles. Particularly, accurate Toxicological/Hydrology/Hydraulics and water quality models need to be further developed to evaluate the fate of ECs in marine ecosystems. Their underlying molecular mechanism is also largely unknown, including inflammation, cellular dysfunction and neurological damage could better assess human risk. Given that the ECs in marine waters also threaten human health, special attention should be paid to such aspects.

In this Research topic, we would like to clarify the risk situation of ECs in the complex marine environment and explore the driving forces of environmental factors on ecotoxicological processes. Combined with high-resolution mass spectrometry, biochemical analysis, hydrodynamic water quality model we target sensitive biomarkers and accurately the impacts of environmental factors on ecological and health risks of ECs. To date, the team has been committed to the development of ecological risk assessment and toxicological endpoints evaluation of ECs and numerical modelling approaches.

We invite research and review papers on, but not limited to, the following research areas:

• Toxicological endpoints of ECs on marine organisms at the behavioral, metabolic, and translational levels;
• Inflammation, cellular dysfunction and toxicological models of ECs and their molecular mechanism;
• Bioavailability of particle-associated ECs under the influence of environmental factors (such as climate change and hydrodynamic processes);
• Impacts of ECs transportation and transformation on nutrient cycles and their mechanisms;
• Hydrology/Hydraulics and water quality model exploration of ECs in the complex marine environment;