Occurrence, toxicity impacts and mitigation of emerging micropollutants in the aquatic environments: Recent tendencies and perspectives

Rampant industrial development, urbanization, and the exponential increase in population growth resulted in an alarming number of emerging micropollutants. These micropollutants have a major toxic effect on human health and aquatic entities and constitute a formidable challenge for the researcher and scientific community. Various physicochemical and biological methods have been implemented to minimize their effects on the environment. These approaches, such as nanofiltration, advanced oxidation processes, reverse osmosis, activated carbon adsorption, and membrane bioreactors, can achieve high performance to remediate micropollutants from the environmental matrices. The physicochemical characteristics of micropollutants and treatment conditions have a remarkable influence on their removal from contaminated environments. Microbial metabolism is significant for mineralization of the toxic pollutants into environmentally accepted forms and thus can be employed for developing eco-friendly, cost-effective methods and sustainable technologies for emerging micropollutant removalThe occurrence in the aquatic environment, fate, and adverse impacts of micropollutants are thoroughly vetted in this review. This review also provides an insight into recent technologies developed for mitigating an array of refractory micropollutants of serious concern from the environmental matrices.

Automated summary

Rampant industrial development, urbanization, and population growth have led to a large number of emerging micropollutants, which pose significant toxic effects on human health and aquatic entities and present a major challenge for the scientific community. Various physicochemical and biological methods have been implemented to mitigate their impact on the environment, with microbial metabolism playing a crucial role in transforming toxic pollutants into environmentally acceptable forms.