New challenges in environmental analytical chemistry: Identification of toxic compounds in complex mixtures

Toxic effects evidenced in the environment are most often caused by mixtures of known and unknown pollutants. One of the key challenges in environmental chemistry and ecotoxicology is to characterize and identify those toxicants in relation with the effect. However, many of the current bottlenecks in the assessment of organic contaminants in our environment are related to the difficulty of evaluating various chemical classes and biological effects within complex mixtures and more precisely to link both approaches. To tackle these analytical challenges, the bioanalytical concept has emerged during the last decade. In this article, we describe through some outstanding examples the current limitations in the chemical-driven approach such as problems encountered for a correct evaluation of water quality when the continuous introduction of new chemicals has to be taken into account in monitoring for correct evaluation of this quality and could led to tremendous analytical costs or some of the integrated bioanalytical approaches as promising powerful tools to improve environmental risk assessment by taking into account the link presence/effect. (C) 2011 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.