New insights for early warning and countermeasures to aquatic pollution

In the last few decades, challenges of the aquatic environment have been dramatically changed in terms of magnitude of disturbances or types of hazards, along with the rise of new scientific and technological opportunities. In addition to the traditional (legacy) chemicals like metals or organic chemicals (including PAHs, PCBs and dioxins), emerging pollutants such as endocrine disruptors (EDCs), pharmaceuticals and microplastics are examples of worrying stressors for health of aquatic organisms and ecosystems. These compounds, introduced by different environmental sources and having a wide distribution, are absorbed by several species causing potential deleterious effects. The challenges of such pollutants will be discussed focusing on (i) new detection strategies, (ii) mode of action, (iii) ecological risk assessment and (iv) implementation of mitigation actions, to reduce the contaminant impact in terms of health care costs and maintenance of biodiversity. Sustainable and ecologically compatible methods and strategies for the reclamation of aquatic sediments contaminated with organic pollutants and toxic metals will also be described. Such knowledge will foster the reduction of use or release of many hazardous substances, together with providing insights on the early warning detection of chemical harmful agents within an environmental monitoring and security application program. Based on this knowledge, in this review we attempted to describe the approaches that are taken by research groups with different backgrounds operating at Università Politecnica delle Marche.