Special Issue Call

This Special Issue will bring together a collection of selected papers presented in the 38th International Conference on Environmental Geochemistry and Health, Athens Greece 2-6 July 2023. Encouragement of early career researcher contributions will be particularly welcome. The issue will focus on research trends of Environmental Geochemistry and Health in the post-pandemic, net-zero era. The issue will be structured around the four central themes of SEGH2023, namely: Emerging contaminants and human health in land, water and air; Innovative data collection methods for studying environmental change; Environmental geochemistry in the energy transition era, and Global databases for geochemistry and beyond. We will seek contributions advancing the understanding of interaction between emergent contaminants, the geoenvironment and human health, showcase novel data collection methods to solve complex environmental challenges and assess environmental change, examining aspects of the life cycling of critical elements with potential toxicity for the terrestrial and marine environments, as well as demonstrating examples of generating standardised data and machine-readable metadata and the utilization of such databases for answering geochemical and environmental questions.

Publication schedule

Manuscript submission ends : January 31, 2024

Incremental concern towards biowaste management and emerging micropollutants in developing and developed countries necessitates the global efforts that are required for their minimization or to eliminate the adverse impact on living beings. In order to develop a management plan for bio-waste and admixed micropollutants effectively, waste characterization (degradable and non-degradable; hazardous and non-hazardous; solids, liquid and gases; etc.) is given prime importance. Knowing whether the wastes contain hazardous constituents is crucial to developing waste control and remediation strategies. It is possible to convert compostable industrial wastes into fertilizers and manures. This results in both waste removal and environmental improvement. The reusable and recyclable wastes are the resources for several benignant products that can be recovered by means of suitable innovative technologies without harming the environment. The monitoring and measurement of emerging micropollutants (EMPs), pharmaceutical and personal care products, detergents, steroid hormones, industrial chemicals, pesticides, microplastics as well as many other contaminants associated with synthetic and natural products are relatively undeveloped. Therefore, they impose adverse effects on the environmental and human health.

The main objective of the special issue is to identify the innovative and environmental friendly remediation technologies to utilize different kinds of reusable or recyclable wastes, in addition to the removal of toxic nature of the associated EMPs in the wastes and biowastes through bioremediation approaches, exclusion of micropollutants, bioremediation of heavy metal(loid)s, pesticides, microplastics, treatment technologies for wastewater and sludges, lignocellulosic biomass for biofuel refinery, etc. Moreover, the innovative sustainable management approaches are exquisite to refine the present understanding by means of interdisciplinary, socially acceptable, economically feasible and sustainable approaches.

Publication schedule

Manuscript submission opens: September 25, 2023

Manuscript submission ends : June 30, 2024

Final revised paper submission ends: September 30, 2024

Completion of the editorial process: October 30, 2024