ABSTRACT
Emerging pollutants include a wide range of substances of various categories, and their classifications are based on their usage, applications, and chemical properties. This chapter lists some general types of emerging pollutants based on their broad applications. It also lists the extraction steps for most of the emerging pollutants. For aqueous samples, the two most common techniques are the liquid–liquid extraction (LLE) and the solid phase extraction (SPE). LLE procedures may be applied for extracting all classes of emerging pollutants including flame retardants, plasticizers, disinfectants, pharmaceuticals, alkylphenol ethoxylate nonionic surfactants, and disinfectants. SPE offers many advantages over LLE in terms of cost and speed. All recent work cited in the literature pertaining to the analysis of various classes of emerging pollutants describe the mass spectrometric techniques (GC/MS and LC/MS). The selection of an analytical method however should depend on achieving the desired detection levels and also on regulatory requirements.
