Industrial chemicals are essential to modern society, supporting products ranging from plastics and electronics to pharmaceuticals and agricultural supplies. However, scientists warn that many of these chemicals can transform and spread through the environment in ways that are difficult to track, creating complex pollution mixtures that threaten ecosystems and human health. A new study introduces an innovative framework designed to better understand and manage these risks across the entire life cycle of industrial chemicals.
The research, published in New Contaminants, presents a concept called the "emiss-ome," a systems-based approach that links chemical production, transformation, environmental transport, and toxic effects into a unified risk assessment framework. The work aims to shift chemical pollution management from reactive responses to proactive prevention.
Since 2010, the number of registered synthetic chemicals worldwide has more than doubled, rising to over 350,000 substances. Many of these chemicals are released during manufacturing, use, disposal, and environmental transformation processes. Once released, they often interact with other pollutants, forming complex mixtures that are difficult to evaluate using traditional risk assessment methods, which typically focus on individual chemicals or isolated exposure points.
"Industrial chemicals rarely remain in their original form once they enter the environment," said lead author Keshuo Zhang. "Our study shows that pollutants can evolve through multiple transformation steps, making it critical to track their entire life cycle if we want to effectively protect environmental and public health."
The proposed emiss-ome framework combines several advanced scientific approaches. First, it integrates industrial metabolism analysis with environmental fate and transport modeling to trace how chemicals move from production processes into environmental systems such as water, soil, and air. This allows researchers to establish quantitative links between upstream chemical inputs and downstream pollutants.
Second, the framework incorporates models that predict how chemicals transform during both industrial processing and environmental transport. These transformations can generate new pollutants that may be more persistent or toxic than their original forms. By simulating these pathways, scientists can better identify emerging contaminants and potential risk hotspots.
Third, the framework introduces toxicity pathway analysis to identify which chemicals in complex mixtures pose the greatest biological threats. By examining how contaminants trigger molecular and cellular responses that lead to adverse health outcomes, researchers can pinpoint high-risk toxicants and assess cumulative risks from multiple chemical exposures.
"Understanding mixture toxicity is one of the greatest challenges in environmental risk assessment," said corresponding author Fan Wu. "Our framework helps identify the most hazardous components within chemical mixtures and provides tools to evaluate how risks change across different stages of a chemical's life cycle."
The researchers believe that integrating material tracking with toxicity risk analysis provides a powerful new tool for regulators and industry. By identifying critical stages where pollutants form or accumulate, the framework enables targeted interventions, such as improving manufacturing processes, redesigning chemical structures, or strengthening pollution treatment technologies.
The study also highlights the need for interdisciplinary collaboration among chemists, environmental scientists, toxicologists, and data scientists to implement life cycle chemical risk management strategies. The authors emphasize that future progress will require standardized data sharing, improved predictive models, and expanded knowledge of chemical transformation pathways.
"Our ultimate goal is to support safer chemical design and sustainable industrial development," Zhang said. "By tracing pollutants back to their source and understanding how risks evolve, we can develop smarter strategies to prevent contamination before it occurs."
The authors suggest that the emiss-ome framework could play an important role in guiding environmental policies and supporting global efforts to manage emerging contaminants in a rapidly evolving chemical landscape.
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Journal reference: Zhang K, Ruan X, Wan L, Lu Y, Wang H, et al. 2026. Life cycle risk assessment and management of industrial chemicals: synergizing material metabolism and risk flow by 'emiss-ome'. New Contaminants 2: e005 doi: 10.48130/newcontam-0026-0001
https://www.maxapress.com/article/doi/10.48130/newcontam-0026-0001
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About the Journal:
New Contaminants (e-ISSN 3069-7603) is an open-access journal focusing on research related to emerging pollutants and their remediation.
