Characterization and source-apportionment of synergistic ecotoxicities of multiple pollutants based on a biosensor-biospectroscopy coupling (BBC) test battery approach

Human activities have released numerous environmental pollutants, posing significant risks to ecological systems and human health. Toxicity assessment of environmental pollutants generally contains several principal aspects, i.e., toxicity levels, mechanisms and origins. Conventional toxicity assays can only address one of the mentioned criteria, e.g., toxicity level quantification by physicochemical methods and toxicity mechanism characterization by molecular-based analytical approaches. A comprehensive ecotoxicity risk assessment is increasingly demanded to diagnose toxicity levels, identify toxicity mechanisms and source-apportion toxicity origin. This review critically summarizes conventional toxicity assays for environmental pollutants and proposes a biosensor-biospectroscopy coupling (BBC) based test battery approach to achieve the quantification and source-appointment of ecotoxicity. It shows adequate abilities to interrogate the toxicity levels and mechanisms, distinguish the synergistic and antagonistic effects of multiple pollutants, and source-apportion the toxicities, which can be potentially incorporated into real-time water quality monitoring systems for wastewater treatment plants, on-site devices for long-term evaluation of remediation performance at contaminated sites retrospectively, or rapid risk assessment of contaminants in multiple environmental matrices for emergency response.