The role of analytical chemistry in exposure science: Focus on the aquatic environment

Exposure science, in its broadest sense, studies the interactions between stressors (chemical, biological, and physical agents) and receptors (e.g. humans and other living organisms, and non-living items like buildings), together with the associated pathways and processes potentially leading to negative effects on human health and the environment. The aquatic environment may contain thousands of compounds, many of them still unknown, that can pose a risk to ecosystems and human health. Due to the unquestionable importance of the aquatic environment, one of the main challenges in the field of exposure science is the comprehensive characterization and evaluation of complex environmental mixtures beyond the classical/priority contaminants to new emerging contaminants. The role of advanced analytical chemistry to identify and quantify potential chemical risks, that might cause adverse effects to the aquatic environment, is essential. In this paper, we present the strategies and tools that analytical chemistry has nowadays, focused on chromatography hyphenated to (high-resolution) mass spectrometry because of its relevance in this field. Key issues, such as the application of effect direct analysis to reduce the complexity of the sample, the investigation of the huge number of transformation/degradation products that may be present in the aquatic environment, the analysis of urban wastewater as a source of valuable information on our lifestyle and substances we consumed and/or are exposed to, or the monitoring of drinking water, are discussed in this article. The trends and perspectives for the next few years are also highlighted, when it is expected that new developments and tools will allow a better knowledge of chemical composition in the aquatic environment. This will help regulatory authorities to protect water bodies and to advance towards improved regulations that enable practical and efficient abatements for environmental and public health protection

Corporate Governance, Capital Market Regulation and the Challenge of Disembedded Markets

Long before the current financial and economic crisis, corporate governance and securities regulation had become part of one of the most interesting and dynamic regulatory areas in law and policy making today. Both areas had been undergoing dramatic transformations over the past 30-40 years, which saw a global expansion of capital markets and a deep-running ‘financialisation’ of the corporation. Around the world governments saw themselves challenged to adapt their regulatory apparatus to the whims and hues of nervous investors with global sensitivities. Meanwhile, scholars in law, economics, but also political science and sociology fiercely debated whether what was unfolding constituted a worldwide convergence around a corporate governance philosophy that placed the shareholder at the centre or whether we would continue to have different, divergent corporate governance systems around the world. Today’s crisis-responses appear to be primarily designed to ‘fix the excesses’ of the past decades, rather than driven by an interest to connect the present efforts at regulation with the earlier convergence vs. divergence debates, which themselves built on much older critiques of the embeddedness of the firm and the political economy context of corporate activity. The paper contends that the sustainability of future corporate governance and securities regulation depends on the effort to critically examine both areas in the context of a larger inquiry into the goals and challenges of market regulation