Luminescence Sensors Applied to Water Analysis of Organic Pollutants—An Update

The development of chemical sensors for environmental analysis based on fluorescence, phosphorescence and chemiluminescence signals continues to be a dynamic topic within the sensor field. This review covers the fundamentals of this type of sensors, and an update on recent works devoted to quantifying organic pollutants in environmental waters, focusing on advances since about 2005. Among the wide variety of these contaminants, special attention has been paid polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pesticides, explosives and emerging organic pollutants. The potential of coupling optical sensors with multivariate calibration methods in order to improve the selectivity is also discussed

Application of chemometric methods to environmental analysis of organic pollutants: A review

Organic pollutants include a very wide variety of chemical compounds with different structures, properties, functions and origins, which may produce diverse damages to the ecosystem and the human beings. This review presents the recent progress on the use of chemometrics to evaluate the occurrence of these substances in the environment. The main topics addressed are: (a) the problems related to the interpretation of the analytical measurements used in the determination of organic pollutants (quantitative analytical determinations section), (b) the profiling of the related environmental pollution sources through their compositional, geographical and temporal distribution patterns (environmental exploratory studies section) and (c) the prediction of the toxicological activity of these substances through models based on the use of structural or physical/chemical descriptors (toxicity studies section). Each section includes selected works related to pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and other organic pollutants.The authors gratefully acknowledge Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional (AECI), Project A/8964/07, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (Project PAE 22204) and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET, Argentina, Project PIP No. 1950), for financial support of this work.Peer reviewe