Micropollutants in water and their adverse effects on environment and human life

Rapid industrial and urban development with increasing global population can cause serious concers in water systems like drinking, groundwater, and surface water. A wide range of anthropogenic pollutants spread and increase in concentrations in the water systems. Some of these anthropogenic pollutants referred as micropollutants that are found in the environment at very low concentrations including a wide and heterogeneous group of organic compounds, including pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, corrosion inhibitors, pesticides, surfactants, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and phthalates. They may negatively contribute to environment and human life through their toxicity, endocrine-disrupting, mutagenic, and carcinogenic effects, as well as antibiotic resistance. Therefore, this chapter aims to classify the existing and emerging micropollutants by their occurence and concentrations in various water systems such as drinking, groundwater, and surface water. Moreover, in order to rank the micropollutants in water systems, the hazard estimation of micropollutants is conducted using avaliable environmental risk assessment approaches (e. g. contamination factor, risk quotient, human health hazard estimations). Furthermore, by this ranking of micropollutants, the biological impact of each micropollutants is assessed from higher to lower organisms (e. g. animals, human cells, invertabretes, microorganisms) to understand the adverse impact on the environment and human health using experimental studies like in vitro, in vivo stuties etc. We also highlight knowledge gaps and areas for future research of micropollutants on environmental and human health.