The presence of potentially harmful chemicals in the environment is a pressing public concern. Pollution of water, air, and soil, as well as chemical exposure from food and products like personal care items, building materials, and paints, all pose major societal problems that require our attention.

The Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology (MITO) section conducts research and provides advisory work to better understand exposure sources, exposure levels, transformation routes, risks, and effective ways to reduce the danger posed by chemicals. Our aim is to increase knowledge of the fate and risk of organic pollutants in the environment and develop approaches to manage and remediate these risks in technical systems, such as water purification and soil remediation.

MITO conducts research that involves experiments, measurements, and specific process studies. This work includes modeling toxicity and optimizing technical and biological processes to reduce environmental exposure, as well as addressing human exposure to chemicals and associated risks. The research section also performs environmental risk assessments for various organic pollutants, such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, PCBs, flame retardants, fluorinated compounds, dioxins, PAHs, personal care products, plasticizers, chemical warfare agents, and their degradation products.

In addition, our research examines the sources, transport mechanisms, distribution patterns, bioaccumulation processes, and transformation pathways of contaminants in diverse environmental and human matrices. The section also focuses on identifying new potentially problematic organic pollutants and developing highly sensitive chemical analytical methods to detect these substances in environmental samples, consumer products, plants, animals, and humans. Our work involves conducting both environmental risk assessment and public health risk assessment.