Dear Colleagues,

Heavy metals (HMs) have been regarded as a hazard to humans and the ecotope due to their toxicity, persistence, and biological accumulation for centuries. Risks to human health can be caused by heavy metal residues through a multi-pathway, owing to their transport and transformation among environmental multi-media, such as ambient air, soil, surface water, etc. Unfortunately, after long-term research, the present advances in human technology have not effectively reduced that risk. In fact, increased industrialization and urbanization of the developing world, the enhanced demand for resources, and the advent of new technologies have increased the risk of exposure to these substances. In recent decades, environmental risk assessment and sustainable management have been established as valuable tools to support national or regional quantitative regulatory systems and administrative decision making for HMs pollution. Historically, environmental health risk assessments have tended to narrowly focus on single heavy metals with indicators of their total content, usually emphasizing a specific human health endpoint and a particular exposure pathway for hypothetical receptors. However, it is obvious that multi-receptors in the real world are routinely exposed to HMs in environmental multimedia from multi-pathways. Furthermore, the exciting progress on studies regarding HMs’ bioavailability and combined effects, spatial analysis technology, uncertainty control method, exposure science, remediation techniques, etc., are possible to promote the current methods of environmental health risk assessment and sustainable management. Thus, this Special Issue will encourage and highlight new or improved approaches, models, and theories, which have either been applied or are under development, that move the field forward in assessing and managing the environmental health risks posed by HMs from multi-pathway exposure in environmental multimedia. Research papers, analytical reviews, case studies, conceptual framework, and policy-relevant articles are solicited. The Guest Editors will select high-quality research for blind peer review. Reviewers will be selected from researchers who are active in the field, and whose works are present in international databases.

Dr. Fei Li
Dr. Hongtao Yi
Dr. Jie Liang
Dr. Hua Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• Heavy metals

• Distribution, transportation and transformation

• Enrichment and bioavailability

• Multimedia, multi-pathway and multi-receptor

• Human health risk assessment

• Integrated environmental risk assessment

• Pollution source analysis

• Risk-based decisions

• Sustainable risk management

• Systematic uncertainty control