Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety

Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety is a multidisciplinary journal dedicated to advancing the understanding of toxicological mechanisms underlying exposure to environmental contaminants and their effects on organisms and human health. The journal's scope encompasses three primary themes:

Ecotoxicology

• Mechanistic ecotoxicology in aquatic and terrestrial organisms, including microbes, invertebrates, vertebrates, algae, and plants. Studies at environmentally relevant concentrations are welcome

• Mesocosm and field studies investigating the fate, effects, and mechanisms of contaminants across diverse organisms.

• Mechanistic studies on exposure, bioavailability, and toxicological outcomes at environmentally relevant concentrations.

• Research spanning from the molecular to the whole-organism level, encompassing animal behavior to the population level, to establish causal relationships.

• Investigations into modes of action and in-depth mechanisms using omics, systems biology, quantitative live-cell/tissue measurements, biomarkers, histopathology, and complementary methods.

Environmental Safety

• Epidemiological studies linking environmental contamination to human or wildlife health effects with causal insights (not just associations).

• Molecular mechanism-based toxicological studies employing cell or animal models to evaluate hazards from environmental contaminants, or to assess health and safety impacts of persistent toxic substances in the environment and food chain.

• Mechanistic studies of adverse effects following exposure to various contaminants at cellular and molecular levels.

• Exposure, toxicity, and environmental risk assessment using computational approaches — including big data, machine learning, and quantitative structure-toxicity relationship modeling—supported by experimental verification and validation

Environmental Chemistry

• Hypothesis-driven, mechanistic studies detailing chemical speciation, transformations in the environment, or bioaccessible fractions in vivo and across environmental compartments.

• Investigations into mixture interactions and cocktail effects in environmental matrices, including fate and behaviour, as well as effects on organisms.

• Environmental forensics studies that mechanistically link the cause and effect of pollutants on organisms

• Mechanistic studies on the remediation of wastewater and sludge under field conditions.

The journal publishes hypothesis-driven research with a strong emphasis on mechanistic understanding. Accordingly, the following types of routine reports fall outside the journal's scope and should not be submitted:

• Manuscripts presenting simple correlations between pollutants and health outcomes without establishing causal relationships.

• Studies on smoking/secondary smoke, indoor air pollution, or occupational exposure are out of scope

• Computational studies relying solely on public databases without experimental verification and environmental relevance.

• Routine monitoring reports of pollutant concentrations in the environment or biota.

• Routine measurements of biomolecules in organisms that lack a mechanistic investigation.

• Routine reports of adsorption isotherms, material synthesis, catalytic reactions, remediation methods, or other well-established chemical or material phenomena.

• Studies on general environmental parameters affecting organism physiology—such as salt or drought effects on plants—without an explicit environmental pollution component in the study design.

• Agronomy studies, natural geochemistry studies, or animal biology research that lack an environmental contamination aspect.

• Research addressing basic plant physiological and growth parameters under chemical influence.

• Manuscripts on overlapping topics or extensions of previously published articles.