Publication focusing on overview of African water resource CECs accepted into STOTEN journal

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Plastic pollution near a water source (Credit: Helen Holleman)
Plastic pollution near a water source (Credit: Helen Holleman)

A review manuscript under African Water Resources Mobility Network (AWaRMN) project from Makerere University has been accepted for publication in Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN). The Science of the Total Environment is one of the prestigious journals of environmental sciences under Elsevier. Science of the Total Environment is Q1 journal with 14.1 CiteScore and 10.753 impact factor. The title of the manuscript is “Overview of African water resources contamination by contaminants of emerging concern (CECs)” and the authors are Zaccheus Shehu, George Nyakairu William Atwoki, Emmanuel Tebandeke and Oghenekaro Nelson Odume.

This review was written to shed light on the threats that CECs present in water pose as well as how African water resources have been contaminated by CECs. About 160 pieces of information on the presence of CECs in both conventional and non-conventional water resources were found in this investigation, spanning the years 2001 to 2021. According to regions, West Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, North Africa, and Central Africa each had 48, 51, 40, 18, and 3 articles. It's noteworthy that 22 out of 54 countries provided data. This demonstrated that there is little or no information regarding CECs contaminating water resources, necessitating additional study to determine the quality of water resources in Africa. Apart from their subclasses, CECs like pharmaceuticals, microplastics, endocrine disruptors, personal care products, stimulants, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) were detected in all regions.

Interesting, the most common comment from the four reviewers is “Africa needs this review”. Well done to all the authors on getting this important work published. A link to the paper details is available here.