Emerging pollutants (EPs) are chemicals and compounds that have recently been identified as dangerous to the environment and ecosystems, including the health of human beings. In addition, many of these emerging pollutants have not been regulated under national or international legislation, hence posing a greater risk to our livelihood. These pollutants include a variety of compounds such as antibiotics, drugs, steroids, endocrine disruptors, hormones, industrial additives, chemicals, and also microbeads and microplastics (Sousa et al. 2018; Peña-Guzmán et al. 2019). There are numerous sources of EPs ranging from hospitals and industries to agriculture and households. The potential toxicity test was conducted by various researchers, and these toxicity tests were conducted under controlled laboratory conditions for different types of EPs (Hughes et al. 2013; Sanchez and Egea 2018). The outcome of the observations suggests that many of these compounds are potentially very toxic to aquatic life and human health. The national and international level literatures related to EPs were available on the scientific webpages. Whereas the awareness related to EPs and their negative impact on the environment, especially in biota and humans, are very few. Under these circumstances, the scientific gathering was organized as a 2-day national seminar on “Emerging Pollutants in Geosphere: Impact on environment, management and challenges” – EPGIEMC 2021 (09th and 10th July 2021). The technical program schedule consists of six keynote speeches and 59 oral presentations. As a part of the national seminar, the special issue was invited to publish the original research findings related to emerging environmental pollutants in Environmental Science and Pollution Research (ESPR).

The main goal of the special issue on Emerging Pollutants in Geosphere: Impact on environment and management (EPGIEMC-2021) is to bring the leading researchers together and exchange their new and novel ideas on all interdisciplinary aspects of recent emerging pollutants. This also offers a leading interdisciplinary forum for researchers, practitioners, and educators to present and address the latest developments, patterns, and concerns as well as practical problems faced and approach embraced in environmental pollution and impact on the geosphere. The research themes of this SI included recent advancements in emerging pollutant studies such as source, fate, and transport pathways of pollutants, climatic changes, biodiversity, and human adaptation and their impact on the environment, including the biosphere. Among the nine original research articles, four articles exclusively discussed water quality monitoring and assessment studies (Pandi et al. 2022; Stanly et al. 2022; Akhtar et al. 2022; Edukondal et al. 2022; Murugesan et al. 2021) whereas two papers confer on climatic changes (Kumar and Warat 2022; Sabarathinam et al. 2022) and the remaining two papers on environmental management perspectives (Pokkiladathu et al. 2022; Kumar et al. 2022). This edited special issue will be helpful to beginners and advanced researchers of geo-scholar environmentalists and also as a reference work for researchers who are actively working on environmental science and pollution-related research problems.