What Are Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) and Why Does CESE Study Them?

Updated

Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are chemicals that have recently been shown to occur in the environment and have been identified as a potential risk to the environment or public health. The UConn Center for Environmental Sciences and Engineering (CESE) studies them because many CECs are in everyday use — in homes, farms, businesses, and industrial processes — so understanding where they end up and at what levels is a prerequisite for monitoring environmental quality and informing sound stewardship and policy.

What makes a contaminant "emerging"

The term does not necessarily mean the chemical is new. It means the concern is new or newly documented. A substance can fall into this category because:

  • Detection caught up with use. Analytical methods improved enough to find it at low concentrations in water, soil, or tissue.
  • Risk assessment caught up with detection. A chemical long present in the environment was later linked to a potential risk to ecosystems or public health.
  • Use patterns changed. A compound became widespread in consumer, agricultural, or commercial products, increasing the pathways by which it reaches the environment.

CESE's own description notes that many CECs are in common use and found in everyday products in homes, farms, and businesses, or used by industry in commercial processes. That everyday presence is what makes them hard to isolate and important to track.

Why CESE focuses on them

CESE is a unit within UConn's Institute of the Environment, and its stated aim is to support multidisciplinary research bridging basic and applied science. Its activities strengthen scientific understanding of complex and evolving natural systems, monitor environmental quality, inform sound stewardship, and enlighten policy. CECs sit directly at the intersection of those goals:

  • They are an analytical problem. Finding a chemical at trace levels in a complex sample requires method development, which is exactly what CESE's environmental laboratories do.
  • They are a monitoring problem. Knowing whether a CEC is present, and at what concentration, is the first step toward judging whether it matters.
  • They are a policy problem. Risk information only becomes useful when it can inform stewardship decisions and regulation.

A concrete example: neonicotinoids in Connecticut waterways

CESE published a study, featured in The Hartford Courant, examining levels of neonicotinoids in Connecticut rivers and waterways. Neonicotinoids are pesticides developed in the 1990s and now widely used. As CESE describes it, they are effective but kill indiscriminately, often harming pollinators such as bees and butterflies.

This example shows the full CEC arc: a widely used class of chemicals, a plausible risk to non-target organisms, a need to measure actual environmental concentrations, and a result that can inform policy and stewardship. The full report, "Neonicotinoids in Connecticut," is dated 1-11-2025.

How CESE supports work on CECs

Beyond its own research, CESE runs programs that lower the barrier for others to study these chemicals:

Program What it does
Environmental Laboratories Provide a full range of services in analytical method development and analytical testing, supporting faculty as well as government and industry scientists
Business Office Provides pre-award and post-award support to investigators; core faculty have a record of support from NSF, NIH, USDA, EPA, NASA, USGS, and DoE
MiSER (Mini-Grants in Support of Environmental Research) Leverages CESE laboratory analytical capacity to help UConn faculty develop research projects that do not currently have extramural or intramural support, reducing the cost of services and analyses for nutrients, metals, organics, and emerging contaminants

The MiSER program is the most direct entry point for a UConn faculty member who wants to generate preliminary CEC data — the kind of data often needed before a larger proposal can be competitive.

What this means if you are trying to decide something

  • If you are a researcher needing CEC analysis (or nutrients, metals, or organics), CESE's laboratories are the service entry point, and MiSER is worth checking first if you lack current funding.
  • If you are looking for a collaborator or a lab with CEC expertise, the center's focus on method development and testing, plus its record of agency-funded work, is the relevant signal.
  • If you are simply trying to understand the term, the practical definition is: a chemical recently shown to occur in the environment and identified as a potential risk — regardless of whether the chemical itself is new.

For specifics on services, sample handling, or program eligibility, the center's own pages on Environmental Laboratories, Emerging Contaminants, and the Business Office are the authoritative sources.