The most commonly studied pollutants in our laboratory are:
- Phthalates: a group of substances used in the plastics industry as plasticising agents, i.e. as substances added to polymers to improve their flexibility and mouldability;
- Pesticides: used in agriculture to protect crops from disease and pests. the term covers a broad class of substances that may be found as residues on crops or in food;
- Hydrocarbons: polycyclic aromatics are molecules that are extremely toxic to both humans and environmental fauna and flora and can be produced through incomplete combustion of other molecules;
- Polychlorinated biphenyls: these are a class of compounds that were once widely used as additives and are now an environmental problem due to their toxicity.
Recently, our research has also extended to the study of microplastics, emerging contaminants that are of particular concern to the scientific community due to the very few monitoring studies on their presence in foodstuffs and the scarcity of knowledge on their potential harmful effects on humans and the environment.