Big data integration for environmental risk assessment of emerging contaminants

Emerging contaminants are reshaping ecosystems, yet our understanding of their community- and system-level impacts is rather limited, because conventional assessments oversimplify the real problem by focusing on single chemicals or species. A big-data-integration framework that links chemical measures with biological responses to elucidate hidden drivers of emerging contaminants’ environmental risks can help address the challenge. This Perspective discusses how to make such a framework actionable by employing high-throughput techniques, using data-driven tools that handle high-dimensional data and sharing paired chemical–biological datasets. Such integration can enable earlier intervention on key emerging contaminants to improve the sustainability of ecosystems.