What is it about?
This article presents the first examination of the possible role of the Matthew Effect in biasing decisions for selecting which chemical contaminants should be monitored in the environment. Published data on the occurrence of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in the environment were evaluated as an archetype.
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Why is it important?
Much of the data regarding the environmental occurrence of individual APIs can be categorized as "data of absence" or "absence of data". These data can be used to assess the possibility that an environmental contaminant has been overlooked or ignored with respect to targeted monitoring in the environment. Chemicals lacking occurrence data might be called "Matthew Effect Orphaned Chemicals" (MEOCs). MEOCs may deserve future attention for targeted environmental monitoring.
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This page is a summary of: The Matthew Effect and widely prescribed pharmaceuticals lacking environmental monitoring: Case study of an exposure-assessment vulnerability, The Science of The Total Environment, January 2014, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2013.06.111.
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Supplementary Table S1. Frequently prescribed APIs lacking environmental monitoring data: (i) absence of data, (ii) data of absence, or (iii) reports restricted to trace levels.
Supplementary Table S2. APIs identified as most probable MEOCs in this study, categorized according to one measure of their potential to enter the environment – pharmacokinetics
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