Damià Barceló Cullerès

Meet Damià Barceló Cullerès

Main research aims? My work focuses on wastewater based-epidemiology (WBE) using environmental proteomics and high resolution mass spectrometry, as well as analysis, fate and advanced removal technologies of emerging contaminants and micro/nanoplastics in aquatic and agroecosystems.

Biggest challenge in environmental analysis? Non target analysis and bioinformatics seems to be the necessary tools for the future, but an old problem still remains in the field of environmental analysis: the lack of standards of newly identified chemicals like transformation products of emerging contaminants. With high resolution MS we are able to discover large amounts of new chemical compounds, but many of them can only be identified tentatively due to the lack of commercially available standards. Although LC-tandem MS and high resolution MS are nowadays very powerful, being able to detect hundreds of compounds at low levels, we still miss the final authenticity of the compound tentatively identified by MS due to the lack of standards. Omic technologies, including metabolomics and proteomics are complementary tools to better understand the complexity of wastewater composition and possible effects as well as pathogens, viruses and antimicrobial resistance genes. The sewage chemical and microbiological information is nowadays part of the so-called “exposomics” or “One Health” concept bridging environment and human health exposure.