Liquid Crystal Monomers as Emerging Contaminants: Contaminated Distribution, Environmental Behavior, Detection Technologies, and Future Challenges

Liquid crystal monomers (LCMs) are synthetically produced organic compounds widely used in liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and have recently emerged as a significant environmental concern. Characterized by environmental persistence, bioaccumulation, toxicity, and long-range transport, LCMs are now recognized as emerging contaminants with the potential to pose serious ecological and human health risks. In recent years, as the researches grows increasingly, LCMs have been confirmed to be ubiquitous in a variety of environmental media and biological samples worldwide. This has led to more research on the toxicology, environmental behavior and environmental governance of LCMs. However, due to the ambiguity of contamination levels and environmental distribution, there remains a substantial gap in data on the human health impacts of LCMs exposure. This review provides a comprehensive overview of recent literature on LCMs, with a particular focus on their environmental distribution, biological toxicity, bioaccumulation pathways, potential health risks, as well as advances in sample pretreatment and detection technologies. We also discuss key challenges and future research directions in reducing LCMs environmental release and improving detection technologies, highlighting the necessity of interdisciplinary approaches to better assess and mitigate the risks of LCMs. This review provides critical insights into the ecotoxicology, health effect, and detection of LCM pollution.