Fluorescent Aptasensors for Point-of-Care Detection of Environmental Pollutants

Early detection or accurate sensing of toxic contaminants is one of the many problems worldwide. The growth of industries and the controlled or uncontrolled discharge of toxic pollutants are the main causes of generating huge amount of environmental pollutants. To solve this problem and meet the growing demands of the modern world, studies have been conducted to design fast-track diagnostic. Due to the great need for clinical trials, occupational health, public health and social security, the quantification of pollutants is becoming increasingly important. Due to improvements in biosensing techniques, rapid and consistent methods have been realized for the precise and sensitive diagnosis of environmental pollutants. For the detection of pollutants, optical methods are ideally suited as no sample preparation is needed which results in rapid, easy and economic analysis. In this chapter, fluorescence-based aptasensors for the detection of environmental pollutants are discussed. This chapter highlights the various fluorescence-based methods that can be utilized for the detection of the pollutants at the point of sample collection.