Pollution and Diseases is an interdisciplinary journal committed to the study of environmental contamination and its complex relationships with human, animal, and ecosystem health. The journal welcomes submissions across a broad range of scientific, medical, ecological, and historical perspectives.
At the same time, the journal identifies several editorial priority areas that reflect particularly urgent, underexplored, or societally significant challenges arising from pollution-related processes. These priorities guide editorial initiatives, thematic discussions, and special collections, but do not restrict the scope of topics considered for publication.
While priority areas inform editorial planning and thematic initiatives, Pollution and Diseases remains fully open to high-quality submissions addressing any aspect of pollution and disease that meets the journal’s scientific and ethical standards.
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The editorial group War, Environment, and Health was established within the journal Pollution & Diseases to address a critical gap in contemporary scientific research: the systematic analysis of armed conflict as a driver of environmental transformation and public health outcomes.Modern warfare reshapes landscapes, contaminates soils and waters, disrupts energy, agricultural, and sanitation infrastructures, and produces long-term health consequences for civilian populations. These processes are not peripheral to conflict; they are integral to its conduct and legacy. Yet they remain insufficiently examined within conventional disciplinary boundaries.
This editorial group approaches war as an active environmental force—one that mobilizes matter, energy, and toxic substances at scale, and whose ecological and infectious effects persist long after active hostilities cease. At the same time, the group does not advance a single theoretical or methodological doctrine. It provides a structured scholarly space for diverse scientific approaches, including environmental sciences, ecology, hydrology, toxicology, epidemiology, infectious ecology, public health, and post-conflict recovery studies.
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Armed conflicts represent one of the most profound and understudied drivers of long-term environmental degradation. Military activities generate complex and persistent contamination of soils and freshwater systems through explosive residues, heavy metals, fuel combustion products, and large-scale physical disturbance. Despite the growing recognition of these impacts, systematic, comparative, and methodologically coherent research remains limited.
The international conference War, Soil, and Freshwater Systems: 2026 aims to bring together researchers from soil science, environmental sciences, geosciences, toxicology, ecology, infectious ecology, and public health to examine the environmental and health consequences of war-related contamination. The conference emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches, integration of field-based evidence, and the development of robust theoretical and methodological frameworks for studying military-induced environmental change.
Special attention will be given to comparative case studies, including long-term consequences of the Vietnam War and ongoing environmental impacts of the war in Ukraine, with a particular focus on soil degradation, freshwater contamination, and associated risks to ecosystems and human health. The conference will also address the use of highly impacted territories and aquatic systems as scientific “polygons” for detailed geochemical, ecological, and toxicological investigation.
A central thematic focus will be the comprehensive study of Snake Island in the Black Sea and its surrounding marine area as a unique natural laboratory for assessing war-induced environmental pollution. The existence of extensive pre-war baseline data allows for rare before-and-after comparisons and provides an exceptional opportunity to advance understanding of military contamination processes and their long-term implications.
In addition to scientific presentations, the conference will facilitate structured roundtable discussions and strategic sessions dedicated to the development of international expeditionary research programs and collaborative funding initiatives. All accepted contributions will be published in the journal Pollution and Diseases.
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