Retraction notice to ‘Quorum sensing - a promising tool for degradation of industrial waste containing persistent organic pollutants’ [Environ. Pollut. Part-B, 292 (2022) 118342] (Environmental Pollution (2022) 292(PB), (S0269749121019242), (10.1016/j.envpol.2021.118342))

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier policy on article withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/article-withdrawal). This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. A number of concerns regarding irregularities in the references were documented on PubPeer at https://pubpeer.com/publications/FB620FD7131ACA0AA888A6F156AD40. An investigation by the journal revealed that significant numbers of references were added when the revised version of the manuscript was submitted on 28 September 2021. The beneficiaries of these were co-authors. Sonam Tripathi, Ram Chandra and, to a lesser extent, Diane Purchase, and Guest Editor Govarthanan Muthusamy. The assessing editor confirmed that a significant number of these added citations were not germane to the work and as such, confidence in the work is lost. Additionally, unauthorised authorship changes were made when the revised version of this paper was submitted, following suggestions for relatively minor revisions from the reviewers and Guest Editor, with author Raja Mythili being added to the paper to replace another author who was deleted. No satisfactory explanation was given for this change, nor was it approved by the editor. This authorship change breaches the policies of the journal and as a result, the editors no longer have confidence in this paper and are retracting it. The journal apologises for not having identified the problematic authorship change during the review process and for any resulting inconvenience. Co-author Diane Purchase indicated that she received no subsequent drafts or further communication regarding the manuscript after 8 September 2021 (before the revised version was submitted) until being sent a copy of the published PDF on 26 October 2021, and that the aforementioned changes were incorporated into the manuscript during the final stages of submission or production without her awareness or approval. For all of the above reasons, the editor has lost confidence in the contributions of the authors and the reliability of the findings presented in this article as a whole, and is retracting it. Muhammad Bilal, signing an email on behalf of all authors, does not agree with the retraction and disputes the grounds for it.