Meeting the needs of our growing global population places increasing pressure on Earth’s natural resources—we are changing the planet faster than many living systems can respond. As a result, we are witnessing the emergence of new environmental issues that may pose future harm to life on earth, but have yet to be recognized as matters of immediate concern. Collaborative responses to emerging issues are difficult because we encounter uncertainty and risk at every stage of the process, from forecasting and researching nascent problems, to developing regulatory strategies and adaptively managing solutions. To achieve sustainable development—preserving living systems for the future while still allowing for responsible resource use today—we must acknowledge the challenge of emerging issues in the context of our rapidly changing world. This organized oral session will present a multidisciplinary perspective on an emerging environmental issue--aquatic contaminants of emerging concern. Our marine and freshwater ecosystems are important resources for billions of people throughout the world. As the global population grows and the demand on our aquatic systems increases, preserving and utilizing these resources sustainably pose significant challenges to researchers and policymakers. These tasks are further complicated by the influx of new aquatic contaminants: their effects are felt at multiple ecological scales, and through coupled food webs and biogeochemical exchanges, they also threaten life on land and in the air. As a result, addressing contaminants of emerging concern requires integration across scales and disciplines to work toward effective science- and policy-driven solutions. In this organized oral session, scientists from academia, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations will each present research that considers aquatic contaminants of emerging concern at multiple ecological scales: physiological effects of oil contaminants on marine larval development, population-level effects of Marcellus Shale contamination, consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Gulf communities, the effects of plastic debris on marine ecosystems, and the causes and consequences of contamination from personal care products in coupled social-ecological systems. Speakers will also demonstrate how information obtained at their specific level of disciplinary expertise is vital to understanding the future trajectory of the issue as a whole. The session will conclude with a panel discussion on how integration across scales and social-ecological networks, as well as novel research-policy collaborations, can help ecologists better address this and other emerging environmental issues.