Retraction notice to ‘In-house fabrication of macro-porous biopolymeric hydrogel and its deployment for adsorptive remediation of lead and cadmium from water matrices’ [Environ. Res. 214 (2022) 113790] (Environmental Research (2022) 214(P2), (S0013935122011173), (10.1016/j.envres.2022.113790))

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier policy on article withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/article-withdrawal). This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor. Concerns about this article were raised on PubPeer at https://pubpeer.com/publications/51CBAECF2BBCA7DCFD3C10D3E71C1F. The authors acknowledged receipt of the journal's request for an explanation but failed to respond further. The Editor confirms that over 50% of the citations (28 out of a total of 53) are made to papers with 'M. Bilal' as an author, and that out of those 28 citations, 5 were irrelevant. An unauthorised authorship change was made when the revised version of this paper was submitted, following suggestions for relatively minor revisions from the reviewers and Guest Editor, with two authors being 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 editor no longer has confidence in this paper and is retracting it. The journal apologises for not having identified the problematic authorship change during the review process and for any resulting inconvenience. The authors disagree with the retraction and dispute the grounds for it.