DUGi

Target analysis and suspect screening of wastewater derived contaminants in receiving riverine and coastal areas and assessment of environmental risks

http://dugi.udg.edu/item/http:@@@@hdl.handle.net@@10256@@19409

The main objective of this thesis is to evaluate the impact of wastewater discharges on receiving riverine and coastal ecosystems by studying the occurrence and fate of emerging contaminants (ECs). Since there is a myriad of ECs present in the environment, this thesis mostly focused on two main groups of compounds: (i) endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs), including natural and synthetic hormones, alkylphenols (APs), such as nonylphenol (NP) and octylphenol (OP), and the plasticizer bisphenol A (BPA), and (ii) pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs). These compounds were selected because they are one of the ECs of major input into the environment, thus being considered as “pseudo-persistent” pollutants, and for their potential deleterious effects to non-target organisms. Besides these target ECs, this thesis also evaluated the occurrence of other groups of contaminants by using high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS). Finally, an assessment of the environmental risks posed by the identified ECs has been done in order to select the compounds of major ecological concern and those that could be used as relevant markers of wastewater contamination in freshwater and marine ecosystems. To accomplish the thesis objectives, two different analytical approaches have been used: (i) quantitative target analytical methods to determine the two groups of selected ECs (13 target EDCs and 81 PhACs that belong to nineteen different therapeutic groups) using reference analytical standards, and (ii) suspect screening using HRMS and exact mass compound databases (360 ECs)

La finalitat principal d’aquesta tesi és l’avaluació de l’impacte de les aigües residuals en els ecosistemes d’aigua dolça i costaners, mitjançant l’estudi de la presència i destí de contaminants emergents (CEs). Atès que hi ha una gran quantitat de CEs presents en el medi ambient, aquesta tesi s’ha centrat principalment en dos grups de contaminants: (i) compostos disruptors endocrins (EDC), que inclouen les hormones naturals i sintètiques, alquilfenols (AP), com el nonilfenol (NP) i el octilfenol (OP), i el plastificant bisfenol A (BPA); ii) fàrmacs (PhACs). Aquests compostos es van seleccionar perquè pertanyen als CEs amb major entrada al medi ambient, de manera que es consideren com a contaminants "pseudo persistents", a banda dels seus possibles efectes adversos per als organismes aquàtics. Apart d’aquests CEs, en aquesta tesi també s’ha estudiat la presència d’altres grups de contaminants mitjançant l’ús d’espectrometria de masses d’alta resolució (HRMS). Finalment, s’ha realitzat una avaluació dels riscos plantejats per la presència dels CEs identificats, amb l’objectiu de seleccionar els compostos de major rellevància ecològica i que es podrien utilitzar com a marcadors de contaminació d’aigües residuals en els ecosistemes d’aigua dolça i marins. Per aconseguir aquests objectius, s’han utilitzat dos enfocaments analítics diferents: (i) l’ús de mètodes analítics target per determinar els dos grups de CEs seleccionats (13 EDCs i 81 PhACs que pertanyen a dinou grups terapèutics diferents), utilitzant estàndards analítics de referència; (ii) suspect screening mitjançant l’ús de HRMS i bases de dades de massa exactes (360 ECs)

This thesis was financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MINECO), the Spanish Agency of Investigation (AEI), the European Regional Development Found (FEDER) and the European Social Fund (FSE) through the projects TRANSFORMCOAST (CGL2014-56530-C4-4-R, AEI/FEDER, UE) and CLEaN-TOUR (CTM2017-85385-C2-1-R, AEI/FEDER, UE). M.Celic acknowledges her doctoral thesis grant FPI, with reference number BES2015-072297 (MINECO/FSE, EU). Partial financial support from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia, through the project no.172050, is also acknowledged. Catalan Government support is acknowledged via the Economy and Knowledge Department through Consolidated Research Groups (ICRA-ENV 2017 SGR 1124) and Water and Soil Quality Unit (2017 SGR 1404)

Universitat de Girona