Journal
CHEMOSPHERE
Volume 119, Issue -, Pages 1054-1061Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2014.09.027
Keywords
Wastewater; Irrigation; Pharmaceutical; Personal care product; Household chemical; Pesticide
Categories
Funding
- Sino-Swiss Science and Technology Cooperation Program of the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research [IZL CZ2 123912]
- External Cooperation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences [GJHZ0908]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Anthropogenic contamination of surface waters in Asia is on the increase. While polar organic contaminants are gradually recognized for their impacts on aquatic ecosystems in the Western World, less is known about the situation in Asia. In developing countries like China, water resources are particularly vulnerable. We investigated the occurrence, elimination, and per capita loads of a wide range of pharmaceuticals, household chemicals and pesticides in five Beijing WWTPs representative for megacities in China, and compare the efficiency of different treatment processes. Based on initial screening for 268 micropollutants using high-resolution mass spectrometry, 33 compounds were examined in detail. Pollutant concentrations in raw wastewater ranged from <0.02 mu g L-1 for pesticides to >20 mu g L-1 for caffeine and the contrast agent iopromide. Concentrations in the WWTP effluents were generally <1 mu g L-1, except for some pharmaceuticals, iopromide (1.2-18 mu g L-1), caffeine (0.025-2.3 mu g L-1), and the artificial sweetener sucralose (2.7-3.5 mu g L-1). Elimination efficiencies varied greatly from <1% to close to 100%, with macrolides, some sulfonamides, metronidazole, iopromide, and 4-acetamidoantipyrine being the most persistent compounds. Total per capita loads of the investigated micropollutants were lower than in communal wastewater of Europe, amounting to 7.9-12.2 and 2.0-6.5 g d(-1) 1000 inhabitants(-1) in the influents and effluents, respectively, with an average release of similar to 100 kg d(-1) by the 11.4 million people and 2.3 million m(3) of wastewater treated per day. Since the wastewater effluents are often used for agricultural irrigation, residual organic pollutants pose a threat to food safety, the development of antibacterial resistance, and combined effects of micropollutants in the aquatic environment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available