Session 34 - Emerging pollutants

Overwhelming evidence over many decades has shown that many organic compounds have been released in the environment due to anthropogenic activities. The term “chemicals of emerging concern (CEC)” has been established for chemicals, which are not subjected to marketing restrictions and regulatory monitoring programmes but are candidates for future regulation, due to their frequent detection in environmental samples and their potential hazardous properties (Thomaidis et al, 2012; Gavrilescu et al, 2015; Dulio et al, 2018). Despite the fact that their chemical and physical properties allow them to enter marine, freshwater and/or terrestrial ecosystems, data for the potential bioaccumulation and biomagnification of CECs though the food are missing, which increases the concern about their effects on the ecosystems, biota and human health. CECs, in many studies, are determined by targeted methods, based on the analysis of reference standards (e.g., plant protection products, OCPs, PAHs, PFAS, pharmaceuticals and veterinary medicines). However, despite the high selectivity and sensitivity of targeted methods, using mainly selected reaction monitoring (SRM) mode of detection, they are limited to the determination of a restricted number of compounds.

Session: 34, Room: D, at Fri, 09/06/2019 - 16:15 to 16:30
Oral presentation in Emerging pollutants

Organic micropollutants are compounds which are normally detected at concentrations up to microgram per liter in the aquatic environment and they are considered to be potential threats to the ecosystem. Some of them have been studied in detail since 1980s and are already included in existing national or international legislative documents, while others are characterized as emerging contaminants (ECs) and no regulations currently require their environmental monitoring. During the last decade, several studies have been focused on the investigation of possible sources of emerging contaminants’ distribution into the environment. According to the literature, sewage treatment plants are considered as major point sources of these compounds into the environment, as they receive domestic and industrial wastewater, as well as urban and -in some cases- agricultural runoff (Ratola et al., 2012; Luo et al., 2014; Arvaniti and Stasinakis, 2015). On the other side, the contribution of landfills, via the produced leachates, in transferring emerging pollutants to the environment, is not well reported so far (Oturan et al., 2015). Besides European policy for recycling and waste-to-energy, landfilling still remains one of the alternative options for municipal solid waste management in EU-28, where 58 × 106 tonnes of municipal solid waste were disposed to landfills in 2017 (Eurostat, 2018).

Session: 34, Room: D, at Fri, 09/06/2019 - 16:30 to 16:45
Oral presentation in Emerging pollutants

Recent advances on Liquid Chromatography-High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (LC-HRMS) has revolutionized identification of new compounds, having various polarity, over various scientific fields especially in the environmental science. The continuous growing of LC-HRMS applications yet increased the “peak inventories”. This is achieved within three main workflows of “Target”, “Suspect” and “Non-target” screening. Although targeted analysis is the best way to confirm the identification of a compound, it is sometime not practical due to limited access to reference standards. The vast majority of the peaks detected in the samples generally remain unidentified and supportive information such as retention time prediction, MS/MS (experimental and estimated one) along with ionization behavior would help increase the identification confidence. As “peak inventories” expands and number of regulatory databases grows, retrieving possible candidates and screening them often become a time-consuming task and requires large amount of efforts. Thus, an automatic approach could be of great need to screen known-unknown compounds in the samples. The aim of this study is to propose a workflow (Automatic Non-target Screening (AutoNonTarget)) to screen a peaks-list, created by LC-HRMS instrument, from the environmental samples such as influent/effluent wastewater (IWW and EWW) or sewage sludge samples.

Session: 34, Room: D, at Fri, 09/06/2019 - 16:45 to 17:00
Oral presentation in Emerging pollutants

In recent years, the technical-scientific community has been paying increasing attention to the presence of emerging contaminants that are intercepted in surface water and wastewater since these compounds could have harmful effects on human health and on environment too.
Conventional wastewater treatment installations represent a source of pollution from emerging contaminants because they are not designed to remove these compounds from the wastewater in their treatment cycle.
Several studies have shown the possibility of removing successfully these compounds from wastewater through the use of membrane bioreactors (MBR) combined with electrochemical processes, using conventional membranes.
The present study first examined the possibility of combining electrochemical processes with MBR (eMBR), through the use of self-forming dynamic membranes (SFDM) for the removal of emerging contaminants from municipal wastewater.
Thanks to this extremely innovative hybrid system, it has been possible to reduce the problems linked to the use of traditional membranes, in particular the high costs both of initial investment and of cleaning following fouling.

Session: 34, Room: D, at Fri, 09/06/2019 - 17:00 to 17:15
Oral presentation in Emerging pollutants

The site of interest of this study is Asopos river which is located in Sterea Ellada, north of Athens, and passes through areas where 20% of total Greece industrial production takes place. The extensive installation of industries in the area near the river, and the uncontrolled disposal of industrial and agricultural wastes into the river, make the water quality of Asopos questionable. The environmental problem of Asopos river basin is known since 1969, due to the detection of high Cr (VI) concentrations in ground and river water samples with potential carcinogenic effects to human health. However, the probable occurrence of industrial and agricultural organic chemicals with unknown toxic effects has not been studied so far. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first environmental monitoring study in Greece including not only the determination of legislated compounds, but also the wide-scope screening of organic chemicals for which no occurrence data exist.

Session: 34, Room: D, at Fri, 09/06/2019 - 15:45 to 16:00
Oral presentation in Emerging pollutants

Monitoring activities over several decades have revealed the ubiquitous presence of organic contaminants in environmental compartments. Asopos river basin, located in Sterea Ellada, has been the focus of many environmental studies over the last decades, mainly due to its geomorphology and the extensive industrial activities that take place in this territory. The detection of high Cr(VI) concentrations, causing potential carcinogenic effects, have attracted the attention of media and raised the consciousness of the citizens. Although there are many studies in recent literature focusing on the occurrence of heavy metals in Asopos river basin, there is a lack of information concerning the presence of emerging contaminants. The aim of this study is the determination of thousands of emerging contaminants in the environmental samples (river water and sediments) form Asopos river basin, following wide-scope target screening methodologies. Solid-Phase Extraction (SPE) by mixed-mode sorbent was used during the sample preparation of river water samples to ensure the extraction of various classes of compounds with a wide range of physicochemical properties. The extracts were analyzed by complimentary chromatographic techniques, including Reversed Phase (RP) and Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography (HILIC) coupled to Quadrupole-Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (QToF-MS).

Session: 34, Room: D, at Fri, 09/06/2019 - 16:00 to 16:15
Oral presentation in Emerging pollutants

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are substances of wide distribution, high toxicity, persistence, and ability to long-distance migration. They are characterized by unique properties: temperature stability; high boiling point; non-combustibility; resistance to chemical and physical influences; high dielectric constants.
The presence and concentration of dioxin-like and non- dioxin-like PCBs in old and new landfills of Dilijan district (Republic of Armenia) were investigated. Municipal waste dumps of Dilijan are active sources of PCBs accumulation and spread. In soil samples from both the old and new landfills excess concentrations of PCBs were found in 100% of cases compared to normative level, and the summary concentrations of the latter multiply exceeded the normative level.
PCBs-related environmental pollution is of great concern because the emergence and spread of PCBs in nature is not always subject to control and regulation, as the sources of PCBs formation are diverse.

Session: 34, Room: D, at Fri, 09/06/2019 - 15:15 to 15:30
Oral presentation in Emerging pollutants

Screening of 102 organic pollutants in groundwater along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal in China by GC×GC-TOFMS. A total of 45 samples were collected. The targets of the investigation involve multiple types of organic pollutants such as Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their derivatives, phthalates (PAEs), phenols, anilines, polychlorinated naphthalenes (PCNs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) et al. The results showed that naphthalene, fluoranthene and phthalates are commonly detected compounds. There are 8 categories of organic pollutants detected. The highest concentration of 4-nitrobiphenyl is as high as 430 μg/L, and other targets were detected at the higher concentration in the sample. It means groundwater in the sites have been polluted by micro organic pollutant.

Session: 34, Room: D, at Fri, 09/06/2019 - 15:30 to 15:45
Oral presentation in Emerging pollutants

Prioritisation of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) remains a challenging task of primary importance for environmental managers and the scientific community as regards the definition of priority actions for pollution prevention & control and for the allocation of resources to address current knowledge gaps. The NORMAN prioritisation scheme combines the traditional risk-based ranking process with the preliminary application of a decision tree, which allows the allocation of substances into six action categories, based on the knowledge gaps and actions needed to fill them, e.g. development of more powerful analytical methods, launch of monitoring campaigns and performing additional ecotoxicity tests. The ranking within each category is then evaluated by occurrence, hazard and risk criteria. The tremendous improvements in high-resolution mass spectrometry and the development of advanced chemometric tools resulted in the update of the NORMAN prioritisation scheme, so that it incorporates the automatic retrieval of the occurrence of CECs through retrospective suspect screening. The objective of the study was to present a) the updated NORMAN prioritization scheme and the modifications introduced and b) the application of the scheme for the prioritization of more than 40,000 CECs in 46 effluent wastewater samples collected from Europe.

Session: 34, Room: D, at Fri, 09/06/2019 - 15:00 to 15:15
Oral presentation in Emerging pollutants

The presence of ten pharmaceutical compounds (bupropion, venlafaxine, mirtazapine, sertraline, citalopram, caffeine, triclosan, carbamazepine, diazepam, clozapine) which belong to different treatment categories was studied in one hospital and three urban WWTPs in north and northwestern Greece. The pharmaceuticals have been selected due to their high usage rate but also because of their proven presence in both wastewater treatment plants and the aquatic environment. Analytical methodology was based on gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS) detection after the application of a solid phase extraction (SPE) step. In addition, elimination of these compounds in the WWTPs was assessed as well as their ecotoxicological impact on the aquatic environment was estimated by means of risk quotient (RQ). The results showed that the most often detectable compounds were caffeine, triclosan and venlafaxine. High concentration levels of caffeine, up to 22142.1 ng/L were found, while removal rates were up to 99 %. In addition, high levels of acute and chronic toxicity were observed for triclosan (RQ>1).

Session: 34, Room: D, at Fri, 09/06/2019 - 17:15 to 17:18
Flash presentation in Emerging pollutants

There is a growing public and scientific concern about the possibility of ecosystem and human health effects from pharmaceuticals in environment. Results have shown that several types of environmental waters (drinking water, groundwater, surface water, treated water) were contaminated by the presence of pharmaceutical compounds including psychiatric drugs. For this reason, it is imperative to develop analytical methods of extraction and pre-concentration to allow for subsequent instrumental analysis of these drugs. In this work, fabric phase sorptive extraction (FPSE) is investigated for the extraction of citalopram, clozapine and sertraline (used in the treatment of mental diseases) in water samples with the aid of chemometric tools and high performance liquid chromatography-photodiode array detection (HPLC-UV/DAD). Parameters affecting the efficiency of FPSE were evaluated in depth. The method shows good linearity, with RSD of less than 15%. Relative recoveries higher than 59% were obtained for the studied compounds

Session: 34, Room: D, at Fri, 09/06/2019 - 17:18 to 17:21
Flash presentation in Emerging pollutants