PT04 Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals in Wastewater Treatment Effluents
Exhibit Hall
8:00 AM - Tuesday
(PT061A) Trends and profiles of priority estrogenic substances and hER activity in municipal wastewater and bleached kraft mill effluent streams.
Fernandez, M1, Ikonomou, M1, Campbell, P2, Devlin, R2, Courtney, S3, 1 Institute of Ocean Sciences, Sidney, BC, Canada2 West Vancouver Laboratory, West Vancouver, BC, Canada3 Gulf Fisheries Centre, Moncton, NB, Canada
ABSTRACT- Recent findings from numerous groups around the world have shown that alkylphenol ethoxylates and biogenic and synthetic steroids such as 17-
ethinylestradiol (birth control hormone) account for a large portion of the estrogenicity exhibited by wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents. In vivo laboratory experiments in which fish were exposed to nonyl-phenols, phytoestrogens and synthetic steroids have found adverse reproductive and/or developmental effects at ecologically relevant concentrations. Periodic sampling of secondary influent and effluent from two municipal wastewater treatment plants, with trickling filtration (TF) or aerated lagoon (AL) secondary treatment, and one bleached kraft mill in Canada was performed. Additionally, to explore diurnal variation in estrogenic components from WWTPs daily 4-point time series sampling was performed for the TF-WWTP effluents. Filtered whole effluents and solid phase extraction fractions of varying polarity were measured for total net estrogenic activity using Sumpter's recombinant yeast assay (Routledge and Sumpter, 1996 - ET&C, 15(3): 241-248). A gas chromatography - high-resolution mass spectrometry based chemical analysis (See Ikonomou et al., SETAC 2004) was used to quantify several estrogenic endocrine disrupting compounds in the whole effluent samples. The hER activity, in estradiol equivalents, along with corresponding levels of potent estrogens in sewage and pulpmill effluents are presented and compared to previously reported values for WWTPs and pulpmills. Differences in hER activity and concentrations of priority estrogenic chemicals were examined between secondary treatment influent and effluent in the two WWTPs and in the 4-point time series samples for the TF-WWTP. Significant diurnal trends in hER activity that were inversely related to plant flow rate were found for secondary effluent for the trickling filtration treatment system. Finally, correlations between concentration profiles of potent estrogens and observed hER activity will be presented.
Key words: yeast estrogen screen, endocrine disrupting chemicals, BKME, trickling filtration