IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/waterr/v25y2011i4p1183-1193.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Existence of Pharmaceutical Compounds in Tertiary Treated Urban Wastewater that is Utilized for Reuse Applications

Author

Listed:
  • Despo Fatta-Kassinos
  • E. Hapeshi
  • A. Achilleos
  • S. Meric
  • M. Gros
  • M. Petrovic
  • D. Barcelo

Abstract

Research on the effects of chemical pollution in the environment that is related to urban wastewaters’ discharge and reuse until recently was focused almost exclusively on conventional pollutants. During the last several years though there has been a growing level of concern related to the hypothesis that various chemicals may exhibit endocrine disrupting effects. In addition, thousands of tons of pharmacologically active substances are used annually ending up in the wastewaters. In many countries facing prolonged droughts and implementing wastewater reuse schemes for irrigation and groundwater discharge, the existence of xenobiotic compounds in the tertiary treated wastewaters constitutes a new concern. This study describes the application of a recently developed multi-residue method for the determination of 29 multi-class pharmaceuticals using off line solid phase extraction followed by liquid chromatography–triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (LC–MS–MS). The method was applied for the analysis of pharmaceutical residues at three sewage treatment plants in Cyprus serving major coastal Mediterranean cities. The presence of 19 pharmaceuticals was confirmed. For some of the compounds high concentrations were obtained for the final effluents (e.g. ofloxacin: 4.82 μg/L, diclofenac: 5.51 μg/L, carbamazepine: 27.27 μg/L, metoprolol: 9.59 μg/L). Concerning the elimination potential, what was derived from the study is that the biological treatment step contributes the most to the removal of the compounds while sand filtration and chlorination steps reduce slightly the residual concentrations. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Suggested Citation

  • Despo Fatta-Kassinos & E. Hapeshi & A. Achilleos & S. Meric & M. Gros & M. Petrovic & D. Barcelo, 2011. "Existence of Pharmaceutical Compounds in Tertiary Treated Urban Wastewater that is Utilized for Reuse Applications," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 25(4), pages 1183-1193, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:waterr:v:25:y:2011:i:4:p:1183-1193
    DOI: 10.1007/s11269-010-9646-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-010-9646-4
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11269-010-9646-4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. N. Tangsubkul & P. Beavis & S. Moore & S. Lundie & T. Waite, 2005. "Life Cycle Assessment of Water Recycling Technology," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 19(5), pages 521-537, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Papadaskalopoulou, C. & Katsou, E. & Valta, K. & Moustakas, K. & Malamis, D. & Dodou, M., 2015. "Review and assessment of the adaptive capacity of the water sector in Cyprus against climate change impacts on water availability," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 105(PA), pages 95-112.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nancy Diaz-Elsayed & Jiayi Hua & Nader Rezaei & Qiong Zhang, 2023. "A Decision Framework for Designing Sustainable Wastewater-Based Resource Recovery Schemes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-27, February.
    2. Reza Farrahi Moghaddam & Fereydoun Farrahi Moghaddam & Mohamed Cheriet, 2014. "A Multi-Entity Input Output (MEIO) Approach to Sustainability - Water-Energy-GHG (WEG) Footprint Statements in Use Cases from Auto and Telco Industries," Papers 1404.6227, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2014.
    3. Elena Gómez Sellés & Andrei Briones-Hidrovo & Roberto del Teso March & Francisco Javier Uche Marcuello & Enrique Cabrera Marcet, 2021. "Rigid Versus Variable Energy Sources in Water-Pressurized Systems: An Economic and Environmental Analysis," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 35(10), pages 3203-3220, August.
    4. Prouty, Christine & Zhang, Qiong, 2016. "How do people's perceptions of water quality influence the life cycle environmental impacts of drinking water in Uganda?," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 24-33.
    5. Sandra E. Parada & Olga Blasco-Blasco & Vicente Liern, 2019. "Adequacy Indicators Based on Pre-established Goals: An Implementation in a Colombian University," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(1), pages 1-24, May.
    6. Pereira, Luis S. & Cordery, Ian & Iacovides, Iacovos, 2012. "Improved indicators of water use performance and productivity for sustainable water conservation and saving," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 39-51.
    7. Ana Elduque & Carlos Javierre & Daniel Elduque & Ángel Fernández, 2015. "LCI Databases Sensitivity Analysis of the Environmental Impact of the Injection Molding Process," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-9, March.
    8. Muñoz, Ivan & del Mar Gómez, María & Fernández-Alba, Amadeo R., 2010. "Life Cycle Assessment of biomass production in a Mediterranean greenhouse using different water sources: Groundwater, treated wastewater and desalinated seawater," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 1-9, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:waterr:v:25:y:2011:i:4:p:1183-1193. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.