IWRA Proceedings

What are the emerging pollutants?

• Newly detected compounds, development of analytical techniques, not regulated.
• Microplastics, nanomaterial, PFAs and PPCPs.

Why are pharmaceuticals an issue?

• Biologically active.
• High consumption -> Continuous introduction into the environment.

How do they reach agricultural soils? WWTP effluent -> Indirect reuse

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the natural attenuation processes of four pharmaceuticals and two Transformation products (TPs) during their infiltration through an agricultural from data obtained in a column test.

CONCLUSIONS

• All models obtained fairly acceptable results R2> 0.90 in all cases.
• For the modelled pharmaceuticals, a better fit was obtained when considering sorption in non-linear equilibrium. While for the TPs a better fit was obtained when considering kinetic sorption with a tendency towards linearity.
• It seems that sorption processes in this type of agricultural soil are dominated by electrostatic sorption phenomena with the mineral phases, therefore, positively ionized compounds have a higher affinity to sorption in this soil.
• Flecainide and metformin show the highest attenuation; however, the risks of their presence in the soil must be assessed.
• Although valsartan has the highest mass (435.23 Da) and an anionic character, it is the most persistent compound possibly due to the absence of certain field conditions (rhizosphere and/or organic matter).
• The modelled compounds are arranged based on their μω in descending order from the one that suffered the most degradation to the one that suffered the least; Sulfamethoxazole, atenoloic acid, 4-formylaminoantipyrine and valsartan.

Thursday, January 19th, 2023, 13:00