Occurrence and removal of phenolic endocrine disrupting chemicals in the water treatment processes.

Xuemin Lv,Pu Jiang,Sanhua Xiao,Fei Tang,Gang Zhang

doi:10.1038/srep22860

Abstract

This paper evaluated the occurrence and removal efficiency of four selected phenolic endocrine disrupting chemicals (bisphenol A (BPA), octylphenol (OP), nonylphenol (NP) and diethylstilbestrol (DES)) in two drinking waterworks in Jiangsu province which take source water from Taihu Lake. The recombined yeast estrogen screen (YES) and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) were applied to assess the estrogenicity and detect the estrogens in the samples. The estrogen equivalents (EEQs) ranged from nd (not detected) to 2.96 ng/L, and the estrogenic activities decreased along the processes. Among the 32 samples, DES prevailed in all samples, with concentrations ranging 1.46–12.0 ng/L, BPA, OP and NP were partially detected, with concentrations ranging from nd to 17.73 ng/L, nd to 0.49 ng/L and nd to 3.27 ng/L, respectively. DES was found to be the main contributor to the estrogenicity (99.06%), followed by NP (0.62%), OP (0.23%) and BPA (0.09%). From the observation of treatment efficiency, the advanced treatment processes presented much higher removal ratio in reducing DES, the biodegradation played an important role in removing BPA, ozonation and pre-oxidation showed an effective removal on all the four estrogens; while the conventional ones can also reduce all the four estrogens.

Highlights

We could find that the estrogencities of the samples were lower in waterworks A, considering the different water intake points of the two waterworks, water works B is much nearer to the tributary that run through the residential districts which may bring in more contaminants, that may be the cause to the different estrogenicities
The total treatment removal efficiency manifested that the conventional and advanced treatment processes can effectively reduce the concentration of bisphenol A (BPA), NP and OP with the removal efficiencies were above 80% even to 100%
Yeast estrogen screen (YES) assay showed that the estrogenic activities decreased along the processes in both conventional and advanced treatment processes, and the LC-MS/MS analysis found out that BPA, DES and NP were identified in most of the samples, and DES was identified to be the main contributor to the estrogenicity among the four target compounds

Summary

Introduction

Conventional water treatment processes (coagulation, sedimentation, sand filtration, and chlorination) have been used for decades, and with the pollution becoming more serious and the purpose of improving drinking water quality, advanced water treatment processes (ozonation, activated carbon and ultra-membrane filtration) have been applied in a waterworks (Taihu Lake source) five years ago. The objectives of this paper were to (a) determine the occurrence of the phenolic EDCs in two waterworks that both take source water from Taihu Lake, (b) to discuss the removal efficiencies of the target phenols in the conventional water treatment processes and the advanced treatment processes, (c) to find out the main contributor to the estrogenicity of the four target phenols

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion