Road Runoff Characterization: Ecotoxicological Assessment Combined with (Non-)Target Screenings of Micropollutants for the Identification of Relevant Toxicants in the Dissolved Phase

Fidji Sandré,Julien Le Roux,Gilles Varrault,Christophe Morin,Régis Moilleron,Laure Garrigue-Antar,Marie-Christine Gromaire,Nina Huynh

doi:10.3390/w14040511

Fidji Sandré, Julien Le Roux + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/w14040511

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Journal: Water	Publication Date: Feb 9, 2022
Citations: 8	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: École des Ponts ParisTech, Université Paris-Est Créteil

Abstract

Road runoff (RR) is an important vector of micropollutants towards groundwater and soils, threatening the environment and ecosystems. Through combined chemical and biological approaches, the purpose of this study was to get insights on specific toxicants present in RR from two sites differing by their traffic intensity and their toxicological risk assessment. Non-target screening was performed by HRMS on RR dissolved phase. Ecotoxicological risk was evaluated in a zebrafish embryos model and on rat liver mitochondrial respiratory chain. Specific HRMS fingerprints were obtained for each site, reflecting their respective traffic intensities. Several micropollutants, including 1,3-diphenylguanidine (DPG) and benzotriazole (BZT) were identified in greater concentrations at the high-traffic site. The origin of DPG was confirmed by analyzing HRMS fingerprints from shredded tires. RR samples from each site, DPG and BZT were of relatively low toxicity (no mortality) to zebrafish embryos, but all generated distinct and marked stress responses in the light–dark transition test, while DPG/BZT mixes abolished this effect. The moderate-traffic RR and DPG inhibited mitochondrial complex I. Our study highlights (i) the unpredictability of pollutants cocktail effect and (ii) the importance of a multi-approaches strategy to characterize environmental matrices, essential for their management at the source and optimization of depollution devices.

Highlights

Growing urbanization, increasing demographic pressure, and soil sealing generate important environmental pollution problems
The samples intended for HRMS andtoxicity experiments were globally representative of their respective sites of origin
Our results showed that the mitochondrial complex I activity is not impacted by a Road runoff (RR) sample (2017-06-28) from the C site but is significantly inhibited by the R site one (41.25%) (Figure 3)

Summary

Introduction

Growing urbanization, increasing demographic pressure, and soil sealing generate important environmental pollution problems. Road runoff (RR) is constituted of a complex matrix of over 600 different micropollutants mainly originating from traffic, whose release can contribute to environmental degradation and cause a threat to aquatic organisms [7]. These pollutants include particles such as tire residues and dust, and molecules such as petrochemicals, metals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), herbicides, phthalates, or alkylphenols [1,3,8,9]. Target analysis is one of the major tools to characterize wastewater and RR, allowing the detection and quantification of contaminants in the ng/L range [1,9,10,11]. Non-target screening (NTS) is increasingly used to complete the characterization of micropollutant contamination of samples without focusing on one or more families of molecules, but by examining the sample content as a whole, unraveling several hundreds to thousands of unknown molecules [13]

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