What do we breathe near contaminated water bodies?

Abstract

Samples of total suspended particles were taken at points located in the vicinity of two polluted rivers of Puebla, México, an affluent of the Atoyac River (UPMP), the Nexapa River (ICATEP), a point at some distance from the Nexapa River (UTIM) and one point far from this stream (sCarlos). 1 L water samples were taken from the two streams (aAtoyac and Nexapa). Sampling and extraction of organic contaminants was performed according to USEPA method TO13A and analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. In addition, DNA was extracted from the samples and sequenced. In previous work, a group of semi-volatile emerging contaminants were analyzed and in this work, 8 compounds with lower volatility were selected. Water concentrations of the studied compounds were much higher for aAtoyac than for Nexapa. The results obtained allow us to establish that the contaminants present in the water are aerosolized and therefore can affect the population that is exposed to aerosols from heavily polluted rivers with decreasing concentration in the order UPMP>ICATEP>UTIM>sCarlos with a decrease in their relative concentrations with distance from the water body. We conclude that proximity to heavily contaminated bodies of water implies serious risks to human health. It is worth mentioning that the obtained results represent only a first glance of the studied problem. A deeper evaluation obviously require more sampling and varying the distances from the rivers to determine time-space variations of the pollutant’s concentrations in aerosols and bioaerosols near polluted water bodies.