Caffeine as a chemical tracer for contamination of urban rivers

Abstract

The growing urbanization in urban centers have continuously contributed to the deterioration of water quality in rivers. The use of caffeine as a chemical tracer for anthropic activities is an approach to the environmental monitoring of urban waterbodies, as its use is limited to humans and less susceptible to sampling error comparing to other traditional parameters for anthropic pollution. To analyze the possibility of using caffeine as a water quality parameter, the anthropic influence over three watersheds (Atuba, Belem and Palmital) from the Greater Curitiba was observed over five sampling campaigns. The caffeine was analyzed by liquid chromatography tandem diode array detection, after the solid phase extraction. Traditional parameters of water quality monitoring, such as ammoniacal nitrogen, thermotolerant coliforms, biochemical oxygen demand and orthophosphate, were measured for comparison. The results indicate anthropic influence over the basins, probably due to the lack of infrastructure, thus leading to the assumption of untreated domestic wastewater being discharged. The most degraded river was the Belem river (caffeine concentration of 23.08 µg.L-1). Caffeine presented itself as an appropriate approach for environmental monitoring, presenting a good correlation with the traditional parameters, such as for thermotolerant coliforms (R = 0.7375).

Clima Urbano E Vegetação: O Papel De Uma Área De Mata Na Formação De Uma Ilha Fria Em Uma Área Urbana

“…Thus, our work also indicated caffeine contamination. This compound has already been detected in rivers in China (Dai et al, 2016;Zhou et al, 2016), in the Iberian Peninsula (Gorga et al, 2015;Kuzmanović et al, 2015), Ecuador (Voloshenko-Rossin et al, 2015), Brazil (Mizukawa et al, 2019).And it was reported in all studies that caffeine is a pollution marker caused by urban activities.…”

In situ voltammetric analysis of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid in environmental water using a boron doped diamond electrode and an adapted unmanned air vehicle sampling platform

“…Organic compounds were not studied as potential interference because their presences had been reported only in case of specific contamination, as for example caffeine, an emerging pollutant. 34,35 Nowadays, caffeine was analysed by our research group 36 using SWV and BDDE and an oxidation peak near to 1.35 V ( vs. AgAgCl, 3.0 mol L −1 KCl ) with a peak width of 0.3 V was found. Therefore, caffeine would be a potential interferent for 2,4-D SWV detection, if caffeine were present in the samples.…”

Urban landscapes and legacy industry provide hotspots for riverine greenhouse gases: A source-to-sea study of the River Clyde

“…A drone-mounted CH 4 sensor might be effective in identifying point sources while continuous in-situ CH 4 measurements would better define source-flow relationships, although sensor reliability and sensitivity needs improvement. Where the source of nutrient pollution is unclear, human tracers such as caffeine could be applied to support understanding contributions to nutrient pollution (Mizukawa et al, 2019 , andChen et al, 2002).…”