“…Therefore, this approach may be useful for government and law enforcement agencies to monitor illicit drug markets in near real-time by covering large numbers of catchments simultaneously. For example, a national wastewater programme has been in effect in Australia since 2016, and such activities may benefit from higher throughput and more comprehensive analytical methods like the one developed herein ( O’Brien et al, 2019 ). Fig.…”
“…Therefore, this approach may be useful for government and law enforcement agencies to monitor illicit drug markets in near real-time by covering large numbers of catchments simultaneously. For example, a national wastewater programme has been in effect in Australia since 2016, and such activities may benefit from higher throughput and more comprehensive analytical methods like the one developed herein ( O’Brien et al, 2019 ). Fig.…”
“…Wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent is a major contributor to chemical pollution in the aquatic environment ( Eggen et al., 2014 ; Neale et al., 2017b ). A National Wastewater Monitoring Program aligned the collection of wastewater influent and effluent samples from around Australia with the 2016 Australian Census to improve understanding of public health and the release of chemicals from WWTPs ( O’Brien et al., 2019 ). These samples have been used to investigate the consumption of illicit drugs, alcohol and tobacco ( O’Brien et al., 2017 ), to refine excretion factors for codeine and methadone ( Thai et al., 2019 ), to determine the relationship between sociodemographic factors and diet, drug and lifestyle biomarkers ( Choi et al., 2019 ), to assess the prevalence of gout in Australia ( Ahmed et al., 2020 ), to calibrate passive samplers for a range of pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs ( McKay et al., 2020 ) and to estimate the release of UV filters in wastewater effluent ( O’Malley et al., 2020 ).…”
Bioassays show promise as a complementary approach to chemical analysis to assess the efficacy of wastewater treatment processes as they can detect the mixture effects of all bioactive chemicals in a sample. We investigated the treatment efficacy of ten Australian wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) covering 42% of the national population over seven consecutive days. Solid-phase extracts of influent and effluent were subjected to an
in vitro
test battery with six bioassays covering nine endpoints that captured the major modes of action detected in receiving surface waters. WWTP influents and effluents were compared on the basis of population- and flow-normalised effect loads, which provided insights into the biological effects exhibited by the mixture of chemicals before and after treatment. Effect removal efficacy varied between effect endpoints and depended on the treatment process. An ozonation treatment step had the best treatment efficacy, while WWTPs with only primary treatment resulted in poor removal of effects. Effect removal was generally better for estrogenic effects and the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor than for inhibition of photosynthesis, which is consistent with the persistence of herbicides causing this effect. Cytotoxicity and oxidative stress response provided a sum parameter of all bioactive chemicals including transformation products and removal was poorer than for specific endpoints except for photosynthesis inhibition. Although more than 500 chemicals were analysed, the detected chemicals explained typically less than 10% of the measured biological effect, apart from algal toxicity, where the majority of the effect could be explained by one dominant herbicide, diuron. Overall, the current study demonstrated the utility of applying bioassays alongside chemical analysis to evaluate loads of chemical pollution reaching WWTPs and treatment efficacy.
“…Beyond the origin of raw wastewaters, geographical specificities can be of great importance regarding a local (Causanilles et al, 2018;O'Brien et al, 2019), a national (Kolpin et al, 2002;Nefau et al, 2013) or even a continental (Tran et al, 2018) pattern. From a continental point of view, the occurrence of micropollutants has mainly been studied in three continents (i.e.…”
Global Trimethoprim (TMP) and Sulfamethoxazole (SMX) occurrences in raw wastewaters were systematically collected from the literature (n=140 articles) in order to assess the relevance of using the SMX/TMP ratio as a marker of the main origin of wastewaters. These two antibiotics were selected due to their frequent use in association (i.e. co-trimoxazole) in a 5:1 ratio (SMX:TMP) for medication purposes, generating a unique opportunity to globally evaluate the validity of this ratio based on concentration values. Several parameters (e.g. sorption, biodegradation) may affect the theoretical SMX/TMP ratio. However, the collected data highlighted the good agreement between the theoretical ratio and the experimental one, especially in wastewater treatment plant influents and hospital effluents. Only livestock effluents displayed a very high SMX/TMP ratio, indicative of the very significant use of sulfonamide alone in this industry. Conversely, several countries displayed low SMX/TMP ratio values, highlighting local features in the human pharmacopoeia. This review provides new insights in order to develop an easy to handle and sound marker of wastewater origins (i.e. human/livestock), beyond atypical local customs.
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