Assessment of the Occurrence and Potential Effects of Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products in South Florida Waters and Sediments

Abstract

All rights reserved.iv DEDICATION It is not easy to start pursuing a Ph.D and it becomes even harder towards the end. It is a kind of job that makes me start to question myself; it is a period of time in my life that I am desperate to call for help. But I am indeed blessed.I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, without their understanding and support and most of all love, it is impossible for me to walk so far on my way of pursuing my dream. They not only gave me life but also taught me how to become a better person.I dedicate this dissertation to my husband, without him, I will never know the colorful and beautiful part of life. He lets me feel peaceful and powerful when I face difficulties. An ASE-SPE-GC-MS method was developed and applied to the analysis of the sediment and soil area where reclaimed water was used for irrigation. Most analytes were below detection limits, even though some of analytes were detected in the reclaimed water at relatively high concentrations corroborating the fact that PPCPs do not significantly partition to mineral phases.

Use of sucralose and caffeine as tracers of human waste in a coral reef ecosystem

“…Tracers (caffeine and s ucralose) were quantified a t Florida International University (sub-contract to T DI Brooks) using previously published m ethods (Wang 2012; Batchu e t al 2015). These methods resulted in m ethod d etection l imits (MDLs) of 1.1 a nd 1 2.1 n g/L, for caffeine and sucralose respectively.…”

Hospital and Municipal Wastewater: Identification of Relevant Pharmaceutical Compounds

“…Description of the Database. The development of this work involved three steps: (1) Search papers from 2009 to 2013 about PhCs in hospital and municipal wastewater; (2) Develop tables Bila e Dezotti, 2003;Homem and Santos, 2011;Lapworth et al, 2012;Wang, 2012;Jiang et al, 2013. and graphics of hospital and municipal wastewater data; and (3) analyze the results.…”

Assessment of the Occurrence and Potential Risks of Antibiotics and their Metabolites in South Florida Waters Using Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry

“…Most of these published methods focus on the detection of pharmaceuticals including antibiotics, whereas the present method was optimized for the detection of antibiotics only in various environmental matrices, including drinking waters. In the major Miami-Dade DWTPs, the conventional treatment process consists of screening, grit removal, primary sedimentation, activated sludge treatment by oxygenation and chlorination (Wang, 2012). Thus, finished drinking water samples contain residual amounts of chlorine from disinfection, which might either alter the stability of antibiotics or interfere with the analysis.…”