Emerging Contaminants at a Closed and an Operating Landfill in Oklahoma

Abstract

Landfills are the final depositories for a wide range of solid waste from both residential and commercial sources, and therefore have the potential to produce leachate containing many organic compounds found in consumer products such as pharmaceuticals, plasticizers, disinfectants, cleaning agents, fire retardants, flavorings, and preservatives, known as emerging contaminants (ECs). Landfill leachate was sampled from landfill cells of three different age ranges from two landfills in Central Oklahoma. Samples were collected from an old cell containing solid waste greater than 25 years old, an intermediate age cell with solid waste between 16 and 3 years old, and operating cell with solid waste less than 5 years old to investigate the chemical variability and persistence of selected ECs in landfill leachate of differing age sources. Twenty‐eight of 69 analyzed ECs were detected in one or more samples from the three leachate sources. Detected ECs ranged in concentration from 0.11 to 114 μg/L and included 4 fecal and plant sterols, 13 household\industrial, 7 hydrocarbon, and 4 pesticide compounds. Four ECs were solely detected in the oldest leachate sample, two ECs were solely detected in the intermediate leachate sample, and no ECs were solely detected in the youngest leachate sample. Eleven ECs were commonly detected in all three leachate samples and are an indication of the contents of solid waste deposited over several decades and the relative resistance of some ECs to natural attenuation processes in and near landfills.

Investigating landfill leachate as a source of trace organic pollutants

“…The concentrations of DEET in Sites A and B leachate were higher than the highest calibration standard and are reported as greater than the highest calibration standard. The concentration of DEET was higher than previously reported in studies of U.S. landfill leachates (n = 5; range <80-8100 ng L À1 ) (Barnes et al, 2004;Masoner et al, 2014) but lower than a second study (43.7-52.8 mg L À1 ) (Andrews et al, 2012). The concentration of DEET has been reported in a range of surface water samples from the U.S. and the concentration is typically in ng L À1 ranges ( Weigel et al (2004) is also typically lower than was found in the samples analyzed in this study but wastewater volumes are considerably higher.…”

“…In another landfill leachate study, fluoxetine was also less than the detection limit (Andrews et al, 2012). However, the lack of detection of fluoxetine is consistent with reports of low frequency of detection of fluoxetine in surface waters Glassmeyer et al, 2005;Benotti et al, 2009), groundwaters (Barnes et al, 2008) and wastewaters (Weigel et al, 2004).…”

“…The concentration of DEET has been reported in a range of surface water samples from the U.S. and the concentration is typically in ng L À1 ranges ( Weigel et al (2004) is also typically lower than was found in the samples analyzed in this study but wastewater volumes are considerably higher. It is possible that landfill leachates are a source of DEET to the environment and this requires further investigation, particularly given the range of concentrations reported in this study and that of Andrews et al (2012) and that DEET is not well removed through conventional wastewater treatment processes (Sui et al, 2010).…”

“…Many early studies focused on toxic and carcinogenic organic compounds in landfill leachate including BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes), chlorinated hydrocarbons, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and organochlorine pesticides (Brown and Donnelly, 1988;Öman and Hynning, 1993). Subsequently, hundreds of individual chemicals from a variety of classes has been detected in landfill leachates; including pharmaceuticals (Andrews et al, 2012) , fluorinated surfactants (Busch et al, 2010), phosphate based flame retardants (Yasuhara, 1994), phthalate acid esters (Bauer et al, 1998), bisphenol A (Yamamoto et al, 2001), personal care products (Eggen et al, 2010), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (Öman and Junestedt, 2008), chlorinated dioxins/furans (Öman and Junestedt, 2008) and organotin compounds (Pinel-Raffaitin et al, 2008). A recent publication has highlighted the occurrence of a large number of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and other substances in US landfill leachates (Masoner et al, 2014).…”

Determination of Prazosin and Simvastatin in Landfill Leachate Using Liquid Chromatography-Time of Flight-Mass Spectrometry

“…In leachate samples, the detection of pharmaceuticals has never been studied except few reported papers [9,10]. Landfills may be sources of a large number of organic compounds known as emerging contaminants (ECs and/or EDCs) such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, fertilizers and others.…”