Occurrence, fate, and persistence of gemfibrozil in water and soil

Abstract

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) have emerged as a group of potential environmental contaminants of concern. The occurrence of gemfibrozil, a lipid-regulating drug, was studied in the influent and effluent at a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) and groundwater below a land application site receiving treated effluent from the WWTP. In addition, the sorption of gemfibrozil in two loam soils and sand was assessed, and biological degradation rates in two soil types under aerobic conditions were also determined. Results showed that concentrations of gemfibrozil in wastewater influent, effluent, and groundwater were in the range of 3.47 to 63.8 µg/L, 0.08 to 19.4 µg/L, and undetectable to 6.86 µg/L, respectively. Data also indicated that gemfibrozil in the wastewater could reach groundwater following land application of the treated effluent. Soil-water distribution coefficients for gemfibrozil, determined by the batch equilibrium method, varied with organic carbon content in the soils. The sorption capacity was silt loam > sandy loam > sand. Under aerobic conditions, dissipation half-lives for gemfibrozil in sandy loam and silt loam soils were 17.8 and 20.6 days, respectively; 25.4 and 11.3% of gemfibrozil was lost through biodegradation from the two soils over 14 days.

Modeling the transport behavior of 16 emerging organic contaminants during soil aquifer treatment

“…Since primidone was found to be persistent in all previous studies Hass et al, 2012;Burke et al, 2014a;Henzler et al, 2014), we refrain from linking its degradation behavior to the potentially prevailing redox conditions below the pond. For most of the degrading compounds the estimated rate constants of this study were considerably higher than reported in previous studies, even though prolonged aerobic conditions, which generally lead to higher degradation rates for many organic compounds (Stuyfzand et al, 2007;Kunkel and Radke, 2008;Xu et al, 2009;Wiese et al, 2011;Fang et al, 2012;Hoppe-Jones et al, 2012), were presumably not present. Flow path averaged degradation constants lay between 0.036 d −1 for clofibric acid and 0.9 d −1 for ibuprofen.…”

Fates and transport of PPCPs in soil receiving reclaimed water irrigation

“…However, no PPCP compound was detected in the gravity drainage collected at the depth of 100 cm below ground surface. Fang et al (2012) reported that the gemfibrozil in reclaimed water applied on land might reach the groundwater aquifer underneath. These field-observed results provided a snapshot of the PPCP chemicals in motions, but were unable to delineate the dynamic interactions between the chemicals, hydraulics, and nature of soil environment.…”

Interactions of triclosan, gemfibrozil and galaxolide with biosolid-amended soils: Effects of the level and nature of soil organic matter

“…For gemfibrozil the range of the log K FOC values (representing OC-normalized distribution coefficients at the solution concentration of 1 mg L À1 ) includes that reported in the literature for the log OC-normalized distribution coefficients (K OC , Lkg À1 ) varying between 1.9 and 2.9 on different soils at relevant pH (Lin et al, 2011;Fang et al, 2012). The range of the triclosan log K FOC values presented in Table 3 is within the wider log K OC range of 3.0-4.3 reported on various soils at comparable pHs (Karnjanapiboonwong et al, 2010;Duran-Alvarez et al, 2012).…”