Relationship between pollutant content and ecotoxicity of sewage sludges from Spanish wastewater treatment plants

Roig, Neus; Sierra, Jordi; Nadal, Martí; Martí, Esther; Navalón-Madrigal, Pedro; Schuhmacher, Marta; Domingo, José L.

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2012.03.018

Cited by 83 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…As compared with heavy metal levels reported in literature for sludge collected from various WWTPs, our results (Table 1) are in good agreement with those found for Kavala by other authors [25,33], are comparable with findings for Kalamata [22], Komotini [23] and Crete [21] in Greece, for Spain [18,28,38], Poland [13,27] and Brasil [34,37], and are much lower than the values obtained for Greece at the largest WWTPs of Athens (Psyttalia and Metamorphosi) [33] and Thessaloniki [4], and also for China [35,36] and Thailand [7], probably due to the fact that the WWTPs in this study only receive domestic wastewater, while industrial wastes processed in other stations usually contain higher levels of heavy metals than residential wastes [39].…”

Section: Metal Levels In Greek Wwtps Sludgesupporting

confidence: 92%

“…On one hand, this addition may represent a good alternative to prevent degradation of soils and to improve many physical, chemical and biological properties of soil [14,[25][26][27][28]. On the other hand, the high content of hazardous substances in sewage sludge, such as heavy metals (ranging from less than 1 mg/kg to over 1000 mg/kg) [10], would increase the risk of their accumulation in the soil [17] and, subsequently, the contamination of surface and groundwater, crops and food chain, having serious consequences for animals and human health [6,9,11,14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Temporal variability of sewage sludge heavy metal content from Greek wastewater treatment plants

Spanos

Ene

Patronidou

et al. 2016

Ecological Chemistry and Engineering S

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Abstract:The aim of this study was to evaluate the temporal variations of selected heavy metals level in anaerobic fermented and dewatered sewage sludge. Sewage sludge samples were collected in different seasons and years from three municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) located in Northern Greece, in Kavala (Kavala and Palio localities) and Drama (Drama locality) Prefectures. An investigation of the potential of sludge utilization in agriculture was performed, based on the comparison of average total heavy metal concentrations and of chromium species (hexavalent, trivalent) concentrations with the allowed values according to the Council Directive 86/278/EEC and Greek national legislation (Joint Cabinet Decision 80568/4225/91) guidelines. In this regard, all the investigated heavy metals (Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn, Hg) and chromium species Cr(VI) and Cr(III) have average concentrations (dry matter weight) well below the legislated thresholds for soil application, as following: 2.12 mg kg -1 Cd; 103.7 mg kg -1 Cr; 136.4 mg kg -1 Cu; < 0.2 mg kg -1 Hg; 29.1 mg kg -1 Ni; 62.0 mg kg -1 Pb; 1253.2 mg kg -1 Zn; 1.56 mg kg -1 Cr(VI) and 115.7 mg kg -1 Cr(III). Values of relative standard deviation (RSD) indicate a low or moderate temporal variability for domestic-related metals Zn (10.3-14.7%), Pb (27.9-44.5%) and Cu (33.5-34.2%), and high variability for the metals of mixed origin or predominantly resulted from commercial activities, such as Ni (42.4-50.7%), Cd (44.3-85.5%) and Cr (58.2-102.0%). For some elements the seasonal occurrence pattern is the same for Kavala and Palio sludge, as following: a) Cd and Cr: spring>summer>winter; b) Cu, Ni and Pb: winter>spring>summer. On average, in summer months (dry season) metal concentrations are lower than in spring and winter (wet seasons), with the exception of Zn. For Kavala and Palio the results demonstrate that the increased number of inhabitants (almost doubled) in summer time due to tourism does not influence the metal levels in sludge. Comparing the results obtained for similar spring-summerwinter sequences in 2007 and 2010/11 and for the spring season in 2007, 2008 and 2010, it can be noticed that, in general, the average heavy metal contents show an increasing tendency towards the last year. In all the measurement periods, the Palio sludge had the highest metal contents and Kavala sludge the lowest, leading to the conclusion that the WWTP operating process rather than population has a significant effect upon the heavy metal content of sludge. Cr(VI)/Cr(total) concentration ratios are higher for Kavala sludge in the majority of sampling campaigns, followed by Drama and Palio sludge. The metals which present moderate to strong positive correlation have common origin, which could be a domestic-commercial mixed source.

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Section: Metal Levels In Greek Wwtps Sludgesupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal variability of sewage sludge heavy metal content from Greek wastewater treatment plants

Spanos

Ene

Patronidou

et al. 2016

Ecological Chemistry and Engineering S

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…the toxic effect of heavy metals in the leachate of sewage sludges on water organisms (Fjällborg et al 2005;Fjällborg and Dave 2003). Other researchers investigated the toxic effect of sewage sludges with bacteria and terrestrial plants (Roig et al 2012) and developed a novel assay that measures denitrification inhibition in a model denitrifier (Holzem et al 2014). So far, researchers did not concentrate on investigating the direct toxic effect of sewage sludge by the use of selected organisms of all affected compartments and additional behavioural studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Toxic potential of different types of sewage sludge as fertiliser in agriculture: ecotoxicological effects on aquatic and soil indicator species

Rastetter

Gerhardt

2014

J Soils Sediments

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Purpose Treated and processed sewage sludge (biosolids) generated during the treatment of waste water usually contain substantial concentrations of nutrients, especially phosphorus which is essential for plant growth. Sewage sludge therefore can be used as an alternative fertiliser in agriculture. But since sewage sludge could also contain pollutants, analysis and ecotoxicological tests on affected soil and streamwater organisms are necessary in order to guarantee its harmless use. Materials and methods Three test species were chosen to cover the environmental compartments water, sediment and soil. Following test species and parameters were applied to evaluate the acute effects of sewage sludge: Lemna minor (inhibition, discolouration and colony break-up), Gammarus fossarum (mortality, behaviour), Eisenia fetida (avoidance behaviour). Chemical assessment included nutrients, organic pollutants and heavy metals. Results and discussion The assessment of a non-dewatered sludge sample resulted in an inhibition of growth of L. minor starting from 22.5 g total solid (TS) l −1 after 7 days (EC 50 : 45.7 g TS l −1 ). Concentrations below 9 g TS l −1 supported plant growth. G. fossarum displayed significantly decreased movement activity at 18 and 45 g TS l −1 sludge concentration during an exposure time of 2 days, leading to decreased survival after 4 days of exposure in 18 g TS l −1 (LC 50 : 17.9 g TS l −1 ). After 2 days, E. fetida exhibited an increased avoidance behaviour of contaminated soil from 9 g TS kg −1 sewage sludge (EC 50 : 13.4 g TS kg −1 ). 100 % avoidance of contaminated soil was obtained at 45 g TS kg −1 . The dewatered sludge samples had a higher toxic effect on L. minor and G. fossarum but a lower one on the avoidance behaviour of E. fetida. G. fossarum was the most sensitive test species in the applied test setups. The realistic application amounts of the tested sewage sludge samples being approx. 6.0 g TS kg −1 (maximum allowed application amount of sewage sludge) and approx. 3 g TS kg −1 (maximum agronomical relevant application amount) in worst case studies are lower than the analysed EC 50 /LC 50 values. Conclusions In conclusion, for all three test species, all three tested sewage sludge samples have to be classified as toxic at high concentration levels under laboratory conditions. However, it is assumed that acute toxic effects of the sludge samples on the three test species can be most likely excluded in the field due to lower dosing, adsorption and dilution. Tests of environmental samples will be conducted in order to support this hypothesis.

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“…The Σ 75 PCNs in this work are comparable to Σ 9 PCNs in sewage sludge from Sweden in the early 1990s (Nylund et al, 1992), while they are much lower than those of U.K. (Meijer et al, 2001;Stevens et al, 2003) and Spain (Roig et al, 2012), indicating generally low levels of PCNs in the collected sludge in China. Previous work (Guo et al, 2008) reported that Σ 75 PCNs in eight sludge samples from WWTPs located in Beijing were in the range of 1.48-28.2 ng/g dw with a mean value of 7.79 ng/g dw whereas the present work showed lower levels of PCNs (1.87-2.78 ng/g dw with a mean value of 2.49 ng/g dw) in sludge samples from the same city.…”

Section: Levels Of the Total Pcns And Teqsmentioning

confidence: 47%

Polychlorinated naphthalenes in sewage sludge from wastewater treatment plants in China

Zhang

Xiao

Liu

et al. 2014

Science of The Total Environment

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Relationship between pollutant content and ecotoxicity of sewage sludges from Spanish wastewater treatment plants

Cited by 83 publications

References 46 publications

Temporal variability of sewage sludge heavy metal content from Greek wastewater treatment plants

Temporal variability of sewage sludge heavy metal content from Greek wastewater treatment plants

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Toxic potential of different types of sewage sludge as fertiliser in agriculture: ecotoxicological effects on aquatic and soil indicator species

Polychlorinated naphthalenes in sewage sludge from wastewater treatment plants in China

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