Fate of sex hormones in two pilot-scale municipal wastewater treatment plants: Conventional treatment

The fate and behavior of selected endocrine disrupting chemicals in full scale wastewater and sludge treatment unit processes

“…Although these estrogen metabolites are deconjugated by bacteria present in sewage and mixed liquor (Shi et al, 2004;Czajka and Londry, 2006), the deconjugated steroids are however, detected in the effluent at concentrations close to the total expected based on excretion values (Johnson et al, 2000). EE2 has the highest endocrine disrupting potency; it is found at low concentrations and is also recalcitrant to biodegradation (Esperanza et al, 2007;Haiyan et al, 2007;Hashimoto et al, 2007). NP is a transformation product of nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPnEOs) which is used in many industrial and commercial process including textile industry processes, and in cosmetic and detergent manufacture (Birket and Lester, 2003;Chien and Shih, 2007).…”

Fate and mass balance of contaminants of emerging concern during wastewater treatment determined using the fractionated approach

“…The drugs of abuse were selected based 101 upon our previous studies indicating their presence in wastewaters in Canada (Metcalfe et al, 2010;102 Rodayan et al, 2014a). Androstenedione was selected as a model androgen because of the lack of 103 data in the literature investigating its fate (Esperanza et al, 2007), and estrone was selected as a 104 model estrogen because of its widespread occurrence in wastewater (Servos et al, 2005). To illustrate 105 the importance of including metabolites in mass balance calculations, two metabolites of 106 carbamazepine, rac trans-10,11-dihydro-10,11-dihydroxy carbamazepine (CBZ-DiOH) and 107 carbamazepine 10,11-epoxide (CBZ-EP) were monitored because these compounds have been 108 previously detected in wastewater and sludge (Hummel et al, 2006;Miao & Metcalfe, 2003;Miao et 109 al., 2005).…”

Trace organic contaminants in biosolids: Impact of conventional wastewater and sludge processing technologies and emerging alternatives

“…The effect of temperaturediffers with the type of TrOC (Figure 3) . Studies concur that thermophilic digestion favours the removal of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons [44,120,121] especially those with higher molecular weight [120], but different trends are reported for hormones, nonylphenol/nonylphenol ethoxylates, and pharmaceuticals [8,47,51,98,116,119]. For instance, Paterakis et al [119] reported that increasing digester temperature from mesophilic (35±0.2 °C) to thermophilic (55±0.2 °C) enhanced the removal of estrone, but increased the bioconversion among hormones leading to a decrease in the removal of estriol and significant formation of 17β-estradiol.…”

“…Aerobic digestion involves the treatment of thickened sludge in a completely mixed aerated reactor that is commonly used by small WWTPs (< 22 ML/day) [1] and is notable for greater biodegradation of TrOCs such as nonylphenol/nonylphenol ethoxylates, hormones, and polycyclic hydrocarbons compared to anaerobic digestion [98][99][100][101]. Reports to date usually reveal that TrOCs such as nonylphenol have minimal impact on the organic matter and volatile solids removal efficiency of aerobic digestion [100], but the effect of other compounds is yet to be investigated.…”

“…First, methanogens are susceptible to organic pollutants such as chlorophenols, halogenated aliphatics, and N-substituted aromatics [105]. Second, full-scale anaerobic digesters generally have negligible or poor biodegradation of TrOCs [97,99,[106][107][108], and reports of high TrOC removal are limited to laboratory-scale anaerobic digesters [98,109]. Third, some anaerobic co-metabolic pathways may produce more potent pollutants, such as the formation of nonylphenol from nonylphenol ethoxylates and 17β-estradiol from estrone [46,50,51], which have serious implications on the toxicity and/or estrogenicity of biosolids.…”