Integrated Assessment of Wastewater Reuse, Exposure Risk, and Fish Endocrine Disruption in the Shenandoah River Watershed

Abstract

Reuse of municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent is used to augment freshwater supplies globally. The Shenandoah River Watershed (U.S.A.) was selected to conduct on-site exposure experiments to assess endocrine disrupting characteristics of different source waters. This investigation integrates WWTP wastewater reuse modeling, hydrological and chemical characterization, and in vivo endocrine disruption bioassessment to assess contaminant sources, exposure pathways, and biological effects. The percentage of accumulated WWTP effluent in each river reach (ACCWW%) was used to predict environmental concentrations for consumer product chemicals (boron), pharmaceutical compounds (carbamazepine), and steroidal estrogens (estrone, 17-β-estradiol, estriol, and 17-α-ethinylestradiol). Fish endocrine disruption was evaluated using vitellogenin induction in adult male or larval fathead minnows. Water samples were analyzed for >500 inorganic and organic constituents to characterize the complex contaminant mixtures. Municipal ACCWW% at drinking water treatment plant surface water intakes ranged from <0.01 to 2.0% under mean-annual streamflow and up to 4.5% under mean-August streamflow. Measured and predicted environmental concentrations resulted in 17-β-estradiol equivalency quotients ranging from 0.002 to 5.0 ng L–1 indicating low-to-moderate risk of fish endocrine disruption. Results from the fish exposure experiments showed low (0.5- to 3.2-fold) vitellogenin induction in adult males.

Drinking water vulnerability in less-populated communities in Texas to wastewater-derived contaminants

“…Figure SI.6 shows as a function of distance the degradation of several CECs commonly used as WWTP surrogates (meprobamate, ibuprofen, gemfibrozil, diclofenac, sulfamethoxazole, TCPP and TCEP phosphates) for larger CEC lists that may number in the hundreds of compounds. 5,17,31,34 For a 0.1 m/s streamflow, roughly 50% of the ibuprofen degraded within 100 km, whereas 50% degradation of diclofenac, meprobamate, gemfibrozil, or sulfamethoxazole may not be reached until 300 km. Even longer distances (600 km) may be required for similar degradation of TCPP or TCEP.…”

“…45 We considered relationships between cancer mortalities and DFR, but as many CECs are pharmaceuticals they do not cause cancer, but rather potentially endocrine disruption or a number of other endpoints that have yet to be epidemiologically supported at low concentrations that occur in drinking waters. 12 One use of this paper could be to locate potential communities for inclusion in such toxicology 17,46 or epidemiology studies.…”

“…The DRINCS model has been used and validated through field sampling in several case studies. 5,15,17,18 Our prior DRINCS study concluded that >50% of DWTPs in the US serving 10,000 or more people with treated surface water have at least one WWTP discharge upstream of the drinking water intake. 16 While the frequency of DFR is high, its magnitude is relatively low under average streamflow condition.…”

Temporal variations of de facto wastewater reuse and disinfection by-products in public water systems in the Shenandoah River watershed, USA

“…The potential impact of de facto reuse on surface water quality and downstream DWTPs is increasingly being studiede.g., for endocrine disrupting compounds and other chemicals of emerging concern Ternes et al 2015;Nguyen et al 2018;Tran et al 2018;Barber et al 2019;Medlock-Kakaley et al 2020), disinfection by-products (DBPs) Weisman et al 2019), and pathogens Amoueyan et al 2017;Caicedo et al 2019;Soller et al 2019). These studies showed a range of wastewater effluent impacts on downstream water quality.…”

Evaluation of Drainage Water Quality of El Hoks Drain at North Nile Delta, Kafr El-Sheihk Governorate, Egypt

“…The long-time reuse of low-quality water such as drainage water and wastewater for irrigation could impair soil functions and cause environmental pollution due to salinization, increase of sodium ions relative to other cations, and accumulation of heavy metals (Kabata-Pendias and Mukherjee, 2007;Abegunrin et al, 2016;Balkhair and Mohammad, 2016;Saliba et al, 2018;Cao et al, 2018;Ganjegunte et al, 2018;Abd-Elwahed, 2018 andBarber et al, 2019). There is a number of water quality guidelines related to irrigation according to FAO (Ayers and Westcot, 1985), but none of them is entirely satisfactory because of the wide variability in the environmental conditions, because they concerned about the effect of water quality on soil and crops.…”