Occurrence and fate of micropollutants in the Vidy Bay of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Part I: Priority list for environmental risk assessment of pharmaceuticals

Abstract

Pharmaceuticals are substances designed to have a biological effect in humans. Their presence in the environment, especially in surface waters, is of increasing concern because of their potential risk to non-target species. A large number of pharmaceuticals are on the market; for example, approximately 2,000 active ingredients are approved in Europe, and many of them have already been detected in surface water. It is therefore crucial to select the substances that may do the most harm to the environment prior to performing measurements and extensive risk assessment. In the present study, a method to determine a list of pharmaceuticals to survey in surface water is proposed. Inclusion of substances on the list was based on a screening procedure, the analytical feasibility, and previous knowledge of pharmaceuticals detected in water. The screening procedure proposed here is an improvement on the standard procedure of the European Medicine Evaluation Agency (EMEA). It is designed to decrease the number of pharmaceuticals to be evaluated in a stepwise manner, thus decreasing the number of data necessary for the evaluation. We applied our approach to determine a list of 37 pharmaceuticals and four hormones to survey in a specific region of Switzerland, the Lake Geneva area, and discussed the advantages and weak points of the method.

Treatment of micropollutants in municipal wastewater: Ozone or powdered activated carbon?

“…Analysis of 58 hydrophilic micropollutants (36 pharmaceuticals, 13 biocides and pesticides, 2 corrosion inhibitors and 7 endocrine compounds, Table S1, Supporting information (SI)), identified in Switzerland as priority micropollutants Perazzolo et al, 2010), were conducted on the filtrate by solid phase extraction (SPE) followed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled to tandem quadrupole mass spectrometer (UPLC-MS/MS).…”

Antibiotic resistant bacteria/genes dissemination in lacustrine sediments highly increased following cultural eutrophication of Lake Geneva (Switzerland)

“…In analogy to marine sediments, recent investigations in freshwater lakes have established sampling procedures for assessing in situ microbial activity (Vuillemin et al, 2010;Thevenon et al, 2011). Vuillemin et al, 2010) successfully applied this approach to identify living microbes in lake sediments as deep as 50 m. Recent studies also investigated the occurrence and fate of micropollutants (e.g., hormones) in the Vidy Bay Perazzolo et al, 2010;Margot et al, 2011;Bonvin et al, 2011). These studies demonstrated the presence of a large abundance of pharmaceuticals and antibiotics in different concentration in WWTP effluent and water column in the bay.…”

Local to regional scale industrial heavy metal pollution recorded in sediments of large freshwater lakes in central Europe (lakes Geneva and Lucerne) over the last centuries

“…This site was previously investigated to evaluate the impact of the discharge of municipal and industrial waste sediments from the WWTP. High concentrations of heavy metals (Monna et al, 1999;Loizeau et al, 2004), high microbial activities (Poté et al, 2008;Thevenon et al, 2011a), and the spreading of pharmaceutical and hormonal micropollutants (Perazzolo et al, 2010) occurred in the sediment.…”