Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products across Different Water Bodies in Taihu Lake Basin, China: Occurrence, Source, and Flux

Abstract

Although pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) have attracted great attentions, their occurrence characteristics across different water bodies at a basin scale remain poorly understood. To grasp a more comprehensive understanding of PPCP pollution from the perspective of the whole basin, the occurrence, spatial and seasonal variation, source, and flux of thirteen PPCPs across the different environmental compartments of the northern Taihu Lake Basin (TLB) were studied. The results showed that the non-therapeutic pharmaceuticals caffeine (CFI) and n, n-diethyl-m-toluamide (DEET) were the main components across the different environmental compartments. The total concentrations of detected PPCPs ranged from 0.2 to 2437.9 ng/L. Higher concentrations of PPCPs were observed in spring and autumn, which were mainly attributed to seasonal differences in PPCP consumption. Generally, pollution level was higher in industry and agriculture area and in the inner bay and southwest of Taihu Lake. Source apportionment indicated that untreated water was the main source of PPCPs in river waters of the northern TLB. Flux estimation showed that the mean annual flux of PPCPs from northern TLB to Taihu Lake in 2021 was 1.6 t/a, which was higher in comparison with other areas. Overall, the resulting data will be useful to enrich the research of PPCPs in freshwater for environmental investigations.

Enhancement of carbamazepine removal rate using Tetradesmus obliquus KNUA061 and NaOCl and utilization of the resulting biomass

“…Approximately 1,014 tons of CBZ are consumed annually worldwide (Zhang et al, 2008). Consequently, CBZ that cannot be completely metabolized by the human body usually flow into receiving water bodies and it is one of the most frequently detected PPCPs in wastewater treatment plants around the world (Zhang et al, 2008;Zhang et al, 2018;Seo et al, 2020;Huang et al, 2022;Ma et al, 2022). However, CBZ has been reported to have very low removal efficiency (7%-10%) in conventional wastewater treatment facilities (Zhang et al, 2008) due to its relatively low attenuation rate during both abiotic and biotic processes (Baena-Nogueras et al, 2017;Thanekar et al, 2018;Dao et al, 2022).…”