Remediation efficiency of three treatments on water polluted with endocrine disruptors: Assessment by means of in vitro techniques

Abstract

Chemical substances with potential to disrupt endocrine systems have been detected in aquatic environments worldwide, making necessary the investigation about water treatments able to inhibit such potential. The present work aimed to assess the efficiency for removing endocrine disruptors (with estrogenic and androgenic activity) of three simple and inexpensive substrates that could be potentially used in sectors or regions with limited resources: powdered activated carbon (PAC), powdered natural zeolite (ZEO) (both at a concentration of 500 mg L) and natural aquatic humic substances (AHS) (at 30 mg L). MilliQ-water and mature water from fish facilities (aquarium water, AW), were artificially spiked with 17β-estradiol (E2), 17α-ethinylestradiol and dihydrotestosterone. Moreover, effluent samples from waste water treatment plants (WWTP) were also submitted to the remediation treatments. Estrogenic and androgenic activities were assessed with two cell lines permanently transfected with luciferase as reporter gene under the control of hormone receptors: AR-EcoScreen containing the human androgen receptor and HER-LUC transfected with the sea bass estrogen receptor. PAC was efficiently removing the estrogenic and androgenic compounds added to milliQ and AW. However, androgenic activity detected in WWTP effluents was only reduced after treatment with ZEO. The higher surface area of PAC could have facilitated the removal of spiked hormones in clean waters. However, it is possible that the substances responsible of the hormonal activity in WWTP have adsorbed to micro and nanoparticles present in suspension that would have been retained with higher efficiency by ZEO that show pores of several microns in size.

Worldwide Research Analysis on Natural Zeolites as Environmental Remediation Materials

“…Cluster 3 (blue), "NZ water purification", is formed by 10 nodes with 379 co-occurrences. Various topics on water purification are dealt with, presenting methods such as desalination and de-oiling of water with natural zeolite membranes [34], treatments for nitrate removal [105], treatments are evaluated in waters contaminated with endocrine disruptors [106] and even the purification of groundwater [107], with keywords "purification", "water quality", and "clinoptilolite".…”

Study of the Potential of Water Treatment Sludges in the Removal of Emerging Pollutants

“…The adsorption process with activated carbon (AC) is considered by many authors to be one of the most promising treatment processes with high EP removal capacity, mainly because (i) it is simple to design and operate; (ii) it has a low investment cost; (iii) it allows reuse and regeneration; and (iv) it does not generate toxic by-products [8,19,[21][22][23][24]. Several studies have also already demonstrated that pure AC is able to effectively remove and lower the toxicity of E2 and EE2 in distilled water, drinking water and WW [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. For example, Gökçe and Arayici [33] obtained a removal rate for E2 of 88% with AC produced from sewage sludge.…”

Nanoparticles: a Novel Approach for Sustainable Agro-productivity

“…Due to the limitation of water and arable land resources, an urgent need is requested to increase effective use of these resources as well as minimize the agro-ecology damage by using the effective modern technologies like nanotechnology (Manjunatha et al 2016). Several applications of nanotechnologies can be addressed in the developing countries including production, conversion and storage energy (like CNT storage of H; Zhang et al 2014(a or b); Li and Sun 2016;Liu et al 2017), enhancement of the agricultural productivity (like herbicide delivery; Pandey et al 2016;Chhipa and Joshi 2016), water treatment and remediation (like nano-membranes; Toli et al 2016;Polloni-Silva et al 2017), diagnosis and screening of diseases Mignani et al 2017), delivery systems of drugs (like nanocapsules; Nawaz and Wong 2017;, processing, coating, packaging and storage of foods (Carbone et al 2016;Sarkar et al 2016;Chalco-Sandoval et al 2017), remediation of air pollution (like nano-catalysts; Kuppusamy et al 2016), durability of construction (Balapour et al 2017;Fallah and Nematzadeh 2017), monitoring Env. Biodiv.…”