Background Pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs), as a new type of pollutants, contain a wide range of chemicals and are widely found in natural water bodies. In recent years, PPCPs have drawn considerable attentions from the masses and researchers. Drinking water safety is an important livelihood issue in Shanghai as an international metropolis.
Objective This study is designed to analyze the pollution characteristics of PPCPs in water sources of Shanghai and assess the ecological risk.
Methods Water samples were collected in wet reason of 2017 from four water sources of Shanghai, and 33 PPCPs were quantitatively analyzed by ultra high performance liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry after automatic solid phase extraction. Risk quotient was applied to assess the ecological risk of high-concentration PPCPs.
Results Around one third of the 33 PPCPs studied were detected in all, partial, and no samples respectively. The main pollutants were veterinary drugs such as analginum metabolite 4-acetamidoantipyrine (4-AMP) and sulfanilamides, both detection rates were 100%, the concentrations were 30.44-344.35 ng/L and 7.38-65.39 ng/L respectively, and they accounted for 79.69%-97.69% of the total PPCPs. The detected sulfanilamides mainly included sulfadiazine, sulfapyridine, sulfadimidine, and sulfamethoxazole with highest concentrations of 22.18, 3.70, 28.45, and 8.67ng/L, respectively. Quinolones showed low detection rates and concentrations, and their concentrations were below 1 ng/L except ofloxacin and sarafloxacin. For human medicines, antihypertensive and antidepressive drugs like metoprolol and carbamazepine were also detected in all the water sources, and their concentrations were relatively low with maximum concentrations of 3.44 and 5.69 ng/L respectively. There were some similarities and differences among the constituent features of PPCPs from the selected four water sources. The main pollutant in all water sources was 4-AMP. The concentration of PPCPs in water source D, one branch of the Yangtze River, was 2.55-10.35 times higher than the concentrations in the other water sources; the concentrations of each PPCPs detected in water source D were generally higher than those in the other water sources, especially 4-AMP and cimetidine at concentrations of 344.35 and 88.49 ng/L respectively. The difference among the other three water sources mainly lied on the concentration of 4-AMP. The results of ecological risk assessment indicated a low ecological risk with risk quotients ranging from 2.77×10-3 to 3.13×10-2 due to the low ecotoxicity of 4-AMP in spite of its high concentration. The main risk resulted from sulfamethoxazole as a priority pollutant. In water source D, the risk quotient contributed by sulfanilamides was 0.51, and in the other three water sources, the values were between 0.18 and 0.33.
Conclusion PPCPs contamination is found in the water sources of Shanghai, mainly veterinary drugs such as sulfanilamides and 4-AMP. The water source on the branch of the Yangtze River is the most polluted. The preliminary risk assessment results show that individual PPCPs exhibit potential ecological risks, calling for strengthening regulations for such priority pollutants.
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