Micropollutant fluxes in urban environment - A catchment perspective.

This study provided a holistic understanding of the sources, fate and behaviour of 142 compounds of emerging concern (CECs) throughout a river catchment impacted by 5 major urban areas. Of the incoming 169.3 kg d of CECs entering the WwTWs, 167.

A multi-residue method by supercritical fluid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry method for the analysis of chiral and non-chiral chemicals of emerging concern in environmental samples.

This manuscript presents the development, validation and application of a multi-residue supercritical fluid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry method for the analysis of 140 chiral and non-chiral chemicals of emerging concern in environmental samples, with 81 compounds being fully quantitative, 14 semi-quantitative and 45 qualitative, validated according to European Medicine Agency (EMA) guidelines (European Medicines Agency 2019). One unified LC-MS method was used to analyse all analytes, which were split into three injection methods to ensure sufficient peak resolution. The unified method provided an average of 113% accuracy and 4.

Wastewater-based epidemiology combined with local prescription analysis as a tool for temporalmonitoring of drugs trends - A UK perspective.

This paper reports the application of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for the monitoring of one city in the UK in years 2014-2018 as a means of 1) exploring relative temporal changes of illicit drug usage trends across 5 sampling weeks in 5 years, (2) assessing policy impact in reducing drug consumption, focussing particularly on mephedrone, which was classified as a class B drug in the UK in 2010, and the effects of subsequent regulation such as the novel psychoactive substances (NPS) bill of 2016, (3) investigating temporal changes in consumption of prescription pharmaceuticals vs illicit drug usage, and (4) comparing consumption of prescription drugs with WBE to enable more accurate verification of prescription drugs with abuse potential. Mephedrone was quantified only for the first two years of the study, 2014-2015, and remained undetected for the next three years of the study. This shows that given enough time changes in drug policy can have an effect on drug consumption.

Spatio-temporal assessment of illicit drug use at large scale: evidence from 7 years of international wastewater monitoring.

Background And Aims: Wastewater-based epidemiology is an additional indicator of drug use that is gaining reliability to complement the current established panel of indicators. The aims of this study were to: (i) assess spatial and temporal trends of population-normalized mass loads of benzoylecgonine, amphetamine, methamphetamine and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in raw wastewater over 7 years (2011-17); (ii) address overall drug use by estimating the average number of combined doses consumed per day in each city; and (iii) compare these with existing prevalence and seizure data.

Design: Analysis of daily raw wastewater composite samples collected over 1 week per year from 2011 to 2017.

Stereoisomeric profiling of chiral pharmaceutically active compounds in wastewaters and the receiving environment - A catchment-scale and a laboratory study.

Chiral pharmaceutically active compounds (cPACs) are not currently governed by environmental regulation yet are expected to be in the future. As cPACs can exert stereospecific toxicity in the aquatic environment, it is essential to better understand their stereoselective behaviour here. Therefore, this study aims to provide a new perspective towards comprehensive evaluation of cPACs at a river catchment level, including their stereochemistry as a chemical phenomenon driving fate of chiral molecules in the environment.

An ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method for oxidative stress biomarker analysis in wastewater.

Reported herein is the development of an analytical method for the detection of four oxidative stress biomarkers in wastewater using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) and solid phase extraction (SPE). The following four biomarkers of oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation have been investigated: hydroxynonenal-mercapturic acid (HNE-MA), 8-iso-prostglandin F2beta (8-iso-PGF), 8-nitroguanine (8-NOGua) and 8-hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG). The method showed very good performance: accuracy (> 87%), precision (> 90%), method quantification limits (1.

Stereochemistry of ephedrine and its environmental significance: Exposure and effects directed approach.

Analysis of drugs and pharmaceuticals in the environment is typically performed with non-chiral chromatographic techniques. The environmental risks posed by chiral compounds analysed in this way must therefore be assumed to be independent of chirality, meaning that each enantiomer is equally potent in toxicity and long-lived in stability. This manuscript examines the degradation of each of the four isomers of ephedrine in river simulating microcosms and links this to toxicity data obtained by exposing three different organisms (D.