Final wastewater solids, or “biosolids”, are widely used as an agricultural soil amendment because they increase nutrient concentrations and water holding capacity of soils. Although the land-application of biosolids is a valued means of recycling, pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) within biosolids are of concern because of potential risk to crops, groundwater, and nearby surface waters. Dissolved organic matter (DOM) from organic materials has been shown to impact the bioavailability and aqueous transport of contaminants, promoting chemical interactions and enhanced solubility. While it is well-established that DOM characteristics influence the fate of organic compounds in the environment, limited work has characterized and quantified PPCP interactions with DOM specifically from major wastewater solids treatment classes, including anaerobically digested, aerobically digested, limed, or composted biosolids. Spectroscopic techniques and partition coefficient (KDOM) experiments are currently being employed to probe the relationship between PPCPs with different types of biosolids-derived DOM. Spectroscopic techniques such as UV-Visible, fluorescence, and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) are being developed to characterize chemical moieties, polarity, or operationally-defined functionalities of DOM including fulvic-acid or humic-acid like. Fluorescence spectroscopy is specifically utilized in quenching experiments with DOM-PPCP solutions. Suppressed or quenched fluorescent DOM regions indicate where PPCPs are chemically associated to DOM, and the degree of suppression (chemical interaction) is quantified by integration of the difference in excitation-emission matrices. Preliminary results show significant differences in C and N content and contrasting spectra for aerobically versus anaerobically digested materials. We will also present KDOM determination experiments of common PPCPs with variable properties in solubility enhancement-based approaches and dialysis tubing experiments, with PPCPs quantified by HPLC-MS/MS. The goal of this work is to rigorously quantify and characterize biosolids-based DOM-PPCP interactions pertinent to the aqueous fate and transport of PPCPs in the environment.

Characterization and quantification of pharmaceutical and personal care product (PPCP) interactions with biosolids-derived dissolved organic matter

254th National Meeting (2017)

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