Increasing chemical pollution in aquatic environments has been a serious issue, while its overall extent of impacts in a global scale is not well-understood. A huge number of chemicals are termed as "micropollutants" (MPs, due to their low concentrations). In recent decades, numerous treatment methods or technologies have been proposed to remove MPs in water, and typically several MPs were chosen as target pollutants to evaluate the removal efficiencies, however, it's s often ambiguous whether their toxicity and occurrence levels and frequencies enable them to contribute significantly to the overall chemical pollution in global aquatic environments. This study intends to answer this important yet not-well-addressed question, i.e., which MPs or class of MPs on a global scale should be removed with higher priority. The risk quotient (RQ) method was a feasible approach to prioritize MPs in a large scale due to its simple assessment procedure and extensive use. Therefore, 83 prioritization case studies based on the RQ method published in the past decade were compiled, while as many as 473 compounds from three broad classes (pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), pesticides, and industrial chemicals) were screened to have risks. By integrating the risk intensity and frequencies of MPs from different case studies, the risk levels of MPs were averaged to be the overall risk surrogate to give a better prioritization result. Through metadata analysis, we recommended a ranking list of 53 MPs, including 36 PPCPs (e.g., sulfamethoxazole, and ibuprofen), seven pesticides (e.g., heptachlor, and diazinon), and 10 industrial chemicals (e.g., 4-nonylphenol, and bisphenol A). The results of this study would aid in better formulating "realistic" environment problems to cope with in the future.

Which micropollutants in water environments deserve more attention globally?

ACS Fall 2021

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