The emergence of pharmaceuticals in the environment has large toxicological and ecological implications for both the health of our communities and our ecosystems. These pharmaceuticals can be found in soil, water, and sediment samples. However, pharmaceuticals in water are the particular concern given the growing increase in water reuse and recycling to promote global sustainability of this resource. Most analytical methods for measuring pharmaceuticals and man-made compounds in water provide information on the total amount of each compound that is present, and do not consider how interactions by these compounds with soluble binding agents (e.g., dissolved organic matter, humic acid) that may affect the biologically available and active form. Thus, the goal of this research project is to provide information on the biologically available forms of these pharmaceuticals, and their interactions in biological and environmental systems. Ultrafast affinity extraction will be used to characterize the reversible and weak to moderate strength binding interactions between the pharmaceuticals and humic acids. Humic acid is an important binding agent for many pharmaceuticals and other man-made compounds due to their complex structures that can form many non-permanent interactions in environmental samples. In this project through ultrafast affinity extraction, a microcolumn containing noncovalently immobilized humic acid will be used to extract the free fraction of an analyte from a sample. Several pharmaceuticals will be examined that are known to bind to humic acid and various conditions to optimize in the use of ultrafast affinity extraction for equilibrium and kinetic studies will be considered. In addition, several approaches for these measurements will also be explored to understand the presence of active form of pharmaceuticals in wastewater samples.

Determining pharmaceutical binding with humic acid by high performance affinity chromatography

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