Priority and emerging organic microcontaminants in three Mediterranean river basins: Occurrence, spatial distribution, and identification of river basin specific pollutants.
Marianne Köck-Schulmeyer, Antoni Ginebreda, Mira Petrovic, Monica Giulivo, Òscar Aznar-Alemany, Ethel Eljarrat, Jennifer Valle-Sistac, Daniel Molins-Delgado, M Silvia Diaz-Cruz, Luis Simón Monllor-Alcaraz, Nuria Guillem-Argiles, Elena Martínez, López de Alda Miren, Marta Llorca, Marinella Farré, Juan Manuel Peña, Ladislav Mandaric, Sandra Pérez, Bruno Majone, Alberto Bellin, Eleni Kalogianni, Nikolaos Th Skoulikidis, Radmila Milačič, Damià Barceló
Antoni Ginebreda: Dept. of Environmental Chemistry, IDAEA-CSIC, c/Jordi Girona 18-26, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: agmqam@cid.csic.es.
Mira Petrovic: Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), Emili Grahit, 101, Edifici H(2)O, Parc Científic i Tecnològic de la Universitat de Girona, 17003 Girona, Spain; Catalan Institution for Research and advanced studies (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain.
Juan Manuel Peña: Dept. of Environmental Chemistry, IDAEA-CSIC, c/Jordi Girona 18-26, 08034 Barcelona, Spain.
Ladislav Mandaric: Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), Emili Grahit, 101, Edifici H(2)O, Parc Científic i Tecnològic de la Universitat de Girona, 17003 Girona, Spain.
Bruno Majone: Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento, Via Mesiano 77, I-38123 Trento, Italy.
Alberto Bellin: Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento, Via Mesiano 77, I-38123 Trento, Italy.
Eleni Kalogianni: Institute of Marine Biological Resources and Inland Waters (IMBRIW), Hellenic Center for Marine Research (HCMR), 46.7 km Athens-Souniou Av., 190 13, P.O. Box 712, Anavissos, Greece.
Nikolaos Th Skoulikidis: Institute of Marine Biological Resources and Inland Waters (IMBRIW), Hellenic Center for Marine Research (HCMR), 46.7 km Athens-Souniou Av., 190 13, P.O. Box 712, Anavissos, Greece.
Radmila Milačič: Department of Environmental Sciences, Jožef Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Damià Barceló: Dept. of Environmental Chemistry, IDAEA-CSIC, c/Jordi Girona 18-26, 08034 Barcelona, Spain; Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), Emili Grahit, 101, Edifici H(2)O, Parc Científic i Tecnològic de la Universitat de Girona, 17003 Girona, Spain.
There is a worldwide growing use of chemicals by our developed, industrialized, and technological society. More than 100,000 chemical substances are thus commonly used both by industry and households. Depending on the amount produced, physical-chemical properties, and mode of use, many of them may reach the environment and, notably, the aquatic receiving systems. This may result in undesirable and harmful side-effects on both the human and the ecosystem's health. Mediterranean rivers are largely different from Northern and Central European rivers in terms of hydrological regime, climate conditions (e.g. air temperature, solar irradiation, precipitation), and socio-economics (e.g. land use, tourism, crop types, etc.), with all these factors leading to differences in the relative importance of the environmental stressors, in the classes and levels of the pollutants found and their environmental fate. Furthermore, water scarcity might be critical in affecting water pollution because of the lowered dilution capacity of chemicals. This work provides raw chemical data from different families of microcontaminants identified in three selected Mediterranean rivers (the Sava, Evrotas, and Adige) collected during two sampling campaigns conducted in 2014 and 2015 in three different matrices, namely, water, sediments, and biota (fish). More than 200 organic micropollutants were analyzed, including relevant groups like pharmaceuticals, personal care products, perfluorinated compounds, pesticides, pyrethroid insecticides, flame retardants, and persistent organic pollutants. Data obtained were summarized with some basic statistics for all compound families and matrices analyzed. Observed occurrence and spatial patterns were interpreted both in terms of compound physical-chemical properties and local environmental pressures. Finally, their spatial distribution was examined and their ecotoxicological risk in the water phase was assessed. This allowed locating, at each basin, the most polluted sites ("hot spots") and identifying the respective river basin specific pollutants (RBSPs), prioritizing them in terms of the potential ecotoxicological risk posed to the aquatic ecosystems.
