Pharmaceuticals are micropollutants belonging to the main sources of water pollution due to their relative persistence and toxicity in the water body. These compounds are used to treat human and animal diseases and come in the surface waters from the industrial production, hospitals and incompletely metabolized drugs. During the last time an increased resistance of human and animal bodies to drugs was registered that leads to some unexpected health effects. This fact is caused by the uncontrolled input of pharmaceuticals in surface waters that determined the European Union to pay a special attention to this topic. Thus the European Parliament amending the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) is preoccupied to introduce some anti-inflammatory drugs, namely diclofenac and 17beta-estradiol, in the list of emerging pollutants and to establish their maximum allowable concentration in surface waters. In this work, the authors present the results of one year monitoring (July 2014-June 2015) of some classes of pharmaceuticals (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories, hormones, antibiotics, anticancers) widely used for the human and veterinary treatments, in Tisza River and some of its tributaries on Romanian territory. The isolation of studied pharmaceuticals from water matrices was achieved by solid-phase extraction (SPE) on Strata C18-U and Strata X cartridges. The pharmaceutical analysis was performed by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detector and/or mass spectrometer. The SPE-HPLC-DAD/MS procedures were used for the determination of the target compounds in river water samples collected from the Romanian Tisza River Watershed during four seasons. The developed procedures were validated and studies of statistical significance of the obtained results were done. Among the target pharmaceuticals found in the investigated river water samples were diclofenac and ibuprofenas anti-inflammatories; estrone and 17beta-estradiol as hormones and tetracycline, doxycycline, ceftazidime and ceftriaxone as antibiotics. The monitoring results show the importance of the study of pharmaceuticals in surface waters for a better risk assessment.
Acknowledgements: This work has been performed in the frame of NATO Science for Peace 984440/2014-2017 Project.
Presenting author:
Virginia Coman
Babes-Bolyai University, Raluca Ripan Institute for Research in Chemistry, 30 Fantanele Street, 400294, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
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Authors:
Mihail Simion Beldean-Galea - Babes-Bolyai University, Faculty of Environmental Science and Engineering, 30 Fantanele Street, 400294, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Florina Copaciu - Babes-Bolyai University, Raluca Ripan Institute for Research in Chemistry, 30 Fantanele Street, 400294, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Miuta Filip - Babes-Bolyai University, Raluca Ripan Institute for Research in Chemistry, 30 Fantanele Street, 400294, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Mihaela Vlassa - Babes-Bolyai University, Raluca Ripan Institute for Research in Chemistry, 30 Fantanele Street, 400294, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
