Using laboratory incubations to predict the fate of pharmaceuticals in aquatic ecosystems
Johan Fahlman
A D , Jerker Fick B , Jan Karlsson A , Micael Jonsson A , Tomas Brodin A C and Jonatan Klaminder A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, Umeå 90187, Sweden.
B Department of Chemistry, Umeå University, Umeå 90187, Sweden.
C Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå 90183, Sweden.
D Corresponding author. Email: johan.fahlman@umu.se
Environmental Chemistry 15(8) 463-471 https://doi.org/10.1071/EN18154
Submitted: 12 July 2018 Accepted: 12 October 2018 Published: 30 November 2018
Environmental context. Environmental persistence of excreted pharmaceuticals in aquatic ecosystems is usually predicted using small-scale laboratory experiments assumed to simulate natural conditions. We studied five pharmaceuticals comparing their removal rates from water under laboratory conditions and under natural environmental conditions existing in a large pond. We found that the laboratory conditions did not fully capture the complexity within the pond, which led to different removal rates in the two systems.
Abstract. Environmental persistence is a key property when evaluating risks with excreted pharmaceuticals in aquatic ecosystems. Such persistence is typically predicted using small-scale laboratory incubations, but the variation in aquatic environments and scarcity of field studies to verify laboratory-based persistence estimates create uncertainties around the predictive power of these incubations. In this study we: (1) assess the persistence of five pharmaceuticals (diclofenac, diphenhydramine, hydroxyzine, trimethoprim and oxazepam) in laboratory experiments under different environmental conditions; and (2) use a three-month-long field study in an aquatic ecosystem to verify the laboratory-based persistence estimates. In our laboratory assays, we found that water temperature (TEMP), concentrations of organic solutes (TOC), presence of sediment (SED), and solar radiation (SOL) individually affected dissipation rates. Moreover, we identified rarely studied interaction effects between the treatments (i.e. SOL × SED and TEMP × SOL), which affected the persistence of the studied drugs. Half-lives obtained from the laboratory assays largely explained the dissipation rates during the first week of the field study. However, none of the applied models could accurately predict the long-term dissipation rates (month time-scale) from the water column. For example, the studied antibioticum (trimethoprim) and the anti-anxiety drug (oxazepam) remained at detectable levels in the aquatic environment long after (~150 days) our laboratory based models predicted complete dissipation. We conclude that small-scale laboratory incubations seem sufficient to approximate the short-term (i.e. within a week) dissipation rate of drugs in aquatic ecosystems. However, this simplistic approach does not capture interacting environmental processes that preserve a fraction of the dissolved pharmaceuticals for months in natural water bodies.
Additional keywords: antibiotics, antidepressant, anxiolytics, antihistamines, degradation.
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