Issues of Emerging

Contaminants in our Lakes

GREAT LAKES
WATER
Rebecca Klaper, Ph.D. INSTITUTE
Shaw Associate Scientist
Great Lakes WATER Institute
School of Freswhater Sciences
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Emerging Contaminants

New chemicals
New technologies
How do they get into our water?
Emerging Contaminants
• How do we determine if they are harmful?

Who is exposed?
Is chemical toxic at that dose
Does it cause some unintended effect
 Opportunity for exposure:
Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products
in our Freshwater Systems
 x Distribution in
x
x Surface Waters

x
x
x
Sampling
 Natural estrogens- Industry Effluent
1000000
Genistein Daidzein
Log Concentration (ng/L)

100000

10000

1000

100

10

Industrial Process Type

Lundgren and Novak 2009

 Results from WWTPs

Removal Influent Effluent

efficiency concentration concentration

City 1 95.0 % 1,011 ng/L 51 ng/L

City 2 99.8 % 53,341 ng/L 71 ng/L

City 3 93.1 % 18,009 ng/L 1,236 ng/L

City 4 “100%” 38,181 ng/L Non-detect

Lundgren and Novak 2009

Also need to worry about breakdown products:

Buth et al. 2010 EST

Buth et al. 2010 EST
Opportunity for exposure?
How are we exposed?
 Opportunity for Exposure:
Drinking water?
Milwaukee
Atrazine, caffeine

Other cities
Philadelphia 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water,
medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental
illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were
found in the city's watersheds.

Southern California: Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected

in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people

Northern NJ: drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in
found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine
in drinking water.
 Opportunity for Exposure:
Food Consumption?
• Plastics
• Linings and Coatings
• Animal products – fish, other meats
• Plant products
• Phytoestrogens
• Uptake from sludge
Dangerous at levels of Exposure?
Toxic at levels higher than environmental concentrations

Drug Acute (mg/L) Chronic mg/L

•  Salicylic acid 1293.1 13.3

•  Clofibrate 28.2 .01
•  Naproxen 66.4 .33

Daphnia magna
 What do they do?
Ecological Effects
•  Endpoints not necessarily toxicity
•  Chronic low-level exposures
 What do they do?
Ecological Effects
•  Designed for specific action
•  Trigger same reaction in ecological species?
•  Cause other problems?
*
*
What are some effects? -Estrogenic

Plasma VTG,
males ng/mL
White Sucker

GSI, females
# of Oocyte stages,
adult females
Intersex 0% 19%

Vajda et al., 2008

 What are some effects? -Estrogenic

 A recent paper showed

intersex fish across the
country (Hinck et al., 2009)
 73% of the smallmouth bass
caught at Lake City, MN
were intersex
From Hinck et al., 2009
 What are we seeing in humans?

The effect could not be explained

by change in BMI

Aksglaede et al. Pediatrics 2009

What are we seeing in humans?

Swan et al. Env. Health Perspectives 2000

What are some effects? Other effects
 Bacteria
  Reduced soil microbial activity
  Synergistic effects of mixtures
  Effects to planktonic bacteria
 Plants
  Inhibited photosynthesis of microalgae
  Shifts in algal community structure
  Sulfanamide antibiotics disrupt folate biosynthesis (herbicidal effects)
 Animals
  Effects to tadpole development (triclosan)
  Abnormal development in clams and decreased
  Larval survival
  Fish behavior changes
  Induction of spawning
  Drug mixtures inhibited growth of human embryonic cells
  Renal failures in vultures (diclofenac)
 WHY?
 Diet?
 Psychosocial stress?
 BMI
 Chemicals, including environmental contaminants?
Do not know what most chemicals may do
•  Low level exposures
•  Chronic exposures
•  Mixture of chemicals
– Low levels of 2 or more chemicals of same
action?
– Mixture of chemicals with contrary actions?
 What can we do?
•  Does something need to be done?
– It may only be certain compounds that need
control
•  Removal from waste stream?
– Waste treatment?
– Collection of unused pharmaceuticals
 Removal from Waste Water
•  Varies with drug
– 20% (carbamazepine) to 99% (acetaminophen)
(Gomez et al. 2007)
•  Varies with treatment process
– Biological treatment (water soluble)
– Solids treatment over time (antibiotics)
– Ozone
•  Some are not removed with any treatment
•  New treatments being studied
Collection
Days
2006-2007

-MMSD,
WATER Institute,
Aurora Healthcare

-13, 30 gallon drums

of non-controlled
medicine.
-oldest 1963

-Will this help the

problem?
 Take Home Messsages
•  We do not know what these compounds are doing
–  Need more data on effects at low levels
–  Need to know how mixtures of compounds cause effects
–  Need to know impacts to determine which ones are truly in
need of controls
•  Can we remove them from the system?
–  Pharmaceutical cleanup days only solve part of the problem
–  Wastewater treatment technologies
–  At the source technologies
•  Funding