Tuesday, October 23, 2007 : 10:10 a.m.
Occurrence of Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products in Source and Finished Waters in Ontario, Canada
Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) have been detected in trace amounts in surface water and drinking water in both Europe and the U.S. The Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE) encourages and contributes to investigations and research to identify and determine the levels and fate of emerging contaminants in the environment. Thus, the purpose of this extensive survey was to examine the occurrence of PPCPs in drinking water supplies, whether there were any temporal trends and to examine whether existing drinking water plant processes (carbon, ozonation) were able to reduce the occurrence of PPCPs in finished water. 250 samples were collected over a 15 month period from 17 different water treatment plants and analyzed for 51 PPCPs including antibiotics, acidic, neutral and basic drugs, hormones and veterinary drugs. Samples were collected on a monthly schedule, pre-concentrated from 800-mL to 5 mL using a single solid phase extraction (SPE) to a final sample volume of 0.1 mL, and analyzed by three liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) methods. All reported results were in the low ng/L range and the most frequently detected compounds in finished waters were gemfibrozil, carbamazepine and bisphenol A. Analytical results also indicated that the existing drinking water treatment processes are capable of reducing the levels of these target compounds.
Sonya Kleywegt, Ontario Ministry of the Environment Sonya Kleywegt is a scientist with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. She has been with ministry for just over 4 years, and her primary focus has been on emerging compounds including pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the environment. She completed her bachelor and doctorate degrees in the field of biomedical studies.
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Manuscript 6th International Conference on Pharmaceuticals and Enocrine Disrupting Chemicals in Water