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Biological Activity in US Food Processing Plant Effluent
Citation:
MedlockKakaley, E., M. Cardon, N. Evans, C. Lambright, B. Blackwell, R. Hofer, L. Hubbard, P. Bradley, J. Conley, E. Gray, AND D. Kolpin. Biological Activity in US Food Processing Plant Effluent. SETAC Europe Annual Meeting (Virtual), Durham-Virtual, NC, May 03 - 06, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
The existence of complex mixtures of anthropogenically-derived chemicals in freshwater environments has long been established, yet water treatment processes eliminate contaminants with variable efficiency. We previously evaluated agricultural, municipal, and industrial impacted surface and source waters for hundreds of organic chemicals as well as biological activity indicative of potential adverse physiological outcomes. Commercial food, beverage, and feedstock processing facilities also produce wastewater with complex chemical mixtures and are a probable source of bioactive contaminants. However, current monitoring of these wastewaters is primarily focused on basic constituents including, pH, dissolved oxygen, and suspended solids. Here, we investigated in vitro biological activity indicative of potential endocrine disrupting contaminants in wastewater effluent from food processing plants across the United States. Chemical concentrations quantified using targeted analytical methods could not completely explain the cumulative bioassay concentrations high enough to potetially ellicit adverse physiological effects in aquatic organisms in almost half of the wastewater effluent samples. Results of this study maintain the importance of applying non-targeted effects-based methods alongside targeted analytical methods during water quality screening. Further, wastewater from the food processing plants assessed in the study likely contain contaminants beyond those currently monitored in the wastewater types.
Description:
Extended Abstract submission for platform presentation at SETAC Europe Virtual Annual Meeting: ABSTRACT: Complex mixtures of anthropogenically-derived chemicals in freshwater environments have long been established. We previously evaluated agricultural, municipal, and industrial impacted surface and source waters for hundreds of chemical contaminants as well as biological activity indicative of potential adverse physiological outcomes. Commerical food processing facilities also produce wastewater with complex chemical mixtures. However, current monitoring of these wastewaters is primarily focused on basic constituents including, pH, dissolved oxygen, and suspended solids. Therefore we measured approximately 580 organic chemicals and biological activity in a two-phase study of wastewater effluent from 23 food, beverage, and feedstock processing facilities across the United States. In Phase I, extracted effluent samples were assessed for estrogenic (T47D-KBluc), androgenic (CV1-chAR), and glucocorticoid (CV1-hGR) activity, as well as activation of 26 additional nuclear receptors and 52 transcription factor signatures using the multi-endpoint Attagene FACTORIALTM bioassays. All Phase I effluent samples contained estrogenic activity above the method detection limit (MDL: 0.0017 ng E2Eq/L) and ranged 0.019 – 1.62 ng E2Eq/L. Androgenic activity was detected in 9 of 23 sites above the MDL, (0.055 ng DHTEq/L) and ranged 0.19 – 8.41 ng DHTEq/L. No facility discharges were found to contain glucocorticoid activity, and no field blanks contained biological activity above bioassay MDLs. Attagene results corroborated the single endpoint bioassay results indicating contaminants causing estrogenic activity existed in all screened effluent extracts. We compared estrogenic activity and detected known estrogen concentrations from Phase I (9 estrogens detected using HPLC/MS-MS; converted to total E2Eq) through linear regression which resulted in R2 = 0.46. Although nearly half the samples contained cumulative bioactivity (estrogenic) concentrations high enough to potentially elicit adverse physiological effects in aquatic organisms, the chemical concentrations quantified using targeted analytical methods did not completely explain all measured biological activity. These results support the application of bioassays in water quality screening applications and their continued use in Phase II sample analysis. Phase II sampling, expanded to include stream water, bed sediment and aquatic organisms collected above and below the outfall of a subset of 7 facilities (in addition to effluent sample) will provide additional insight regarding potential effects of exposure to these biologically active contaminants. Abstract does not necessarily reflect USEPA views or policy.