Use of mass-spectra database for screening pharmaceuticals and drug of abuse in the aquatic ecosystem

Abstract

Pharmaceuticals and drugs of abuse are emergent pollutants which, together with its metabolites and TPs, are subject of concern, and affect water quality and aquatic life. These enter into the water body after consumption and excretion by humans and animals. In addition to these emerging contaminants, pesticides are of concern because of their wide use in agriculture. Many of these contaminants and their metabolites are not removed after conventional treatments in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), which have to apply additional treatments (e.g. advanced oxidation) to ensure that the treated water is of sufficient quality for its use. In this work, we used MS QTOF coupled to UHPLC for screening various target compounds in different types of water samples, including influent and effluent wastewater, and surface water. We have found 17 pharmaceutical compounds of different types (e.g. telmisartan, 2 drugs of abuse (e.g. cocaine), 3 herbicides (e.g. atrazine), and one TPs in the water samples:two from Colombia, one from Athens and one effluent wastewater from a WWTP Sample treatment was not a part of this work, which was focussed only on data treatment in order to find these compounds in the spectrum manually, through databases of exact mass spectra online and using the instrument software. Getting 6 negative and 17 tentatively detected or identified by MS QTOF, since reference standards were not available.