Evaluation of Contaminants of Emerging Concern and Their Transformation Products in Water

In recent decades, pharmaceuticals have emerged as a significant new group of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). Due to their inefficient removal by conventional wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), a significant amount of these drugs enters the aquatic environment via municipal sewage systems. Despite the recent consumption trend, which is projected to continue in the future due to rising incidence of health issues requiring pharmaceutical treatment, little is known about the occurrence and fate of many pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment. This thesis studied ten pharmaceuticals for which there is a considerable lack of data concerning their occurrence and fate in the aquatic environment. Thus, new analytical methods have been developed and validated for the determination of CECs and their transformation products (TPs). As a result, nine new TPs of two drugs (irinotecan and aliskiren) in water have been identified using UHPLC and mass spectrometry (QTRAP and Orbitrap). Moreover, a fully automated online SPE LC MS/MS method was validated for the determination ten pharmaceuticals in wastewater, allowing ultra-trace analysis. In addition to these targeted methods, the potential of LC-HRMS was explored for non-target screening of wastewater and surface waters from Greece, France, and Italy. A total of 264 environmental contaminants were identified and the findings were deposited into the NORMAN databases using the Suspect List Exchange and Digital Sample Freezing Platform. Finally, experimental design (DOE) techniques were applied to optimize and study the robustness of CECs’ abatement processes. Thus, the effects of various factors were studied on the solar photodegradation of irinotecan and the UV photocatalytic degradation of maprotiline. Consequently, WWTP operational guidelines have been established by identifying the factors that have no effect, or those that must be strictly controlled, as even tiny alterations can result in decreased efficiency.