Non-target analysis of Danish wastewater treatment plant effluent: Statistical analysis of chemical fingerprinting as a step toward a future monitoring tool

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  • Marie Rønne Aggerbeck
  • Emil Egede Frøkjær
  • Anders Johansen
  • Lea Ellegaard-Jensen
  • Hansen, Lars Hestbjerg
  • Martin Hansen

In an attempt to discover and characterize the plethora of xenobiotic substances, this study investigates chemical compounds released into the environment with wastewater effluents. A novel non-targeted screening methodology based on ultra-high resolution Orbitrap mass spectrometry and nanoflow ultra-high performance liquid chromatography together with a newly optimized data-processing pipeline were applied to effluent samples from two state-of-the-art and one small wastewater treatment facility. In total, 785 molecular structures were obtained, of which 38 were identified as single compounds, while 480 structures were identified at a putative level. Most of these substances were therapeutics and drugs, present as parent compounds and metabolites. Using R packages Phyloseq and MetacodeR, originally developed for bioinformatics, significant differences in xenobiotic presence in the wastewater effluents between the three sites were demonstrated.

Original languageEnglish
Article number119242
JournalEnvironmental Research
Volume257
Number of pages11
ISSN0013-9351
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

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Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors

    Research areas

  • Chemical classes, Drugs of abuse, Industry chemicals, Metabolites, Multivariate statistics, Non-target analysis, Pesticides, Pharmaceuticals, Phyloseq, Suspect screening

ID: 400306661