Determination of emerging pollutants in fish collected in marine outfalls

Abstract

Emerging pollutants (EPs) are compounds that have potential risks to the environment due to their wide use in the everyday products and the possible toxic effects over aquatic biota which are not completely studied. Steroid hormones are compounds that act as endocrine disruptors producing adverse effects on organisms, even at trace concentrations, and interfering with the food chain by biomagnification and bioaccumulation. For this reason, it is necessary the development of monitoring studies to know, not only the presence of this type of emerging pollutants in aquatic biota, but also the concentrations of them in fish tissue. This study is very interesting in areas as Canary Islands because these emerging pollutants are discharged into the sea through the wastewater treatment plant marine outfalls. In the present study, fifteen steroid hormones were determined in three fish species sampled in three residual discharge points, near of high-density populated or touristic areas on the island of Gran Canaria during a period of two years (2016-2018). For the extraction and detection of studied compounds, an optimized method based on microwave-assisted extraction coupled to ultra-high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry were used. The selected method permits to determine the target compounds that are generally in the concentration range of µg·g-1. During the twoyears monitoring study, the concentrations of target steroid hormones were detected between 0.09 and 75.8 µg·g-1. The most detected hormone was prednisone in the three species and the marine outfall of San Agustín, one of the most tourist areas, presents the highest number of positive samples.