TY - JOUR
T1 - Wide-scope target and suspect screening methodologies to investigate the occurrence of new psychoactive substances in influent wastewater from Athens
AU - Diamanti, Konstantina
AU - Aalizadeh, Reza
AU - Alygizakis, Nikiforos
AU - Mardal, Marie
AU - Thomaidis, Nikolaos
PY - 2019/10/1
Y1 - 2019/10/1
N2 - Almost all licit and illicit drugs consumed by the society end up either unchanged or as a mixture of metabolites in the sewage systems. The analysis of influent wastewater samples and the estimation of drug consumption is the field of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE). A new trend of WBE is the estimation of the consumption of New Psychoactive Substances (NPS), which are legal replacements of established narcotic and psychotropic drugs with slightly modified chemical structures and similar or new effects. To investigate the occurrence of NPS, 30 composite daily influent wastewater samples from the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) of Athens (Greece) were collected in a four-year sampling campaign (2015–2018). A generic four-sorbent solid-phase extraction (SPE) sample preparation protocol able to retain compounds with wide physicochemical properties was used. Extracts were analyzed by liquid-chromatography coupled to quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-QTOF-MS) using target screening for 278 NPS and suspect screening for 451 NPS. Target screening method was validated for a subset of 49 representative NPS and illicit drugs with similar structures with the NPS. 24 NPS and related compounds were detected by target screening and two compounds were tentatively identified based on mass accuracy, prediction of retention time using in-house QSRR prediction models, isotopic pattern and HRMS/MS fragmentation, whereas the excreted mass loads were also calculated. The results indicated an occasional and low occurrence of NPS in wastewater during the week and over the years, whereas the estimation of the exact sources and the evaluation of the patterns in wastewater were critically discussed.
AB - Almost all licit and illicit drugs consumed by the society end up either unchanged or as a mixture of metabolites in the sewage systems. The analysis of influent wastewater samples and the estimation of drug consumption is the field of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE). A new trend of WBE is the estimation of the consumption of New Psychoactive Substances (NPS), which are legal replacements of established narcotic and psychotropic drugs with slightly modified chemical structures and similar or new effects. To investigate the occurrence of NPS, 30 composite daily influent wastewater samples from the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) of Athens (Greece) were collected in a four-year sampling campaign (2015–2018). A generic four-sorbent solid-phase extraction (SPE) sample preparation protocol able to retain compounds with wide physicochemical properties was used. Extracts were analyzed by liquid-chromatography coupled to quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-QTOF-MS) using target screening for 278 NPS and suspect screening for 451 NPS. Target screening method was validated for a subset of 49 representative NPS and illicit drugs with similar structures with the NPS. 24 NPS and related compounds were detected by target screening and two compounds were tentatively identified based on mass accuracy, prediction of retention time using in-house QSRR prediction models, isotopic pattern and HRMS/MS fragmentation, whereas the excreted mass loads were also calculated. The results indicated an occasional and low occurrence of NPS in wastewater during the week and over the years, whereas the estimation of the exact sources and the evaluation of the patterns in wastewater were critically discussed.
U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.06.173
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.06.173
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 31390696
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 685
SP - 1058
EP - 1065
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
ER -