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Behaviour of selected endocrine-disrupting chemicals in three sewage treatment plants of Beijing, China

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Abstract

Occurrence and fate of eight kinds of selected endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) in three sewage treatment plants (STPs) of Beijing, China was investigated. These EDCs, composed of 4-octylphenol (4-OP), 4-n-nonylphenol (4-n-NP), bisphenol A (BPA), estrone (E1), 17α-estradiol (17α-E2), 17β-estradiol (E2), estriol (E3) and 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2), in every step of STPs, were simultaneously analysed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry after derivatisation. All the EDCs were detected in the influents of three STPs, and BPA was the most abundant compound. The concentrations of EDCs ranged from 36.6 ng/l of 17α-E2 (STP C) to 1342.3 ng/l of BPA (STP B) in the influent sewages and from below limits of detection of E2 and E3 (STP C) to 142.5 ng/l of E1 (STP B) in the effluent sewages. The STPs could not remove alkylphenols effectively from the aqueous phase with less than 40% reduction. BPA decreased over 90%, and steroid estrogens achieved considerable reductions from 64.8% of E2 to 94.9% of E3. Generally, biological treatment was more effective in removing alkylphenols, BPA and natural estrogens from the aqueous phase than primary treatment. However, the synthetic estrogen, EE2, was mostly removed by the primary treatment with about 63.5% reduction. It is the first time that the concentration of 17α-E2 in the sewage of China was reported in this paper. The compound might have a bearing with the waste effluents of dairy farms around urban area of Beijing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Haidong Zhou, Xia Huang, Xiahui Zhi & Xianghua Wen

  2. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China

    Xiaolin Wang & Qunhui Wang

  3. Department of Chemistry, Analytical Technology Center, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Chengdui Yang

  4. Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Hiroshi Tsuno & Hiroaki Tanaka

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  1. Haidong Zhou
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  2. Xia Huang
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Correspondence to Xia Huang.

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Zhou, H., Huang, X., Wang, X. et al. Behaviour of selected endocrine-disrupting chemicals in three sewage treatment plants of Beijing, China. Environ Monit Assess 161, 107–121 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-008-0731-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-008-0731-6

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