Review
Removal mechanisms for endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) in wastewater treatment — physical means, biodegradation, and chemical advanced oxidation: A review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2008.08.039Get rights and content

Abstract

Endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) are pollutants with estrogenic or androgenic activity at very low concentrations and are emerging as a major concern for water quality. Within the past few decades, more and more target chemicals were monitored as the source of estrogenic or androgenic activity in wastewater, and great endeavors have been done on the removal of EDCs in wastewater. This article reviewed removal of EDCs from three aspects, that is, physical means, biodegradation, and chemical advanced oxidation (CAO).

Introduction

Endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) are chemicals with the potential to elicit negative effects on the endocrine systems of humans and wildlife. In the past few decades, research efforts to combat this problem have grown immensely. Key to the solution for this problem is the identification of EDCs, the accurate measurement of their presence in aquatic systems, and development of methods for their elimination from the environment.

Various natural and synthetic chemical compounds have been identified that induce estrogen-like responses; including pharmaceuticals, pesticides, industrial chemicals, and heavy metals (Giesy et al., 2002). The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) defines an EDC as: “An exogenous agent that interferes with the synthesis, secretion, transport, binding, action, or elimination of natural hormones in the body that are responsible for the maintenance of homeostasis, reproduction, development, and/or behavior.” (USEPA, 1997)

This broad class of chemicals includes natural estrogens, such as estrone (E1),17β-estradiol (E2), and estriol (E3) (Blair et al., 2000, Nishihara et al., 2000, Folmar et al., 2002, Zhu et al., 2006); natural androgens such as testosterone (T), dihydrotestosterone (DHT), and androsterone (A) (Bauer et al., 2000, Fang et al., 2003); artificial synthetic estrogens or androgens, such as ethynylestradiol (EE2), Norgestrel (N), and Trenbolone (Tr) (Blair et al., 2000, Bauer et al., 2000); phytoestrogens including isoflavonoides and coumestrol (Bacaloni et al., 2005, Stopper et al., 2005) as well as other industrial compounds such as bisphenol A, nonylphenol (Mocarelli et al., 1996, Ramamoorthy et al., 1997, Howdeshell et al., 1999, Ying et al., 2002). Such chemicals as those above have been found existing in wastewater, surface waters, sediments, groundwater, and even drinking water (Ternes et al., 1999a, Befenati et al., 2003, Petrovic et al., 2003, Snyder et al., 2003, Vethaak et al., 2005, Durhan et al., 2006, Fernandez et al., 2007). Wastewater treatment plants have been studied as a major source for EDCs (Kolpin et al., 2002, Legler et al., 2002, Snyder et al., 2003, Nakada et al., 2006, Tan et al., 2007). Being EDCs exist in extremely low concentration ( μg/L or ng/L), highly sensitive measurement of EDCs is necessary, including chemical monitoring, such as liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and bioassay (both in vitro and in vivo). Detailed information may be found in Flemming and Bent (2003) and Karin (2003).

EDCs have been attributed as a cause of reproductive disturbance in humans and wildlife (Hayes et al., 2002, Oak et al., 2004, Samir et al., 2006, Campbell et al., 2006). Human exposure to these chemicals in the environment is a critical concern with unknown long-term impacts. Natural and synthetic EDCs are released into the environment by humans, animals and industry; mainly through sewage treatment systems before reaching the receiving bodies (soil, surface water, sediment and ground water), EDCs' main distribution in the environment is illustrated in Fig. 1. (Flemming and Bent, 2003). EDCs are a latent crisis to humans and the environment. Theoretically this crisis could be easily controlled, if EDCs can be completely removed from sewage at sewage treatment plants before final release into the environment. EDCs removal methods fall into three categories; physical removal, biodegradation and chemical advanced oxidation (CAO). This article will focus on the latest progress of these removal methods.

Section snippets

Absorption by activated carbon

Use of activated carbon (AC) is a well-known process for removing various organic contaminants. AC is most commonly applied as a powdered feed (powder activated carbon, PAC) or in a granular form (granular activated carbon, GAC) in packed bed filters. Several authors have demonstrated the efficiency of AC, both as PAC and GAC, for the removal of trace organic pollutants from water (Matsui et al., 2002a, Matsui et al., 2002b, Asada et al., 2004, Westerhoff et al., 2005, Zhou et al., 2007). In

Removal of EDCs by existing wastewater treatment systems

The objective of wastewater treatment systems is to remove organic substances, phosphorus and nitrogen from wastewater, but research has discovered that EDCs can also be reduced by wastewater treatment systems. Among wastewater treatment systems, the activated sludge process is the most widely used in the world, and as the proportion of removal by primary settling, chemical precipitation, aerating volatilization and sludge absorption was small, the majority of EDCs in wastewater is regarded as

EDCs removal by chemical advanced oxidation

Within the past few years, there have been numerous studies on the removal of EDCs through the use of different chemical oxidants, known as chemical advanced oxidation (CAO). The essential mechanisms of CAO are mineralization of pollutants in wastewater to CO2 or transference of pollutants to some other metabolite products by some strong oxidizers through oxidation–reduction reactions. Therefore the key point for CAO is the choice of oxidizer. Redox potentials of some wastewater treatment

Conclusions

Pollutant removal from wastewater is a process with high energy consumption, where cost and efficiency are the key considerations for their application. Biodegradation processes have proven to be the most cost-effective processes. Among these, the activated sludge process is widely applied all over the world. Although some investigations suggested that high EDC removal rates could be achieved through conventional biological wastewater treatment processes, further data showed that the removal

Acknowledgements

This work has been partly supported by the Institute of Osaka International House Foundation, Osaka, Japan. The authors would like to thank the Institute of Osaka International House Foundation, Osaka, Japan, for the scholarship support to overseas students. The authors would also like to thank CRAIG Farnham, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka City University, who helped to correct the English of the manuscript.

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