Biological Activity in US Food Processing Plant Effluent
On this page:
Extended Abstract submission for platform presentation at SETAC Europe Virtual Annual Meeting: ABSTRACT: Complex mixtures of anthropogenically-derived chemicals in freshwater environments have long been established. We previously evaluated agricultural, municipal, and industrial impacted surface and source waters for hundreds of chemical contaminants as well as biological activity indicative of potential adverse physiological outcomes. Commerical food processing facilities also produce wastewater with complex chemical mixtures. However, current monitoring of these wastewaters is primarily focused on basic constituents including, pH, dissolved oxygen, and suspended solids. Therefore we measured approximately 580 organic chemicals and biological activity in a two-phase study of wastewater effluent from 23 food, beverage, and feedstock processing facilities across the United States. In Phase I, extracted effluent samples were assessed for estrogenic (T47D-KBluc), androgenic (CV1-chAR), and glucocorticoid (CV1-hGR) activity, as well as activation of 26 additional nuclear receptors and 52 transcription factor signatures using the multi-endpoint Attagene FACTORIALTM bioassays. All Phase I effluent samples contained estrogenic activity above the method detection limit (MDL: 0.0017 ng E2Eq/L) and ranged 0.019 – 1.62 ng E2Eq/L. Androgenic activity was detected in 9 of 23 sites above the MDL, (0.055 ng DHTEq/L) and ranged 0.19 – 8.41 ng DHTEq/L. No facility discharges were found to contain glucocorticoid activity, and no field blanks contained biological activity above bioassay MDLs. Attagene results corroborated the single endpoint bioassay results indicating contaminants causing estrogenic activity existed in all screened effluent extracts. We compared estrogenic activity and detected known estrogen concentrations from Phase I (9 estrogens detected using HPLC/MS-MS; converted to total E2Eq) through linear regression which resulted in R2 = 0.46. Although nearly half the samples contained cumulative bioactivity (estrogenic) concentrations high enough to potentially elicit adverse physiological effects in aquatic organisms, the chemical concentrations quantified using targeted analytical methods did not completely explain all measured biological activity. These results support the application of bioassays in water quality screening applications and their continued use in Phase II sample analysis. Phase II sampling, expanded to include stream water, bed sediment and aquatic organisms collected above and below the outfall of a subset of 7 facilities (in addition to effluent sample) will provide additional insight regarding potential effects of exposure to these biologically active contaminants. Abstract does not necessarily reflect USEPA views or policy.