Jones-Lepp T L
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, National Exposure Research Laboratory, 944 E. Harmon, Las Vegas, NV 89119, USA.
J Environ Monit. 2006 Apr;8(4):472-8. doi: 10.1039/b512858g. Epub 2006 Mar 10.
Giving public water authorities another tool to monitor and measure levels of human waste contamination of waters simply and rapidly would enhance public protection. Most of the methods used today detect such contamination by quantifying microbes occurring in feces in high enough densities that they can be measured easily. However, most of these microbes, for example E. coli, do not serve as specific markers for any one host species and many can have origins other than feces. As an alternative, chemicals shed in feces and urine might be used to detect human waste contamination of environmental waters. One potential chemical marker of human waste is the compound urobilin. Urobilin is one of the final by-products of hemoglobin breakdown. Urobilin is excreted in both the urine and feces from many mammals, particularly humans. Source waters from 21 sites in New England, Nevada, and Michigan were extracted using hydrophilic-lipophilic balance (HLB) cartridges and then analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography-electrospray mass spectrometry (HPLC-ES-MS). As a marker of human waste, urobilin was detected in many of the source waters at concentrations ranging from not detectable to 300 ng L(-1). Besides urobilin, azithromycin, an antibiotic widely prescribed for human use only in the US, was also detected in many of these waters, with concentrations ranging from not detectable to 77 ng L(-1). This methodology, using both urobilin and azithromycin (or any other human-use pharmaceutical) could be used to give public water authorities a definitive method for tracing the sources of human waste contamination. The analysis and detection of urobilin in surface waters by HPLC-ES-MS has not been previously reported in the peer-reviewed literature.
为公共供水部门提供另一种简单快速地监测和测量水体中人类粪便污染水平的工具，将加强对公众的保护。当今使用的大多数方法是通过对粪便中以足够高的密度存在从而易于测量的微生物进行定量来检测此类污染。然而，这些微生物中的大多数，例如大肠杆菌，并非任何一种宿主物种的特异性标志物，而且许多微生物的来源可能并非粪便。作为一种替代方法，粪便和尿液中排出的化学物质可用于检测环境水体中的人类粪便污染。人类粪便的一种潜在化学标志物是化合物尿胆素。尿胆素是血红蛋白分解的最终副产物之一。尿胆素在许多哺乳动物（尤其是人类）的尿液和粪便中都会排出。使用亲水亲脂平衡（HLB）柱对来自新英格兰、内华达州和密歇根州21个地点的水源进行萃取，然后通过高效液相色谱 - 电喷雾质谱法（HPLC - ES - MS）进行分析。作为人类粪便的标志物，在许多水源中检测到了尿胆素，其浓度范围从不可检测到300 ng L⁻¹。除了尿胆素外，阿奇霉素（一种仅在美国广泛用于人类的抗生素）也在许多这些水体中被检测到，浓度范围从不可检测到77 ng L⁻¹。这种同时使用尿胆素和阿奇霉素（或任何其他人类使用的药物）的方法可用于为公共供水部门提供一种追踪人类粪便污染来源的明确方法。通过HPLC - ES - MS分析和检测地表水中的尿胆素此前尚未在同行评审文献中报道。
