Advanced Water Management Centre, The University of Queensland , St. Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia.
Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences, The University of Queensland , Brisbane, Queensland 4108, Australia.
Environ Sci Technol. 2018 Feb 6;52(3):1561-1570. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.7b05109. Epub 2018 Jan 18.
Systematic sampling and analysis of wastewater samples are increasingly adopted for estimating drug consumption in communities. An understanding of the in-sewer transportation and transformation of illicit drug biomarkers is critical for reducing the uncertainty of this evidence-based estimation method. In this study, biomarkers stability was investigated in lab-scale sewer reactors with typical sewer conditions. Kinetic models using the Bayesian statistics method were developed to simulate biomarkers transformation in reactors. Furthermore, a field-scale study was conducted in a real pressure sewer pipe with the systematical spiking and sampling of biomarkers and flow tracers. In-sewer degradation was observed for some spiked biomarkers over typical hydraulic retention time (i.e., a few hours). Results indicated that sewer biofilms prominently influenced biomarker stability with the retention time in wastewater. The fits between the measured and the simulated biomarkers transformation demonstrated that the lab-based model could be extended to estimate the changes of biomarkers in real sewers. Results also suggested that the variabilities of biotransformation and analytical accuracy are the two major contributors to the overall estimation uncertainty. Built upon many previous lab-scale studies, this study is one critical step forward in realizing wastewater-based epidemiology by extending biomarker stability investigations from laboratory reactors to real sewers.
系统抽样和废水样本分析越来越多地被用于估计社区的药物消费水平。了解非法药物生物标志物在污水中的输送和转化对于降低这种基于证据的估计方法的不确定性至关重要。在本研究中，在具有典型污水条件的实验室规模污水反应器中研究了生物标志物的稳定性。使用贝叶斯统计方法的动力学模型被开发出来，以模拟反应器中生物标志物的转化。此外，在实际压力污水管中进行了现场规模研究，对生物标志物和流量示踪剂进行了系统的加标和采样。在典型水力停留时间（即几个小时）内，观察到一些加标的生物标志物在污水中发生了降解。结果表明，污水生物膜对生物标志物的稳定性有显著影响，其影响随污水停留时间而变化。测量值和模拟值之间的生物标志物转化拟合表明，基于实验室的模型可以扩展到估计实际污水中生物标志物的变化。结果还表明，生物转化和分析准确性的可变性是总体估计不确定性的两个主要因素。本研究在许多以前的实验室规模研究的基础上，通过将生物标志物稳定性研究从实验室反应器扩展到实际污水，在实现基于污水的流行病学方面迈出了关键的一步。
