Dep. of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, The Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
Huck Institutes of Life Sciences, The Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
J Environ Qual. 2022 Sep;51(5):1066-1082. doi: 10.1002/jeq2.20398. Epub 2022 Sep 5.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater surveillance was leveraged as a powerful tool for monitoring community-scale health. Further, the well-known persistence of some pharmaceuticals through wastewater treatment plants spurred concerns that increased usage of pharmaceuticals during the pandemic would increase the concentrations in wastewater treatment plant effluent. We collected weekly influent and effluent samples from May 2020 through May 2021 from two wastewater treatment plants in central Pennsylvania, the Penn State Water Reclamation Facility and the University Area Joint Authority, that provide effluent for beneficial reuse, including for irrigation. Samples were analyzed for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (influent only), two over-the-counter medicines (acetaminophen and naproxen), five antibiotics (ampicillin, doxycycline, ofloxacin, sulfamethoxazole, and trimethoprim), two therapeutic agents (remdesivir and dexamethasone), and hydroxychloroquine. Although there were no correlations between pharmaceutical and virus concentration, remdesivir detection occurred when the number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 increased, and dexamethasone detection co-occurred with the presence of patients with COVID-19 on ventilators. Additionally, Penn State decision-making regarding instruction modes explained the temporal variation of influent pharmaceutical concentrations, with detection occurring primarily when students were on campus. Risk quotients calculated for pharmaceuticals with known effective and lethal concentrations at which 50% of a population is affected for fish, daphnia, and algae were generally low in the effluent; however, some acute risks from sulfamethoxazole were high when students returned to campus. Remdesivir and dexamethasone persisted through the wastewater treatment plants, thereby introducing novel pharmaceuticals directly to soils and surface water. These results highlight connections between human health and water quality and further demonstrate the broad utility of wastewater surveillance.
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，废水监测被用作监测社区规模健康的有力工具。此外，众所周知，一些药物在废水处理厂中得以长期存在，这引发了人们的担忧，即在大流行期间药物使用量的增加会导致废水处理厂废水中的药物浓度增加。我们从 2020 年 5 月到 2021 年 5 月，从宾夕法尼亚州中部的两个废水处理厂——宾夕法尼亚州立大学水回收设施和大学区联合管理局——收集每周的进水和出水样本，这些废水处理厂提供用于有益再利用的废水，包括灌溉。样本中分析了严重急性呼吸系统综合征冠状病毒 2（仅进水）、两种非处方药物（对乙酰氨基酚和萘普生）、五种抗生素（氨苄西林、多西环素、氧氟沙星、磺胺甲恶唑和甲氧苄啶）、两种治疗剂（瑞德西韦和地塞米松）以及羟氯喹。尽管药物和病毒浓度之间没有相关性，但瑞德西韦的检测是在 COVID-19 住院患者人数增加时发生的，地塞米松的检测与 COVID-19 患者使用呼吸机同时发生。此外，宾夕法尼亚州立大学关于教学模式的决策解释了进水药物浓度的时间变化，主要是在学生在校时检测到药物。对于在鱼类、水蚤和藻类中有效和致死浓度分别为 50%的人群产生影响的已知药物，计算出的风险商数在废水中通常较低；然而，当学生返回校园时，磺胺甲恶唑的一些急性风险很高。瑞德西韦和地塞米松在废水处理厂中得以持续存在，从而将新型药物直接引入土壤和地表水。这些结果突出了人类健康与水质之间的联系，并进一步证明了废水监测的广泛应用。
