Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, Jammu, and Kashmir, 190006, India; Environmental Engineering and Management, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, 721302, West Bengal, India.
Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, Jammu, and Kashmir, 190006, India.
Chemosphere. 2023 Nov;341:139976. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2023.139976. Epub 2023 Aug 30.
The challenge of emerging contaminants (ECs) in global surface water bodies and particularly in low- and middle-income countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, is evident from the literature. The complexity arises from the high costs involved in EC analysis and the extensive list of ECs, which complicates the selection of essential compounds for scientific and regulatory investigations. Consequently, monitoring programs often include ECs that may have minimal significance within a region and do not pose known or suspected ecological or human health risks. This study aims to address this issue by employing a multi-risk assessment approach to identify priority ECs in the surface waters of the aforementioned countries. Through an analysis of occurrence levels and frequency data gathered from published literature, an optimized risk quotient (RQ) was derived. The findings reveal a priority list of 38 compounds that exhibit potential environmental risks and merit consideration in future water quality monitoring programs. Furthermore, the majority of antibiotics in India (12 out of 17) and Pakistan (7 out of 17) exhibit a risk quotient for antimicrobial resistance selection (RQ) greater than 1, highlighting the need for devising effective strategies to mitigate the escalation of antibiotic resistance in the environment.
从文献中可以明显看出，全球地表水，特别是印度、巴基斯坦、孟加拉国和斯里兰卡等中低收入国家，面临着新兴污染物（ECs）的挑战。EC 分析成本高，EC 种类繁多，这使得为科学和监管调查选择基本化合物变得复杂，从而增加了复杂性。因此，监测计划通常包括在该地区意义不大且不存在已知或疑似生态或人类健康风险的 ECs。本研究旨在通过采用多风险评估方法来解决这一问题，以确定上述国家地表水的优先 ECs。通过对已发表文献中收集的出现水平和频率数据进行分析，得出了优化的风险商数（RQ）。研究结果显示了 38 种具有潜在环境风险的化合物的优先列表，这些化合物值得在未来的水质监测计划中考虑。此外，印度（17 种中的 12 种）和巴基斯坦（17 种中的 7 种）的大多数抗生素的抗微生物选择风险商数（RQ）大于 1，这突显了需要制定有效的策略来减轻环境中抗生素耐药性的升级。
