Analytical and chemical tools for elucidating fate processes controlling exposure to emerging environmental pollutants

化学污染是当今社会中一个严重且日益严重的问题。为了了解这些化学品可能对人类和生态系统健康造成的风险，我们必须彻底了解它们的环境行为和归宿。然而，对于许多目前使用的化学品，如药物及其降解产物，这种了解充其量是有限的，最坏的情况是根本不存在。药物等化学品被设计成具有深远的生物效应，因此越来越受到环境关注。目前的测量技术通常依赖于仅考虑该时间点的水平的采样。然而，越来越多的证据表明，这些化学品的释放，例如来自处理废水的排放，随着日常和季节性使用模式的变化以及供水（如风暴）和用水的变化而变化。虽然许多药物在人体内代谢和排泄是众所周知的，但除了怀疑它们可能在浓度上与原始药物竞争之外，对环境中的这些降解产物几乎一无所知，并且某些形式可以变回原始化合物。我们将解决这些严重的知识差距。首先，我们将提高我们对被动水采样器工作原理的理解。这是一种小型的、不显眼的、不需要电力的装置，当它被放置在沃茨时，可以收集化学物质，并提供连续的化学物质水平测量--如果我们能克服使用它们时的许多问题的话。我们拟议的研究将涉及这些设备在实验室中的化学品收集，基本化学性质和环境因素，如水的流速，pH值和自然溶解物质的干扰。我们还将开发新的方法，从沃茨中的原始化学物质中分离和定量药物代谢物，并去除任何干扰化合物。我们将使用这些方法来研究如何在实验室和各种类型的实际废水处理厂及其接收沃茨中更有效地去除药物。这些工作最终将在修复、维护、改善和保护我们宝贵的水资源方面发挥重要作用。

Chemical pollution is a serious and increasing problem in our society today. To understand the risks such chemicals may pose on human and ecosystem health, we must thoroughly understand their environmental behavior and fate. However, this understanding is at best limited and at worst nonexistent for many current-use chemicals, such as drugs and their degradation products. Chemicals such as drugs are designed to have profound biological effects, and are of increasing environmental concern for that reason. Current measurement techniques typically rely on sampling that only accounts for levels at that point in time. However, there is increasing evidence that release of such chemicals, for example from discharge of treated wastewater, changes over time with daily and seasonal use patterns, and with changes in water supply (such as storms) and water use. While many drugs are well known to be metabolized and excreted in the human body, almost nothing is known about these degradation products in the environment aside from suspicions that they may rival the original drugs in concentrations, and that some forms can turn back into the original compound. We will address these severe knowledge gaps. First, we will improve our understanding of how passive water samplers work. These are small inexpensive unobtrusive devices, requiring no power, that collect chemicals when placed in waters, and provide continuous measures of chemical levels--if we can overcome the many problems with their use. Our proposed research will relate chemical collection by these devices in the laboratory, to fundamental chemical properties and to environmental factors such as water flow rate, pH, and interference by natural dissolved materials. We will also develop new ways to separate and quantify drug metabolites from the original chemicals in waters, and remove any interfering compounds. We will use these methods to study how wastewater treatment can more efficiently remove drugs, both in the laboratory and at actual wastewater treatment plants of various types, and their receiving waters. Such work will ultimately play a significant role in remediating, maintaining, improving, and protecting our precious water resources.