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

化学污染是当今社会一个严重且日益严重的问题。要了解这些化学物质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命运。然而，这种理解充其量是有限的，在最坏的情况下对许多当前使用的化学品，如药物及其降解产物来说是不存在的。像药物这样的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的关注。目前的测量技术通常依赖于仅考虑该时间点水平的抽样。然而，越来越多的证据表明，这类化学品的排放，例如来自经处理的废水的排放，随着时间的推移而随着日常和季节性使用模式以及供水(如风暴)和用水的变化而变化。虽然众所周知，许多药物在人体内会被代谢和排泄，但除了怀疑它们的浓度可能与原始药物相媲美，以及某些形式的药物可能会还原为原始化合物外，人们对这些环境中的这些降解产物几乎一无所知。 我们将解决这些严重的知识差距。首先，我们将提高对被动式取水器工作原理的理解。这些设备很小，价格便宜，不需要电力，当放入水中时可以收集化学物质，并提供持续的化学水平测量--如果我们能克服使用它们的许多问题的话。我们建议的研究将把这些设备在实验室中收集的化学物质与基本化学性质和环境因素(如水流速度、pH值和天然溶解物质的干扰)联系起来。我们还将开发新的方法，从水中的原始化学物质中分离和量化药物代谢物，并消除任何干扰化合物。我们将使用这些方法来研究废水处理如何在实验室和各种类型的实际废水处理厂及其接收水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.