Elucidation and prediction of fate, speciation, and transformation processes for polar contaminants of emerging concern in wastewater-impacted environments

化学污染是一个严重的和日益严重的问题，在我们的社会。为了了解化学品对人类和生态系统健康的风险，我们必须描述其环境行为和归宿。药物等化学品被设计为具有深远的生物学效应，因此日益受到环境关注。众所周知，许多药物一旦服用，就会被人体和其他生物体代谢和排泄。 虽然目前正在努力确定环境中的这些降解产物，但对这些产物的环境投入水平、其行为和归宿或其效果和影响知之甚少。现有的证据表明，人们担心这些产品可能在浓度上与原始药物相媲美，并可能重新变成原始化合物。鉴于越来越多的废水沃茨排放影响越来越多的接收沃茨，以及越来越多的再生废水和生物固体用于灌溉和肥料，能够预测药物及其降解物的命运和运输至关重要。我们将解决这些严重的知识差距。首先，我们已经开发了新的和更好的方法来采样，分离，并量化药物降解从他们的母体化合物在沃茨，并删除干扰化合物。 我们将使用这些方法，根据需要进行修改，以了解有多少父母和降解是目前在污水处理厂和接收沃茨，以及什么物理，化学，生物和生态过程控制这些水平。 这将通过生物反应器中的实验室实验来实现，以进行可控实验，预测废水处理厂和受投入物影响的沃茨中的实际水平。 ** 第二，我们将评估植物如何处理药物及其降解物。 当用废水灌溉或施肥的作物和被药物污染的生物固体吸收这些化学品时，人类可能会接触到这些化学品。 此外，植物可用于修复受污染的地区，如人工湿地;虽然它们已知可以降解许多污染物，但迄今为止对药物及其降解物的研究很少。 我们将通过根系测量药物的吸收和降解，以建立与药物的物理化学性质，植物的生理特性和环境条件（如pH）相关的预测模型。我们将评估植物如何将药物从根转移到芽，叶，果实和种子，再次用于预测目的 我们还将研究药物通过植物整体的转化动力学，并使用酶提取物和细胞培养物进行更可控的实验，以评估和预测植物降解这些化学品的潜力。这项工作最终将通过深入了解药物和降解物在这些系统中的行为，在修复，维护，改善和保护我们宝贵的水和食物资源方面发挥重要作用。

Chemical pollution is a serious and increasing problem in our society. To understand the risks of chemicals on human and ecosystem health, we must characterize their environmental behavior and fate. Chemicals such as drugs are designed to have profound biological effects, and are therefore of increasing environmental concern. Once taken up, many drugs are well known to be metabolized and excreted by humans and other organisms. While efforts are currently under way to identify these degradation products in the environment, very little is known about environmental levels of inputs of these products, their behavior and fate, or their effects and impact. Existing evidence points to fears that these products may rival the original drugs in concentrations and can turn back into the original compound. Being able to predict the fate and transport of drugs and their degradates is vital given increasing release of wastewaters impacting ever more receiving waters, and increasing reuse of reclaimed wastewater and biosolids for irrigation and fertilizer.******We will address these severe knowledge gaps. First, we have developed new and better ways to sample, separate, and quantify drug degradates from their parent compounds in waters, and remove interfering compounds. We will use these methods, modified as needed, to understand how much of both parent and degradate are present in wastewater treatment plants and in receiving waters, and what physical, chemical, biological, and ecological processes control these levels. This will be done through lab-based experiments in bioreactors for controllable experiments to predict real-world levels in wastewater treatment plants, and in waters impacted by inputs. ******Second, we will evaluate how plants can deal with drugs and their degradates. Human exposure can occur when crops irrigated or fertilized with wastewaters and biosolids contaminated with drugs can take up these chemicals. Also, plants can be used to remediate contaminated areas, such as with constructed wetlands; while they are known to degrade many contaminants, drugs and their degradates are poorly studied to date. We will measure uptake of drugs and degradates through the root system, to build predictive models relating uptake to physical-chemical properties of drugs, physiological properties of plants, and environmental conditions such as pH. We will evaluate how plants may move drugs from roots to shoots, leaves, fruits and seeds, again for predictive purposes We will also study transformation dynamics of drugs by plants both whole, and using enzyme extracts and cell cultures for more controllable experiments, to evaluate and predict potentials of plants for degrading these chemicals.******This work will ultimately play a significant role in remediating, maintaining, improving, and protecting our precious water and food resources by providing insights into how drugs and degradates behave in these systems.