Identification of emerging contaminants in greywater emitted from ships by a comprehensive LC-HRMS target and suspect screening approach

Abstract

The increase in maritime traffic has led to substantial greywater discharges into the marine environment. Greywater, originating from sinks, showers, kitchen, and laundry facilities, contains a wide array of chemical contaminants influenced by on-board activities, ship size, and management practices. The lack of comprehensive regulations for greywater management, along with limited research on its chemical composition, highlights the need to characterize these waste streams. This study is one of the first to provide a comprehensive characterization of greywater samples from ships using advanced liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution-mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) strategies, including wide-scope target and suspect screening. The target analysis detected 86 compounds, such as pharmaceuticals, stimulants, tobacco and food-related products, personal care products, UV filters, surfactants, perfluoroalkyl compounds, plasticizers, and flame retardants, many of which are rarely measured in routine monitoring programs. Furthermore, 11 additional compounds were tentatively identified through suspect screening. A novel scoring system further highlighted 25 priority compounds posing ecological risks to marine ecosystems, including pharmaceuticals such as tapentadol, dextrorphan, citalopram, or irbesartan. This study emphasizes the significant introduction of chemicals at μg L-1 levels through greywater discharges, underscoring the urgent need for improved management practices to mitigate ecological risks to the marine ecosystem

This study has been carried out under the support of the Horizon 2020 EMERGE project (Grant agreement ID: 874990). M. Gros acknowledges her Ramon y Cajal contract (RYC2020-030324-I) funded by the MCIN/AEI 10.13039/501100011033 and by “ESF Investing in your future”. Authors also acknowledge the European Regional Development Found (FEDER), the Generalitat de Catalunya through the Consolidated Research Group (SGR ICRA-ENV 2021 01282) and the funding from CERCA program