Fate and transport of EDCs and PPCPs through soils on a reuse golf course

摘要

The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) encourages Las Vegas area golf courses to irrigate with reuse water. As one of several proactive initiatives to address emerging contaminant issues associated with water reuse, SNWA installed three soil infiltration lysimeters on a golf course that had been irrigated with reuse water for over 15 years. Samples were collected periodically and analyzed at SNWA's Applied Research & Development Center for conservative tracer ions and a suite of suspected endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC) and pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP). Study objectives included establishing EDC/PPCP concentrations in the irrigation application water, measuring their attenuation in established soils, and developing field procedures. At the end of the study, soil cores were recovered from two of the lysimeters and analyses performed on samples from different soil horizons to test for sorbed EDC/PPCP. Evaluation of field results required a number of hydrologic assumptions as well as event-by-event interpretation. In the irrigation water, only 8 of 23 targeted EDC/PPCP routinely occurred at concentrations in the tens to hundreds of nanograms per liter and could be studied effectively. A total of 7 others were rarely or never detected, and 2 more were subject to interference and thus not interpretable. The remaining compounds were sometimes found at concentrations generally less than 10 ng/1 in those samples with detection limits below that level. Detection limits in soil drainage waters were greater than in irrigation water, primarily due to small sample volumes. The behavior of 6 analytes (atenolol, carbamazepine, gemfibrozil, meprobamate, sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim) was semi-quantifiable in soil drainage waters; all demonstrated significant irreversible attenuation during passage through soil. In addition to those 6 compounds, a limited measure of qualitative interpretation was possible with dilantin and naproxen. In samples of soil from cores, most target analytes were below detection levels (0.1 to 0.32 ng/g); however, atorvastatin, carbamazepine, and dilantin in the range of about 1 to 4 ng/g were each present in 2 of 8 soil samples.