Tracing urban wastewater contaminants into the Atlantic Ocean by nontarget screening

Abstract

Oceans are the ultimate sink for many of the over 100 million man-made substances. Until now, monitoring was limited to a reduced number of targeted persistent organic pollutants, reaching open waters mainly via atmospheric deposition. However, the composition and fate of the thousands of pollutants reaching the marine environment though wastewater discharges from coastal sources remain largely unexplored. By combining a newly developed nontarget screening (NTS) workflow and high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS), we have identified over 500 sewage-derived contaminants occurring in the ocean. Samples from the NE Atlantic contained this anthropogenic imprint at distances over 50 km from the coastline and >500 m depth, beyond the continental margin. The range of identified compounds spans from pharmaceuticals and personal care products to food additives and industrial chemicals, including several that have never been reported in the environment, as they escaped conventional targeted analytical methods. Predicting the effects of the continuous input of this chemical “cocktail” on marine ecosystems is a formidable challenge, since 40% of the detected compounds lack information regarding their use and ecotoxicity.