Abstract

The presence of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in the environment is an emerging field of study which has generated huge concerns, as these PPCPs are usually found in trace concentrations, below detectable limits and have been reported to result in negative physiological changes in fish. This project is aimed at developing and establishing a suitable sampling protocol for the ecotoxicological evaluation of municipal waste water from Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), using samples from two teaching blocks in GCU – The Govan Mbeki and George Moore buildings. These locations were chosen based on the hypothesis that the Govan Mbeki building has a higher female student population than the George Moore building. The flow pattern of both streams of waste water was determined and time weighted composite sampling was carried out over a sampling period of five working days. The samples were characterized chemically, with no significant differences in the measured parameters. In comparison, samples from both locations were fairly consistent and representative of the student population during the sampling period. No EE2 was detected, as a result of low concentration of the calibration standard used, which lacks sensitivity to EE2 at lower concentrations. It is recommended that in future research, lower concentrations of standard solutions be used to calibrate measuring equipment and samples from more than two locations should be obtained, to provide a wider range of comparable results.

Keywords: Micropollutants; Oestrogen; Pharmaceuticals; Wastewater; Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS)