The sorption behaviour of 20 organic micropollutants originating in wastewater – for which there are little or no experimentally determined data – is assessed by means of sediment column experiments.
Organic pollutants derived from wastewater may enter groundwater by infiltration from wastewater-influenced surface waters, or due to leakage from sewer systems.
Since sorption is an essential process for attenuation of organic pollutants during subsurface flow, information on the sorption properties of each pollutant is essential for assessing their environmental fate and transport behaviour.
In this German study, the sorption behaviour of 20 wastewater-originated organic micropollutants was assessed by means of sediment column experiments, since experimentally determined data for these compounds are not (or only sparsely) represented in the literature.
Compounds investigated include various psychoactive drugs, phenazone-type pharmaceuticals and beta blockers, as well as phenacetine, N-methylphenacetine, tolyltriazole, and para-toluenesulfonamide.
For most of the compounds no or only low sorption affinity was observed, but an elevated tendency to sorb onto aquifer sand was obtained for the beta blockers atenolol, propranolol, and metoprolol.
The experimental data were compared with data estimated based on the octanol/water partition coefficient following the QSAR (quantitative structure–activity relationship) approach. This demonstrated the limitations of the latter to predict the adsorption behaviour in natural systems for the studied compounds.
