Occurrence of organic microcontaminants in the wastewater treatment process. A mini review

A wastewater treatment plant may receive various types of wastewater namely, urban, industrial, agricultural, washout from the streets, wet or/and dry atmospheric deposition. As such, scientists have detected in wastewaters all major categories of pollutants like persistent organic pollutants (POPs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and pesticides, but also substances that are widely used as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, classified as "PPCPs" (pharmaceuticals and personal care products). Finally, the latest categories of compounds to be looked upon in these types of matrices are illicit drugs (drugs of abuse, like cocaine, etc.) and doping substances. This review article summarises major categories of organic microcontaminants that have been detected in wastewaters and studies their fate during the wastewater treatment process. Occurrence of these compounds in the influents and effluents are reported, as well as percents of removal, mass balances and phase distributions

Evolution of ochratoxin A content from must to wine in Port wine microvinification

To study the evolution of ochratoxin A (OTA) content from must to wine during the making of Port Wine, grapes from the five most common varieties of Port Wine were harvested and combined in equal percentages in order to perform microvinifications. Three sets of assays were studied: a blank (A), where the most common Port Wine-making process was used; in the second (B), a solution of OTA was added to the initial must; in the third (C), the grapes were aspersed with an inoculating solution of OTA-producing fungi. Samples were collected, in duplicate, on four different occasions throughout the process. The influence of the addition of SO_2 to the must was also assessed in each set. The quantification of OTA was based on the standard reference method for wines (European Standard prEN 14133), which includes clean-up via immunoaffinity columns and HPLC with fluorescence detection. The limits of detection were 0.076 μg/l for wine and 0.114 μg/l for must. The method was validated by assessing the precision, accuracy and by obtaining an estimate of the global uncertainty. Overall, the levels of OTA observed during the vinifications dropped by up to 92%, and no grapes used in this work were contaminated naturally.The authors wish to thank the support of the INIAP—Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária e das Pescas (Portugal), through the Program AGRO, Medida 8.1, and all the personnel and facilities at the Centro de Estudos Vitivinícolas do Douro (Peso da Régua, Portugal) and the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e Porto (Porto, Portugal)

Worldwide interlaboratory study on the determination of ochratoxin A in different wine type samples

Interlaboratory studies are decisive tools to help the validation of a specific analytical methodology or to assess the reproducibility of the use of different methods to analyze a given compound or compounds in certain sample matrices. In this work, homogeneous samples of two white wines (“White Wine” and “White Liqueur Wine”) and one red wine (“Red Fortified Wine”) from Portugal with different production techniques and characteristics, namely in alcohol strength (10.5%, 16.0% and 19.0% ethanolic content, respectively), were analyzed for their contents in ochratoxin A (OTA), a mycotoxin generated from fungal contamination. White Liqueur Wine was naturally contaminated, whereas the other two wine type were spiked with ethanolic OTA solutions. The participation of 24 laboratories from 17 countries of five continents was ensured for this study. Although with no restrictions in terms of analytical methodology to employ, 75% of the laboratories resorted to immunoaffinity columns clean-up followed by high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (HPLC-FD), most of them in accordance with the European Standard EN 14133. For White Wine samples, the general mean OTA concentration was 1.96 μg/l (two outliers) with interlaboratorial standard deviation (sL) of 0.53 μg/l; for White Liqueur Wine, mean of 1.59 μg/l (one outlier), with sL = 0.59 μg/l; and for Red Fortified Wine, mean of 2.73 μg/l (no outliers), with sL = 0.96 μg/l. Outliers were determined by Cochran and Grubbs tests. The Horrat index, recommended by the Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC) for the quality assurance of the collaborative study was, on average, 1.7. This study proved that OTA determination in wines is reproducible, regardless of the methodology employed.INIAP (Portugal), through the Program AGRO

Impact of large wildfires on PM10 levels and human mortality in Portugal

Uncontrolled wildfires have a substantial impact on the environment, the economy and local populations. According to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), between 2000 and 2013 wildfires burned up to 740 000 ha of land annually in the south of Europe, Portugal being the country with the highest percentage of burned area per square kilometre. However, there is still a lack of knowledge regarding the impacts of the wildfire-related pollutants on the mortality of the country's population. All wildfires occurring during the fire season (June–July–August–September) from 2001 and 2016 were identified, and those with a burned area above 1000 ha (large fires) were considered for the study. During the studied period (2001–2016), more than 2 million ha of forest (929 766 ha from June to September alone) were burned in mainland Portugal. Although large fires only represent less than 1 % of the number of total fires, in terms of burned area their contribution is 46 % (53 % from June to September). To assess the spatial impact of the wildfires, burned areas in each region of Portugal were correlated with PM10 concentrations measured at nearby background air quality monitoring stations. Associations between PM10 and all-cause (excluding injuries, poisoning and external causes) and cause-specific mortality (circulatory and respiratory) were studied for the affected populations using Poisson regression models. A significant positive correlation between burned area and PM10 was found in some regions of Portugal, as well as a significant association between PM10 concentrations and mortality, these being apparently related to large wildfires in some of the regions. The north, centre and inland of Portugal are the most affected areas. The high temperatures and long episodes of drought expected in the future will increase the probabilities of extreme events and therefore the occurrence of wildfires.This work was financially supported by the European Regional Development Fund–Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (ERDF-FEDER), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness/Agencia Estatal de Investigación (grant no. CGL2017-87921-R (ACEX project)) and Project UIDB/00511/2020 of LEPABE (Portuguese national funds through FCT/MCTES PIDDAC). Sofia Augusto was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (grant no. SFRH/BPD/109382/2015)

Relationship Between Biogenic Amines and Free Amino Acid Contents of Winesand Musts from Alentejo (Portugal)

The concentration of biogenic amines and free amino acids was studied in 102 Portuguese wines and 18 musts from Alentejo demarcated (D.O.C.) regions. Most wines were commercial, except for 38 monovarietals obtained by micro vinification. Musts from the varieties used to produce the latter wines were also studied. Both biogenic amines and free amino acids were analyzed by HPLC using fluorescence detection for their o-phthalaldehyde/fluorenylmethyl chloroformate (OPA/FMOC) derivatives. The most significant amines (average 10.8 mg/L for histamine+tyramine in red, and 7.4 mg/L for white wines) were found to be present at low levels and, although no important relationship between each individual biogenic amine could be obtained, the total amine content depends significantly on the assimilable amino acid content in wine

Can biomonitors effectively detect airborne benzo[<i>a</i>]pyrene? An evaluation approach using modelling

Biomonitoring data available on levels of atmospheric polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in pine needles from the Iberian Peninsula were used to estimate air concentrations of benzo[<i>a</i>]pyrene (BaP) and, at the same time, fuelled the comparison with chemistry transport model representations. Simulations with the modelling system WRF+EMEP+CHIMERE were validated against data from the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP) air sampling network. Modelled atmospheric concentrations were used as a consistent reference in order to compare the performance of vegetation-to-air estimating methods. A spatial and temporal resolution of 9 km and 1 h was implemented. The field-based database relied on a pine needles sampling scheme comprising 33 sites in Portugal and 37 sites in Spain complemented with the BaP measurements available from the EMEP sites. The ability of pine needles to act as biomonitoring markers for the atmospheric concentrations of BaP was estimated by converting the levels obtained in pine needles into air concentrations by six different approaches, one of them presenting realistic concentrations when compared to the modelled atmospheric values. The justification for this study is that the gaps still exist in the knowledge of the life cycles of semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), particularly the partition processes between air and vegetation. The strategy followed in this work allows for the effective estimation by the model of concentrations in air and vegetation and of the best approaches to estimate atmospheric levels from values found in vegetation