2022 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Virtual Conference

March 13 - 15, 2022

5/25/2021 | 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM | PHARMACEUTICAL AND SOLUTE COCKTAILS IN BALTIMORE STREAMS | Virtual Platform

PHARMACEUTICAL AND SOLUTE COCKTAILS IN BALTIMORE STREAMS

Pharmaceuticals, nutrients, and other solutes are some of the many anthropogenic chemical stressors faced by urban streams. We present analysis of twenty years of weekly solute concentrations overlapping with one year of weekly pharmaceutical concentrations in stream water from eight catchments spanning an urbanization gradient in Baltimore, MD. Despite none of the streams receiving direct effluent discharge from wastewater treatment, we frequently detected pharmaceuticals in these streams. The total number of pharmaceutical detections over the year at a given site was positively correlated with population density in the catchment, and the highest concentration of any pharmaceutical (3717 ng/L of acetaminophen) was found in a highly urbanized site furthest downstream. Repeated sampling revealed that pharmaceutical concentrations are highly dynamic over time, not correlated with stream discharge, and do not show synchrony among compounds. Over the 20-year record, minimum and median chloride concentrations increased at most sites, and intra-annual variability in many solutes was related to precipitation. Finally, we explore relationships between solutes, nutrients, and pharmaceuticals to better characterize and predict the complex chemical cocktails in these urban streams.

Contaminants
Pharmaceutical
Pollution

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Presenters/Authors

Megan Fork (), Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, megan.fork@gmail.com;