Suspect screening of emerging pollutants and their major transformation products in wastewaters treated with fungi by liquid chromatography coupled to a high resolution mass spectrometry

• Bioremediation of wastewaters with Trametes versicolor white rot fungus.
• Suspect screening of 33 pharmaceuticals and 113 transformation products.
• Post target screening by a home-made library.
• Liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry.

A new approach for the screening of 33 pharmaceuticals and 113 of their known transformation products in wastewaters was developed. The methodology is based on the analysis of samples by liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) followed by data processing using specific software and manual confirmation. A home-made library was built with the transformation products reported in literature for the target pharmaceuticals after treatment with various fungi. The method was applied to the search of these contaminants in 67 samples generated along treatment of wastewaters with white-rot fungus Trametes versicolor. The screening methodology allowed the detection of different transformation products (TPs) generated from degradation of parent compounds after fungal treatment. This approach can be a useful tool for the rapid screening and tentative detection of emerging contaminants during water treatment in both full and batch-scale studies when pure standards are not available.