Assessment of fates of estrogens in wastewater and sludge from various types of wastewater treatment plants

We measured five estrogens in the wastewater samples from the municipal wastewater treatment plants (M-WWTPs), livestock wastewater treatment plants (L-WWTPs), hospital WWTPs (H-WWTPs) and pharmaceutical manufacture WWTPs (P-WWTPs) in Korea. The L-WWTPs showed the highest total concentration (0.195–10.4 μg L−1) of estrogens in the influents, followed by the M-WWTPs (0.028–1.15 μg L−1), H-WWTPs (0.068–0.130 μg L−1) and P-WWTPs (0.015–0.070 μg L−1). Like the influents, the L-WWTPs (0.003–0.729 μg L−1) and the M-WWTPs (0.001–0.299 μg L−1) also showed higher total concentration of estrogens in the effluents than the H-WWTPs (0.002–0.021 μg L−1) and P-WWTPs (0.011 μg L−1 in one sample). The L-WWTPs (37.5–543 μg kg−1, dry weight) showed higher total concentrations in sludge than the M-WWTPs (3.16–444 μg kg−1, dry weight) like the wastewater. The distribution of estrogens in the WWTPs may be affected by their metabolism in the human body, their transition through biological treatment processes, and their usage for livestock growth. Unlike the concentration results, the daily loads of estrogens from the M-WWTPs were the highest, which is related to the high capacities of WWTPs.

Research highlights
► In this work, five estrogens were analyzed in various wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The livestock WWTPs had the highest concentrations of estrogens in influents as well as in effluents, followed by the municipal WWTPs, hospitals and pharmaceutical manufactures. Like the wastewater, the levels of estrogens in the livestock sludge were higher than those in the municipal wastewater sludge. This result is attributed to the fact that estrogens are naturally originated from animals and human.