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 mu g L-1) of estrogens in the influents, followed by the M-WWTPs (0.028-1.15 mu g L-1), H-WWTPs (0.068-0.130 mu g L-1) and P-WWTPs (0.015-0.070 mu g L-1). Like the influents, the L-WWTPs (0.003-0.729 mu g L-1) and the M-WWTPs (0.001-0.299 mu g L-1) also showed higher total concentration of estrogens in the effluents than the H-WWTPs (0.002-0.021 mu g L-1) and P-WWTPs (0.011 mu g L-1 in one sample). The L-WWTPs (37.5-543 mu g kg(-1), dry weight) showed higher total concentrations in sludge than the M-WWTPs (3.16-444 mu g 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. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.