The potential threat of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) to the environment has emerged as a topic of concern in recent years. To date, there exists a dearth of analytical methods to empirically determine their occurrence in solid media. This 3-year research and development project focused on a number of topics surrounding the exposure of the terrestrial environment to pharmaceuticals through land spreading of municipal biosolids (sludges) on agricultural land. More specifically, the aims of the project were: - To identify which PPCPs may occur at significant levels in waste-water treatment sludges - To develop robust analytical methods for soil and sludge analysis - To compare any occurrence data with those from a European case study -To determine the solid-water partition coefficient for all compounds in aqueous sewage sludge and soil suspensions - To model sorption data in order to identify preferred sorption modes in the environment - To assess the mobility of such compounds in sewage sludge amended soils after exposure to rainfall. It is clear from the results generated during this project that PPCPs are indeed present in the solid environment and that their ecotoxicological effects need to be substantially further addressed. Principally, the main conclusion is that, depending on molecular affinity for the solid compartments, certain PPCPs may persist beyond the waste-water treatment process and may even concentrate in biosolids. Therefore, a new set of selection criteria for these PPCPs is critical in assessing any risk to the environment and for implementation of any monitoring strategies. Certainly, sales and usage data may assist in identification of those compounds warranting further study, but sales and occurrence data are obviously not proportionally related. Obviously, if a PPCP is not consumed in a country, then it could be considered of minimal or no risk by process of elimination. That said, compounds that are consumed in lesser yearly amounts may still display concentration ability in solids over those products sold in considerably higher quantities. Therefore, an evaluation of Kd for all PPCPs sold in Ireland is indeed desirable, however impractical.

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Barron, L.   "Occurrence and fate of pharmaceuticals and personal care products within sewage sludge and sludge-enriched soils". Associated datasets and digitial information objects connected to this resource are available at: Secure Archive For Environmental Research Data (SAFER) managed by Environmental Protection Agency Ireland https://eparesearch.epa.ie/safer/resource?id=711a6f9f-8df7-102d-ba42-8e912b2741d0 (Last Accessed: 2024-12-14)

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SAFER-Data Display URL	https://eparesearch.epa.ie/safer/iso19115/display?isoID=162
Resource Keywords	PPCP pharmaceuticals sludge waste-water digested sludges soils sewage
EPA/ERTDI/STRIVE Project Code	2005-FS-30-M1
EPA/ERTDI/STRIVE Project Theme	Waste and Resource Management
Resource Availability:	Public-Open
Limitations on the use of this Resource	There is no data attached to this resource. However further usage of the reports in any significant way should be properly cited or acknowledged in any further publications. A citation is provided below
Number of Attached Files (Publicly and Openly Available for Download):	3
Project Start Date	Saturday 1st January 2005 (01-01-2005)
Earliest Recorded Date within any attached datasets or digital objects	Sunday 1st January 2006 (01-01-2006)
Most Recent Recorded Date within any attached datasets or digital objects	Sunday 31st December 2006 (31-12-2006)
Published on SAFER	Wednesday 31st March 2010 (31-03-2010)
Date of Last Edit	Wednesday 31st March 2010 at 10:37:45 (31-03-2010)
Datasets or Files Updated On	Wednesday 31st March 2010 at 10:31:58 (31-03-2010)

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Description of Geographical Characteristics of This Project or Dataset
Digested sludge samples were taken from two WWTPs by sampling directly from the sludge digestion tanks or from final product silos into sealed storage bags and were frozen immediately until analysis. The first sampling site was located in Leixlip, Co. Kildare, with an average waste-water turnover of 3 × 107 l/day at the time of sampling, ~7,000 t/year digested sludge turnover for 2006 and a population equivalent (PE) of 80,000. This plant only consists of primary and secondary treatment services and resultant sludges are spread on forestry land after digestion (~17-21% dry solids). This matrix was used for analytical method validation. The second Irish sampling site at Ringsend, Dublin, handles an average waste-water throughput of 5 × 108 l/day and serves a PE of ~1.7 million. This plant consists of permanent primary and secondary waste-water treatment processes. The location of the plant with respect to many Blue Flag beaches requires temporary tertiary UV treatment of effluent waste waters and this is performed only during the recreational bathing season from May to September. Two biosolid fertilisers are available from this facility, which are currently in the trial phase. These comprise hydrolysed and digested sludge cakes, with 26% dry solid content, as well as a second granular product which is subject to further thermal drying at average temperatures of 450C with reported annual yields of ~25,000 t/year and 90% dried solid material. According to one biosolid spreading company, based in Co. Wicklow, which currently serves agricultural land across the province of Leinster, the dried granular biosolids were applied in 2005/2006 typically at 3.3 t/ha and the sludge cake at 11 t/ha. During this time ~45% was for grassland and 55% for tillage. There are currently no available data on the PPCP residue content within this fertiliser in either form. Samples of digested sludge cake and thermally treated biosolids from Scandinavia were taken from five WWTP sites in 2007 and served the following PEs: - Site 1: Sweden (PE: 23,000) - Site 2: Sweden (PE: 50,000) - Site 3: Sweden (PE: 20,000) - Site 4: Norway, Bekkelaget (PE: 350,000) - Site 5: Norway, Arendal (PE: 40,000).

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The following is a list of projects, datasets, and resources on SAFER-Data from which users downloaded attachments from soon after downloading attachments from this resource Occurrence and fate of pharmaceuticals and personal care products within sewage sludge and sludge-enriched soils. You can view the full description for projects, datasets, and resources by using the links supplied.

• On-site wastewater treatment: investigation of rapid percolating subsoils, reed beds and effluent distribution View Full Metadata Description
• Precipitation chemistry data starting 2005 for Oak Park, Glenn Veagh, Wexford View Full Metadata Description
• Clarianna Rver Catchment - Raw Data Collection View Full Metadata Description
• Anaerobic Digestion: Decision Support Software View Full Metadata Description
• EPA Ireland Archive of PM10 Monitoring Data View Full Metadata Description

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