Photolysis of β-blockers in environmental waters Original Research Article

Many drugs such as β-blockers have been shown to occur in aquatic environments. Even if adequate ecotoxicity data are not available, it is of primary importance to get informations about their fate in environmental waters, particularly about their photofate in sewage treatment plant effluents (STP). The main difficulties when studying pharmaceutical photochemical behaviour in environmental waters, are linked to the very low environmentally relevant concentrations (ng L−1 to μg L−1) which can generate problems in terms of analytical sensitivity. Moreover, the complexity of environmental matrices can modify micropollutants degradation kinetics. The photodegradation of β-blockers has been compared at two concentration levels (10 μg L−1 and 10 mg L−1) and in two different matrices (pure water and STP effluent). It has been shown that the concentration does not influence β-blockers degradation pathways, thus allowing the identification of degradation compounds using the 10 mg L−1 solutions. Although environmental waters speed up the degradation process, the same photoproducts were appeared in both matrices. Using LC–MS/MS, hydroxyl radical additions have been identified as an important degradation pathway for especially pindolol, propranolol and timolol, leading to several positional isomers, corresponding to mono-, di- or tri-hydroxylations. Kinetics of appearance/disappearance of these photoproducts have been studied in STP effluents.