Fate and Mass Balance of 13 Kinds of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in a Sewage Treatment Plant

Solid phase extraction (SPE)/high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was employed to simultaneously determine 13 kinds of interested endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in the wastewater taken from a sewage treatment plant (STP) of Harbin, China. Results show that the concentrations of estriol, estrone, dimethyl phthalate (DMP) and 4-tert-octylphenol (4-J-OP) increase in the primary sedimentation effluent, comparing to that in its influent. The removal rates of EDCs range from 70% to 96% in the STP, but not for 17alpha-ethynylestradiol (EE2) (60.4%) and diethylstilbestrol (51.3%). Studies indicate that most of the EDCs partition dominantly in aquatic phase except for dibutyl phthalate, di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, 4-t-OP, branched nonylphenol and 4-n-nonylphenol. The mass balance was carried out for evaluating the ability of the secondary treatment process to remove EDCs. It turns out that the removals obtained from biodegradation range from 4.2% (EE2) to 91.8% (DMP). In the meantime, the removals achieved by excess activated sludge range from 0.5% (bisphenol A) to 45.2% (EE2).