Occurrence and environmental risk assessment of 4 estrogenic compounds in surface water in Belgium in the frame of the EU Watch List

Abstract

The presence of natural estrogens estrone (E1), 17β-estradiol (E2), estriol (E3) and synthetic estrogen 17α-ethynylestradiol (EE2) in the aquatic environment has raised concerns because of their high potency as endocrine disrupting chemicals. The European Commission (EC) established a Watch List of contaminants of emerging concerns including E1, E2 and EE2. The proposed environmental quality standards (EQSs) are 3.6, 0.4, 0.035 ng/L, for E1, E2, EE2, respectively. A thorough evaluation of analytical procedures developed by several studies aiming to perform sampling campaigns in different European countries highlighted that the required limits of quantification in surface water were not reached, especially for EE2 and to a lesser extent for E2. Moreover, data regarding the occurrence of these contaminants in Belgian surface water are very limited. A sampling campaign was therefore performed on a wide range of rivers in Belgium (accounting for a total of 63 samples). The detection frequencies of E1, E2, E3 and EE2 were 100, 98, 86 and 48%, respectively. E1 showed the highest mean concentration (= 4.433 ng/L). In contrast, the mean concentration of EE2 was 0.042 ng/L. The risk quotients (RQs) were calculated based on the respective EQS of each analyte. The frequency of exceedance of the EQS was 31.7% for E1, EE2, while it increased to 44.4% for E2. The extent of exceedance of the EQS, represented by the 95th percentile of the RQ dataset, was higher than 1 for E1, E2, EE2. The use of a confusion matrix was investigated to try to predict the risk posed by E2, EE2, based on the concentration of E1.

Keywords: Belgian river waters; EU Watch List; Environmental risk assessment; Estrogenic compounds; Occurrence data; Risk prediction.