The anthropic impact on Antarctica: a biennial study on emerging contaminants’ occurrence

Human activities influence (often negatively) the environmental processes. The most visible consequences occur in highly-impacted regions, where industries and residences are more abundant. Still, even small settlements in remote areas can have an impact on the surroundings, like the Mario Zucchelli Italian research Station (MZS) in Terra Nova Bay (Antarctica). The PNRA (National Research Program in Antarctica) project called ‘MATISSE’ (Emerging contaminants in the Ross Sea: occurrence, sources and ecotoxicological risks) is devoted to assess such an impact1. In this work, the results of the samplings performed in the outlet of the MZS’s wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) and the surrounding Road Bay seawaters (where the WWTP discharges) during two consecutives campaigns (37th and 38th Italian expedition in Antarctica) were compared. Samplings were carried out by following two approaches: (i) spot sampling and consequent solid-phase extraction and (ii) passive sampling (exploited by the first deployments of Polar Organic Chemicals Integrative Samplers – POCIS –in this remote region for 2-3 weeks), which encompasses an in-situ pre-concentration during the sampling itself. The final extract of each sample processed was properly diluted and analysed by LC-MS/MS, targeting approximately 40 emerging contaminants, belonging to various classes and presenting different physico-chemical properties. The first campaign involved an intensive sampling, which was reorganized during the second one according to the obtained results1: the processing method was slightly modified to increase the recovery of the most polar analytes, and the sampling point at Road Bay was moved closer to the WWTP outlet to reduce the seawaters’ dilution effect. This allowed to double the number of compounds detected in marine samples, while the analytes within the WWTP effluent were more or less the same from one year to the following one. Detected substances included food- and recreational activities- related compounds (methylxanthines, artificial sweeteners, taurine, nicotine), pharmaceuticals (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, β-blockers, β-agonists…), hormones, UV-filters and industrial additives (like PerFluoroAlkyl Substances and BisPhenol-A) at concentrations ranging from dozens of ng L-1 to dozens of μg L-1. During the two campaigns, most of these analytes were quantified at comparable levels. In order to get a more comprehensive evaluation and interpretation of the results, both principal components analyses and correlation matrices were implemented, highlighting the relations among the compounds and those with the number of personnel in the base, as well as between the two sampling approaches, whose quantifications resulted correlated for many compounds1. References: [1] H. MacKeown, C. Scapuzzi, M. Baglietto, B. Benedetti, M. Di Carro, E. Magi, Science of The Total Environment, 2024, 925, 171755.