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Environmental contextEnvironmental persistence of excreted pharmaceuticals in aquatic ecosystems is usually predicted using small-scale laboratory experiments assumed to simulate natural conditions. We studied five pharmaceuticals comparing their removal rates from water under laboratory conditions and under natural environmental conditions existing in a large pond. We found that the laboratory conditions did not fully capture the complexity within the pond, which led to different removal rates in the two systems. AbstractEnvironmental persistence is a key property when evaluating risks with excreted pharmaceuticals in aquatic ecosystems. Such persistence is typically predicted using small-scale laboratory incubations, but the variation in aquatic environments and scarcity of field studies to verify laboratory-based persistence estimates create uncertainties around the predictive power of these incubations. In this study we: (1) assess the persistence of five pharmaceuticals (diclofenac, diphenhydramine, hydroxyzine, trimethoprim and oxazepam) in laboratory experiments under different environmental conditions; and (2) use a three-month-long field study in an aquatic ecosystem to verify the laboratory-based persistence estimates. In our laboratory assays, we found that water temperature (TEMP), concentrations of organic solutes (TOC), presence of sediment (SED), and solar radiation (SOL) individually affected dissipation rates. Moreover, we identified rarely studied interaction effects between the treatments (i.e. SOLxSED and TEMPxSOL), which affected the persistence of the studied drugs. Half-lives obtained from the laboratory assays largely explained the dissipation rates during the first week of the field study. However, none of the applied models could accurately predict the long-term dissipation rates (month time-scale) from the water column. For example, the studied antibioticum (trimethoprim) and the anti-anxiety drug (oxazepam) remained at detectable levels in the aquatic environment long after (similar to 150 days) our laboratory based models predicted complete dissipation. We conclude that small-scale laboratory incubations seem sufficient to approximate the short-term (i.e. within a week) dissipation rate of drugs in aquatic ecosystems. However, this simplistic approach does not capture interacting environmental processes that preserve a fraction of the dissolved pharmaceuticals for months in natural water bodies.

Pharmaceuticals derived from manufacturing and human consumption contaminate surface waters worldwide. To what extent such pharmaceutical contamination accumulates and disperses over time in different compartments of aquatic food webs is not well known. In this study we assess to what extent five pharmaceuticals (diphenhydramine, oxazepam, trimethoprim, diclofenac, and hydroxyzine) are taken up by fish (European perch) and four aquatic invertebrate taxa (damselfly larvae, mayfly larvae, waterlouse, and ramshorn snail), by tracing their bioconcentrations over several months in a semi-natural large-scale (pond) system. The results suggest both significant differences among drugs in their capacity to bioaccumulate and differences among species in uptake. While no support for in situ uptake of diclofenac and trimethoprim was found, oxazepam, diphenhydramine, and hydroxyzine were detected in all analyzed species. Here, the highest bioaccumulation factor (tissue:water ratio) was found for hydroxyzine. In the food web, the highest concentrations were found in the benthic species ramshorn snail and waterlouse, indicating that bottom-living organism at lower trophic positions are the prime receivers of the pharmaceuticals. In general, concentrations in the biota decreased over time in response to decreasing water concentrations. However, two interesting exceptions to this trend were noted. First, mayfly larvae (primarily grazers) showed peak concentrations (a fourfold increase) of oxazepam, diphenhydramine, and hydroxyzine about 30 days after initial addition of pharmaceuticals. Second, perch (top-predator) showed an increase in concentrations of oxazepam throughout the study period. Our results show that drugs can remain bioavailable for aquatic organism for long time periods (weeks to months) and even re-enter the food web at a later time. As such, for an understanding of accumulation and dispersion of pharmaceuticals in aquatic food webs, detailed ecological knowledge is required.

Behavioral traits measured in laboratory settings are commonly used when predicting ecological effects and evolutionary outcomes in natural systems. However, uncertainties regarding the relevance of simplified lab-based behavioral tests for complex natural environments have created doubts about the use of these tests within aquatic ecology and ecotoxicology. In this study, we scrutinize the assumption that fish performance in six commonly applied behavioral assays has relevance for in situ behavior, by comparing individual behavior tracked in both artificial laboratory settings as well as in two natural lakes. We show that: i) commonly measured behavioral traits of individual fish (Perca fluviatilis) have low predictive power for within-lake behaviors if interpreted alone, but that; ii) composite variables synthesized from several (six) behavioral assays explain important in situ measures such as swimming activity, dispersion, home-range size, and habitat preference. While our findings support recent criticisms against the use of single behavioral tests for predicting environmental effects, we provide empirical evidences suggesting that fish performances in multiple laboratory assays are highly relevant for fish behavior in nature.