Acoustic cavitation is a known water treatment, whereas hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) has only recently been addressed. Firstly, a general overview of HC as water treatment is presented. In the second part we represent the outcomes of our work, where HC was assessed in terms of removal of selected pharmaceuticals, cyanobacteria, green microalgae, bacteria and viruses from water. We have shown that HC can manifest itself in various forms, each having its own distinctive mechanism. Since this was neglected in the past, it has led to poor performance of HC. We intend to show in our future work that a different type of HC (different removal mechanism) is required for successful removal of various pollutants. HC is not the method of choice for routine water cleaning at present. Regardless, our the recent results have shown its great potential as the optimization could lead to a low energy water treatment technique.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3649871
The results of an inter-laboratory comparison exercise to determine cytostatic anticancer drug residues in surface water, hospital wastewater and wastewater treatment plant effluent are reported. To obtain a critical number of participants, an invitation was sent out to potential laboratories identified to have the necessary knowledge and instrumentation. Nine laboratories worldwide confirmed their participation in the exercise. The compounds selected (based on the extent of use and laboratories capabilities) included cyclophosphamide, ifosfamide, 5-fluorouracil, gemcitabine, etoposide, methotrexate and cisplatinum. Samples of spiked waste (hospital and wastewater treatment plant effluent) and surface water, and additional non-spiked hospital wastewater, were prepared by the organising laboratory (Jožef Stefan Institute) and sent out to each participant partner for analysis. All analytical methods included solid phase extraction (SPE) and the use of surrogate/internal standards for quantification. Chemical analysis was performed using either liquid or gas chromatography mass (MS) or tandem mass (MS/MS) spectrometry. Cisplatinum was determined using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). A required minimum contribution of five laboratories meant that only cyclophosphamide, ifosfamide, methotrexate and etoposide could be included in the statistical evaluation. z-score and Q test revealed 3 and 4 outliers using classical and robust approach, respectively. The smallest absolute differences between the spiked values and the measured values were observed in the surface water matrix. The highest within-laboratory repeatability was observed for methotrexate in all three matrices (CV)12 %). Overall, inter-laboratory reproducibility was poor for all compounds and matrices (CV 27-143 %) with the only exception being methotrexate measured in the spiked hospital wastewater (CV=8 %). Random and total errors were identified by means of Youden plots.
COBISS.SI-ID: 28748839
The present study reports the ecotoxicity and genotoxicity of cyclophosphamide (CP), ifosfamide (IF), carboxy-cyclophosphamide (CPCOOH), keto-cyclophosphamide (ketoCP) and N-dechloroethyl-cyclophosphamide (NdCP). Only CPCOOH (EC50 = 17.1 mg L−1) was toxic towards cyanobacteria Synecococcus leopoliensis. The measured mixture toxicity was lower than the predicted one. The SOS/umuC assay revealed genotoxic activity of CP, CPCOOH and the mixture in the presence of metabolic activation. CPCOOH was genotoxic also in the absence of metabolic activation. This finding is important as CPCOOH can directly affect DNA of non-target organisms in the environment. The UV irradiation of samples containing CP and IF showed efficient degradation of both compounds and samples remained non-toxic towards S. leopoliensis. This is the first study describing the ecotoxicity and genotoxicity of the investigated cytostatics and their mixture. The results indicate the importance of toxicological evaluation and future monitoring of also other metabolites/TPs as they may be more hazardous than parent compounds.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3706959