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APPLICATION OF ANTHROPOGENIC CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL MARKERS TO CHARACTERIZE RECEIVING URBAN WATERS FOR HUMAN FECAL POLLUTION AND UNTREATED SANITARY WASTE
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2025-08
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Environmental Engineering
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https://doi.org/10.34944/762b-7596
Abstract
Reliable markers are essential for accurately identifying untreated human waste and fecal pollution in receiving waters. Traditionally, chemical or biological markers have been used independently for detecting untreated sanitary waste and fecal pollution. However, several of the markers used are influenced by factors such as degradation, sorption, dilution, the ability to properly identify host specificity, and marker replication. This limits their accuracy and reliability. This comprehensive study utilizes both chemical and biological markers to identify and validate the source and extent of untreated sanitary waste and fecal contamination. Study results from both marker categories are associated to add robustness to the procedures, to confirm marker suitability and to identify anthropogenic contamination. A fingerprint is developed using a suite of 25 reliable chemical markers from various classes and 5 source-specific biomarkers. A total of 12 outfall samples, 32 surface water samples, and two groundwater samples were studied. With few exceptions all target chemical markers were detected in the wastewater influent samples. Artificial sweeteners, sucralose and acesulfame were detected in all water matrices including groundwater, and acetaminophen was detected with the highest median concentration. The detection frequency of the human-associated biomarkers BacH, F-RNA-II and MitoH ranged from 40-100 %, while the animal specific marker was less frequently detected with frequencies ranging from 20-33%. Human-associated biomarkers, BacH and F-RNA-II were strongly correlated with several labile chemical makers such as Nicotine, Caffeine, Ibuprofen and Naproxen (0.42-0.75, p < 0.05). They were also moderately to strongly correlated with conservative chemical markers Acesulfame, Metformin, and Triclocarban (0.46-0.79, p < 0.05). MitoH correlated moderately with labile markers nicotine and salicylic acid and with conservative markers Metformin and Triclocarban (0.31 – 0.47, p<0.05). This study demonstrated that by using a combination of chemical and biological markers, a more robust technique was developed for fingerprinting source-specific untreated waste and fecal contamination in natural water resources. This work also serves to expand the limited body of information available in scientific literature in which associations between different marker categories are used to characterize source waters for fecal pollution.
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