SusAnRis - - Towards sustainable analytical methods to determine contaminants of environmental concern for human health risk assessment

Project R+D+i de generació de coneixement, Ministeri de Ciència, Innovació i Universitats 2024-2027

PID2023-148939NB-I00

The increasing concern for the environmental problems and human health requires a global effort to contribute to their mitigation. This concern has raised in recent years due to the effects of climate change and water scarcity. The need to contribute to sustainability in all possible areas and to have information on the effects of contamination on humans have been decisive in the approach of the project presented. That is why the project aims to develop sustainable analytical methods, following the principles of green analytical chemistry (GAC), for the determination of contaminants of emerging interest and radionuclides in different environmental compartments that will allow their monitoring and evaluating the risk to human health due to exposure to these contaminants through the main contact routes.The increasing concern for the environmental problems and human health requires a global effort to contribute to their mitigation. This concern has raised in recent years due to the effects of climate change and water scarcity. The need to contribute to sustainability in all possible areas and to have information on the effects of contamination on humans have been decisive in the approach of the project presented. That is why the project aims to develop sustainable analytical methods, following the principles of green analytical chemistry (GAC), for the determination of contaminants of emerging interest and radionuclides in different environmental compartments that will allow their monitoring and evaluating the risk to human health due to exposure to these contaminants through the main contact routes.

Thus, it is proposed to develop sustainable and automated methods taking into account the principles of the GAC in the different stages of the analytical process; emphasizing each of the steps of the analytical process and especially in the sampling and sample preparation. In this sense, it is intended to develop new passive samplers for the determination of contaminants in air and water samples, which present benefits compared to active sampling both in terms of the representativeness of the sample and the reported concentration of the contaminants, and the reduction of organic solvents. In addition, new sustainable materials obtained from renewable sources will be developed for application to extraction techniques, as well as the automation of methods using techniques that minimize the use of organic solvents. These strategies in extraction techniques are clearly aligned with the GAC principles, while attempting to obtain cutting-edge analytical methods for the selective and sensitive determination of contaminants and radionuclides of interest.

These results will visibly contribute to scientific progress and can be transferred to other contaminants and types of samples.Once method developed, it is proposed to evaluate the occurrence of contaminants in different environmental compartments, focusing on the Tarragona area, because of the different problems arising due to its location, since it houses an important petrochemical industrial park, which coexists with an outstanding tourist activity. The scarcity of water implies a greater dependence on water from the Ebro River, which in its last part has suffered the influence of nuclear power plants and both urban and industrial discharges, which clearly affects its quality. That is why it is necessary to evaluate the presence of organic contaminants and radionuclides in samples of air, water and marine organisms that represent an important part of the population's diet.

Once the presence of these pollutants has been determined, human exposure and the human risk of both non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic compounds will be evaluated. This information will be transferred to the competent authorities and to the society, who is very aware of the contamination problems in the area.