Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ZeroPM (ZeroPM: Zero pollution of Persistent, Mobile substances)
Período documentado: 2021-10-01 hasta 2023-03-31
To protect the environment and human health from PM substances, the H2020 project ZeroPM: Zero pollution of Persistent, Mobile substances will interlink and synergize prevention, prioritization and removal approaches. ZeroPM, through its multidisciplinary team, will establish an evidence-based multilevel framework to guide policy, technological and market incentives to minimize use, emissions and pollution of entire groups of PM substances including PFAS.
Prioritization: To identify what substance groups of PM substances to prioritize, a digital global chemical inventory has been established, synthesizing chemical registries from around the world of chemicals on the market. Specific focus has been on understanding and assessing complex mixtures. Transformation data is an important aspect for the project and we have worked on the addition of new structures and transformation product data for PFAS and PM substances (S74 REFTPS DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4318838 and S68 HSDBTPS DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3827487) as well as prototype Shiny interface for curating transformation product data has been drafted. Further a database of PFAS have been made available, called the PubChem PFAS Tree which enables users to navigate the PFAS universe (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/classification/#hid=120). To better understand the risk of substance groups in water resources, effort has focused on coding a fugacity model to look at relevant exposure scenarios. Human in vitro-in vivo extrapolation physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model have been applied to select PFAS, triazines and triazoles. In the laboratory, the hazard tool box is being built and a screening with 36 substances has been carried out for various endpoints. Most activity was observed for triazole substances. Work is now continuing looking at developmental and immunotoxic effects in zebrafish embryos.
Removal: Pilot scale technologies are being installed at three test sites (Rastatt, Upper Rhine and Mytilene) in existing water treatment works or in a pilot plant to be installed during the project. Much testing and optimization has been done as part of establishing the pilot plant at the waterworks the Rastatt test site, which is severely contaminated by PFAS originating from the application of sludge containing paper pulp. Experimental work has identified suitable passive sampling materials that will be used in devices installed at test sites Upper Rhine and Mytilene to determine concentrations of PFAS, triazines and triazoles in water and wastewater. As part of the pilot plant being developed in Mytilene, lab scale anaerobic digestion (AD) experiments have been conducted to evaluate the role of different conductive materials and application of voltage. Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) experiments have also been performed to check the role of temperature, pressure and pH. Results show that longer chain PFAS and larger benzotriazoles were removed to a higher extent during AD and that higher pH values favour the removal of selected PM substances.