Antiviral, antibiotics and decongestants in wastewater treatment plants and receiving rivers in the Thames catchment

The sampling of all analytes in the Benson and Oxford WWTP was performed during a 24-hour period spanning 10-11 November 2009. An additional 24-h sampling was initiated on May 15, 2011 from only the Benson WWTP effluent. An automated sampler was used to recover a time-proportional sample (approximately 750 ml) of influent and effluent every hour for 24 hours. Samples were aliquoted into triplicate 50-ml borosilicate glass vials with PTFE-lined caps and immediately stored at -80°C until analysis. Grab samples were acquired from the main river flow at 21 locations within the Thames catchment as part of the CEH Thames Initiative Research Platform on November 3, 11, 17, and 24, 2009, as well as on March 15, 2010 (late-pandemic period) and May 11, 2011 (inter-pandemic period). River flow data was acquired from the National River Flow Archive (http://www.ceh.ac.uk/data/nrfa/) for all locations at the closest gauging station to the sampling site. Samples were transported from the field to the laboratory in amber glass jars (250 ml) within siz hours and transferred into 50-ml borosilicate glass vials with PTFE-lined caps, in triplicate. The samples were stored at -80°C until analysis. An on-line solid phase liquid extraction/liquid chromatography-tandem mass-spectrometry (SPE/LC-MS/MS) method was used to measure the analyte levels in pre-filtered and acidified 1 mL-samples. This on-line SPE/LC-MS/MS method used has 132 been evaluated and described in detail previously: Khan GA, Lindberg R, Grabic R, Fick J (2012) The development and application of a system for simultaneously determining anti-infectives and nasal decongestants using on-line solid- phase extraction and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. J Pharm Biomed Anal 66: 24-32.

This dataset is included in the following collections

Water quality and biological data from the River Thames and its tributaries (1997 to 2013)