Grad student uses EPA fellowship to study drugs in water supply

Environmental Engineering graduate student Kirsten Studer is using a fellowship from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to study the potentially harmful “disinfection byproducts” of estrogen in the public drinking water supply.

The danger posed by low levels of pharmaceuticals in drinking water became a major news story last spring after the Associated Press found that “a vast array of pharmaceuticals – including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones – have been found in the drinking water of at least 41 million Americans.”

Studer’s EPA research on estrogen compounds in the water supply will provide an important piece of a puzzle that many researchers are fitting together. They want to know how to deal with at least 130 manmade chemicals showing up in ground water around the country.

“It’s really complicated,” says Studer, “because one pharmaceutical in the water will act differently if there are other pharmaceuticals in the water, so we haven’t been able to research all these variables.”

The research for Studer’s STAR Fellowship of $37,000 per year is entitled, “Investigating Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals and their Disinfection Byproducts in Relation to Estrogenic Strength within Drinking Water Treatment.”

“Estrogen itself is not dangerous,” explains Studer. “What could be dangerous are the byproducts produced when estrogen compounds react with disinfectants in water treatment systems. What we are studying is both natural and synthetic estrogens that make their way into the water supply.”

Sex hormones from contraceptives and hormonal therapies get into ground water in a variety of ways, says Studer, but mainly through bodily wastes from humans using prescription medicines and domestic animals being administered drugs by veterinarians. Another source is through the waste streams of hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. AP estimated that about 90 percent of the pharmaceuticals in the environment come from drugs digested by consumers.

The potential danger of estrogen, which Studer says occurs in very low levels of five parts per trillion or less for drinking water, is that its disinfection byproducts could act as “endocrine disruptors,” interfering with the set of glands that help guide the development, growth, reproduction and behavior of animals and humans. These estrogen byproducts also have the potential for being carcinogenic.

“To get at this problem,” says Studer, “first, we’ll try to figure out what the different byproducts are, and then do tests on them to determine the endocrine disrupting chemicals, and the best disinfection techniques for making them harmless.”

Her research is looking at various water treatment techniques such as chlorination, the use of chloramines, ozonation, as well as ultraviolet and ultraviolet/ozone treatment.

“We want to compare which is the most efficient way of treating estrogen, which has the least harmful byproducts, and which has the most,” says Studer. “Most importantly, we need to know what different byproducts are produced by each of these treatments, how they are interacting with each other, and what harmful effects they are causing.”

Studer’s research is part of a larger project being conducted by her advisor, professor David Reckhow of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, whose team is studying pharmaceuticals in the drinking water supply of 15 public utilities. That $150,000 project is funded by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.

“The amounts [of pharmaceuticals] are small,” Reckhow told the Boston Globe, “but during a lifetime of exposure people are coming into contact with hundreds of pharmaceuticals. It’s important we understand the long-term effect on people, as well as what happens when these compounds come in contact with one another.”

The research of both Studer and Reckhow was greatly accelerated when the Waters Corporation gave them access to one of its AquaAnalysis instruments, worth $300,000. The machine, which is nicknamed “Betsy,” allows them to use much smaller sample sizes of water and get results in a much shorter time.

The EPA STAR Fellowship program was initiated in 1995. Approximately 1,300 STAR fellowships have been awarded since the inception of the program. The purpose of the fellowship program is to encourage promising students to obtain advanced degrees and pursue careers in an environmental field.

February 8, 2009.

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