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Aquatic occurrence of phytotoxins in small streams triggered by biogeography, vegetation growth stage, and precipitation.

Authors :
Günthardt BF
Hollender J
Scheringer M
Hungerbühler K
Nanusha MY
Brack W
Bucheli TD
Source :
The Science of the total environment [Sci Total Environ] 2021 Dec 01; Vol. 798, pp. 149128. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Jul 20.
Publication Year :
2021

Abstract

Toxic plant secondary metabolites (PSMs), so-called phytotoxins, occur widely in plant species. Many of these phytotoxins have similar mobility, persistence, and toxicity properties in the environment as anthropogenic micropollutants, which increasingly contaminate surface waters. Although recent case studies have shown the aquatic relevance of phytotoxins, the overall exposure remains unknown. Therefore, we performed a detailed occurrence analysis covering 134 phytotoxins from 27 PSM classes. Water samples from seven small Swiss streams with catchment areas from 1.7 to 23 km <superscript>2</superscript> and varying land uses were gathered over several months to investigate seasonal impacts. They were complemented with samples from different biogeographical regions to cover variations in vegetation. A broad SPE-LC-HRMS/MS method was applied with limits of detection below 5 ng/L for over 80% of the 134 included phytotoxins. In total, we confirmed 39 phytotoxins belonging to 13 PSM classes, which corresponds to almost 30% of all included phytotoxins. Several alkaloids were regularly detected in the low ng/L-range, with average detection frequencies of 21%. This is consistent with the previously estimated persistence and mobility properties that indicated a high contamination potential. Coumarins were previously predicted to be unstable, however, detection frequencies were around 89%, and maximal concentrations up to 90 ng/L were measured for fraxetin produced by various trees. Overall, rainy weather conditions at full vegetation led to the highest total phytotoxin concentrations, which might potentially be most critical for aquatic organisms.<br />Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.<br /> (Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
1879-1026
Volume :
798
Database :
MEDLINE
Journal :
The Science of the total environment
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
34325139
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149128