No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

In recent years concerns have been raised about micropollutants, such as pharmaceutical ingredients, being released into the aquatic environment. As a consequence, signs of adverse effects on biota have been identified. Also, potable drinking water is a precious and potentially finite resource that need be taken care of. Sewage treatment plants have been identified as point sources for emissions of micropollutants originating from modern way of life. The problem is that the sewage treatment plants of today are not built to handle these kinds of pollutants. One possibility is however to supplement existing processing equipment with new technology to overcome that deficiency. In this thesis, the ability, of two sewage treatment plants, to remove seven active pharmaceutical ingredients of different structure and class have been investigated. All seven were found in at least one of the influent samples and only one was removed to any significant level in one of the treatment plants. Effluent samples were then subjected to tertiary treatment by ozonation, activated carbon or biochar to investigate the possibility of further reducing the concentrations in the effluent. Activated carbon proved to be very efficient and to some extent ozone. However, ozonation trials were inconclusive due to contamination of samples.

No description available.

No description available.

Due to the high temperatures during a fire event, a large variety of compounds are formed or released from burning materials, all of which have a varying degree of environmental effects. In an incidental fire there are several variables that are important for which and how much combustion products that are formed, including the burning material, ventilation (presence of air), and temperature. The aim of this project is to evaluate if there is a difference between formed fire residues in gas and soot using four different fire extinguishing techniques. A non-target approach is used with gas chromatography connected with ultrahigh-resolution mass spectrometry. Unlike target analysis, non-target analysis enables identification of not only known chemicals, but also previously unknown chemicals. However, one of the major challenges in non-target analysis is how to handle the large amount of data generated in order to identify important markers for the current research question. Mass defect filtering is used to interpret the complex mass spectral data. Plotting the mass defect against the measured m/z allows you to visualize a high number of mass spectral peaks, linking homologues and congeners. The plot is based on a specific mass scale and can be used to find m/z that belong to compounds of a specific compound group. Statistical methods such as Principle Component Analysis (PCA) are also useful as it extracts and displays systematic variation in a data set, which can be used to find interesting variables. Mass defect filtering proved to be useful for the detection of a number of different compound groups: Alkylated hydrocarbons, halogenated compounds and PAHs. There were several differences in the composition of the gas versus soot. Gas had little variation between the samples whereas soot varied more depending on firefighting method used. Despite the fact that the chemical composition of gas and soot does differ between the four firefighting techniques, the variations in wind conditions made it hard to draw any conclusions regarding how the different firefighting techniques affect the compound formation and to what extent.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) have been used broadly in industries, firefighting foams, surfactant materials and consumer products. These compounds are very resistant to degradation in the environment and high exposure to these compounds may cause health issues such as cancer and immunosuppression. Many of the consumer products will end up as waste and later end up in landfills where the leachate will be contaminated by these compounds. The leachate can be dispersed to the surrounding environment, and it is therefore necessary to investigate and reduce the concentrations of PFAS in the landfill leachates. This study examined eight composite samples from eight different sample sites; the samples was originally from eight samples per sample site at a hazardous waste management facility collected at different time points, where 23 PFASs and extractable organic fluorine (EOF) were analysed. The concentrations of the total target PFASs ranged from 676-11 800 ng/L and the dominating compounds were short-chain perfluoroalkyl sulfonic acids (PFSAs), where perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS) had the highest concentration in most samples. These results were compared with another on-going study that analysed the same sample sites with grab samples collected at different time points. The comparison was made on the average of three grab samples from each sample site and it showed that the results from the grab samples and composite samples were similar in terms of number of detected compounds but not exact in concentrations. Depending on the objective of the monitoring, it is possible to use composite samples to save money and time. The study also showed that 80% of the EOF in all samples, except one, were unidentified which implies that the water samples might consist of high amounts of PFASs not in the target list, or other fluorinated compounds with similar properties to PFAS, which needs to be investigated, monitored and might be reduced in the environment.

The exposome is a complex study that includes both endogenous and exogenous markers related to different diseases as part of the research. Connecting both endogenous and exogenous markers can help explain many associations between environmental chemicals and metabolic profiles, which can be stressors for causing different diseases. This study investigates the impact of per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) exposure during pregnancy on lipid profiles and measures the concentrations in blood and also in infants cord blood at birth. In addition, we are interested in lipids and bile acids (BA) levels in blood and if these three groups of analytes of interest are associated with each other. The infant blood-based samples come from a Chinese cohort and the maternal samples are from a Finnish cohort. The samples were extracted for PFAS and BA and for lipid analysis. Statistical analysis was performed for both cohorts. The main interest was to investigate the interactions between the identified compounds. The results also include concentrations to show the variety of values measured.  Type 2 diabetes (T2D) and non-alcoholic fatty-liver disease (NAFLD) are usually not acquired early in life. Our results show a strong positive correlation between PFASs and triglycerides (TGs), as well as strong correlation between PFASs and conjugated primary and secondary BA particularly in cord blood samples, which can indicate higher risk of developing T2D or NAFLD. In maternal samples, the interactions between PFASs, BAs and lipids were much lower and showed less significant correlation. This indicates that the impact of PFAS exposure is much stronger during fetal development than in adult life.

Type one diabetes (T1D) and islet autoimmunity (IA) in people with a genetically susceptibility for the diseases can be triggered by environmental factors. It is earlier showed that the diet can be one of the environmental factors as it has been indicated that a cereal rich diet can increase the risk of developing IA. In this study, we investigated blood plasma samples from a study done by L. Hakolas on children that have genetic risk of developing T1D and IA, with a focus on dietary contaminants originating from cereals. Mycotoxins often found on cereals could be one of the environmental factors triggering the development of the diseases. To see if this could be the case a method based on a liquid chromatography coupled with a quadrupole-time of flight (LC-QTOF) was developed for the analysis of mycotoxins and glyphosate; MS/MS mode was used after that to confirm the identity of the compounds. For sample preparation, protein precipitation of the plasma samples was applied. The method was optimized by analyzing 5 mycotoxin standards and a list of suspected compounds that could be found in the screening to make sure the method could separate all the compounds. Test plasma samples was also analyzed to determine the optimal plasma volume (100 mL) for extraction and injection volume (15mL). For the data preprocessing, MZmine software was used and could tentatively identify some of the mycotoxins based on accurate mass acquisition. After comparing the signal against the background noise, Ergotaminine, FB1, Gly and HT-2 and NIV were identified. As quality control three replicates of a pooled sample were analysed, using both positive and negative ionization modes. From the pooled sample mean, standard deviation (STD) and relative standard deviation (RSD) were calculated showing some variation among the plasma sample for some mycotoxins e.g., Gly. The results presented in this report show that some mycotoxins do occur in the blood plasma and that the amounts of the mycotoxins varied. However, how these mycotoxins can affect the progress of T1D and IA is still unknown and requires further studies.