EVALUATION OF ANTHROPIC ACTION ON THE LEVELS OF MICROPLASTICS AND EMERGING CONTAMINANTS IN URBAN HYDROGRAPHIC BASINS

Abstract

As a result of population growth and urban and industrial activities developed in recent centuries, there is an increase in the presence of contaminants of anthropogenic origin in the environment. Currently, several studies have highlighted the risks associated with the presence of microplastics (MP) and emerging contaminants (EC) in aquatic matrices around the world. MP are polymeric particles with a size of less than 5 mm, resulting from the weathering of plastic materials or produced on this scale for commercial applications. EC are compounds present in everyday products, constantly released into the environment, not covered by current legislation, although their occurrence in trace concentrations indicates potential health risks to organisms. The aim of this project is to evaluate the impact of human activities on the contamination of different surface waters, using the city of Belo Horizonte (MG) as a model for the case study. MP will be characterized by ¼-FTIR spectrometry, and EC will be quantified by LC-MS/MS. These contaminants will be investigated (i) in the effluent, affluent and sludge of wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) in order to assess their contribution as a potential source of contamination for surface water bodies; (ii) simultaneously the rivers that receive these effluents will be sampled upstream and downstream of the WWTP in regions with different socioeconomic profiles, in order to also identify if there are significant differences that can be attributed to consumption or sanitation conditions, and, finally, (iii) in Lagoa da Pampulha, which presents itself as a model of urban lentic aquatic system that does not have dense vegetation on the banks, and, therefore, ends up being vulnerable to the impacts of urban pollution. Sampling campaigns will be done in wet and dry seasons of the rivers, in order to assess the influence of seasonality on the contamination profile of the studied areas. It is expected that the results obtained will help to better understand how this type of pollution is distributed in urban centers and can contribute to important decision-making in the environmental scope, which is so much on the international agendas.