Occurrences of six steroid estrogens from different effluents in Beijing, China

Concentration levels of six natural and anthropogenic origin steroid estrogens, namely, diethylstilbestrol (DES), estrone (E1), estradiol (E2), estriol (E3), ethinylestradiol (EE2), and estradiol-17-valerate (Ev), from different effluents in Beijing were assessed. Sampling sites include two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), a chemical plant, a hospital, a pharmaceutical factory, a hennery, and a fish pool. In general, concentrations of estrogens in the effluents varied from no detection (nd) to 11.1 ng/l, 0.7 to 1.2 × 103 ng/l, nd to 67.4 ng/l, nd to 4.1 × 103 ng/l, nd to 1.2 × 103 ng/l, and nd to 11.2 ng/l for DES, E1, E2, EE2, E3, and Ev, respectively. The concentration levels of steroid estrogens from different effluents decreased in the order of pharmaceutical factory and WWTP inlets > hospital > hennery > chemical factory > fish pool. This study indicated that natural estrogens E1, E2, and E3 and synthetic estrogen EE2 are the dominant steroid estrogens found in the different Beijing effluents. For source identification, an indicator (hE = E3/(E1 + E2 + E3)) was used to trace human estrogen excretion. Accordingly, hE in effluents from the hospital and WWTP inlets exceeded 0.4, while much smaller values were obtained for the other effluents. Human excretions were the major contributor of natural estrogens in municipal wastewater. Estimation results demonstrated that direct discharge was the major contributor of steroid estrogen pollution in receiving waters.