Grant: Strategic Projects Supplemental Competition

This proposal will validate an innovative approach for non-lethal sampling of contaminants in fish in a heavily impacted watershed. This technique will enable resource managers to rapidly assess the temporal and spatial distribution of emerging contaminants in both water and fish tissues. Solid phase microextraction (SPME), has been recently developed as a rapid analytical tool for monitoring contaminants in the environment as well as in pharmacological studies. This proposal will develop and test SPME as a monitoring tool for application in both water and fish studies. The ability to non-lethally monitor contaminant dynamics in fish will be a major advantage for watershed managers. As the Grand River watershed represents one of the fastest growing and intensively developed watersheds in southern Ontario, it provides a real world laboratory to evaluate SPME technologies for agricultural, municipal, and industrial contaminants. Compounds selected for study include herbicides, pharmaceuticals and industrial compounds that have been identified as contaminants of interest by water managers within the Grand River watershed, and are believed to have the potential to adversely affect hitman and/or ecosystem health. SPME techniques will be evaluated under laboratory and field conditions, in water and in fish tissues in vivo and ex vivo, and validated for analytical sensitivity. Within the lab, SPME fibres equilibrated in water samples (environmental and stock solutions of test compounds) will be evaluated against established solid phase extractions, with both preparations analyzed by LC-MS/MS or GC-MSD. Equilibration time, choice of SPME fibre adsorbent, based on physical properties of compounds (log Kow, pKa), will all be optimized in the laboratory prior to field evaluations in both fish and water. In the second year of the study, attention will focus on field validation of the SPME techniques. Field samples of water and fish will be collected adjacent to agricultural areas and near municipal wastewater discharges within the Grand River watershed to evaluate temporal changes in water quality, and bioaccumulation potential of compounds of interest in fish.