Ecological Risk Assessment of Caffeine in Aquatic Ecosystems of Latin America: Risk Quotients and Species Sensitivity Distribution Approaches

LAVARELLO, FRANCISCO; ITURBURU, F. G.; CALDERON, GABRIELA ; MENONE, ML

Valdivia

Congreso; . SETAC Latin America 14th Biennial Meeting; 2021

SETAC

Caffeine has become one of the most consumed psychoactive substancesin the world, not only as a natural ingredient of food and infusions, butalso as a component of energy drinks and medicines. It is included in thegroup of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) and they occur inwater ecosystems worldwide. While wastewater treatment plants(WWTPs) have shown to be able to remove high percentages of caffeinein the water, this removal capacity is related to the available methodsand technologies. In this context, the objective of this study was toidentify the Ecological Risk Assessment of caffeine concentrationsreported in aquatic ecosystems of Latin America. For this purpose, theRisk Quotients (RQs) and Species Sensitivity Distribution (SSD)approaches were used. We proposed two possible scenarios for RQs,using mean and maximum values. International reports were employedas source of toxicity data and measured environmental concentrations(MECs), while databases (US-EPA Ecotox, Envirotox, among others)were also employed for toxicity data. Geographical Information Systemswere used to display the RQs for each point and if the MECs exceed ornot the calculated Hazardous Concentration 5 % (HC5), in those caseswith reported geo-references. A total number of 103 reports of MECs ofcaffeine (13 publications) were obtained from freshwater bodies of LatinAmerica (particularly from Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and México).The 41 % of the sites showed RQmean > 1 and 46 % RQmax > 1,alerting for a possible risk for the biota inhabiting these ecosystems. Onthe other hand and considering the SSD approach, a HC5= 7.275 ug/Lwas calculated, with 18 % of the sites exceeding this value. The highproportion of sites with caffeine MECs with possible risk for aquaticbiota gains relevance considering not only the annual increase of itsconsumption all around the world, but also the impossibility of havingWWTPs with the best available technology to remove CECs in manyplaces of Latin America