Occurrence of Pharmaceuticals and Disinfectants in the Dissolved Water Phase of the Danube River and Three Major Tributaries from Romania

The presence of pharmaceuticals in the aquatic ecosystem has received great attention from the
scientific community in the last decades, due to their potential impact on living organisms. This
paper presents a short review of the results of investigations performed by INCD-ECOIND
concerning the occurrence of 32 pharmaceutical compounds belonging to important therapeutic
classes and 2 disinfectants along the Danube River and its tributaries. Grab water samples were
collected from multiple points along the River (10 sites) and from 2 locations for each of the
tributaries Jiu, Olt and Argeș, upstream and downstream of large cities. All samples were
quantified via solid phase extraction, followed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass
spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Results of these studies show that various pharmaceutical compounds
are present in the dissolved water phase of the Danube River and its tributaries in low to moderate
amounts with variation due to season and location.