Avaliação de contaminantes no rio iguaçu: variação da concentração de cafeína, hsfs e do igch

Abstract

Rapid urbanization and industrialization have disrupted the natural balance of the ecosystem, contaminating almost all environmental compartments with a variety of pollutants. As a result, the availability of high-quality drinking water has decreased dramatically. The Iguaçu River, in Paraná, where the state and the river belong to the Paraná Hydrographic Region, which occupies 10% of the Brazilian territory covering seven states. A populous region with great economic development in the country, in need of great demand for water resources. With all this demand, studying a large river, which has a supply capacity and has energy potential like the Iguaçu River, is relevant. Within this scenario, the objective of this research was to evaluate the concentrations of OD, NH4 +, PO43-, caffeine, estrone, estradiol and ethinylestradiol along the Iguaçu River, between the years 2014 to 2017, in the areas of the Upper and Middle Iguaçu by performing a comparison with the demographic data of the region and the IGCH – General Index of Human Contamination. Physical and chemical parameters are important for the characterization of an aquatic environment and contribute to assess the quality of the water that is analyzed. In addition, emerging contaminants that are synthetic or natural chemical compounds, whose existence in environmental matrices was not reported until recently, are increasing more and more. In this case, we have caffeine which, due to its physical and chemical properties and high consumption, has been used as an anthropogenic tracer for aquatic ecosystems, and hormones, which can reach water sources by contamination with domestic sewage, or with pesticides or other compounds applied in ground. Eleven collections were made at 09 sample points, with statistical analysis of the data obtained and, thus, obtaining an association of emerging contaminants with the physical and chemical parameters analyzed. It was possible to determine that the point (IG2D) meets the high values in all the studied parameters, since this point is located after the ETE Atuba Sul, which may not be showing an efficiency in the treatment of effluents, made this point of the Iguaçu River a challenge in guaranteeing determining standards in water quality. When observing the IGCH, after the IG2, the river tends to purify itself, even with other pollution inputs, as in point IG4 and IG7. Even at point IG9 the water quality is not the same closer to the source of the Iguaçu River (IG1, Clean Water Channel).