Accumulation in textiles and release by laundry as an emission pathway for aromatic amines from indoor environments to waste- and surface waters

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Werner Brack, since 6/2024
• Subject Area: Hydrogeology, Hydrology, Limnology, Urban Water Management, Water Chemistry, Integrated Water Resources Management
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 471051149

Chemical contamination in indoor environments contains a wide range of chemicals emitted by indoor objects, materials or indoor human activities and can pose a risk to aquatic ecosystems when the chemicals enter the water cycle. We hypothesize that aromatic amines (AAs) emitted from indoor environments significantly contribute to the total amount of AAs and related mutagenicity observed in surface waters receiving these emissions. Laundered textiles contaminated with AAs by indoor emission sources act as a vector of these substances to wastewaters. This pathway may help us understand better the occurrence of AAs without clear emission sources found in surface waters. AAs are reported in many studies to be key drivers of mutagenicity in surface waters, as well as in domestic wastewaters originating from indoor human activities like tobacco smoking and grilling meat. They can adsorb to textiles via gaseous sorption or accumulation of particles such as house dust. Therefore, we aim to investigate the pathway of indoor aromatic amines via textile laundry waters into surface waters in the following four aspects: (i) functional group specific nontarget screening to detect the whole compound class in all matrices along the suggested pathway, namely, extracts of textile, dust, laundry water, wastewater and surface water (ii) development and use of monitoring tools to selectively enrich aromatic amines from wastewater and surfacewaters to unravel their fate in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and associated risk to aquatic organisms (iii) characterizing uptake of aromatic amines on textiles through air and particle adhesion and their distribution in indoor environments via laboratory and field-based textile exposure experiments and (iv) applying all developed tools and methods in combination with diagnostic mutagenicity testing to elucidate the input of the proposed emission pathway. This includes textile exposure in indoor environments with different AA sources, laundry experiments, and sample collection from WWTPs and effluent receiving waters to identify the source-related patterns, and to unravel the key AAs that drive the observed mutagenic activities. With this approach we aim to bridge the so far unexplored gap between indoor exposure and environmental contamination. This project will combine the expertise of one German and one Czech research institute,including target suspect and nontarget screening of organic contaminants in complex environmental mixtures, surface water mutagenicity and causative chemicals, effect-based tools, passive sampling in environmental matrices, distribution mechanisms ofcompounds in indoor environments.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Czech Republic
• Cooperation Partner: Dr.-Ing. Branislav Vrana, Ph.D.
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Dr. Melis Muz Massei, Ph.D., until 5/2024