Principal Investigator Philip Gschwend
The goals are first to identify and quantify the full suite of natural and synthetic estrogens and their conjugated and chlorinated derivatives in (a) Deer Island WWTP effluent and (b) the receiving waters and sediments of Massachusetts Bay. We hypothesize that past observations have greatly underestimated the environmental dosing with estrogens because conjugated and chlorinated derivatives were not assessed. Second, we seek to develop quantitative tools, ranging from a spatially well-mixed mass budget (box model) to a 3D numerical transport and fate model for steroidal estrogens in Massachusetts Bay. This modeling effort will enable us to ascertain whether natural background estrogens and/or sources beyond the Deer Island outfall are important contributors, as well at to understand how different estrogen species (free vs conjugated vs chlorinated) respond to transport and transformation processes controlling their environmental distributions.