Bacterial and Chemical Evidence of Coastal Water Pollution from the Tijuana River in Sea Spray Aerosol.
Matthew A PendergraftPedro Belda-FerreDaniel PetrasClare K MorrisBrock A MittsAllegra T AronMacKenzie BryantTara SchwartzGail AckermannGreg HumphreyEthan KaandorpPieter C DorresteinRob KnightKimberly A PratherPublished in: Environmental science & technology (2023)
Roughly half of the human population lives near the coast, and coastal water pollution (CWP) is widespread. Coastal waters along Tijuana, Mexico, and Imperial Beach (IB), USA, are frequently polluted by millions of gallons of untreated sewage and stormwater runoff. Entering coastal waters causes over 100 million global annual illnesses, but CWP has the potential to reach many more people on land via transfer in sea spray aerosol (SSA). Using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, we found sewage-associated bacteria in the polluted Tijuana River flowing into coastal waters and returning to land in marine aerosol. Tentative chemical identification from non-targeted tandem mass spectrometry identified anthropogenic compounds as chemical indicators of aerosolized CWP, but they were ubiquitous and present at highest concentrations in continental aerosol. Bacteria were better tracers of airborne CWP, and 40 tracer bacteria comprised up to 76% of the bacteria community in IB air. These findings confirm that CWP transfers in SSA and exposes many people along the coast. Climate change may exacerbate CWP with more extreme storms, and our findings call for minimizing CWP and investigating the health effects of airborne exposure.
Keyphrases
- climate change
- human health
- heavy metals
- water quality
- particulate matter
- tandem mass spectrometry
- risk assessment
- health risk assessment
- healthcare
- endothelial cells
- water soluble
- high performance liquid chromatography
- ultra high performance liquid chromatography
- mental health
- public health
- liquid chromatography
- simultaneous determination
- air pollution
- gas chromatography
- high resolution
- copy number
- mass spectrometry
- gene expression
- cancer therapy
- microbial community
- induced pluripotent stem cells
- high resolution mass spectrometry