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Recently, caffeine has been used as a tool for assessing human impacts on aquatic systemsbecause of its relatively high concentrations detected in surface water as well as its clearanthropogenic origin. Human pharmaceuticals have been extensively surveyed insewage effluent and river water and proposed as chemical tracers because of their relatively highwater solubility and low natural background levels.In this study, the feasibility of using caffeine and human pharmaceutical compounds to identifythe human-source contamination in urban marine systems was investigated. Experimental methods included: sample collection; bacterial analysis; and, extraction and instrumental analysis of organic compounds. It was found that a high correlation exists between caffeine and fecal coliform (R2, 0.598),ibuprofen and fecal coliform (R2, 0.364), respectively, in the urban marine system of Singapore,demonstrating that caffeine and ibuprofen are highly related to human-source contamination.Results indicate that caffeine is a suitable chemical tracer in urban marine systems because of itseasy detection (in the range of 0.08-2.31 ng/mL), compared with other chemicals monitored.Relative lower concentrations of human pharmaceutical compounds ( 0.2 ng/mL) in urbanmarine water samples make them hard to be detected, and then limit their use as achemical tracer. However, their existence can help to validate sewage contamination. The strongcorrelation between caffeine and ibuprofen also shows the potential to use caffeine as anindicator for the occurrence of emerging pharmaceutical residues in marine water systems. Includes 8 references, table, figure.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 11/01/2009 Number of Pages: 6File Size: 1 file , 810 KB