DETECTING CHEMICALS OF EMERGING CONCERN ACROSS CENTRAL NEW YORK: IMPRINTS FROM HYDROLOGY AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Around the World, a suite of chemicals termed ‘chemicals of emerging concern’ (CECs), or emerging contaminants, have been increasingly detected in rivers, lakes, and other waterways. This class of chemicals includes personal care products, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals. Though the widespread occurrence of these chemicals is recognized, we are still working to understand the spatial and temporal dimensions of their occurrence, how this is organized by transport via hydrologic processes, and how this is influenced by human behavior. To better constrain the regional dimensions of chemicals of emerging concern, our project has focused on twenty watersheds in central New York spanning a gradient of land cover from pristine and forested drinking water source waters to heavily agricultural and urban sites. We analyzed grab samples collected during a drier period (e.g., August/September) and a wetter period (May/June) to characterize the concentrations and occurrences of CECs across study watersheds. In total, we detected 79 different chemicals – spanning personal care products (n = 10), pesticides (n = 25), and pharmaceuticals (n = 44) - across multiple sampling dates. Though some chemicals remained constant in concentrations through time, others showed strong temporal variability. Surprisingly, this temporal variability was not organized by streamflow magnitude. Across watersheds, some chemicals were strongly organized by land cover, while others showed little organization. Altogether, our work demonstrates that there are patterns in the noise of regional CEC occurrence and concentrations, but that these patterns are challenging to parse given the interacting signals of hydrology and human behavior.