Municipal and industrial wastewater discharges are the primary pathways through which contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) enter aquatic systems. In areas with highly developed agriculture, such as the Vojvodina region, the use of surface water for irrigation raises concerns due to the potential presence of CECs.
\nThis study aims to quantify CECs in the Great Ba\u010dka Canal using target analysis of preselected list of compounds. The target CECs were selected based on previously conducted suspected screening analysis (SSA) using high resolution mass spectrometry . A total of 120 grab samples of surface water were collected along the entire length of the canal during three campaigns (spring, summer and autumn in 2024). Sample preparation was conducted using solid-phase extraction (SPE) with a custom-made multi-sorbent cartridge consisting of 200 mg of Oasis HLB sorbent in the upper, and a mixture of 150 mg of Bond Elut PPL, 100 mg of WAX, and 100 mg of WCX in the lower layer. Prior to instrumental analysis, internal standard mixture (40 ng/mL) was added to the final extract.
\nTarget analysis was performed on ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography (Accela™ system, Thermo Fisher Scientific, USA) coupled to triple-quadrupole mass spectrometry (MS/MS) (TSQ Vantage, Thermo Fisher Scientific, USA) equipped with a heated electrospray ionization source (HESI-II, Thermo Scientific, USA). The Waters Acquity HSS T3 (C18) column (100×2.1 mm i.d., 1.8 μm particle size) was used for chromatographic separation.
\nAmong the 30 detected compounds, pharmaceuticals (16 compounds) and pesticide residues (7 compounds) were the most common. They were followed by pharmaceuticals transformation products, hormones and sweeteners with 2 compounds each and one industrial chemical. Across all analyzed samples, the concentrations of identified CECs ranged from below the detection limit to 955 ng/L, with overall median and mean values of 28.80 ng/L and 8.39 ng/L, respectively.
\nAcknowledgment: Acknowledgement - This research was supported by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia, #GRANT No. 7335, Sustainable environmental monitoring and prediction of pollutants spread - EnviLife.
", "publication_date": "2026-06-12", "publisher": "Zenodo", "resource_type": { "id": "poster", "title": { "de": "Poster", "en": "Poster" } }, "rights": [ { "description": { "en": "The Creative Commons Attribution license allows re-distribution and re-use of a licensed work on the condition that the creator is appropriately credited." }, "icon": "cc-by-icon", "id": "cc-by-4.0", "props": { "scheme": "spdx", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode" }, "title": { "en": "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International" } } ], "title": "Target analysis of contaminants of emerging concern in surface water of the Great Ba\u010dka Canal" }, "parent": { "access": { "owned_by": { "user": "474426" }, "settings": { "accept_conditions_text": null, "allow_guest_requests": false, "allow_user_requests": false, "secret_link_expiration": 0 } }, "communities": { "default": "781ddc48-0c0a-48b3-8f57-507267b9b8e8", "entries": [ { "access": { "member_policy": "closed", "members_visibility": "public", "record_submission_policy": "closed", "review_policy": "closed", "visibility": "public" }, "children": { "allow": false }, "created": "2026-06-03T10:27:31.241737+00:00", "custom_fields": { "subjects": [ { "id": "mesh:D004784Q000295" }, { "id": "gemet:concept/5229" }, { "id": "mesh:D014867" }, { "id": "gemet:concept/7843" } ] }, "deletion_status": { "is_deleted": false, "status": "P" }, "id": "781ddc48-0c0a-48b3-8f57-507267b9b8e8", "links": {}, "metadata": { "curation_policy": "This community accepts records related to the EnviLife project funded by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia under the PRISMA program. Submissions are reviewed by community curators before acceptance.
", "description": "EnviLife Community shares open science outputs from the EnviLife project. This project was supported by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia Grant No 7335. Any related posts reflect only the views of the project owner.", "organizations": [ { "name": "BioSense Institute" }, { "name": "University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technology Novi Sad" } ], "page": "EnviLife Community shares open science outputs from the EnviLife project. This project was supported by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia Grant No 7335. Any related posts reflect only the views of the project owner. About the EnviLife: Exploitation of natural resources in the modern world must be organised in a sustainable way, especially for resources such as soil and water. This can be improved through agricultural practices, but new emerging pollutants arising from society advancements make it more difficult. Introduction of information technologies and sophisticated analytical
methods play the main role in enabling sustainable and efficient protection, and monitoring of soil and water. With the expertise from participating institutions, this project will create a prioritised list of pollutants, so-called “the Top List” in the selected part of the Hydro-system Danube-Tisza-Danube (Hydro-system DTD). It will be done using \u0430 novel multicomponent method based on the state-of-the-art instrumental techniques for determination in the agricultural arable soil and irrigation water. Apart from laboratory analysis, a portable membrane inlet mass spectrometer (MIMS) will be
developed, tested and validated for detection of dangerous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in water. Data gathered by aforementioned methods will be processed by advanced data analytic methods, together with satellite imaging and various open databases about weather conditions and terrain features. This will enable development of a reliable prediction tool determining potential pollution spread over water and arable soil. Such tool may be of high value for all stakeholders among agri-food chain for timely prevention of widespread pollution and systematic planning of agricultural
development. The main aim for this prediction tool is to be designed as an up-scalable and out-scalable product enabling sustainable agriculture of tomorrow worldwide.