Abstract Chemical pollution poses a threat to the aquatic environment and to human health. Wastewater treatment plants are the last defensive line between the aquatic environment and emissions of pollutants. This study focuses on identification of most relevant hazardous substances in Estonian municipal wastewater and their fate in the treatment process. During this study, seasonal wastewater and sewage sludge samples were collected from nine municipal wastewater treatment plants and analyzed for 282 hazardous substances, including EU (n = 45) and Estonian (n = 31) priority substances. Results of this study show that several substances that are subject to international restrictions (e.g. Stockholm Convention) are still present in untreated sewage. Wastewater treatment systems that had a greater level of complexity (TEC >5) were more successful in removing hazardous substances. Statistical analyses showed that removal efficiency of organic hazardous substances had significant (p-value <0.05) linear correlation with removal efficiencies of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total suspended solids (TSS), but a monotonic relationship with operators' competency. This study showed that operators' competency had a strong influence on the stability of the wastewater treatment efficiency and removal of organic hazardous substances.

中文翻译：

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城市污水处理厂有害物质去除

摘要化学污染对水生环境和人类健康构成威胁。污水处理厂是水生环境与污染物排放之间的最后一道防线。本研究的重点是识别爱沙尼亚城市废水中最相关的有害物质及其在处理过程中的归宿。在这项研究中，从 9 个城市废水处理厂收集了季节性废水和污水污泥样本，并分析了 282 种有害物质，其中包括欧盟 (n = 45) 和爱沙尼亚 (n = 31) 的优先物质。这项研究的结果表明，未经处理的污水中仍然存在几种受国际限制（例如《斯德哥尔摩公约》）限制的物质。具有较高复杂程度(TEC＞5)的废水处理系统在去除有害物质方面更成功。统计分析表明，有机有害物质的去除效率与化学需氧量（COD）和总悬浮物（TSS）的去除效率具有显着（p值<0.05）线性相关性，但与操作人员的能力呈单调关系。本研究表明，操作人员的能力对废水处理效率的稳定性和有机有害物质的去除有很大影响。