Yolanda Pico

University of Valencia | UV · Desertification Research Centre (CIDE)

L'Albufera Natural Park (Valencia, Spain) is a protected wetland of international significance that provides critical habitats to endemic and threatened bird and plant species. This study aims to use multiple cross-validation techniques to generate an accurate estimation of the environmental risk of organic contaminants (OCs) in an internationally...

Microplastics (MPs) form the most investigated plastic category since their size (1 μm- 5 mm) enables them to accumulate in various environmental compartments and to be ingested by biota. Beach sand and sediment can be indicators of the MP contamination levels of the coastal and marine ecosystem and, thus, they are widely analyzed. With the increas...

Microplastics (MPs) are in all environmental compartments, including atmosphere, terrestrial, and aquatic environments as well as in marine organisms, foods, drinking water, and indoor and outdoor environments. MPs can enter the human body through the food chain and contaminated environment. Ingestion, inhalation, and dermal contact are the routes...

Gestation is a crucial life stage for both women and offspring, and outcomes are affected by many environmental factors, including diet. The Mediterranean dietary pattern (MD) is considered a healthy eating pattern that can provide the nutritional requirements of pregnancy. Meanwhile, iron deficiency anemia is one of the most frequent complications...

Recently, environment pollution around the globe has increased because of anthropogenic activities. As part of the biota, plants can assimilate the compounds present in air, water and soil and respond to changes in surround conditions, for that, they can be used as bioindicators of global pollution. However, urban plants' ability to monitor organic...

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) approach provides objective, quantitative, near real-time profiles of illicit drug consumption by monitoring the concentration of unchanged parent drugs or their metabolites entering the municipal sewage system. Valencia is the third most populous city in Spain (an important country for the use and transit of sev...

According to UNEP and FAO reports, the fishing nets abandoned in the seas around the world represent approximately 10% of the plastic waste present in the oceans. These nets, also called ghost nets, can be degraded over time, releasing microplastics and contaminating the environment. Studying the presence and amount of microplastics in an area impa...

Considering current water situation, reuse is an effective solution to meet water demand and reduce pressure on conventional water sources. However, pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in effluents from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) decrease their quality and suitability. With the aim of identifying and monitoring both the influ...

Predictive models were generated to evaluate the degree to which nine metals (Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, and Zn) were absorbed by the leaves, stems and roots of forage sorghum in growing media comprising soil admixed with poultry manure concentrations of 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40 g/kg. The data revealed that the greatest contents of the majority of...

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their derivatives are legislated contaminants ubiquitous in the environment with well-established determination analytical schemes. However, the determination of PAHs is not exempt from being improved by the application of newly developed methods and therefore needs to be reviewed periodically to establis...

Pyrolysis–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (Py–GC–MS) has confirmed to be a versatile technique that benefits food and environmental analyses. It has been used for the chemical characterization of materials and compounds that are not suitable for traditional gas chromatography (GC) because of their large size. The controlled thermal degradation...

Isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) measures small differences in the abundances of light-stable isotopes of elements, mostly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and nitrogen. The ratio of isotopes is dependent on the environment where the samples are located and therefore the measurement of the isotope signature in food and environmental samples...

Mass spectrometry (MS) has achieved great renown as a specific, selective, sensitive, and rapid technique for the analysis and evaluation of a wide range of food products and environmental matrices. The state of the art of MS in food and environmental safety and quality is presented to show the potential of this technique in the qualification and q...

The spread of pesticides in water bodies integrated into agricultural landscapes may prevent some areas from being colonized. In this study, the effects on the colonization responses of D. magna exerted by gradients of realistic environmental concentrations of the pesticides chlorpyrifos, terbuthylazine and their mixtures were tested in a novel mul...

Worldwide regulatory agencies should (re)examine the consideration of: (i) sub-threshold responses, (ii) non-linear dose-response models able to detect sub-threshold responses of both a beneficial and detrimental nature, and (iii) abandoning the use of default dose-response models for their risk assessment. Mounting evidence for significant sub-thr...

There are numerous families of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), consisting of a series of homologues and branched isomers. Special attention is required for collecting and preparing samples for analysis since PFASs are ubiquitous, and can be present in any plastic or waterproof material used during sampling. PFASs in air might...

The profiling of emerging organic pollutants present in sludge and generated during wastewater treatment is much more limited than in water. This is mainly due to the difficulty of sludge analysis because of its high content of organic matter and interfering compounds. In this study, a generic extraction method using a mixture of buffered water (pH...

In this chapter we review the available data on the application of non-targeted high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) analysis to identify a wide range of substances (mainly emerging pollutants) present in sludge. We focus on non-targeted workflows developed with these instruments: (1) the screening of suspects or broad screening and (2) the ana...

Within the last years aspects such as green, eco-friendly and sustainable are making their way into analytical chemistry. The field has changed with the introduction of these concepts. Information on the consumption of toxic solvents and energy is now a part of everyday life. This green analytical chemistry could be playing a pioneering role in the...

Aim: The commonly used analytical methods for microplastic (MPs) detection in drinking water and the threat of MP pollution in water intended for human consumption to human beings are presented through a systematic review. Furthermore, MP occurrence, transport, and fate from raw to treated drinking water, tap water, and bottled water, as well as th...

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) estimates collective consumption or exposure to chemicals or pathogens by monitoring the substances excreted in the population’s wastewater. Advances in mass spectrometry (MS) and the application of some clinical diagnostic tools and proteomics to wastewater fingerprinting have been linked to the discovery of new...

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has become popular to estimate the use of drug of abuse and recently to establish the incidence of CoVID19 in large cities. However, its possibilities have been expanded recently as a technique that allows to establish a fingerprint of the characteristics of a city, such as state of health/disease, healthy or unh...

The use of psychoactive substances is a serious problem in today’s society and reliable methods of analysis are necessary to confirm their occurrence in biological matrices. In this work, a green sample preparation technique prior to HPLC-MS analysis was successfully applied to the extraction of 14 illicit drugs from urine samples. The isolation pr...

The aim of this study is to design de novo prediction models in order to gauge the likely uptake of eight heavy metals (Al, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb and Zn) by Lycopersicon esculentum, the tomato plant. Uptake was assessed within the plant’s root, stem, leaf and fruit tissues, respectively. The plant was cultivated in soil amended by different applic...

Coastal environments are heavily influenced by human activities. Chemical substances considered as emerging contaminants (ECs) are one of the most important indicators of the anthropic influence on the environment, and they have recently shown to interact with microplastics (MPs). Mussels are suitable for in-lab bioacumulation studies providing ins...

Background: Pesticide residues are a threat to the health of the global population, not only to farmers, applicators, and other pesticide professionals. Humans are exposed through various routes such as food, skin, and inhalation. This study summarizes the different methods to assess and/or estimate human exposure to pesticide residues of the glob...

Anguilla anguilla (Linnaeus, 1758) species is critically endangered. The impacts of anthropogenic origin, including the presence of contaminants in the marine ecosystem, affect the stages of the eel's life cycle. Studying the occurrence of these contaminants in eels it is possible to assess their exposition and safeguard them. This species has also...

This study aimed to develop multi-residue methods for the extraction of organic pollutants in mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis), including 11 pharmaceuticals, 5 pesticides, 5 perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) and 2 illicit drugs. The combination of 4 different QuEChERS methods and 12 clean-ups (a total of 44 combinations) was tested. QuEChERS inc...

Pesticides are widely used by the agricultural sector for the control of weeds and pests, being considered a key element for improved yields in agricultural production. Their physicochemical properties provide a high lifetime in soils and sediments and can cause serious environmental damage and severe health effects in human. The development and...

The principal objective of this study is to generate mathematical regression equations that facilitate the estimation of the extent to which Eichhornia crassipes (C. Mart.) Solms, water hyacinth, absorbs heavy metals (HMs) into four plant organs (laminae, petioles, roots, and stolons). This study considers the absorption of nine HMs (Cd, Co, Cr, Cu...

One of the aspects considered about the presence of contaminants in the aquatic ecosystems is their possible effect on critically endangered species, as the case of European eel, Anguilla anguilla. However, there is a lack of analytical methods to determine these contaminants due to the complexity of eel matrix (contains 5-20 % of lipids and 5-15 %...

Micro and nanoplastic (MP and NP) pollution is among the global environmental concerns of the 21st century due to its transboundary distribution and persistence. The number of studies focused on the determination of microplastics in air, water, sediment, soil and biota of an important number of ecosystems has increased exponentially. However, the i...

El análisis de aguas residuales para la determinación de productos de excreción metabólica humana (Análisis de Aguas Residuales con fines epidemiológicos) es una poderosa herramienta complementaria a los estudios socio-epidemiológicos tradicionales para estimar el abuso de sustancias en una localidad. Basada en el innovador concepto de que el agua...

The dataset provides information on Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) detected in the Albufera Natural Park (Valencia, Spain), a typical Mediterranean coastal wetland. These PPCPs constitute an important group of organic pollutants highly representative of the human impact. The concentrations values measured in soil, sediment and wa...

In this study, water of the channels and ponds that conduct residual water in two most important cities of Saudi Arabia were assessed to ascertain the influence of the population on the occurrence and pollution characteristics of microplastics (MPs) (>20 µm in size). Riyadh has 5,188 million inhabitants and is an urban city even though also have in...

The present study focused on the occurrence, distribution and risk assessment of 32 pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in water and sediment, as well as the surrounding soil of the irrigation channels and lake of a Mediterranean coastal wetland, the Albufera Natural Park (Valencia, Spain). Moreover, the influent and effluent of ten...

The Natural Park of the Albufera (Valencia, Spain) is a Mediterranean wetland where rice cultivation dominates the agricultural activity. The purpose of this study was to offer broader information about the current state of the wetland assessing the contamination by pesticides in four aquatic habitats during the rice cultivation period in 2016. Liq...

In this study, the occurrence of 12 organophosphorus flame retardants (OPFRs), 64 pesticides, 21 perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) and 34 pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in surface water, sediments and vegetation collected from seven locations along the South Riyadh and six locations along the Al-Jubail industrial city (Saudi Ara...

Data obtained from wastewater analysis can provide rapid and complementary insights in illicit drug consumption at community level. Within Europe, Spain is an important country of transit of both cocaine and cannabis. The quantity of seized drugs and prevalence of their use rank Spain at the top of Europe. Hence, the implementation of a wastewater...

This study assesses the extraction of 11 pharmaceuticals, 5 pesticides, 5 perfluoroalkyl substances and 2 illicit drugs in haemolymph from (Mytilus Galloprovincialis). Four extraction procedures using Phree™ Phospholipid Removal cartridges were tested using different volumes of methanol (400 μl and 600 μl) and acetonitrile (300 μl and 450 μl). The...

The concept of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) also known as sewage epidemiology, was proposed by Daughton in 2001. WBE has become now a reality that makes it possible to determine consumption or exposure to chemical substances or pathogens in a population by measuring certain compounds (drugs of abuse, metabolites or biomarkers) or microorgani...

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are abundantly used by people, and some of them are excreted unaltered or as metabolites through urine, with the sewage being the most important source to their release to the environment. These compounds are in almost all types of water (wastewater, surface water, groundwater, etc.) at concentrati...

Despite the prevalence of the common pharmaceutical ibuprofen (IBU) in water and sediments worldwide, the effects of IBU on plants are largely unknown. This study was designed to assess the ecotoxicological effects of emerging pharmaceutical pollutant IBU on plant growth and development in a series of toxicity experiments using cowpea (Vigna unguic...

Carbamazepine exposed individuals of anemone such as, Anemonia sulcata and Actinia equina species were analyzed by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS) on a quadrupole-time-of-flight (QqTOF) with an electrospray ionization source working in the positive ionization (ESI+) mode, (Agilent Technolo...

The use of some systemic insecticides has been banned in Europe because they are toxic to beneficial insects when these feed on nectar. A recent study shows that systemic insecticides can also kill beneficial insects when they feed on honeydew. Honeydew is the sugar-rich excretion of hemipterans and is the most abundant carbohydrate source for bene...

Background In this study, an alternative and complementary method to those approaches currently used to estimate alcohol consumption by the population is described. This method, known as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), allows back-calculating the alcohol consumption rate in a given population from the concentrations of a selected biomarker mea...

Pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS) has great potential within environmental analysis. This technique is mainly used for the chemical identification of macromolecules that cannot be characterized by either liquid or gas chromatography due to their big size. Through pyrolysis (controlled thermal degradation), these macromolecul...

Pharmaceuticals and other emerging contaminants (EC) have been increasingly detected and measured in coastal waters and large effort has been devoted to knowing the effects these substances have in coastal ecosystems. Anthozoa class is underrepresented in ecotoxicology studies despite some of their species being endangered. Anemonia sulcata and Act...

The coupling of chromatography to mass spectrometry has been a very important step in environmental science that has changed routine workflows opening a horizon of new and impressive possibilities. This hyphenated technique benefits from coupling as chromatography offer great separation power and comprise various techniques and mechanisms. In turn,...

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has become a very useful tool to monitor a population's drug consumption or exposure to environmental and food contaminants. In this work, WBE has been applied to estimate tobacco consumption in seven Spanish regions. To this end, 24 h composite wastewater samples were taken daily for one week in 17 wastewater tr...

Phthalates are widely used plasticizers that produce endocrine-disrupting disorders. Quantifying exposure is crucial to perform risk assessments and to develop proper health measures. Herein, a wastewater-based epidemiology approach has been applied to estimate human exposure to six of the mostly used phthalates within the Spanish population. Waste...

This opinion paper on microplastics pollution has selected different aspects and case studies of micro and macro-plastic litter pollution in coastal waters, and rivers. We point out a discussion on this topic and ask ourselves if there is a solution to the global problem by developing new microplastics removal technologies as well as policy actions...

The data set presents the occurrence of 59 currently used pesticides (CUPs) and 33 pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), from wetland areas, in Saudi Arabia, impacted by wastewater discharge. Wetlands are valuable ecosystems, but are very fragile and easily affected by anthropogenic pressure [1-6]. The occurrence of organic contaminan...

This paper describes a procedure for the isolation of 20 organic micro-pollutants among pesticides, drugs, recreational drugs, flame retardants from river sediments. After a solid-liquid extraction with a methanol:water (50:50, v/v) solution, the supernatant was diluted with water and cleaned up by stir-disc solid-phase extraction (SPE). The disc w...

Water bodies cover approximately 70 % of the earth´s surface, making them ecosystems with a high environmental value and the habitat for numerous species of flora and fauna. Emerging pollutants (EPs) are ubiquitous anthropogenic compounds of environmental concern that can be found at different concentration levels in matrices such as sediment, wate...

The objective of this study was to study the association between total sugar intake (TSI) levels of children aged 6-8 years old, nutrient intake and anthropometry. Food and beverage intakes were collected by a prospective three-day recall questionnaire. The 2237 children were distributed into three groups according to TSI percentiles. Mean TSI was...

Two solid-phase extraction methods were systematically studied to determine 32 pharmaceuticals and personal care products in water and sediments by ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. One involves HLB cartridges activated with sodium dodecyl sulfate before the passage of the sample to form an ion pair with cationic...

Since 2015, several contaminants of emerging concern or emerging contaminants (EC) as perchlorate, organophosphorus flame retardants (OPFRs), polybrominated flame retardants (PBFRs), compounds formed during food processing or migrating from the package, perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), microplastics (MPs), nanomaterials (NMs) and some toxins (cya...

Wastewater-Based Epidemiology is currently a reliable and complementary tool to methodologies based on traditional indicators for the control of various substances such as drugs. Although several European countries use it as a working tool for the monitoring of drugs of abuse, in Spain its use is mainly limited to studies carried out by different r...

Recent advances in gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) (ionization sources at atmospheric pressure, fast GC, GCxGC, high resolution mass spectrometry, etc.) have significantly improved the capabilities of this technique, traditionally used to determine pesticides. Although liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is nowadays pref...

The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between different sleep parameters and energy and macronutrient intake in school-aged children. A total of 203 children 6 to 9 years of age participated in this cross-sectional study. Anthropometric measurements were taken first. Diet was assessed with 3-day food logs and sleep was measure...

Background and aims: Wastewater-based epidemiology is an additional indicator of drug use that is gaining reliability to complement the current established panel of indicators. The aims of this study were to: (i) assess spatial and temporal trends of population-normalized mass loads of benzoylecgonine, amphetamine, methamphetamine and 3,4-methylen...

This study assess the presence of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) and pesticides in different environmental compartments and microplastics in water of a characteristic lagoon wetland in Saudi Arabia to establish the transport, accumulation and fate of these pollutants in a water-stressed area under high anthropogenic pressure. In...

This opinion paper reports on Microplastics (MPs) pollution in the aquatic environment. MPs are a global problem being detected everywhere: marine environment, wastewaters, surface waters, soils, sediments, food and air. MPs can also absorb organic contaminants, and can be ingested by organisms and introduced into the food web. MPs can be a vector...

Significance The use of insecticides in agriculture is one of the suggested causes of the decline in insect populations. Neonicotinoids are among the most widely used insecticides. However, they have important negative side effects, especially for pollinators and other beneficial insects feeding on floral nectar and pollen. We identified an exposur...

Pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) is a tool able to provide green extraction methods to further determine contaminants in food and the environment. The aim of this review is to offer a critical overview of the recent developments within this field and can be considered as an update of the previous that we published in 2015. Trends regarding sampl...

The conservation of coastal ecosystems and specially mangroves ''blue carbon'' is receiving more attention as consequence of their recognition as high ecosystem carbon stocks and for the fact that these areas are undergoing land conversion. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the impact of land use changes due to conversion of mangroves to...

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has been consolidated as a tool to provide real-time information on consumption of legal and illegal drugs of abuse by the population. However, WBE is expected to achieve more ambitious objectives such as establishing exposure to certain agents (pesticides, personal care products, persistent organic pollutants, a...

The current literature about pharmaceutical and personal care compounds (PPCPs) focuses on identifying their concentration and toxicological risk both in surface water and in wastewater. However, the influence of urban areas (population ageing, income level, hospitals and others) has not yet been analysed. Knowing how a population (and its faciliti...

Pesticide residues in beebread, live and dead honey bees, together with honey bee death rate were monitored from June 2016 to June 2018 in three apiaries, located near agricultural settings and in wildlands. Dead honey bees were only collected and analyzed when significant mortality episodes occurred and pesticide content in beeswax of each experim...

The analysis, prevention, and removal of microplastics (MPs) pollution in water is identified as one major problem the world is currently facing. MPs can be directly released to water or formed by the degradation of bigger plastics. Nowadays, it is estimated that annually between 4 and 12 million tonnes of plastic go into the seas and oceans-with a...