| The endocrine disruption of aquatic organisms due to hormone contamination of surface waters has led to the need to mitigate the transport of exogenous hormones to the aquatic environment. Discerning appropriate hormone mitigation techniques requires understanding to what extent cattle and dairy farms represent a source of hormones to the aquatic environment. To this end, methods were optimized for the preservation, extraction and analysis of estrogens, androgens and progestogens from soil and surface water.;The ability of various preservatives (sodium azide, hydrochloric and sulfuric acids) were evaluated for their ability to inhibit the degradation of estrogens, androgens and progestogens and stabilize estrogenic and androgenic activities during storage of surface water samples. The absence of preservation resulted in significant degradation of many estrogens, androgens and progestogens. Sodium azide did not adequately inhibit the degradation of many androgens at the concentration used (1 g·L-1). Acid preservation (HCl or H2SO4, pH 2) of surface water samples stabilized estrogenic and androgenic activities and coupling acid preservation with the use of internal standards resulted in reliable and accurate measures of a large suite of estrogens (6 compound), androgens (10 compound) and progestogens (4 compounds).;The ability of three techniques (accelerated solvent extraction [ASE], soxhlet and sonication) to extract estrogens, androgens and progestogens from soils of varying characteristics was also evaluated. Both ASE and sonication extractions resulted in accurate and reliable hormone concentrations. However, since ASE could be carried out using automated methods with high sample throughput and minimal solvent, this method was preferable to the sonication and soxhlet extraction techniques.;These optimized methods for hormone preservation and extraction were utilized to assess the occurrence of estrogens, androgens, progestogens and estrogenic activities, over a two-year monitoring period, in soil and surface water from cattle and dairy farms. While a total 20 compounds were investigated, most compounds were detected in less than 10% of the collected runoff samples. Previous studies have generally focused on the occurrence of estrogens, however, progesterone and 4-androstenedione were the most frequently detected compounds in this study (42% and 36%, respectively), with concentrations detected up to 500 ng·L-1 and 100 ng·L-1 , respectively. |
