The frequent occurrence of pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment requires an assessment of their environmental impact and their negative effects in humans. Among the drugs with high harmful potential to the environment are the antibiotics that reach the environment not only, as may be expected, through the effluents from chemical and pharmaceutical industries, but mainly through the sewage and livestock; because around 25 to 75% of the ingested drugs are excreted in unchanged form after the passage through the Gastro-Intestinal Tract. Tetracycline has high world consumption, representing a human consumption of about 23 kg/day in Brazil in 2007. At the moment, researches are being made to develop new tetracycline that incorporate heavy metals (Hg, Cd, Re, Pt, Pd) to their structures in order to increase their bactericidal effect. The conventional wastewater treatment plants are not able to degrade complex organic molecules to reduce their toxicity and improve their biodegradability. For this reason new technologies, i.e., the advanced oxidation processes, are being developed to handle this demand. The objectives of this study are to review the literature on the processes of obtaining tetracycline, presenting its waste treatment methods and evaluation of their environmental impact.Uniterms: Tetracyclines/production. Tetracyclines/waste/tratament. Tetracyclines/waste/environmental impact. Environmental contamination. Domestic sewage/treatment. Industrial wastewater/treatment. Advanced oxidation processes/wastewater treatment.A ocorrência frequente de fármacos no meio aquático exige a avaliação do seu impacto ambiental e seus efeitos negativos em seres humanos. Dentre os fármacos com maior potencial de impacto ambiental estão os antibióticos, que chegam ao meio ambiente através dos efluentes de indústrias químico-farmacêuticas e, principalmente, através de esgotos domésticos e criação de animais, visto que 25% a 75% dos fármacos são excretados em forma inalterada após passagem pelo Trato Gastrointestinal. Parcela significativa do consumo mundial dos antibióticos corresponde à classe das tetraciclinas, representando consumo humano de 23 kg/dia no Brasil, em 2007. Atualmente, há pesquisas de novas tetraciclinas que incorporam metais pesados (Hg, Cd, Re, Pt, Pd) às suas estruturas com o intuito de aumentar suas atividades bactericidas. As estações de tratamento de águas residuais convencionais não são capazes de degradar moléculas orgânicas complexas, diminuir a sua toxicidade e melhorar a sua biodegradabilidade. Por esta razão, as novas tecnologias, como, por exemplo, os processos oxidativos avançados, estão sendo desenvolvidos para lidar com esta demanda. Os objetivos deste trabalho são fazer uma revisão da literatura sobre os processos de obtenção de tetraciclinas, apresentar métodos de tratamento de seus resíduos e avaliar o seu impacto ambiental.

and are medicinal plants popularly used in Brazil for colds and asthma. Although several studies report differences in their composition, they are frequently used indistinctly, which may be due to misidentification of the species or the plant part used. Herein, the chemical, anatomical, and morphological profiles of both species were evaluated, seeking to differentiate them. Due to the pattern of secondary metabolites found in and , the chemical profile of the leaves was the characteristic that best differentiated the two species. Coumarin was present in all the leaf samples of but absent or in low concentration in leaf samples of The stems presented coumarin in both species, albeit in different concentrations. The quantification of chlorogenic and dicaffeoylquinic acids was crucial for the separation of the two species, as higher concentrations are found in. The anatomic structure of the leaves, stem, and petioles of both species was conserved, even when exposed to different environments, but presented only subtle differences between species. The morphology of the leaves presented different characteristics for each species but altered when exposed to shade. Therefore, the chemical analysis together with the morphological characteristics of plants grown in full sunlight may be used for the correct identification of these species.

Doxycycline is a broad-spectrum tetracycline occurring in domestic, industrial, and rural effluents, whose main drawback is the increasing emergence of resistant bacteria. This antibiotic could be degraded by the so-called Fenton process, consisting in the oxidation of organic pollutants by oxygen peroxide (H2O2) in the presence of Fe2+. Experiments were performed according to an experimental Rotational Central Composite Design to investigate the influence of temperature (0–40.0°C), H2O2concentration (100–900 mg/L), and Fe2+concentration (5–120 mg/L) on residual doxycycline and total organic carbon concentrations. Whereas the final residual doxycycline concentration ranged from 0 to 55.8 mg/L, the oxidation process proved unable to reduce the total organic carbon by more than 30%. The best operating conditions were concentrations of H2O2and Fe2+of 611 and 25 mg/L, respectively, and temperature of 35.0°C, but the analysis of variance revealed that only the first variable exerted a statistically significant effect on the residual doxycycline concentration. These results suggest possible application of this process in the treatment of doxycycline-containing effluents and may be used as starting basis to treat tetracycline-contaminated effluents.

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