Analysis, fate and toxicity of chiral non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in wastewaters and the environment: a review

Abstract

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are found in the aquatic environment globally. Such drugs including naproxen, ibuprofen and ketoprofen are chiral molecules. Enantiomers of those drugs have identical physicochemical properties but can behave and interact differently in chiral environments due to differences in their three-dimensional shape. This results in enantiospecific differences in environmental fate and toxicity, which is often overlooked. Therefore, we review the analytical methods, occurrence and fate, and toxicity of chiral non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs at the enantiomeric level. The advancement of enantioselective chromatography methods, particularly the use of polysaccharide-based stationary phases, has enabled trace determination of enantiomers in complex environmental matrices. Macrocosm and microcosm studies of engineered and natural environments revealed that such drugs can undergo both enantioselective degradation and chiral inversion. Enantioselectivity has been reported during wastewater treatment, in surface waters and in agricultural soils. The use of microcosms spiked with individual enantiomers over racemates is essential to evaluate these degradation and inversion fate processes. The chiral inversion process whereby one enantiomer converts into its antipode can be significant if the more toxic enantiomers are formed. Existing enantiospecific effect studies report less than an order of magnitude difference in enantiomer toxicity. However, toxicity data for enantiomers are limited and further research is needed to better appreciate the environmental risk at the enantiomeric level.

How to decrease pharmaceuticals in the environment? A review

“…The concentrations of antibiotics (tetracyclines, macrolides and others) are reported at the level of a dozen µg/L (Zhi et al 2018;Gros et al 2019). Other classes of pharmaceuticals, for example, antihelminthics and NSAIDs, can also be detected in slurry and manure (Łukaszewicz et al 2016;Gros et al 2019;Petrie and Camacho-Muñoz 2020). A direct toxic effect from this level of concentration is unlikely, but a change in the bacteria community was observed after a continuous flow of livestock wastewater (Jia et al 2017).…”

Comprehensive Characterization of 76 Pharmaceuticals and Metabolites in Wastewater by LC-MS/MS

“…Ibuprofen was detected in the 10 wastewater samples at levels between 1.1 and 7.3 µg L −1 (Table 3). A recent review indicates the widespread presence of ibuprofen in wastewaters at µg L −1 [18]. In 2015, Caballo et al reported levels of ibuprofen between 0.63 and 0.68 µg L −1 in 3 different WWTPs in Córdoba (South of Spain) [19].…”

Enhanced Removal of Non-Steroidal Inflammatory Drugs from Water by Quaternary Chitosan-Based Magnetic Nanosorbents

“…NSAIDs undergo several processes during wastewater treatment, but they are not entirely removed from water using conventional procedures [6,10]. This contributes to the occurrence of high levels of NSAIDs in aquatic environments, reaching values as high as µg/L concentration at multiple locations worldwide [6,11].…”