Issue of Pharmaceutical Compounds in Water and Wastewater: Sources, Impact and Elimination

Abstract

HARMACEUTICALS are designed to have a physiological effect …..on humans and animals in trace concentrations. Persistence against biological degradation and their biological activity are key properties of these pollutants. Increasing consumption of pharmaceutical active compounds (PhACs) and their discharge to the municipal wastewater via excrete are a growing danger for water quality and thus for the health of citizens.The entire discharge volume of medicines into the sewage net and the inefficiency of suitable wastewater treatment solutions to face such a problem, leads to high pharmaceuticals content in the drinking water. Due to its low degradability, 80% of these substances are raw discharged by excretion and flushed to the toilets and sewers to the sewage plants, where no rejection takes place, thus leading to growth of bacterial resistance. This leads to high pharmaceuticals content in the drinking water, people assimilate these substances, resulting in every time higher difficulties when treating common illnesses.The aim of the present article is to review the issue of PhACs in the environment. The review focuses on the source, presence, fate, elimination, and treatment of PhACs in water and wastewater. This review includes: characteristics, occurrence and pathways of PhACs in water and wastewater, fate in the oriented sanitation, environmental and public health impacts. Furthermore, preventing pharmaceuticals in drinking-water, treatment technologies for their removal, knowledge gaps and future research for pharmaceuticals in drinking-water are also discussed. Advanced oxidation techniques, biological treatment systems, separation and treatment of urine for PhACs removal as effective tools are evaluated.

Zero-dimensional luminescent carbon dots as fascinating analytical tools for the treatment of pharmaceutical based contaminants in aqueous media

“…60 Pharmaceuticals used in veterinary and human medicine are physiologically active substances that can be metabolically converted by enzyme systems in the body. 61 These molecules have an intended impact on the body; nevertheless, the unmetabolized products' elimination and environmental implications are generally overlooked during production. Metabolic transformations are divided into two stages.…”

Phenylamine/Amide Grafted in Silica as Sensing Nanocomposites for the Removal of Carbamazepine: A DFT Approach

“…This was achieved by plotting the percentage removal of CBZ as a function of pH to find at which pH value the maximum adsorption occurred. pH has been studied (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11), by taking 0.02 g of adsorbent with 10 mL of 10 ppm of adsorbate initial concentration at room temperature, considering the optimum time required. It was clear that the reaction favored the alkaline medium at a high pH value of both adsorbents (SiBN and SiBCON) and the removal ratio increased sharply between 4 and 8, then increased further until it reached pH 9; then, there was no longer an increase in adsorption (Figure 3B).…”

“…According to World Health Organization (WHO) in 2017, more than USD 1135 billion was spent on prescription medications [1]. Over the past decades, pharmaceuticals have emerged in aquatic environments as an environmental issue [2].…”

“…Pseudo-first/second-order and intraparticle diffusion models.Adsorbents Adsorption Kinetic Models Pseudo-First-OrderPseudo-Second-Order IPD qe EXP. qe (mg/g) K1 (mg•g −1 min −0.5 ) R 2 qe (mg/g) K2 (mg•g −1 min −1 ) R 2 Z (mg/g) Kid (mg•g −1 min −0.5 ) R2 …”

Novel easily separable core–shell Fe3O4/PVP/ZIF-8 nanostructure adsorbent: optimization of phosphorus removal from Fosfomycin pharmaceutical wastewater

“…This leads to the growth of bacterial resistance, which results in difficulties in treating common illnesses. 8 Consequently, as an example, many countries put restrictions on discharge limits for phosphates as 0.5–1.0 mg L −1 in Japan, 9 1–2 mg L −1 in France, 10 and 0.5–1.0 mg L −1 in USA. 10 In particular, a new mandate of even lower phosphate concentrations of 0.05 mg L −1 and 0.01 mg L −1 was respectively suggested by Europe and North America.…”