Pharmaceuticals and personal care products in waters: occurrence, toxicity, and risk

Abstract

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP) are compounds with special physical and chemical properties that address the care of animal and human health. PPCP have been detected in surface water and wastewater in the ng/L to µg/L concentration range worldwide. PPCP ecotoxicity has been studied in a variety of organisms, and multiple methods have been used to assess the risk of PPCP in the environment to ecological health. Here we review the occurrence, effects, and risk assessment of PPCP in aquatic systems, as well as the sustainability of current methods for managing PPCP contamination in aquatic systems. The major points are the following: (1) a number of PPCP present potential concerns at environmentally relevant concentrations. PPCP mixtures may produce synergistic toxicity. (2) Various methods have been used for the ecological risk assessment of PPCP in aquatic systems. There are similarities in these methods, but no consensus has emerged regarding best practices for the ecological risk assessment of these compounds. (3) Human health risk assessments of PPCP contamination in aquatic systems have generally indicated little cause for concern. However, there is a lack of information regarding whether antibiotic contamination in wastewater and aquatic systems could lead to an increase in clinically relevant antibiotic-resistant bacteria and antibiotic-resistant genes. (4) Over the next century, the combination of increasing global population size and potential droughts may result in reduced water availability, increased need for water reuse, and increasing concentrations of PPCP in wastewaters. The current wastewater treatment methods do not remove all PPCP effectively. This, coupled with the possibility that antibiotics may promote the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and antibiotic-resistant genes, leads to concerns about the sustainability of global water supplies.

Occurrence and removal of antibiotics in ecological and conventional wastewater treatment processes: A field study

“…is generally incomplete (Joss et al, 2006;Sponza and Celebi, 2012). The removal of antibiotics in WWTFs is affected by many factors including the physicochemical properties of antibiotics, specific treatment process employed, sludge retention time (SRT), hydraulic retention time (HRT) and environmental temperature, which make the removal efficiencies of antibiotics vary to a large extent (Cizmas et al, 2015;Gao et al, 2012a).…”

Nanomaterials for the Abatement of Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products from Wastewater

“…Although pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) have been used since the end of the 19th century, only in the last two decades the concern for their (post disposal) persistence in the environment has been raised, since they are bioactive species by showing either short or long term toxicity [1][2][3].…”

Cobalt-iron Oxide, Alloy and Nitride: Synthesis, Characterization and Application in Catalytic Peroxymonosulfate Activation for Orange II Degradation

“…Industries such as textiles, printing, plastics, pharmaceuticals, rubber, etc., may bring great threats to the water environment, owing to the production of lots of organic pollutants, most of which are carcinogenic, teratogenic, mutagenic and resistant to biodegradation [1]. Thus, advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) have been developed to solve the wastewater issues, which have been attractive techniques for the realization of powerful degradation ability.…”