Pharmaceuticals and personal care products in aquatic environment: chemicals of emerging concern?

Environmental persistence, detection, and mitigation of endocrine disrupting contaminants in wastewater treatment plants – a review with a focus on tertiary treatment technologies

“…56,57 This stage is focused on the removal of specific contaminants with advanced techniques, which are classified as chemical, physical, and biological processes. 58 Ozonation, UV radiation, chlorination and reverse osmosis are among the most employed techniques in WWTPs. 58 The selection of the treatment should be based on the characteristics of the target contaminant or contaminants.…”

“…58 Ozonation, UV radiation, chlorination and reverse osmosis are among the most employed techniques in WWTPs. 58 The selection of the treatment should be based on the characteristics of the target contaminant or contaminants. Although there are several technologies proven with high effectiveness on the lab scale, most of them are not yet employed in WWTPs, in most cases due to a significant reduction of their effectiveness when escalated or a high cost of operation.…”

Household Pharmaceutical Waste Management Practices in the Johannesburg Area, South Africa

“…Due to this growing trend, it is becoming expensive for water purification companies and water management schemes to remove these drugs, as well as their metabolites, from polluted water bodies [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. Additionally, children have fallen victim to easy-to-reach medicines because they are improperly kept at home, causing needless substance poisoning, physiological damage, and even death in some instances [ 13 , 14 ]. At other times, pharmaceutical wastes are simply mixed with household general waste destined for municipal landfill sites, thus posing another undesirable pathway that releases harmful chemicals into the natural environment [ 6 , 15 , 16 ].…”

Emerging contaminants detected in aquaculture sites in Java, Indonesia

“…In the last few years, pharmaceuticals as emerging trace contaminants have become a matter of great concern due to their widespread distribution in the aquatic environment (Dhodapkar and Gandhi, 2019;Sangion and Gramatica, 2016), their pseudopersistence and high biological activity (Desbiolles et al, 2018;Fernández et al, 2014b;Verlicchi and Zambello, 2014), and their potential threat to aquatic life and human health (Chavoshani et al, 2020). These compounds enter the aquatic environment from multiple sources, such as municipal sewage, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) (Calisto and Esteves, 2009;Felis et al, 2020;Philip et al, 2018;Piram et al, 2008;Silva et al, 2011), effluents from hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry (Cardoso et al, 2014;Oliveira et al, 2015), livestock wastewater (Cycoń et al, 2019), and the utilization of animal manure as a fertilizer in the agriculture sector, animal waste storage, and disposal tanks (FAO & IWMI, 2018).…”