Beate I. Escher

TL;DR: There are three scientific challenges in addressing water-quality problems caused by micropollutants, and usage and disposal strategies should aim to minimize introduction of critical pollutants into the aquatic environment.

TL;DR: This review seeks to show the crucial role of target sites, interactions with the target site(s), and mechanisms for an adequate and efficient ecotoxicological risk assessment and recommends the use of internal effect concentrations and target site concentrations as a mixture toxicity parameter.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors evaluated the ecotoxicological potential of the 100 pharmaceuticals expected to occur in highest quantities in the wastewater of a general hospital and a psychiatric center in Switzerland, and related the toxicity data to predicted concentrations in different wastewater streams to assess the overall risk potential for different scenarios, including conventional biological pretreatment in the hospital and urine source separation.

TL;DR: Because high-risk pharmaceuticals are excreted mainly with feces, urine source separation is not a viable option for reducing the risk potential from hospital wastewater, while a sorption step could be beneficial.

TL;DR: This study has demonstrated that selected cell-based bioassays are suitable to benchmark water quality and it is recommended to use a purpose-tailored panel of bioassay for routine monitoring.