https://research.birmingham.ac.uk/portal/files/41988116/Anekwe_et_al_2017.pdf

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the freshwater aquatic environment

Occurrences and removal of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in drinking water and water/sewage treatment plants: A review

Pharmaceuticals are known to occur widely in the environment of industrialized countries. In developing countries, more monitoring results have recently become available, but a concise picture of measured environmental concentrations (MECs) is still elusive. Through a comprehensive literature review of 1016 original publications and 150 review articles, the authors collected MECs for human and veterinary pharmaceutical substances reported worldwide in surface water, groundwater, tap/drinking water, manure, soil, and other environmental matrices in a comprehensive database. Due to the heterogeneity of the data sources, a simplified data quality assessment was conducted. The database reveals that pharmaceuticals or their transformation products have been detected in the environment of 71 countries covering all continents. These countries were then grouped into the 5 regions recognized by the United Nations (UN). In total, 631 different pharmaceutical substances were found at MECs above the detection limit of the respective analytical methods employed, revealing distinct regional patterns. Sixteen substances were detected in each of the 5 UN regions. For example, the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac has been detected in environmental matrices in 50 countries, and concentrations found in several locations exceeded predicted no-effect concentrations. Urban wastewater seems to be the dominant emission pathway for pharmaceuticals globally, although emissions from industrial production, hospitals, agriculture, and aquaculture are important locally. The authors conclude that pharmaceuticals are a global challenge calling for multistakeholder approaches to prevent, reduce, and manage their entry into and presence in the environment, such as those being discussed under the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management, a UN Environment Program.

https://setac.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/etc.3339

Pharmaceuticals in the environment--Global occurrences and perspectives.

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the aquatic environment in China: a review.

Environmental pollution by pharmaceuticals is increasingly recognized as a major threat to aquatic ecosystems worldwide. A variety of pharmaceuticals enter waterways by way of treated wastewater effluents and remain biochemically active in aquatic systems. Several ecotoxicological studies have been done, but generally, little is known about the ecological effects of pharmaceuticals. Here we show that a benzodiazepine anxiolytic drug (oxazepam) alters behavior and feeding rate of wild European perch (Perca fluviatilis) at concentrations encountered in effluent-influenced surface waters. Individuals exposed to water with dilute drug concentrations (1.8 micrograms liter–1) exhibited increased activity, reduced sociality, and higher feeding rate. As such, our results show that anxiolytic drugs in surface waters alter animal behaviors that are known to have ecological and evolutionary consequences.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/339/6121/814.full.pdf

Dilute concentrations of a psychiatric drug alter behavior of fish from natural populations.

Background: Over the past 10–15 years, a substantial amount of work has been done by the scientific, regulatory, and business communities to elucidate the effects and risks of pharmaceuticals and p...

/pdf/pharmaceuticals-and-personal-care-products-in-the-21mn8a1gee.pdf

Juerg Oliver Straub

Papers

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the environment: what are the big questions?