Environmental Emission of Pharmaceuticals from Wastewater Treatment Plants in the USA

The residual drugs, drug bioconjugates, and their metabolites, mostly from human and veterinary usage, are routinely flushed down the drain, and enter wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). Increasing population, excessive use of allopathic medicine, continual introduction of novel drugs, and existing inefficient wastewater treatment processes result in the discharge of large volumes of pharmaceuticals and their metabolites from the WWTPs into the environment. The effluent from the WWTPs globally contaminate ~25% of rivers and the lakes. Pharmaceuticals in the environment, as contaminants of emerging concerns, behave as pseudo-persistent despite their relatively short environmental half-lives in the environment. Therefore, residual levels of pharmaceuticals in the environment not only pose a threat to the wildlife but also affect human health through contaminated food and drinking water. This chapter highlights WWTPs as point-sources of their environmental emissions and various effects on the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem

INTEGRATED APPROACH FOR INNOVATIVE MONITORING STRATEGIES OF RESERVOIRS AND LAKES

An innovative strategy significantly increasing data density by introducing a flexible, problem-orientated, and cost-effective water quality monitoring approach is presented. Most current monitoring strategies produce water quality data based on fixed stations conducted on fixed dates throughout a defined period of time and, thus, often give a biased and insufficient picture of the water quality. Establishing a refined picture of water quality while not increasing monitoring costs clearly needs a change in monitoring strategy. The complexity of social-economic needs, environmental aspects and evolving legislative guideline values makes the design of a suitable innovative strategy challenging. The combination of investigative and risk-based monitoring with real-time monitoring of proxies (e.g., electrical conductivity (EC)) is a vital asset within this here proposed innovative strategy. For the former, organic micropollutants (e.g., pesticides, pharmaceuticals) are suggested in this article to be a powerful tool for source apportionment as they allow to determine and quantify the cause and impact of water quality impairments. This strategy was tested in a field campaign in which an area of elevated EC was investigated at Lake Garda, Italy. A radio-controlled boat was used for EC mapping and sampling. As no chemical indicators for significant anthropogenic sources could be detected, the elevated EC could be assigned to natural sources

Exposure of marine mussels to diclofenac: modulation of prostaglandin biosynthesis

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