Over the last decades, a strong antropogenic increase in platinum concentrations in the environment is observed. While catalytic converters used in cars and industry contribute to elevated levels in vegetation and soils, hospitals intensely discard platinum from their effluents to surface waters. Since the discovery of its cytostatic properties by Rosenberg, cisplatin and other platinum coordinating compounds such as carboplatin and more recently oxaliplatin are extensively used in chemotherapy for cancer treatment. After ingestion and interaction with DNA, the drugs are biodegraded and excreted by patients through urine – either in hospital or at home - to remain mostly untreated. Biomaterials are ubiquitous distributed over the world and ready available with equal performance. They show a promising potential as sorbent for pollutants from wastewaters. The precious metal containing material can be separated from solution as a solid and be processed and valorised afterwards. In a screening step, several natural wood-based materials and dried microalgal biological flocs have been tested for their sorption efficiency towards cytostatic platinum compounds
