Issue of pharmaceutical compounds in water and wastewater: Sources, impact and elimination

Abstract

PHARMACEUTICALS are designed to have a physiological effect on humans and animals in trace concentrations. Persistence against biological degradation and their biological activity are key properties of these pollutants. Increasing consumption of pharmaceutical active compounds (PhACs) and their discharge to the municipal wastewater via excrete are a growing danger for water quality and thus for the health of citizens. The entire discharge volume of medicines into the sewage net and the inefficiency of suitable wastewater treatment solutions to face such a problem, leads to high pharmaceuticals content in the drinking water. Due to its low degradability, 80% of these substances are raw discharged by excretion and flushed to the toilets and sewers to the sewage plants, where no rejection takes place, thus leading to growth of bacterial resistance. This leads to high pharmaceuticals content in the drinking water, people assimilate these substances, resulting in every time higher difficulties when treating common illnesses. The aim of the present article is to review the issue of PhACs in the environment. The review focuses on the source, presence, fate, elimination, and treatment of PhACs in water and wastewater. This review includes: characteristics, occurrence and pathways of PhACs in water and wastewater, fate in the oriented sanitation, environmental and public health impacts. Furthermore, preventing pharmaceuticals in drinking-water, treatment technologies for their removal, knowledge gaps and future research for pharmaceuticals in drinking-water are also discussed. Advanced oxidation techniques, biological treatment systems, separation and treatment of urine for PhACs removal as effective tools are evaluated.