Occurrence of cytostatics in different water compartments

Abstract

The chapter deals with the occurrence of a selection of anticancer drugs in different water environments: hospital wastewater, wastewater treatment plant influents and effluents, surface water, sea water, and drinking water. Unfortunately, no data are available for groundwater up to now. The chapter presents and discusses measured environmental concentrations of anticancer drugs collected in 56 peerreviewed papers referring to investigations carried out in 18 countries all over the world. It focuses on the variability of observed concentrations in the different environments, and it highlights the importance of planning efficient sampling strategies in order to obtain representative water samples. The highest concentrations in hospital effluents were found for platinum-based compounds and 5-fluorouracil (> 105 ng L-1), in the influent for ciprofloxacin (> 103 ng L-1), in the effluent for platinum-based compounds, ifosfamide and bicalutamide (> 103 ng L-1), and in surface water for cyclophosphamide, tamoxifen, ciprofloxacin, and bicalutamide (> 102 ng L-1). In addition, a comparison is provided between measured and predicted concentrations of some anticancer drugs and a brief discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches is reported.