Bioremediation of pharmaceuticals in water and wastewater

Abstract

Current demographic trends, the rise of chronic diseases, the accessibility of inexpensive generic treatments, and the emergence of “lifestyle” drugs have been the key to increased pharmaceutical medicine use throughout the world. These pharmaceuticals are now the group of emerging contaminants with rising concern in the scientific world due to their presence in surface water, such as lake and river, groundwater, soil, and even drinking water and their associated impact on invertebrates, vertebrates, and ecosystem structure and function. The two main routes of such contaminations are (1) when such drugs taken are excreted in faces and urine and (2) when unused drugs are thrown down. Research undertaken has found that 60-80% of these pharmaceutical medicines are flushed down the toilet or dumped as regular household waste that ends up in sewage treatment plants, which are generally not designed to remove such pollutants from wastewater. Bioremediation is a process where degradation of contamination is done with the help of different microorganisms, which is one of the cost-effective methods that has been used until now. Though there are some interesting reports on the bioremediation of pharmaceuticals from water, further research is crucial for the systematic development of novel technologies to deal with such emerging contaminants. This chapter, therefore, is focused on summarizing and consolidating findings from the current state of the art in the area of pharmaceutical bioremediation.