Perspectives on Human Pharmaceuticals in the Environment

Abstract

Human interaction with the environment remains one of the most pervasive facets of modern society. Whereas the anthropocene is characterized by rapid population growth, unprecedented global trade and digital communications, energy security, natural resource scarcities, climatic changes and environmental quality, emerging diseases and public health, biodiversity and habitat modifications are routinely touted by the popular press as they canvas global political agendas and scholarly endeavors. With a concentration of human populations in urban areas unlike any other time in history, the coming decades will be defined by “A New Normal,” as proposed by Sandra Postel, where the interplay among sustainable human activities and natural resource management will inherently determine the regional fates of human societies. In recent years, few topics have captured the public’s attention like the presence of human pharmaceuticals in environment. But why have citizens been so engaged by fish on Prozac and drug residues in drinking water? Because pharmacotherapy is now entrenched in everyday life, a realization that common drugs are found in the water we drink or the fish we eat likely produces a boomerang effect, where our daily reliance on well-accepted therapies is concretely linked in a new way with their potential consequences to the natural world. On an increasingly urban planet, pharmaceutical residues and traces of other contaminants of emerging concern represent signals of the rapidly urbanizing water cycle and harbingers of the “New Normal.” This volume examines current issues and provides timely future perspectives on human pharmaceuticals in the environment. We further provide a novel prediction that 10% of pharmaceuticals may result in internal fish plasma concentrations equaling the human Cmax value at or below an environmentally relevant concentration of 29 ng/L.