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The presence of personal care product (PCP) residues in the aquatic environment is an emerging issue due to their uncontrolled release through graywater; for this reason, efforts are being made to develop methods to inactivate or eliminate this class of substances in the environment. In this work, homogeneous photocatalysis has been applied for the degradation of UV filter para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA), which exists in several types of PCPs, in order to identify the optimum degradation conditions. The oxidation of PABA by photo-Fenton and oxalate-induced photo-Fenton (ferrioxalate) processes was investigated, and the effect of various operating variables has been assessed, i.e., Fe (0.0035-0.014 g L), HO (0.025-0.2 g L), T (280-323 K), and type of radiation (UV-A, visible). Furthermore, experiments under optimal conditions have been performed in order to evaluate the transformation pathways and phytotoxicity of the treated PABA solution.

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BACKGROUND: The presence of pharmaceutical and personal care products' (PPCPs) residues in the aquatic environment is an emerging issue due to their uncontrolled release, through grey water, and accumulation in the environment that may affect living organisms, ecosystems and public health. As a result, efforts are being made to develop methods to inactivate or eliminate this class of substance in the environment.

BACKGROUND: Liquid hazardous medical wastes (LHMW) originating from health-care laboratory services present a global environmental hazard as most sustainable wastewater treatment technologies fail to address this particularly demanding issue. In this study, heterogeneous and homogeneous photocatalytic oxidation of simulated and real LHMW has been performed at bench scale, investigating their potential to decompose and detoxify such effluents.RESULTS: A simulated LHMW of 0.4 g L −1 DOC 0 was photocatalytically treated in the presence of TiO 2 P25. The addition of H 2 O 2 was necessary to achieve mineralization, while the optimal concentration of P25 for this purpose was 1.0 g L −1 . In the case of photo-Fenton, under optimal conditions (0.056 g L −1 Fe 3+ , 3 g L −1 H 2 O 2 , UV-A, pH 3.0) complete mineralization was accomplished in 600 min of illumination, while phytotoxicity was eliminated or significantly reduced, depending on the employed plant species. Photocatalytic processing of real LHMW (400 mg L −