Behavior of pharmaceuticals and drugs of abuse in a drinking water treatment plant (DWTP) using combined conventional and ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis (UF/RO) treatments

Occurrences of pharmaceuticals in drinking water sources of major river watersheds, China

“…The concentrations varied across a range from sub ng/L concentrations to tens of ng/L, which were generally comparable to the reported levels from other published references concerned with DWSs of The Netherlands (de Jongh et al, 2012), United States (Loraine and Pettigrove, 2005;Stackelberg et al, 2007;Focazio et al, 2008;Benotti et al, 2009;Wang et al, 2011;Padhye et al, 2014), Canada (Kleywegt et al, 2011), France (Vulliet et al, 2011;Mompelat et al, 2011), Spain (Boleda et al, 2011;Huerta-Fontela et al, 2011) and South Korea (Kim et al, 2007). The concentration levels in this survey were similar to reports on those in the DWSs of the Chongqing area of China (Chang et al, 2010;Yan et al, 2014).…”

Occurrence of organic microcontaminants in the wastewater treatment process. A mini review

“…It is difficult to discuss typical concentration levels (Table 1) of PPCPs as these can range from hundreds of pg/L up to hundreds of g/L [13,15,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25], depending on the target PPCP and the type of wastewater. Other important factors that play a role in the occurring levels are the types of products that can be found in the pharmaceutical market in each country, or the possibility in some countries to purchase medicines without a medical prescription [15].…”

“…[8][9][10][11][12][13]. As a result of their broad usage, these microcontaminants have been detected in concentrations up to several g/L in WWTP effluents and in surface waters.…”

“…[46], whilst key target chemicals are cocaine (COC), heroin, nicotine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, opiates or cannabis, among others, and their metabolites, e.g. benzoylecgonine (BE), ecgonine methyl ester, norbenzoylecgonine, norcocaine and cocaethylene [13,[46][47][48][49][50][51][52]. For compounds like nicotine and caffeine, a study in Spain has shown that average concentrations of 13 and 23 g/L are detected in influent wastewaters, respectively, and that the mean values for effluent wastewaters can be as high 2.7 and 4.4 g/L, respectively.…”

Development of titanium dioxide nanotube-based arrays for the electrocatalytic degradation and electrochemical detection of emerging pharmaceuticals in water

“…Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) do not currently have requirements for the removal of PPCPs, although a high percentage of many of these chemicals are removed during typical treatment processes (Boleda et al [2]). However, removal is not the equivalent of degradation, as chemicals trapped in the sewage sludge can enter the environment when it is used as crop fertilizer (Clarke and Smith [3]).…”