Determination of polar pharmaceuticals in sewage water of Greece by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

Ecotoxicological aspects related to the presence of pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment

“…Bezafibrate was found in STP effluents [91,118] and in the Paraíba do Sul river (Brazil) [22] as was gemfibrozil [17,18,21] and further iden-tified in surface waters [17,21,88]. Due to its greater persistence, clofibric acid has been found in STP influents [19,71] and effluents [19,53,71], surface water [22,24,71], drinking water [71,119] and North Sea water [25]. All of these pharmaceuticals were shown to be present at concentration levels in the order of ng L −1 or low µg L −1 , which indicates that their exposure may represent a threat for non-target organisms.…”

“…Wide dissemination at low concentrations mainly in the aquatic environment is evident today. Such concentrations have been detected in aquatic compartments such as influents [14][15][16] and effluents [17][18][19] from sewage treatment plants (STPs), surface waters (rivers, lakes, streams, estuaries, among others) [20][21][22][23][24], seawater [25], groundwater [26][27][28] and drinking water [29][30][31][32]. The scientific community is in broad agreement with the possibility that adverse effects may arise from the presence of pharmaceu-ticals not only for human health but also for aquatic organisms.…”

The Determination of Single and Mixture Toxicity at High Concentrations of Some Acidic Pharmaceuticals via Aliivibrio fischeri

“…Reasons for the inconsistent results in their study are that they used different species (Zhang et al 2010) and different medicines interacting in the same or the opposite direction (Dietrich et al 2010;Cleuvers 2004) Therefore, the existing studies on mixture toxicity should be expanded upon. Annual consumption of ibuprofen is estimated to be in hundreds of tonnes (Koutsouba et al 2003). Many studies have reported that ibuprofen is representative of anti-rheumatic medications (Wiegel et al 2004).…”

The distribution and removal of pharmaceutical contaminants in classic wastewater treatment process

“…3.5mol/L of hydrochloric acid was used to adjust the pH of the water sample to 2.5, which was stored at 0-4°C.to prevent adsorption by impurities or degradation of pharmaceutical substances. Solid phase extraction 1 L of water sample passed uniformly and continuously through the cartridge at a flowrate less than 5 mL/min and followed the method described by (Koutsouba et al, 2003).…”