Municipal Solid Waste Landfills: An Underestimated Source of Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products in the Water Environment

Abstract

Pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) have been the focus of increasing concern in recent decades due to their ubiquity in the environment and potential risks. Out-of-date PPCPs are usually discharged into municipal solid wastes (MSWs), enter the leachates in MSW landfills and have serious adverse effects on the surrounding water environment. However, the occurrence and removal of PPCPs from landfill leachates have rarely been examined to date. This lack of knowledge makes landfill an underestimated source of PPCPs in the environment. In this review, we collected the relevant publications of PPCPs in landfill leachates, systematically summarized the occurrence of PPCPs in landfill leachates globally, evaluated the removal performances for various PPCPs by different types of on-site fullscale leachate treatment processes, and assessed the impacts of landfill leachates on PPCPs in the adjacent groundwater. In particular, influencing factors for PPCPs in landfill leachates, including the physicochemical properties of PPCPs, climate conditions, characteristics of landfill sites (i.e., landfill ages) as well as sociological factors (i.e., economic development) were extensively discussed to understand their occurrence patterns. Future perspectives were also proposed in light of the identified knowledge gaps. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first review regarding the occurrence and removal of PPCPs from landfill leachates worldwide.

Novel CuO/Mn3O4/ZnO nanocomposite with superior photocatalytic activity for removal of Rabeprazole from water

“…Among many other emerging organic water pollutants, pharmaceutical waste is of great concern 3 , 4 . Pharmaceutical substances often get into water bodies by human excretion and their inappropriate disposal of hospital waste 5 , 6 . Because of the ability to interact with living bodies, pharmaceutical wastes often impose threat to the aquatic ecosystem 7 .…”

Ti2O3/TiO2-Assisted Solar Photocatalytic Degradation of 4-tert-Butylphenol in Water

“…Water pollution by a broad category of organic pollutants is a rising issue of worldwide concern [1]. During the last decade, the consumption of personal care products (PPCPs), pharmaceuticals and endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) has increased owing to economic development and population growth [2][3][4][5]. Their widespread use has increased their appearance in the aqueous environment, including rivers, lakes and reservoirs, at concentrations starting from several nanograms (ng/L) to several micrograms (µg/L) per liter [6][7][8][9][10][11][12].…”

Source separation, transportation, pretreatment, and valorization of municipal solid waste: a critical review

“…Moreover, the application of cross-disciplinary tools, such as geographic information system (GIS) and Internet of Things (IoT), provided a more refined management approach for C&T systems (Abdullah et al, 2018 ; Cetin, 2015b ). The purpose of source separation and intermediate treatment station is to select the most suitable value-added treatment method or to improve the potential of resource utilization (Calabro & Satira, 2020 ), rather than to adopt landfills with low resource potential and more emerging pollutants, such as antibiotic resistance genes (Li et al, 2020a ), pharmaceutical and personal care products (Yu et al, 2020 ), and microplastics (Golwala et al, 2021 ).…”