Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products: From Wastewater Treatment into Agro-Food Systems

Abstract

Irrigation with treated wastewater (TWW) and application of biosolids introduce numerous pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) into agro-food systems. While the use of TWW and biosolids has many societal benefits, introduction of PPCPs in production agriculture poses potential food safety and human health risks. A comprehensive risk assessment and management scheme of PPCPs in agro-food systems is limited by multiple factors, not least the sheer number of investigated compounds and their diverse structures. Here we follow the fate of PPCPs in the water-soil-produce continuum by considering processes and variables that influence PPCP transfer and accumulation. By analyzing the steps in the soil-plant-human diet nexus, we propose a tiered framework as a path forward to prioritize PPCPs that could have a high potential for plant accumulation and thus pose greatest risk. This article examines research progress to date and current research challenges, highlighting the potential value of leveraging existing knowledge from decades of research on other chemicals such as pesticides. A process-driven scheme is outlined to derive a short list that may be used to refocus our future research efforts on PPCPs and other analogous emerging contaminants in agro-food systems.

Pharmaceutical Pollution and Disposal of Expired, Unused, and Unwanted Medicines in the Brazilian Context

“…In agreement with these issues, the European Commission has, among its directives, established strategies to control effluents from the pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities and industries [18]. Nowadays, an increasing number of studies regarding the investigation on the occurrence of APIs in the environments, particularly in water bodies, with the studies mentioned above, give a glimpse about the recognized emerging presence of APIs/PPCPs in wastes, soil, sewages, coastal seawater, pounds, rivers, groundwater, and even aquifers and drinking water, in urban areas and remote localities in the planet [19][20][21].…”

Impact of long-term irrigation with municipal reclaimed wastewater on the uptake and degradation of organic contaminants in lettuce and leek

“…One of the research need is therefore a better understanding of the behavior and fate of PPCPs in soil following chronic or long terms irrigation of TWW in agro-food systems to investigate the relevance of PPCPs exposure time on the plant uptake processes and on the subsequent effects on PPCPs degradation. The reduction of PPCPs uptake by plants is generally related to sorption processes to soil, especially for those chemicals with strong hydrophobicity or positive charge but also to transformation processes such as photolysis at the soil-surface and biodegradation (Fu et al, 2019). Plant uptake might be therefore reduced, if attenuation processes outbalance the continuous input of chemicals.…”

Horizontal Flow Constructed Wetland for Greywater Treatment and Reuse: An Experimental Case

“…In addition to reducing water consumption, a possible solution can be the reuse of treated wastewater (WW) produced by human activities [15][16][17]. The WW presents a very large number of contaminants such as dyes, surfactants, heavy metals, drugs, personal care products and bacteria [18][19][20][21][22][23]. To date, there are numerous treatments to remove the contaminants present in the WW, but there is still little attention to the possible reuse of treated water.…”