Pharmaceuticals in the Environment—A Human Risk?

Christensen, Frans Møller

doi:10.1006/rtph.1998.1253

Cited by 199 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…2, for influent, E1 and E3 were the main contributors and accounted for >60%. Because only 1-2% of administered EE2 is transformed to E1, E2, or E3 (Ranney 1977) and, compared with natural E2 excretion, the amount of E2 in pharmaceutical usage is <5% (Christensen 1998), the higher relative abundance of natural estrogens should be due to human excretions (Zhou et al 2011). A study in Japan has also concluded that human estrogens are the major estrogenic compounds in sewage and effluent (Matsui et al 2000).…”

Section: Levels Of Steroid Estrogens In Wwtp Influent and Effluentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Occurrence and fate of steroid estrogens in the largest wastewater treatment plant in Beijing, China

Zhou

Zha

Wang

2011

Environ Monit Assess

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Concern over steroid estrogens has increased rapidly in recent years due to their adverse health effects. Effluent discharge from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is the main pollutant source for environmental water. To understand the pollutant level and fate of steroid estrogens in WWTPs, the occurrence of estrone (E1), 17-β-estradiol (E2), estriol (E3), and 17-β-ethinylestradiol (EE2) was investigated in the Gaobeidian WWTP in Beijing, China. Water samples from influent as well as effluent from second sedimentation tanks and advanced treatment processes were taken monthly during 2006 to 2007. In influent, steroid estrogen concentrations varied from 11.6 to 1.1× 10 2 ng/l, 3.7 to 1.4×10 2 ng/l, no detection (nd) to 7.6×10 2 ng/l and nd to 3.3×10 2 ng/l for E1, E2, E3, and EE2, respectively. Compared with documented values, the higher steroid estrogen concentrations in the WWTP influent may be due to higher population density, higher birthrate, less dilution, and different sampling time. Results revealed that a municipal WWTP with an activated sludge system incorporating anaerobic, anoxic, and aerobic processes could eliminate natural and synthetic estrogens effectively. The mean elimination efficiencies were 83.2%, 96.4%, 98.8%, and 93.0% for E1, E2, E3, and EE2, respectively. The major removal mechanism for natural estrogens and synthetic estrogen EE2 were biodegradation and sorption on the basis of mass balance in water, suspension particles, and sludge. In the WWTP effluent, however, the highest concentrations of E1, E2, E3, and EE2 attained were 74.2, 3.9, 5.1, and 4.6 ng/l, respectively. This is concerning as residual steroid estrogens in WWTP effluent could lead to pollution of the receiving water. Advanced flocculation treatment was applied in the WWTP and transformed the residual estrogen conjugates to free species, which were reduced further by filtration with removal shifting from 32% to 57% for natural estrogen, although no EE2 was removed.

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Section: Levels Of Steroid Estrogens In Wwtp Influent and Effluentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Occurrence and fate of steroid estrogens in the largest wastewater treatment plant in Beijing, China

Zhou

Zha

Wang

2011

Environ Monit Assess

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“…Because they are poorly metabolized in the body (Christensen, 1998;Andreozzi et al, 2006;Vieno et al, 2006) and incompletely degraded in wastewater treatment plants (Lanzky and Halling-Sørensen, 1997;Hartmann et al, 1998;Arslan-Alaton and Caglayan, 2006), antibiotics are continuously introduced into the environment. Consequently, in spite of their relatively short environmental halflives, they are ubiquitous in aquatic environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing the sensitivity of algal, cyanobacterial and bacterial bioassays to different groups of antibiotics

Grinten¹,

Pikkemaat

Brandhof³

et al. 2010

Chemosphere

162

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Comparing the sensitivity of algal, cyanobacterial and bacterial bioassays to different groups of antibiotics van der Grinten, E.; Pikkemaat, M.G.; van den Brandhof, E.J.; Stroomberg, G.J.; Kraak, M.H.S. General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. a b s t r a c tAntibiotics may affect both primary producers and decomposers, potentially disrupting ecosystem processes. Hence, it is essential to assess the impact of antibiotics on aquatic ecosystems. The aim of the present study was therefore to evaluate the potential of a recently developed test for detecting antibiotics in animal tissue, the Nouws Antibiotic Test (NAT), as a sensitive bioassay to assess the effects of antibiotics in water. To this purpose, we determined the toxicity of sulphamethoxazole, trimethoprim, flumequine, tylosin, streptomycin, and oxytetracycline, using the NAT adapted for water exposure. The sensitivity of the NAT was compared to that of bioassays with bacteria (Microtox), cyanobacteria and green algae. In the Microtox test with Vibrio fischeri as test organism, no effects were observed for any of the test compounds. For three of the six antibiotics tested, the cyanobacteria were more vulnerable than the green algae when using photosynthetic efficiency as an endpoint. The lowest EC50 values for four out of six tested antibiotics were obtained using the NAT bacterial bioassay. The bacterial plate system responded to antibiotics at concentrations in the lg L À1 and lower mg L À1 range and, moreover, each plate proved to be specifically sensitive to the antibiotics group it was designed for. It is concluded that the NAT bioassay adapted for water exposure is a sensitive test to determine the presence of antibiotics in water. The ability of this test to distinguish five major antibiotic groups is a very strong additional value.

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“…However, various investigations involving human health and environmental risk assessments have been reported for pharmaceuticals based on their risk quotients, defined as the ratio of predicted environmental concentrations to the PNEC [103][104][105]. Although some studies concluded that the levels of pharmaceutical compounds present in the environment are so small and present negligible risks to humans [105,106], others claim that certain pharmaceuticals, especially antibiotics, are of high concern for the aquatic environment [103,104]. Despite some disagreements in the conclusions of risk assessments conducted to date, there is one thing that researchers agree on: Data is lacking on the chronic effects of pharmaceutical metabolites in the environment, making it difficult to do the necessary refinements on existing models to improve accuracy.…”

Section: Future Directions In Ecotoxicological Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pharmaceutical metabolites in the environment: Analytical challenges and ecological risks

Celiz

Tso

Aga

2009

Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry

293

149

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Abstract-The occurrence of human and veterinary pharmaceuticals in the environment has been a subject of concern for the past decade because many of these emerging contaminants have been shown to persist in soil and water. Although recent studies indicate that pharmaceutical contaminants can pose long-term ecological risks, many of the investigations regarding risk assessment have only considered the ecotoxicity of the parent drug, with very little attention given to the potential contributions that metabolites may have. The scarcity of available environmental data on the human metabolites excreted into the environment or the microbial metabolites formed during environmental biodegradation of pharmaceutical residues can be attributed to the difficulty in analyzing trace amounts of previously unknown compounds in complex sample matrices. However, with the advent of highly sensitive and powerful analytical instrumentations that have become available commercially, it is likely that an increased number of pharmaceutical metabolites will be identified and included in environmental risk assessment. The present study will present a critical review of available literature on pharmaceutical metabolites, primarily focusing on their analysis and toxicological significance. It is also intended to provide an overview on the recent advances in analytical tools and strategies to facilitate metabolite identification in environmental samples. This review aims to provide insight on what future directions might be taken to help scientists in this challenging task of enhancing the available data on the fate, behavior, and ecotoxicity of pharmaceutical metabolites in the environment.

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Pharmaceuticals in the Environment—A Human Risk?

Cited by 199 publications

References 21 publications

Occurrence and fate of steroid estrogens in the largest wastewater treatment plant in Beijing, China

Occurrence and fate of steroid estrogens in the largest wastewater treatment plant in Beijing, China

Comparing the sensitivity of algal, cyanobacterial and bacterial bioassays to different groups of antibiotics

Pharmaceutical metabolites in the environment: Analytical challenges and ecological risks

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