Pharmaceuticals
are environmental contaminants that have been widely
detected in aquatic media. In this review, the occurrence of pharmaceuticals
in the environment, its major causes, and implications along with
effective procedures for their removal from contaminated water have
been studied. Adsorption stands out as a promising treatment method,
since it offers advantages such as lower energy consumption and simpler
operation conditions in comparison to other tertiary treatments. Although
commercial activated carbon is extensively studied as an adsorbent
of pharmaceuticals, its large-scale application is limited by the
high costs. Therefore, different nonconventional low-cost materials
have been investigated and adsorbents based on clays, biochars, chitosan,
agricultural and industrial wastes, and metal–organic frameworks
have been addressed in many studies for pharmaceuticals uptake from
water and wastewater. This article reviews key publications on this
subject, discussing adsorption performance in terms of kinetics, equilibrium,
thermodynamics, continuous fixed-bed process, regeneration capability,
and historical, economical, and practical aspects.