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Occurrence of Cytostatics in Different Water Compartments

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Fate and Effects of Anticancer Drugs in the Environment

Abstract

The chapter deals with the occurrence of a selection of anticancer drugs in different water environments: hospital wastewater, wastewater treatment plant influents and effluents, surface water, sea water, and drinking water. Unfortunately, no data are available for groundwater up to now. The chapter presents and discusses measured environmental concentrations of anticancer drugs collected in 56 peer-reviewed papers referring to investigations carried out in 18 countries all over the world. It focuses on the variability of observed concentrations in the different environments, and it highlights the importance of planning efficient sampling strategies in order to obtain representative water samples.

The highest concentrations in hospital effluents were found for platinum-based compounds and 5-fluorouracil (> 105 ng L−1), in the influent for ciprofloxacin (> 103 ng L−1), in the effluent for platinum-based compounds, ifosfamide and bicalutamide (> 103 ng L−1), and in surface water for cyclophosphamide, tamoxifen, ciprofloxacin, and bicalutamide (> 102 ng L−1). In addition, a comparison is provided between measured and predicted concentrations of some anticancer drugs and a brief discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches is reported.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    Paola Verlicchi, Aina Campos Garrigós & Mustafa Al Aukidy

  2. Terra&Acqua Tech, Technopole of the University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    Paola Verlicchi

  3. Faculty of Earth Science, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Aina Campos Garrigós

Authors
  1. Paola Verlicchi
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  2. Aina Campos Garrigós
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  3. Mustafa Al Aukidy
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paola Verlicchi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Sciences, Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Ester Heath

  2. Department of Environmental, Biological and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies, University of Campania “L.Vanvitelli”, Caserta, Italy

    Marina Isidori

  3. Department of Environmental Sciences, Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Tina Kosjek

  4. Department of Genetic Toxicology and Cancer Biology, National Institute of Biology, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Metka Filipič

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Verlicchi, P., Campos Garrigós, A., Al Aukidy, M. (2020). Occurrence of Cytostatics in Different Water Compartments. In: Heath, E., Isidori, M., Kosjek, T., Filipič, M. (eds) Fate and Effects of Anticancer Drugs in the Environment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21048-9_10

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