Occurrence and distribution of pharmaceuticals in wastewater from households, livestock farms, hospitals and pharmaceutical manufactures

doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2010.10.026

Chemosphere

Volume 82, Issue 2, January 2011, Pages 179-186

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2010.10.026 Get rights and content

Abstract

Twenty-four pharmaceuticals were measured in wastewater from 12 municipal wastewater treatment plants (M-WWTPs), four livestock WWTPs (L-WWTPs), four hospital WWTPs (H-WWTPs) and four pharmaceutical manufacture WWTPs (P-WWTPs). The total concentration of pharmaceuticals in the influent samples was highest in the L-WWTPs followed by the P-WWTPs, H-WWTPs and M-WWTPs. The effluents had different patterns of pharmaceuticals than their corresponding influents because of the different fate of each compound in the WWTPs. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) were the most dominant in the influents from the M-WWTPs and P-WWTPs, while antibiotics were dominantly detected in the L-WWTP. In the H-WWTP influents, NSAIDs, caffeine and carbamazepine were dominant. In the P-WWTPs, the distribution of pharmaceuticals in the effluents varied with sampling sites and periods. The M-WWTP influents had the highest daily loads, while the effluents showed somewhat similar levels in all source types.

Introduction

During the last several decades, the production and consumption of pharmaceuticals have increased rapidly with the development of medical science. Approximately 3000 compounds are used as medicine, and the annual production amount exceeds hundreds of tons (Calisto and Esteves, 2009, Kümmerer, 2009, Sarmah et al., 2006). After their use, large amounts of pharmaceuticals are discharged into the water system (Kümmerer, 2009). They have been detected in urban and livestock agricultural wastewater and surface water (Campagnolo et al., 2002, Kolpin et al., 2002, Larsson et al., 2007, Matamoros and Bavona, 2006, Pedrouzo et al., 2007, Vanderford et al., 2003). Furthermore, these pollutants may adversely impact aquatic ecosystem and human health by endocrine disruption and the maintenance or development of antibiotic resistant bacteria (Walsh, 2003, Sanderson et al., 2004, Kim et al., 2007, de Souza et al., 2009, Yu et al., 2009). For these reasons, pharmaceutical contamination became an emerging concern in the water resources worldwide.

Humans use various pharmaceuticals for their health in daily life and they are widely used for animals. Consequently, large amounts of veterinary pharmaceuticals are used in livestock farms to prevent and treat diseases and for weight promotion. In Korea, the usage of veterinary pharmaceuticals is known to be approximately 20-fold higher than that in other countries (Kim et al., 2008). Considerable amounts of pharmaceuticals are produced by pharmaceutical manufacturers and dispensed in the hospitals (Brown et al., 2006, Li et al., 2008, Lindberg et al., 2004).

Pharmaceuticals are discarded and excreted and subsequently enter into the water environment in the form of treated or untreated wastewater. Thus, wastewaters from municipal wastewater treatment plants (M-WWTPs), livestock farms, hospitals, and pharmaceutical manufactures have become the known sources of pharmaceuticals discharged into the water environment (Matamoros et al., 2009, Zhang et al., 2008). Many investigations have been conducted to understand the occurrence and fate of pharmaceuticals in wastewater (Lindberg et al., 2004, Brown et al., 2006, Gómez et al., 2006, Jones et al., 2007, Larsson et al., 2007, Duong et al., 2008, Li et al., 2008, Lin et al., 2008). However, these studies were mostly concerned with M-WWTP’s. There is a paucity of information on occurrence patterns of pharmaceuticals discharged into the water environment through other WWTPs. Therefore, various sources including livestock WWTPs (L-WWTPs), hospital WWTPs (H-WWTPs) and pharmaceutical manufacture WWTPs (P-WWTPs) need to be surveyed to understand the pathway of pharmaceuticals in the water system.

In this paper, we investigated 24 different pharmaceuticals in wastewater from households, livestock farms, hospitals and pharmaceutical manufactures to understand their occurrence and characteristic distribution according to various sources. A total of 12 M-WWTPs, 4 L-WWTPs, 4 H-WWTPs and 4 P-WWTPs were selected nationwide for this study. This is the first comprehensive survey on the occurrence of pharmaceuticals in influents and effluents from various WWTPs.

Section snippets

Sampling

Wastewater samples were collected from influents (after grit remover) and effluents (final outlet) in 12 M-WWTPs, 4 L-WWTPs, 4 H-WWTPs and 4 P-WWTPs using grab sampling method. All samples were collected in amber glass bottles and refrigerated immediately. Sampling campaigns were performed two times between June and September 2008. The sampling sites were located near major river basins of Korea. The information of sampling sites is shown in Table S1 and Fig. S1 in the Supplementary material.

Concentrations of pharmaceuticals in wastewater

Table 2 presents the concentrations of pharmaceuticals in wastewater (influents and effluents) from the M-WWTPs, L-WWTPs, H-WWTPs and P-WWTPs. In the influents, the L-WWTPs (319–3630 μg L⁻¹) showed the highest total concentrations of pharmaceuticals, followed by P-WWTPs (38.2–2301 μg L⁻¹), M-WWTPs (15.3–1481 μg L⁻¹) and H-WWTPs (4.10–543 μg L⁻¹). As mentioned earlier, pharmaceuticals are extensively used to prevent or treat livestock diseases and promote more rapid growth of animals (Burkholder et al.,

Conclusions

In this work, we studied the occurrence of pharmaceuticals in the wastewater from the M-WWTPs, L-WWTPs, H-WWTPs and P-WWTPs. Of the four target sources, the L-WWTPs had the highest total concentrations of pharmaceuticals in the influents, followed by the P-WWTPs, H-WWTPs and M-WWTPs. In the effluents, the distribution of pharmaceuticals was different from that in the influents because of the different fate and removal tendencies of each pharmaceutical in the WWTPs. In the PCA result, the

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) (No. 2009-0074454).

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Occurrence and distribution of pharmaceuticals in wastewater from households, livestock farms, hospitals and pharmaceutical manufactures

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Sampling

Concentrations of pharmaceuticals in wastewater

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

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