Occurrence and fate of pharmaceutical products and by-products, from resource to drinking water

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Abstract

Among all emerging substances in water, pharmaceutical products (PPs) and residues are a lot of concern. These last two years, the number of studies has increased drastically, however much less for water resources and drinking water than for wastewater. This literature review based on recent works, deals with water resources (surface or groundwater), focusing on characteristics, occurrence and fate of numerous PPs studied, and drinking water including water quality. Through this review, it appears that the pharmaceutical risk must be considered even in drinking water where concentrations are very low. Moreover, there is a lack of research for by-products (metabolites and transformation products) characterization, occurrence and fate in all water types and especially in drinking water.

Introduction

In Europe, around 4000 different pharmaceutical active compounds, used as human and veterinary drugs, are susceptible to reach every environmental compartment. The relatively recent awareness of pharmaceutical products (PPs) impact on environment is reflected in literature since the 1990s through the exponentially increasing number of studies concerning this emergent class of water pollutants. For example, only half of papers cited in this review were published before 2007. This rising interest is not only concomitant with the widespread and growing use of human and veterinary PPs consumption, but also with the analytical techniques improvement allowing detecting traces of substances (ng/L or less) in any type of water.

The great majority of studies on pharmaceutical products PPs in water concerns their analysis, occurrence and fate in wastewater (WW) and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), with an emphasis on processes efficiency with respect to their removal. As the majority of organic micropollutants, the contamination origin is above all anthropogenic and continuously released in wastewater or directly in the environment (via human and animal excretion). As some pesticides and other priority substances, PPs are ubiquitary substances more often persistent and bioaccumulable in the environment mainly in surface water (SW) and sometimes in groundwater (GW). For drinking water (DW), studies are less numerous but the risk is higher. The aim of this literature review is to show the quality and safety issue for water resource and drinking water. It mainly focuses on occurrence and fate of PPs and by-products (BPs), with few considerations on WWTP, the efficiency of which being rather extensively studied.

Section snippets

PPs of concern

The literature review shows that about 160 PPs (human and veterinary), and 30 by-products (BPs) have been recently studied. They are presented according to their therapeutic use in Table 1 from studies concerning analytical developments, occurrence in aquatic compartments, fate in the environment, or fate and elimination during wastewater and drinking water treatments. Works exclusively devoted to ecotoxicology studies were not considered.

PPs and BPs are spread into 24 therapeutic classes,

Origins of PPs

Accurate assessment of PPs impact on the environment is as difficult as there is a multitude of input sources in environment with no evident quantitative data available concerning the relative distribution of PPs from all emission sources (Fig. 1). Although humans and animals treated with PPs constitute the main contamination source of potable water resources (i.e. SW and GW), PPs are qualitatively, quantitatively, spatially and temporally shared out into different routes depending on whether

By-products

By-products (BPs) include both metabolites excreted via urine or faeces, and transformation products which can be formed in environment from PPs and/or metabolites released, under physico-chemical and biological factors as in WWTP or water works (Fig. 2). Concern has been raised regarding the BPs of human and veterinary pharmaceuticals since recently some ecosystem impacts have been shown and effect on human suspected (Table 2).

Once in human/animal body, the parent molecule of a pharmaceutical

Occurrence in water resources

The majority of studies cited in this literature review attest of the general presence of PPs in water bodies from ng/L up to several µg/L, and more rarely but of prime importance for human health, in drinking water. About 90 PPs and BPs are concerned, BPs being less studied than parent compounds, and synthetic data are reported in Fig. 3 for the main therapeutic classes, NSAIDs and antibiotics.

Considering the fate of PPs and BPs (see following section), their concentration obviously decreases

Fate in environment

The presence of PPs and BPs from the main sources of contamination, i.e. discharge of WWTP effluents (human drugs), and animal farming or aquaculture (veterinary substances), is firstly attenuated by dilution in surface water up to trace level (µg/L to ng/L). The other potential attenuation factor of PPs and BPs in receiving waters is the adsorption on suspended solids (and sediments), colloids and natural dissolved organic matter (DOM) (Osenbrück et al., 2007). PPs and BPs may also undergo

Occurrence and fate in drinking water

The apparent weak persistence of a PP does not necessary mean the absence of drinking water contamination. However, only very few data are available on the occurrence of PPs in tap water (Table 4). It can be explained by the analytical difficulties to quantify ultra-trace level (ng/L) of such compounds, and hopefully by concentrations below the quantification limit. Thus, only 17 PPs and 5 BPs have been found in DW between 1.4 and 1250 ng/L. NSAIDs and in a slight less extent anticonvulsants

Conclusion

This literature review, shows however that relatively few works are available for BPs in general and drinking water contamination in particular. For this last point, it is important to check the absence of the most widespread PPs such as carbamazepine, NSAIDs or ICM in the main drinking water networks. Furthermore there is a real need for complementary studies such as the comparison on PPs consumption and occurrence in water based on a reference methodology, the climate change influence on PPs

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