Each year, large quantities of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are used worldwide. Once conveyed to wastewater treatment plants, PPCPs can remain unchanged or undergo partial or complete transformation during wastewater treatment processes before discharge into the environment via effluent and biosolids for land application. Biosolids can be a major sink for some PPCPs. Previ...

The monitoring of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) has focused on the distribution in rivers and small lakes, but data regarding their occurrence and effects in large lake systems, such as the Great Lakes, are sparse. Wastewater treatment processes have not been optimized to remove influent PPCPs and are a major source of PPCPs in the environment. Furthermore, PPCPs are not cu...

The increasing demand for fresh water has forced many countries to use reclaimed wastewater for agricultural purposes. This water contains pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) that remain biologically active following passage through wastewater treatment plants. Run-off from farms and contaminated water from treatment facilities exposes aquatic ecosystems to PPCPs. This study exam...

Organic contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), pose a risk to water quality and the health of ecosystems. This study was designed to determine if a coastal community lacking point sources, such as waste water treatment plant effluent, could release PPCPs, herbicides, and plasticizers at detectable levels to their surface water and groundwater. Research was con...

Four pharmaceuticals (ranitidine, nizatidine, doxylamine, and carbinoxamine) were selected as model compounds to assess the efficiency of four oxidants (ozone (O3), chlorine (Cl2), chlorine dioxide (ClO2) and potassium permanganate (KMnO4)) on the removal of amine-based pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs), as well as the reduction of their N-Nitrosodimethylamine formation potentia...

For over 70 years, scientists have reported that certain synthetic and natural compounds could mimic natural hormones in the endocrine systems of animals. These substances are now collectively known as endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs), and have been linked to a variety of adverse effects in both humans and wildlife. More recently, pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) have bee...

Recently the concerns about environmental contaminants has widened to include not just persistent organic pollutants like pesticides (POPs) but pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) as well. PPCPs encompass a broad class of chemicals, ranging from over-the-counter and prescription drugs, to sunscreen and fragrances. Unlike priority pollutants, most PPCPs are not lipophilic, so they...

We created a database in order to quantitatively assess the occurrence and removal efficiency of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). From 117 scientific publications, we compiled 6641 data covering 184 PPCPs. Data included the concentrations of PPCPs in WWTP influents and effluents, their removal efficiency and their loads to the aquatic en...

Reuse of treated wastewater to irrigate agricultural crops is increasing in many arid and semi-arid areas around the world. The presence of numerous pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in treated wastewater and their potential transfer into food produce such as vegetables poses an unknown human health risk. The goal of this study was to identify PPCPs that have a comparatively hig...

The presence and fate of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in the environment is undergoing increasing scrutiny. The existing clinical pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics data for 81 common compounds were examined for cues of ecotoxicity. Of these the proportions excreted were available for 60 compounds (i.e., 74%). The compounds had a low (< or =0.5%), a moderately low (6-39%...