Fate, Transformation, and Toxicological Impacts of Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products in Surface Waters.

Fate, Transformation, and Toxicological Impacts of Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products in Surface Waters. Environ Health Insights. 2018;12:1178630218795836 Authors: Maldonado-Torres S, Gurung R, Rijal H, Chan A, Acharya S, Rogelj S, Piyasena M, Rubasinghege G Abstract With the growth of the human population, a greater quantity of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) have been released into the environment. Although research has addressed the levels and the impact of PPCPs in the environment, the fate of these compounds in surface waters is neither well known nor characterized. In the environment, PPCPs can undergo various transformations that are critically dependent on environmental factors such as solar radiation and the presence of soil particles. Given that the degradation products of PPCPs are poorly characterized, these "secondary residues" can be a significant environmental health hazard due to their drastically different toxicologic effects when compared with the parent compounds. To better understand the fate of PPCPs, we studied the degradation of selected PPCPs, including ibuprofen and clofibric acid, in aqueous solutions that contained kaolinite clay and were irradiated with a solar simulator. The most abundant degradation products were identified and assessed for their toxicologic impact on selected microorganisms. The degraded mixtures showed lower toxicity than the starting compounds; however, as the...
Source: Environmental Health Insights - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Environ Health Insights Source Type: research