Abstract
An environmental risk assessment (ERA) for the aquatic compartment in Europe from human use was developed for the old antibiotic Trimethoprim (TMP), comparing exposure and effects. The exposure assessment is based on European risk assessment default values on one hand and is refined with documented human use figures in Western Europe from IMS Health and measured removal in wastewater treatment on the other. The resulting predicted environmental concentrations (PECs) are compared with measured environmental concentrations (MECs) from Europe, based on a large dataset incorporating more than 1800 single MECs. On the effects side, available chronic ecotoxicity data from the literature were complemented by additional, new chronic results for fish and other organisms. Based on these data, chronic-based deterministic predicted no effect concentrations (PNECs) were derived as well as two different probabilistic PNEC ranges. The ERA compares surface water PECs and MECs with aquatic PNECs for TMP. Based on all the risk characterization ratios (PEC÷PNEC as well as MEC÷PNEC) and risk graphs, there is no significant risk to surface waters.
Highlights
The topic of pharmaceuticals in the environment (PIE) has gained a lot of attention in environmental discussions
TMP is generally used in combination with sulfonamide antibiotics, which interfere with another step of bacterial folate synthesis pathway; in combination, TMP and SMX act synergistically
In addition to the TGD probabilistic predicted no effect concentrations (PNECs), the chronic NOECs were entered into the Webfram application [158], which calculates a probabilistic HC5 based on a Bayesian algorithm [159]
Summary
The topic of pharmaceuticals in the environment (PIE) has gained a lot of attention in environmental discussions. Antibiotics 2013, 2 treatment plants (STPs) or surface waters Such concerns have been fuelled by ubiquitous detections of APIs in STP effluents and surface waters since the 1970s, in concentrations in the ng/L to μg/L range. The first in-depth aquatic ERA for TMP is presented here. It is based on both predicted and measured environmental concentrations (PECs and MECs, respectively) and on published and new chronic ecotoxicity data. Some of the latter were commissioned in order to produce a solid effects assessment for TMP. In view of sufficient data available, this ERA was supplemented with a probabilistic comparison of percent-ranked MECs and chronic effects species sensitivity distributions in addition to the standard deterministic procedures
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