Chapter 11 - Occurrence of pharmaceutical residues in marine sediments

Abstract

Pharmaceutical residues are emerging pollutants reaching the coastal and marine environments mostly through treated and untreated wastewater discharges. Once in the aquatic systems, they can remain in the dissolved phase or be adsorbed on the suspended solids. To date, a robust corpus of literature has been created on the occurrence and environmental fate of pharmaceutical compounds in seawater and marine biota, although the monitoring of licit and illicit drugs in coastal and marine sediments is limited. In this chapter, the sources of pharmaceuticals in the coastal and marine environments are listed. The routes followed by pharmaceutical residues to build up in the marine benthic zone are explored, along with the processes drawing the environmental fate of these pollutants in the sediment bed, mainly biodegradation and adsorption. The potential acute and chronical effects caused by pharmaceutical residues to the exposed organisms are also described through the revision of relevant study cases. From a thorough revision of the current literature on the occurrence and concentration of pharmaceutical residues in coastal and marine sediments an updated baseline is provided while the knowledge gaps are unveiled.