Abstract
This article reviews the pollution status of anticancer drugs present in the Yodo River basin located in the Kansai district of Japan, covering both the soluble and insoluble (adsorbed on the river sediments and suspended solids) levels. Procedures ranging from sampling in the field and instrumental analytical methods to the data processing for mass balance estimation of the target basin are also described. All anticancer drugs concerned with this article were detected in sewage and river waters, where the presence of bicalutamide (BLT) was identified at considerably high concentrations (maximum 254 ng/L in the main stream, 151 ng/L in tributaries, and 1032 ng/L in sewage treatment plant (STP) effluents). In addition, sorption distribution coefficient (logKd) values showed a tendency to become higher in the silty sediments at Suita Bridge than in the sandy sediments at Hirakata Bridge; these trends were supported by the results of the laboratory-scale sorption experiment. STPs were concluded to be the main sources of the anticancer drug load in the river, and a mass flux evaluation revealed that the effect of attenuation in the river environment was small. The effectiveness of ozonation in the sewage treatment process for removal of these anticancer drugs was further confirmed. The present article should be of value for facilitating the environmental risk assessment of a wide range of drugs in a broader geographical area.
Highlights
The emerging problem of the pollution of river environments by pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) has received a large amount of attention [1,2,3]
The aim of this article is summarize the state of anticancer drugs in the regional river water and sediments in the subcatchment of the Yodo River basin in Japan, providing an invaluable fundamental basis for further spreading of the related studies into a wide range of PPCPs across a wide area to achieve the final goal for conducting effective environmental risk assessments of discharged PPCPs in the future
In the year-round survey, all anticancer drugs were detected at medium concentrations in the range of N.D.–32 ng/L in the river water and
Summary
The emerging problem of the pollution of river environments by pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) has received a large amount of attention [1,2,3]. Pharmaceuticals are designed to have specific physiological effects on target areas of the body. Concern is rising about their toxic effects on ecosystems when discharged into environmental water, even when they are present at low concentrations Their impacts on human health via residues contaminating drinking water should be taken into consideration [4,5,6,7]. The concentrations of these compounds are low (roughly in the range from ng/L to μg/L) worldwide [7,8,9] Even in this low concentration range, there have been reports of the endocrine-disrupting chemicals that have serious environmental impacts, such as the feminization of male fishes [10,11]
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