Abstract
Pharmaceuticals and personal care products are now known as microcontaminants due to their effects on bacterial resistance and effect on non-targeted organisms. Most recently, these substances have been found in surface water, sewage, hospital and care home wastewaters and landfill. Pharmaceuticals have been known to pose acute and chronic effects especially when exposed at higher concentrations and for longer durations. This study adopted the spectrophotometric method to assess the acute and chronic effects of seven pharmaceuticals on Bacillus subtilis bacteria. The effects were observed in terms of the conversion of 3-(4.5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5-(3-carboxymethoxyphenyl)-2-(4-sulfophenyl)-2H-tetrazolium, inner salt; (MTS) to a colored formazan product. The effect of pharmaceuticals was measured as a reduction of tetrazolium solution and expressed as percentage. The results indicate that both acute and chronic effects exist with Bezafibrate, Diclofenac, Diatrizoate, Ibuprofen and Atenolol inhibiting bacterial growth at 50 μg/ml. Consequently, at 500 μg/ml, all the pharmaceuticals inhibited growth thereby posing acute effects. In addition, all the eight pharmaceutical substances tested inhibited bacterial growth at 50 μg/ml and 500 μg/ml when exposed to pharmaceuticals for more than 24 h. The implication is that wastewater from hospitals can likely inhibit biological process of breaking waste in the wastewater treatment plants.
Highlights
Understanding the impacts of pharmaceuticals especially on the biological activity in the Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) is vital in ensuring a limit to these harmful substances from effluents are strictly adhered. To understand this vital impact, this study aims to use bacteria as a tool to assess the toxicity of single pharmaceuticals substances both acute and chronic
The study results indicate a likelihood of severe long-term effects on bacterial activities and since the WWTPs sometimes rely on biological treatment to breakdown waste, hospital wastewater containing drugs will likely inhibit the efficiency of the organisms used in biological treatment of waste
Effects of pharmaceuticals on non-targeted organism and bacterial and pathogen resistance have shown to pose a severe risk to both humans and animals
Summary
The composition of substances that contaminate the environment were centered around heavy metals and emissions from factories as a result of industrialization (Cioca and Munteanu, 2019; Veras et al, 2019; White et al, 2019). In recent times, the attention of contaminants is gradually changing from the previously known contaminants to micro contaminants (Cabral et al, 2019; Fick et al, 2009) These micro contaminants include organic chemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and plastics have been found in the environment in several samples at different places and concentrations (Kümmerer et al, 2019; Pal et al, 2010). These toxic substances have been known to enter the environment via hospitals, care homes, production industries, household waste and wastewater (Bonnefille et al, 2018; Hu et al, 2018; Verlicchi et al, 2010). Their toxic effects have widely been studied in recent years, they continue to persist in the environment at concentrations that can likely cause severe impacts.
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