Veterinary pharmaceuticals in aquaculture wastewater as emerging contaminant substances in aquatic environment and potential treatment methods

Abstract

Veterinary pharmaceuticals are still unregulated and their residues in the environment have the potential to cause considerable impact on ecosystems. Water pollution due to veterinary pharmaceuticals gained worldwide attention because they deteriorate the water quality and impart a toxic effect on living organisms. Therefore, the effective aquaculture wastewater treatment for veterinary pharmaceuticals removal before releasing into the environment is necessary to prevent the risk of environmental contamination and subsequent negative health and economic impacts on both the human and aquaculture industry. This review provides an overview of currently available methods to remove veterinary pharmaceuticals available in aquaculture wastewater while reviewing some methods already studied for other types of pharmaceuticals but possible to use in aquaculture in the future and the scope of the review has been limited to aquaculture antibiotics used as veterinary medicines. Several water refinement techniques such as conventional mechanical, chemical, biological and physical wastewater treatment methods are practiced but they are not with suitable efficiency. Several studies were published covering small or special sections of water pollution by pharmaceuticals. But most of these studies have been done targeting to remove the antibiotics coming from hospital effluent, livestock or animal farm, and veterinary practices. There are very few research studies done specifically for aquaculture wastewater treatment against veterinary pharmaceuticals. Therefore, more attention and efforts must be given to this topic to be developed and to know all details concerning the toxicity of veterinary pharmaceuticals and how they can be removed from the aquaculture wastewaters.