[Pharmwaste] Pharmaceutical Metabolites Found in Wastewater

[DeBiasi,Deborah]

Pharmaceutical Metabolites Found in Wastewater


19 Mar 2006   
 
University at Buffalo chemists have for the first time identified at
wastewater treatment plants the metabolites of two antibiotics and a
medical imaging agent. 

The data, which the UB scientists will present tomorrow at the
Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy
being held in Orlando, will allow wastewater treatment plants to begin
monitoring for these byproducts. 

The results also reinforce concerns about excreted pharmaceutical
compounds from wastewater systems that may end up in the water supply,
potentially resulting in adverse effects for humans and the environment.


For example, antibiotics and their metabolites can significantly
increase antibiotic resistance in the population. Synthetic hormones can
act as endocrine disruptors, by mimicking or blocking hormones and
disrupting the body's normal functions. 

The UB presentations will be made as part of a day-long symposium to be
held March 16 on "Degradation and Treatment of Pharmaceuticals in the
Environment." It will be chaired by Diana Aga, Ph.D., assistant
professor of chemistry in UB's College of Arts and Sciences and leader
of the UB team. 

According to Aga, it has been only in the past five years that
analytical-chemistry techniques have become sufficiently affordable and
practical to allow researchers to detect pharmaceuticals and their
metabolites efficiently at the parts-per-billion and parts-per-trillion
range. 

"Current wastewater treatment processes are optimized to reduce nitrates
and phosphates and dissolved organic carbon, the major pollutants of
concern in domestic wastes," said Aga. "However, treatment facilities
don't monitor or measure organic microcontaminants like residues of
pharmaceuticals and active ingredients of personal care products." 

Aga said that most previous studies looked for drugs' active ingredients
in treated wastewater. 

"But now we are doing laboratory studies to characterize what these
ingredients degrade into during wastewater processing," she added. "The
lesson is that not detecting active ingredients in the effluent doesn't
mean the water is clean. The pharmaceuticals we monitored are not
degraded completely in the treatment plants; most of them are just
transformed into other compounds that still may have adverse
ecotoxicological effects." 

The UB researchers have identified the metabolites for sulfamethoxazole
and trimethoprim, commonly prescribed antibiotics, and for a synthetic
estrogen, a common ingredient in birth control pills and in hormone
replacement therapy. 

In research published in January in Analytical Chemistry, the UB
chemists also found that iopromide, a pharmaceutical imaging agent that
patients consume before taking MRI tests, is barely degraded in the
conventional activated sludge process. 

However, they found that when conditions in biological treatment systems
are optimized for nitrogen removal, this imaging agent does degrade. 

Aga said that these findings have important implications because it
means that wastewater treatment processes can be optimized to remove
persistent pharmaceuticals in wastewater. 

The UB researchers obtained samples during fall and spring from local
wastewater treatment plants in the Western New York towns of Amherst,
East Aurora, Lackawanna, Tonawanda and Holland, representing suburban,
urban and rural areas. 

They sampled effluent before and after each water-treatment stage to
examine relative efficiencies of each treatment process. 

Aga noted that based on the team's findings, a combination of
biological, chemical and physical processing techniques probably will be
the most successful to remove completely pharmaceutical compounds and
their metabolites from wastewater. 

"Originally, it was hoped that during the disinfection process, through
chlorination or ultraviolet techniques, removal of the drugs that we
studied would be enhanced, but, in fact, neither of these is effective,"
she said. 

The researchers did find, however, that that most wastewater treatment
processes are effective in significantly degrading some common
antibiotics, such as ciprofloxacin and tetracycline. 

### 

The UB research was funded by the National Science Foundation. 

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public
university, the largest and most comprehensive campus in the State
University of New York. 

Contact: Ellen Goldbaum
goldbaum at buffalo.edu
University at Buffalo <http://www.buffalo.edu/>  

Article URL:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=39711

 

 

Deborah L. DeBiasi

Email:   dldebiasi at deq.virginia.gov

WEB site address:  www.deq.virginia.gov

Virginia Department of Environmental Quality

Office of Water Permit Programs

Industrial Pretreatment/Toxics Management Program

Mail:          P.O. Box 10009, Richmond, VA  23240-0009 

Location:  629 E. Main Street, Richmond, VA  23219

PH:          804-698-4028

FAX:      804-698-4032

 

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