Predicting the Environmental Fate of Pharmaceuticals: A Database for Surface Waters Exposure and Degradation Properties
Mael Briand, Loïc Dreano, Ashenafi Legehar and Henri Xhaard
University of Helsinki
Chemical pollution is a worldwide growing concern, industrial pollution has been known and monitored for decades now, but more recently there has been a new focus on pharmaceutical pollution from individual and collective waste sources[1]. By design they tend to be effective at low concentrations, keeping them potent after dillution is wastewater, and their off-target effects and final fate after excretion are poorly understood[2].
To approach this problem, we built a database to store environmental data, measurements of concentrations in surface waters from multiple sources for a wide range of pharmaceuticals, and non pharmaceuticals. We also gather degradation and biodegradation data for those compounds. The system then helps us in the identification of the most present compounds and prioritize them for greater toxicity study if needed, and potential research for development of new more environmentally friendly pharmaceuticals.
Furthermore, we aim to develop predictive models of degradation properties using the available data on non-pharmaceuticals to enrich the lacking data on pharmaceuticals[3].
References
[1] Miettinen, M, Khan, SA. Pharmaceutical pollution: A weakly regulated global environmental risk. RECIEL. 2022; 31( 1): 75- 88
[2] Lina Gunnarsson et al. Pharmacology beyond the patient – The environmental risks of human drugs, Environment International, Volume 129, 2019
[3] A.Saravanan et al. Degradation of toxic agrochemicals and pharmaceutical pollutants: Effective and alternative approaches toward photocatalysis. Environmental Pollution, Volume 298, 2022
