[Pharmaceuticals as pollution].
The pharmaceuticals we humans use to treat illness and disease  typically enter the aquatic environment via the sewer network and wastewater  treatment works. Understanding the risks posed to the aquatic environment  by these chemicals requires an understanding of the concentrations  that exist in the environment and whether they are sufficiently high  to have adverse effects on aquatic organisms. The main source of  pharmaceuticals to wastewater treatment works is pharmaceuticals  used by the general population. Only a small contribution is believed  to come from hospitals. The predicted environmental concentrations  of pharmaceuticals suggest that certain pharmaceuticals may pose  a risk to the environment, but measurement of the actual concentrations  present in effluents and recipient waters suggest that sophisticated  wastewater treatment is effective for significantly reducing effluent  concentrations, and that environmental concentrations of pharmaceuticals,  in the Oslo Fjord, for example, are generally low. Humans also excrete  the metabolites of the pharmaceuticals that they have used and these  too may be released into the environment, sometimes in greater concentrations  than the parent drug. The occurrence of most pharmaceuticals and  their metabolites in the environment poses little acute environmental  risk. However, the effects of long-term chronic exposure to these  compounds are still poorly understood and the long-terms risks to  the environment are still not clear. What is clear is that certain  pharmaceuticals pose a greater environmental risk than others, and  that where possible this knowledge should be used to inform users  of more environmentally friendly alternatives.
Norsk institutt for vannforskning (NIVA), Norway. mgr@niva.no
Merete
M
Grung
Katherine
K
Langford
Kevin V
KV
Thomas
D004350:Drug Residues / Q000009:adverse effects*; D064420:Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions; D004781:Environmental Exposure / Q000009:adverse effects; D006801:Humans; D009664:Norway; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012722:Sewage
D012722:Sewage