title: Environmental risk analysis and prioritization of pharmaceuticals in a developing world context.
abstract: The impact of residual pharmaceuticals on the aquatic environment has gained widespread attention over the past years. Various studies have established the occurrence of pharmaceutical compounds in different water bodies throughout the world. In view of the absence of occurrence data in a number of developing world countries, and given the limited availability of analytical resources in these countries, it is prudent to devise methodologies to prioritize pharmaceuticals for environmental monitoring purposes that are site specific. In this work, several prioritization approaches are used to rank the 88 most commonly consumed pharmaceuticals in Lebanon. A simultaneous multi-criteria decision analysis method utilizing the exposure, persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity (EPBT) approach is applied to a smaller subset of the original list (69 pharmaceuticals). Several base cases are investigated and sensitivity analysis is applied to one of these base case runs. The similarities and differences in the overall ranking of individual, and classes of, pharmaceuticals for the base cases and the sensitivity runs are elucidated. An environmental risk assessment (ERA), where predicted environmental concentrations (PEC) and risk quotients (RQ) are determined at different dilution factors, is performed as an alternative method of prioritization for a total of 84 pharmaceuticals. The ERA results indicate that metformin and amoxicillin have the highest PECs while 17β-estradiol, naftidrofuryl and dimenhydrinate have the highest RQs. The two approaches, EPBT prioritization and ERA, are compared and a priority list consisting of 26 pharmaceuticals of various classes is developed. Nervous system and alimentary tract and metabolism pharmaceuticals (9/26 and 5/26 respectively) constitute more than half of the numbers on the priority list with the balance consisting of anti-infective (4/26), musculo-skeletal (3/26), genito-urinary (2/26), respiratory (2/26) and cardiovascular (1/26) pharmaceuticals. This list will serve as a basis for the selection of candidate compounds to focus on for future monitoring campaigns.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, American University of Beirut, P.O. Box 11-0236, Riad El Solh, Beirut 1107 2020, Lebanon.
authors.forename: Fatima
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Mansour
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, American University of Beirut, P.O. Box 11-0236, Riad El Solh, Beirut 1107 2020, Lebanon. Electronic address: ma211@aub.edu.lb.
authors.forename: Mahmoud
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Al-Hindi
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, American University of Beirut, P.O. Box 11-0236, Riad El Solh, Beirut 1107 2020, Lebanon.
authors.forename: Walid
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Saad
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, American University of Beirut, P.O. Box 11-0236, Riad El Solh, Beirut 1107 2020, Lebanon.
authors.forename: Darine
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Salam
mesh_terms: D003906:Developing Countries / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D004785:Environmental Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000032:analysis*; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000379:methods; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000032:analysis
chemical_list: D004785:Environmental Pollutants; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical
keywords: Multi criteria decision analysis; Pharmaceuticals; Predicted environmental concentration; Ranking; Risk assessment