Environmental Risk Assessment of Pharmaceuticals in Wastewater Treatment

The presence of pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) in the environment has gained increasing attention the past two decades. After administration, PhACs are excreted and thus delivered with wastewater to the wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). WWTP effluents are usually discharged into receiving environment and, therefore, a high proportion of pollutants (including pharmaceuticals) can enter water bodies (surface or sea water), but also soils and eventually groundwater. The risk that pharmaceuticals can pose to the environment depends not only on compound concentration but also on its toxicity. In this chapter, different existing risk assessment approaches are presented, applied to the effluents from conventional WWTPs but also from alternative and advance wastewater treatment processes. Environmental Risk assessment (ERA) can also be applied as a tool to evaluate the removal efficiency of a wastewater treatment. Moreover, special focus is paid to assess the risk of pharmaceuticals in water reclamation practices such as crop irrigation. Finally, some research lines or topics that demand greater attention related to ERA in wastewater treatment are addressed such as toxicogenomics, antibiotic resistance, and evaluation of impact of chemical mixtures.