Chapter 2:Adverse Effects of Pharmaceutical Products in the Marine Environment: The Use of Non-target Species to Evaluate Water and Sediment Matrices

The widespread occurrence of pharmaceuticals and the advances in the sensitivity of analytical techniques have led to these contaminants being considered as an emerging environmental issue. Over the last decade, different strategies to determine the environmental risk of pharmaceutical products have considerably evolved. In this respect, some regulations are already in use for such compounds in several developed countries. Nevertheless, a global standard for conducting Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) procedures is not established yet. There is a deep lack in the ERA of pharmaceuticals entering marine ecosystems, including the pharmaceuticals of concern and the procedure for environmental risk assessment. Meanwhile, adverse effects are described owing to the presence of pharmaceutical products in the environment, most of which are sublethal effects which necessitates the use of high-level tier approaches to determine the potential risk associated with these compounds when managing pharmaceuticals in the environment.