Soil Sorption and Degradation Studies of Pharmaceutical Compounds Present in Recycled Wastewaters Based on Enantiomeric Fractionation

Wastewater (WW) reuse and biosolid application for vegetable crop culture is a practice applied worldwide. This strategy helps mitigate the pressure on water resources and improve the fertility of soil. Wastewater reuse is currently not included in chemical risk assessment, but its application has risk of potential accumulation of contaminants of emerging concern such as pharmaceutical active compounds (PhACs). In fact, this practice has caused the uptake of PhACs by plant and their subsequent entrance on the food chain. Residual quantities of contaminants may enter in soil, and they can be accumulated or percolated, consequently leading to contamination of groundwater. Herein, we report the main factors that play an important role on the accumulation of PhACs in soil after irrigation with treated wastewater. Limited data is actually available on the fate of PhACs in field studies because several processes are in competition for their dissipation including sorption and formation of non-extractable residues, leaching, as well as biotransformation. Consequently, an approach based on enantiomeric fractionation of chiral PhACs has been suggested to discriminate between biotic and abiotic dissipation processes.