Pharmaceutical and personal care products in the seawater: mini review

Abstract

Growing industrialization and urbanization along the coastal regions are the potential sources of emerging contaminants that escalate the concentration of contaminants such as pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs), microplastic (MPs), pesticides, herbicides, and endocrine-disrupting compounds. Among all the PPCPs are most frequently found in the water environment worldwide. Threat of PPCPs contamination in coastal water increases in the developing world as the sensitive marine ecosystem is more vulnerable to these contaminants. The present chapter summarizes the reported PPCPs in the coastal water around the world and their sources, fate, and transport in the marine environment. The concentration of PPCPs reported in the different studies varies from below the detection limit to 13,600 ng/L in the coastal water. The seven priorities of PPCPs (sulfamethoxazole (SMX), sulfamethazine (SMN), oxytetracycline (OTC), and ofloxacin (OFL), anhydro-erythromycin (ERY-H2O), roxithromycin (ROX), and caffeine (CAF)) are primarily widely distributed in Asian countries compared to Europe, North America, and Australia. Global PPCPs contamination generally reflected site and region specific distributions, suggesting varying usages and sources across the region and country. The most dominant anthropogenic factors to PPCPs contamination include domestic/industrial wastewater discharge, the gross product of meat, pharmaceuticals used in poultry/horticulture, eggs and milk, and gross aquatic product.