User:IBalart/New sandbox

Drug pollution

Pollution of Water Systems:
In the early 1990s, pharmaceuticals were found to be present in the environment, which resulted in massive scientific research, new regulations, and public attention. Also during the 1990s, it was discovered that for the synthesis of one kilogram of an active pharmaceutical compound the amount of waste produced was fifty to hundred times that one kilogram, which was ending up in the environment. During the late 1990s, estrogens were discovered in wastewater. It was concluded that this was the cause of feminization of fish. This was another factor that caused greater attention to pharmaceuticals in the environment. Reviews and information on pharmaceuticals present in the environment date back to at least the 1980s. The majority of pharmaceuticals are intended to cause slight adverse effects for the target population. Low concentrations of pharmaceuticals can have negative effects on the freshwater ecosystems.

Pharmaceuticals in the Environment:
In the United States, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom over 101 different pharmaceuticals were present in ground water, surface water, drinking water or tap water. Between 30 and 100 different pharmaceuticals were found present in the aforementioned waters in Thailand, Canada, Australia, India, China, South Korea, Japan, Sweden, Poland, Italy, the Netherlands, France and Brazil.

The excretion of Oral contraceptives into freshwater ecosystems has caused fish and amphibians to feminize.

Antipsychotics were created about seventy years ago and it was not until 2007 that it was reported that antipsychotics were present in the environment. They are used to treat a plethora of illnesses including depression, schizophrenia, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and bipolar disease. Antipsychotics, once excreted by the patient by either feces or urine, travel to wastewater treatment plants, which does not remove the drugs and their metabolites. These drugs have been found in drinking water, all bodies of water, and hospital sewage. Once they reach the aquatic environment, they possibly undergo bioconcentration and bioaccumulation through the food web.

Psychiatric drugs, such as fluoxetine, sertraline, citalopram, chlorpromazine and oxazepram, were found to change fish behavior and caused disruption in the hormones of fish. In invertebrates, these drugs were found to cause reproduction toxicity and hormone disruption and alter their behavior.

Antineoplastic drugs are employed during chemotherapy all over the world. They pollute water courses and have 'mutagenic, cytostatic, and ecotoxicological effects on the micro-organisms that are in the aquatic environment.' The wastewater treatment process is not able to remove antineoplastic drugs due to the intractable nature of them. Bodies of water that are contaminated with antineoplastic drugs possess grave consequences on the aquatic environment and even human health. Chemotherapy drugs such as cyclophosphamide 1, fluorouracil, doxorubicin, cisplatin and mitomycin C were discovered to cause genotoxicity in aquatic organisms.

Antibiotics are widely produced and consumed to treat bacterial and fungal diseases. Since antibiotics are only partially metabolized, the non-metabolized antibiotics are released into the environment. Due to this, antibiotics are discovered in sludge, drinking water, wastewater, surface water, soil, groundwater and sediments. Residual antibiotics are not easily biodegraded so, they can survive in environments for long periods of time. There is an urgent push to eradicate antibiotics from the environment because they could cause a generation of antibiotics resistance bacteria and antibiotics resistance genes, which would pose an immense threat to the ecological system and human health. The excessive use and excretion of antibiotics to waterways makes the problem of antimicrobial resistance worse and will gradually affect the human population, possibly causing more deaths. Antibiotics were found to reduce growth in algae, aquatic plants and environmental bacteria.

Prevention:
Drug pollution still reminds to be a global problem, since current policy techniques are not adequate enough. Most policy approaches remain to be individualized, expensive, and reactive. Biomarkers could be extremely helpful in the risk assessment of pharmaceuticals for decision making in regulations. Biomarkers could help explain if a non-target organism was exposed to a pharmaceutical and the toxicity levels of the pharmaceutical in the organism if it is present.