Pharmaceuticals and personal care product (PPCP) contamination—a global discharge inventory

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) form a source for a diverse group of bioactive ingredients such as analgesics, antibiotics, cytostatic hormones, disinfectants, and antiseptics whose steady occurrence in urban wastewater has raised concern on their potential toxicity and ecological implication. The European Union Water Framework Directive updates its database of identified emerging contaminants every 4 years that includes several PPCP originating chemicals. Increasing trends in urbanization and commercial activity are likely to facilitate increased threats from PPCP-based water pollutants globally. Chronic effects on aquatic organisms, tolerance to biodegradation, and conventional water treatment methods allow them to infiltrate the water cycle and food web, thus, reaching humans. Today, China, Brazil, the United States, and European countries are regularly monitoring and assessing the environmental risk of over a hundred identified PPCPs from their wastewater treatment plants and developing treatment technologies such as bioadsorbents, membrane separation, advanced oxidation processes, biological treatment, and electrochemical processes.