A review on antibiotics pervasiveness in the environment and their removal from wastewater

The production and utilization of antibiotics is increasing every year. Overuse, inappropriate disposal, and leakage from production sites leads to the pervasiveness of their residues and toxic intermediates in wastewater and surface water. This paper summarizes the present state of antibiotics in the aquatic environment present around the world and the recent researches in the direction of their removal. Traditional wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) cannot altogether remove many antibiotics due to inadequate treatment processes. As a result, an effective, cost-efficient, quick, operationally practical, and environmentally acceptable solution to remove antibiotics is required. Adsorption has been proved one of the most viable alternatives among other techniques. The adsorption behavior of some widely used antibiotics across different materials is critically discussed in this paper. In addition, the effects of several factors affecting the adsorption process are also analyzed. Future research directions for antibiotic elimination from aqueous medium are also highlighted. Toxicity studies of degraded hazardous antibiotic metabolites are essential, and their viable chemical conversion into economically attractive organic chemicals is the need of the day.