Environmental Toxicology of Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products in the Environment

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are classes of emerging environmental contaminants that in recent years have received unprecedented attention from the media and the scientific and regulatory communities. PPCPs are most commonly introduced to the environment through centralized and decentralized wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) discharges, land application of biosolids and effluents from WWTPs, and livestock husbandry practices in agricultural settings. Whereas the majority of research efforts to date have included standardized toxicity screening and developing analytical methodologies with GC/MSMS, LC/MSMS and (more recently) LC/TOF-MS to support environmental monitoring activities, recent studies are focusing on PPCP source tracking, chemical fate, mechanistic ecotoxicology and ecological risk assessment approaches. PPCPs often possess physiochemical (e.g., many PPCPs are ionizable) and biological (e.g., therapeutics are often designed to target specific biomolecules) properties that differ from many historical contaminants, presenting unique challenges to environmental scientists. For example, current efforts are examining how existing models ranging from fugacity based fate predictions to traditional ecotoxicology assays and risk assessment paradigms may need to be modified to define the environmental impacts of PPCPs. Subsequently this presentation will provide current and future perspectives on the state-of-the-science of PPCPs in the environment, including a summary of research needs to support environmental monitoring, fate, effects and risk assessment activities.