Uptake of Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products by Plants – Potential Mechanisms.

Occurrence of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in the environment is an increasing public concern, which has lead to growing body of data focused on monitoring concentrations, biodegradation, sorption, and transport of these compounds in the terrestrial environment. The possible uptake of some veterinary antibiotics in soils treated with animal manure has been reported in a few studies, but comprehensive information on uptake of other PPCPs by crops, possible translocation into food chain, and potential risk of exposure to humans and animals is scarce. On the other hand a lot of information is available in the literature on pesticides, herbicides, PCBs, dioxins, and other organic contaminants which are widely used or ubiquitous in the terrestrial environment and were found to accumulate in food crops. The information from these studies indicate that many factors like physico-chemical characteristics of the compounds (such as water solubility, vapor pressure, molecular weight, octanol/water partition coefficients), physico-chemical characteristics of soil or growing media (such as pH, mineral content and type, temperature, organic carbon and moisture content, etc.), and plant characteristics (such as root system and lipid content) may be important in determining the uptake of PPCPs by plants and also their distribution and transport within plant components. The purpose of this paper is to present a brief review and discussion of (i) mechanisms involved in the uptake of PPCPs by plants, (ii) relationships between physico-chemical characteristics of PPCPs and their uptake and transport within plants, and (iii) present a framework to predict which PPCPs have the highest potential for uptake in plants