W EEKLY EDITION JUNE 19, 2019
Pharmaceuticals in Wastewater: Implications for
the Portable Sanitation Industry
By Karleen Kos, PSAI Executive Director
In 2014 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
published the largest study to that date on this topic.
They analyzed wastewater from 50 treatment plants across
the US for the presenc e of 54 different active
pharmaceutical ingredients. The findings continued to
suggest that drug concentrations were low enough to
make the water safe to drink, but the data was less clear
about its impact on the ecosystem. Later observations
noted changes in fish behavior, bugs, and other aquatic
species.
In February of 2017 the Arabian Journal of Chemistry
published an extensive paper analyzing the presence of
pharmaceuti cals in wastewater in a city of about 1.1
million in Saudi Arabia. The scientists' extensive study
found:
The removal efficiency of pharmaceuticals from wastewater is actually dependent on several
factors including the climatic conditions, the type of was tewater treatment and its operational
conditions (e.g. temperature, redox conditions, solids and hydraulic retention time) as well as
the age of the activated sludge used in the plant, but the main factor is reported to be the
physico - chemical nature of mo st pharmaceuticals, which is the acidity and high solubility in
water with very low solid – liquid partition. […]
[…S]ome of the pharmaceuticals that were detected in the wastewater were also found in the
sludge of the wastewater treatment plants. This is du e to the low solubility of such drugs. […]
When considering a single pharmaceutical at low concentrations such as those reported in this
investigation and other work, it may be assumed that not many health risks can be associated
with long - term exposure t o such a drug. But the health risks associated with exposure to a
large number of pharmaceuticals, their metabolites, and transformation products, even at low
concentrations, cannot be ignored.
Then, in April 2018 the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction released data gathered
in 2016 showing the presence of cocaine residue in the water supply in several European cities. While
monito ring of wastewater for illicit drugs is something they do regularly to determine the amount of illicit
drug use, it is a further reminder that the water supply contains pharmaceuticals of all types that both need
to be removed through treatment and which r emain in trace amounts that can affect people over time.
P AGE 11
CONTINUED ON PAGE 1 2
