Global risk of pharmaceutical contamination from highly populated developing countries
Muhammad Saif Ur Rehman1, Naim Rashid2, Muhammad Ashfaq3
1Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 305-701, Republic of Korea; Institute of Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Gujrat, Gujrat, Pakistan.
Chemosphere
|March 29, 2013
Summary
Pharmaceutical manufacturing
Area of Science:
- Environmental Science
- Environmental Chemistry
- Environmental Microbiology
Background:
- Global pharmaceutical industry relocation to Asia for competitive advantage.
- Industrial relocation poses significant environmental threats in emerging economies.
- Untreated wastewater discharge from pharmaceutical units is a major concern.
Purpose of the Study:
- Assess pharmaceutical contamination in Asian environmental sectors.
- Investigate the impact of industrial wastewater and biosolids on ecosystems.
- Evaluate global risks associated with pharmaceutical contamination from Asian exports.
Main Methods:
- Literature review to identify research gaps and propose hypotheses.
- Analysis of environmental contamination pathways (water, soil, food web).
- Focus on pharmaceutical compounds (PCs), their metabolites, transformed products (TPs), and resistant microbes.
Main Results:
- Untreated wastewater and biosolids contaminate surface water, soil, and groundwater.
- Pharmaceuticals and multidrug-resistant microbes enter the food web.
- Asian pharmaceutical contamination poses global risks through exports and travel.
Conclusions:
- Emerging pharmaceutical exporters face significant environmental contamination challenges.
- Urgent need for monitoring methods for PCs, TPs, and resistant microbes.
- Mixture toxicity of contaminants requires further investigation.
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