Degradation of Emerging Pharmaceutical Pollutants from Wastewater Using Penicillium aurantiogriseum 2AJS

Approximately 3000 pharmaceutical compounds and personal care products (PPCPs) are utilized and discharged into the wastewater at low levels, and they are rarely removed or treated in wastewater treatment facilities. The present study focused on the potential ability of Penicillium aurantiogriseum 2AJS to degrade pharmaceutical and personal care products of different classes of drugs: antipyretic and analgesic drugs (paracetamol, diclofenac, and ibuprofen) and hormones (estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone). Various ligninolytic extracellular enzymatic studies were also studied. A phytotoxicity assay was performed using the Lemna minor species procured from the Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore. The results revealed degradation of pharmaceutical and personal care products to 95.27% (paracetamol), 94.37% (diclofenac), 89.29% (ibuprofen), 94.16% (progesterone), 91.10% (estrogen), and 82.12% (testosterone). GC-MS and NMR analyses aided in proposing the degradation pathway of all six pharmaceutical compounds. Degradation kinetics showed a first-order model for all the degradation studies with R² values ranging between 0.89 and 0.95. A toxicological assay using Lemna minor showed very less toxicity of degraded compounds with a toxicity index ranging between 1.2 and 1.5 compared to the parent compounds. Hence, strain 2AJS can be used in in situ bioremediation of wastewater treatment processes.