Environmental Pharmaceuticals in Latin America: a yet unaddressed issue

CARRIQUIRIBORDE, P.

Niagara on the Lake

Workshop; 20? Question Exercise on Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products and the Environment - A Technical Workshop; 2011

Health Canada and Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry

Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km², almost 14.1% of the Earth's land surface area. Its population was estimated at more than 590 million and the ten more populated areas (million peoples) are: Mexico City (21.2), São Paulo (20.8), Rio de Janeiro (14.4), Buenos Aires (12.8), Bogotá (9.6), Lima (8.5), Santiago (7.2), Belo Horizonte (5.4), Caracas (5.2) and Guadalajara (4.3). Despite public and scientific concern about pharmaceutical in the environment (EP) has risen in the last ten years in Europe and North America, little is known about these emergent pollutants in Latin America (LA). After a searching the terms ?Pharmaceutical? restricted to ?Environmental Sciences? for each Latin-American country using the Scopus database, only 21 studies were found on EP in LA, regarding effluent treatment technologies (13), genotoxicity (4), residue analysis in effluents (2) and risk assessment of hospital effluents (2). Most of the studies were conducted in Brazil (17), followed by Chile (2), Argentina (1) and Colombia (1). The three more frequent Journals selected for publishing were ?Water Research? (6), ?Chemosphere? (3) and ?Water, Air and Soil Pollution?(2). A survey conducted in order to organize a LA network of colleges working or interested in EP detected at least nine groups from the academy (7), government (1) and industry (1) that confirmed the intention of participating in the network. Members of these groups were base on Argentina (4), Brazil (3), Chile (1) and Costa Rica (1). These groups are mainly working on environmental toxicology and chemistry of EP. In particular our group is based studying the levels of EDC?s and EP in surface water from the Pampa?s region and Rio de la Plata estuary. These aquatic ecosystems are currently receptors of primary or even raw domestic sewages. In particular the Rio de la Plata estuary receives raw domestic discharges of two large cities, Buenos Aires (12.8 million) and La Plata (2.5 million), and an the levels of EDC?s and EP were not previously studied. According to the National Statistics Agency (INDEC) the more sold pharmaceuticals are the antibiotics followed by antiinflammatory and antirheumatic drugs, beta-blockers, antineoplastics and antitumor agents, antacid drugs, other non-therapeutic drugs, neuroactive compounds, blood lipid lowering agents and analgesics. Our own survey in the studied region has identified as the more commonly used pharmaceuticals the analgesics, antipyretics and anti-inflammatory ibuprofen, paracetamol and diclofenac and the neuroactive carbamazepine. An SPE extraction and HPLC-MS method for determining these and eleven more pharmaceuticals at the ng/L level in sewage effluents and surface water of the region is being developed.