Oxidative degradation by Fenton's Method for ten pharmaceutical drugs largely used in a Brazilian City

Medicines have been recently recognized as one of the emerging contaminants in the environment. These are discharged after therapeutic use through human excretion or irregular discharges. Effluent containing high concentrations of drugs discharged from production facilities is also a cause of concern to nearby aquatic bodies. There is an increased interest in their removal due to environmental and public health problems related. Some drugs are resistant to conventional methods of liquid effluent treatment, and there is a risk of negative impacts in humans and animals if exposed repeatedly to the same medicines for prolonged periods. To date, the potential human, animal, and ecological risks associated with the discharge of these compounds to the environment and the potential techniques for liquid effluent degradation demand to be well discussed. Fenton degradation process represents one possibility of pharmaceutical removal of liquid effluents, as presented by the scientific literature. Therefore, this study presents a brief summary on Fenton degradation studies of ten of the most used drugs in city of Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The result of the literature search about the studies of oxidative degradation of the drugs resulted in 45 articles found, applied to 6 drugs among the 10 most frequently used in Belo Horizonte. The needs regarding removal, disposal, and treatment of drugs represent an important challenge in environmental management.