Mitigation Strategies for Emerging Environmental Contaminants: Pharmaceuticals and Related Personal Care Products

Pharmaceuticals and related personal care products, particularly, are a class of natural and man-made chemicals known as emerging environmental contaminants (EECs) that are being found in aquatic ecosystems more frequently all over the world. These substances, which include hormones, sunscreen agents, parabens, antibiotics, antidepressants, anti-inflammatories, and microplastics, come from a variety of sources, including home trash, municipal wastewater, pharmaceutical company effluents, and agricultural runoff. Because of their persistence, bioactivity, and resistance to standard wastewater treatment techniques, PPCPs pose serious dangers even when they are present in trace amounts, usually in the microgram to nanogram per litre range. Endocrine disruption, antibiotic resistance, bioaccumulation in aquatic organisms, and the environmental sources, destiny, and ecological and human health implications of the major PPCP groups are all categorized and highlighted in this review. The study talks about the problems with regular wastewater treatment plants and looks at new treatment methods that could better remove PPCP, like membrane filtration, advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), electrochemical techniques, and constructed wetlands, to reduce the lasting effects of PPCP pollution in order to lessen the long- term effects of PPCP contamination.