Environmental Advances (Oct 2023)
Occurrence and adsorptive removal of sulfonamides and β-blockers in African and Asian water matrices: A comprehensive review
Abstract
Pharmaceuticals in water bodies have led to severe water pollution, posing adverse human and ecological health effects. These pollutants enter water bodies through various sources, including untreated or partially wastewater effluents and landfill leachates. The presence of pharmaceutical drugs in the environment has contributed to the recurring drug resistance due to the continuous addition of new drugs. Therefore, the assessment of pharmaceutical drug contamination in various environmental compartments is vital because it provides clarity of the consequences in future. In this review, substantial literature assessment concurrently with relevant data analysis was conducted to gain a better insight into the trend of sulfonamides and β-blockers in African and Asian water bodies in the last five. Through an extensive literature analysis of several original and review articles, the authors collected measured environmental concentrations for sulfonamides and β-blockers reported in water bodies of African and Asian countries. The results revealed that sulfonamides and β-blockers have been detected in various African and Asian countries. For example, high concentrations of sulfonamides (13 800 ng/L) were detected in Kenya, whilst 3508 ng/L were detected in Vietnam.Furthermore, the concentration of β-blockers ranging between 2198 ng/L and 5824 ng/L were detected in Tunisia and China, respectively. These suggested that developing countries in Africa and Asia are among the most affected by pharmaceutical drugs in the environmental compartments. This might be due to poor sanitation, dysfunctional WWTPs and improper waste management in health facilities, amongst other issues. Because of the above, there is a need to develop effective, economical, and environmentally friendly technologies for removing pharmaceutical drugs in water bodies. Therefore, potential technologies, mostly adsorption using functional nanomaterials, designed to address the sulfonamide and β-blockers pollution are reviewed. The data showed that nanomaterials have strong chemical interactions with the drugs through their functional active sites, thus eliminating sulfonamide and β-blockers.
