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(40-03) Wastewater Treatment of Pharmaceuticals: Observations, Predictions and Approaches to Ecotoxicity Screening. Ericson, Jon*,1, 1 Pfizer Inc, Groton, CT, USA ABSTRACT- Developing a test strategy for an environmental risk assessment for pharmaceuticals requires a full understanding of human metabolism and the fate of the compound during waste water treatment in order to select an appropriate marker for p.chem., fate and ecotoxicity studies. Quite often a worst case scenario can be established to support that metabolites are no more active than parent, and often less active based on receptor binding and/or other pharmacology studies. But what do we know about wastewater biotransformation products derived from treatment of pharmaceuticals. Can we assume a similar rationale? Observations from C14 labeled porous pot wastewater treatment studies have shown that wastewater biotransformation products of pharmaceuticals follow a human metabolism model, resulting in the same fecal metabolites as when determined in human metabolism studies. These wastewater biotransformation products appear to be a result of co-metabolism, and are of a number of products that could result from wastewater treatment depending upon the operating conditions of the wastewater treatment facility. The biotransformation products studied to date are less active than parent when tested with surrogate ecotoxicity tests. Current results suggests that in general wastewater biotransformation products are typically less active than parent, similar to human metabolites and do not suggest an unanticipated ecotoxicity. Key words: wastewater treatment, pharmaceutical, biotransformation, ecotoxicity |
