Science Inventory

POLLUTION FROM PERSONAL ACTIONS, ACTIVITIES, AND BEHAVIORS: PHARMACEUTICALS AND PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS IN THE ENVIRONMENT MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCIENCE ISSUES RELEVANT TO REGULATORY CONSIDERATIONS

Citation:

Daughton, C G. POLLUTION FROM PERSONAL ACTIONS, ACTIVITIES, AND BEHAVIORS: PHARMACEUTICALS AND PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS IN THE ENVIRONMENT MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCIENCE ISSUES RELEVANT TO REGULATORY CONSIDERATIONS. Presented at The Tulane Institute for Environmental Law and Policy: "Environment 2001: Law, Science and the Public Interest", New Orleans, LO, March 9-11, 2001.

Impact/Purpose:

The research focused on in the subtasks is the development and application of state-of the-art technologies to meet the needs of the public, Office of Water, and ORD in the area of Water Quality. Located In the subtasks are the various research projects being performed in support of this Task and more in-depth coverage of each project. Briefly, each project's objective is stated below.

Subtask 1: To integrate state-of-the-art technologies (polar organic chemical integrative samplers, advanced solid-phase extraction methodologies with liquid chromatography/electrospray/mass spectrometry) and apply them to studying the sources and fate of a select list of PPCPs. Application and improvement of analytical methodologies that can detect non-volatile, polar, water-soluble pharmaceuticals in source waters at levels that could be environmentally significant (at concentrations less than parts per billion, ppb). IAG with USGS ends in FY05. APM 20 due in FY05.

Subtask 2: Coordination of interagency research and public outreach activities for PPCPs. Participate on NSTC Health and Environment subcommittee working group on PPCPs. Web site maintenance and expansion, invited technical presentations, invited articles for peer-reviewed journals, interviews for media, responding to public inquiries.

Subtask 3: To apply state-of-the-art environmental forensic techniques to the recognition and characterization of emerging pollutants in the aquatic environment. There is a need for high sensitivity and for a powerful method of structural characterization, advanced mass spectrometric and chromatographic techniques to be employed to meet the challenge of emerging pollutants, including pharmaceuticals and personal care products, agents of sabotage, and explosives. Ongoing efforts continue to identify previously unrecognized pollutants from a range of problematic samples having importance to regional and state contacts.

Subtask 4: To provide the Agency with a set of practical analytical methods for the selective and sensitive determination of selenium species (organic, inorganic, volatile and non volatile forms) in multiple media to accurately assess and if necessary control the risk of selenium exposure to organisms. This includes development of optimal extraction, digestion, separation and detection approaches.

Subtask 5: To develop and apply an analytical method that can extract and detect synthetic musks. The extent of exposure may be determined by measuring levels of synthetic musks from their potential source (communal sewage effluent). This subtask ends in FY05 with the deliverable of APM 21. Future applications to biosolids will be covered in subtask 6.

Subtask 6: Application, and improvement, of previously in-house developed sensitive, robust, and green, methodologies regarding the use of urobilin and sterols as a possible markers of sewage contamination.

Subtask 7: Adaptation and improvement of previously developed in-house methods, for PPCPs (e.g., antibiotics and musks) to solid materials (e.g. biosolids, sediments).

Subtask 8: Study of the presence of personal care products, incombustible organic compounds from the direct-piping of small engines exhaust in Lake Tahoe, and lake deposition of airborne pollutants from industrial activity

Description:

Perhaps more so than with any other class of anthropogenic chemicals, the occurrence of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPS) in the environment highlights the immediate, intimate, and inseparable connection between the personal activities of individual citizens and their environment. PPCPS, in contrast to other types of environmental contaminants, owe their origins in the environment directly to their worldwide, universal, frequent, highly dispersed, and individually small but cumulative usage by multitudes of individuals - as opposed to the larger, highly delineated, and more-controllable industrial manufacturing/usage of most high-volume synthetic chemicals.

PPCPs are a diverse group of chemicals, used internally or externally with the bodies of humans and domestic animals (and agricultural plants), comprising a wide spectrum of chemical classes. In very general terms, PPCPs include: o- drugs (available by prescription or over-the-counter; including the new genre of "biologics"), - diagnostic agents (e.g., X-ray contrast media), P, "nutraccuticals" (bioactive food supplements such as huperzine A), and - other consumer chemicals, such as fragrances (e.g., synthetic musks)'and sun-screen agents (e.g., methylbenzylldene camphor); also included are - "excipients" (so-called "inert" ingredients used in PPCP manufacturing and formulation); the universe of included chemicals is expanded yet further by the numerous environmental transformation products (many of these "daughter" products can also be bioactive) that can be created from each parent compound. In addition to the better known antimicrobials and steroids, over 50 individual PPCPs or metabolites (from more than 10 broad classes of therapeutic agents or personal care products) had been identified [as of 1999; see Environ. Health Perspect. 1999, 107(suppl 6), 907-93 8] in environmental samples (mainly in sewage, surface, and ground waters). It is important to note that although a number of representatives from small subsets of therapeutic classes have been identified in the environment, numerous members of most classes have yet to be searched for. Many- of these unreported drugs are among the most widely prescribed in the U.S.
Many PPCPs (as well as their metabolites and transformation products) can enter the environment following ingestion or application by the user or administration to domestic animals. Disposal of unused/!expired PPCPs in landfills and to domestic sewage is another route to the environment. The aquatic environment probably serves as the major, ultimate receptacle for these chemicals, for which little is known with respect to actual - or-even potential - adverse effects. Domestic sewage treatment facilities were never specifically designed to remove PPCPS, and the efficiencies with which they are removed vary from nearly complete to ineffective. While PPCPs in the environment (or domestic drinking water) are not regulated, and even though their concentrations are extremely low (ng/L-ug/L) and far below "therapeutic thresholds", the consequences of exposure to multiple compounds having different as well as similar (cumulative) modes of action over multiple generations prompts a plethora of questions, many of which impact discussions regarding regulatory significance. While the environmental issues involved with antibiotics (development of pathogen resistance.) and sex steroids ("endocrine disruption") are the most widely recognized, numerous other therapeutic and consumer-use classes of PPCPs pose environmental questions.

Record Details:

Record Type:DOCUMENT( PRESENTATION/ ABSTRACT)
Product Published Date:03/09/2001
Record Last Revised:06/06/2005
Record ID: 61221