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Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products: Recommendations to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority Outfall Monitoring Science Advisory Panel
Citation:
Callaghan, T., M. Cantwell, M. Cashman, A. Robuck, P. Burn, AND J. Pederson. Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products: Recommendations to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority Outfall Monitoring Science Advisory Panel. MIT Sea Grant, Cambridge, MA, 2022.
Impact/Purpose:
This technical fact sheet summarizes scientific literature on impacts to marine organisms from contaminants associated with wastewater. This fact sheet specificially focuses on pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs). PPCPs enter marine waters from wastewater effluents and can pose threat to marine organisms. Here, the fate and toxicity of common PPCP pollutants are summarized from scientific literature. This fact sheet prioritizes particular PPCPs based on their fate and effects in the marine environment. This fact sheet recommends that the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority (MWRA) addresses these PPCPs to minimize their impacts on Massachusetts Bay.
Description:
An ad hoc focus group of scientists, government agencies, and members of the public interested in the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) sewage discharge to Massachusetts Bay convened in 2019 and 2020 to review the scientific literature on impacts to marine organisms from contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) associated with wastewater discharges. A subset of the ad hoc group focused specifically on pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs). Here we summarize what the ad hoc focus group learned about: 1) the types of chemicals that are classified as PPCPs and their origins; 2) where PPCPS are found in the aquatic environment; 3) the effects of PPCPs on marine organisms; and 4) strategies for identifying and prioritizing chemicals of interest from an extensive candidate list. In recent years, advances in instrumentation have allowed for the detection of PPCPs in water, sediment, and biota, typically at concentrations on the order of parts per billion or trillion. At such low levels, PPCPs have not been shown to have acute effects, although there is evidence that at ambient concentrations several classes of PPCPs can induce chronic effects in marine taxa including: oxidative stress, neurotoxicity, inhibited development, metabolic changes, and reduced mobility. In addition, several studies document the bioaccumulation of PPCPs under ambient aquatic conditions. Recommendations are offered to address the issue of PPCPs entering Massachusetts Bay from the MWRA outfall.
URLs/Downloads:
https://seagrant.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Framework_Understanding_Contaminants_Concern_7_2022.pdf