Wastewater treatment plants taking discharges from nearby pharmaceutical manufacturers have "substantially" higher concentrations of drugs in the water, according to a new national study.
Full Answer
Why is wastewater from pharmaceutical manufacturing bad for the environment?
Wastewater produced in pharmaceutical manufacturing, in particular, often contains high levels of contaminants. A study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) showed higher concentrations of pharmaceuticals in the discharge from treatment plants that received wastewater from drug manufacturers.
Do well reclamation plants remove harmful drugs from wastewater?
To investigate how well reclamation plants remove potentially harmful drugs and hormones from wastewater, Pedersen and environmental scientists from the University of California Los Angeles tested the water coming out of three Californian treatment plants, two of which produced recycled water used to recharge groundwater.
How is pharmaceutical waste treated in wastewater treatment?
Basically, they achieved a 95 percent purification rate for removing pharmaceutical waste. In brief, the two methods involve a combination of ozonation and granular activated carbon (GAC). What is Ozonation in Wastewater Treatment?
How can in-house wastewater treatment and recycling help pharma manufacturers?
Establishing an in-house wastewater treatment and recycling process will allow pharma manufacturers to address rising operational costs while increasing profitability. Recycling and reusing fluids internally is proven to reduce maintenance, decrease haul-away costs, and prolong the usage of fluids.
How do wastewater treatment plants remove pharmaceuticals?
New research shows that wastewater treatment plants that employ a combination of purifying techniques followed by reverse osmosis – a process by which water is forced through a barrier that only water can pass – do a good job of removing chemicals that may elicit health effects.
How do pharmaceutical companies affect the environment?
Pharmaceuticals may end up in the environment due to effluents from manufacturing facilities, medicines consumed by patients and then excreted, and the improper disposal of unused and expired medicines.
What happens to medicines and other pharmaceuticals in waste streams?
In hospitals, pharmaceutical waste is generally discarded down the drain or landfilled, except chemotherapy agents, which are often sent to a regulated medical waste incinerator.
Do pharmaceutical companies pollute the environment?
The pharmaceutical industry is responsible for some serious environmental impacts beyond greenhouse gas emissions. For example, the waste water from drug manufacturers in Patancheru, India has left river sediment, ground water and drinking water polluted.
How do pharmaceuticals contribute to water pollution?
Pharmaceutical plants are often incapable of filtering out all the chemical compounds used in their manufacturing process and as such, the chemicals will seep into the surrounding freshwater systems and eventually into the oceans, lakes, streams, and rivers.
Why is pharmaceutical waste a problem?
Even in developed countries, wastewater treatment plants are unable to filter out chemical compounds used to manufacture personal care products and drugs, so these chemicals seep into freshwater systems and into the oceans.
How do drugs affect the environment?
Drug production leaves its mark on the environment in several ways. It results in large-scale carbon emissions, water depletion, pollution and biodiversity loss. Each of these effects has monumental short- and long-term implications for all life on Earth. It's vital to acknowledge and understand the consequences.
How does medicine affect the environment?
The medicine is gradually metabolized and what is not absorbed by the body is excreted as waste, free to flow down the drain. The pharmaceutical-laden waste travels through sewer pipes and reaches a wastewater treatment plant, where it is cleaned before being released into the environment.
What waste is generated by pharmaceutical industry?
Generally Pharmaceutical waste may include: • Expired drugs • Patients' discarded personal medications; • Waste materials containing excess drugs (syringes, IV bags, tubing, vials, etc.); • Waste materials containing chemotherapy drug residues; • Open containers of drugs that cannot be used; • Containers that held ...
How does pharmaceutical disposal cause environmental pollution?
Drug pollution or pharmaceutical pollution is pollution of the environment with pharmaceutical drugs and their metabolites, which reach the aquatic environment (groundwater, rivers, lakes, and oceans) through wastewater. Drug pollution is therefore mainly a form of water pollution.
How does pharmaceutical pollution impact the environment?
“This practice has a detrimental impact on vulnerable populations living near manufacturing facilities and wastewater treatment plants in these countries.” The pollution of pharma products into the environment also adversely affects animals, particularly fish living in contaminated water.
How does pharmaceuticals in water affect humans?
These compounds disrupt internal biological processes such as development, growth, and reproduction that are regulated by hormones. Whether these compounds are present in sufficient levels in our waterways to affect human health remains a topic of serious concern and ongoing research.
What is reverse osmosis in wastewater treatment?
New research shows that wastewater treatment plants that employ a combination of purifying techniques followed by reverse osmosis – a process by which water is forced through a barrier that only water can pass – do a good job of removing chemicals that may elicit health effects.
Does reverse osmosis remove contaminants?
The research shows that water-reclamation plants employing reverse osmosis do in fact remove more contaminants. For example, the conventional treatment plant, which after initial treatment still contained detectable levels of 13 of the different contaminants under study, eliminated only five of them from the discharged water.
Does wastewater contain hormones?
As Pedersen explains, wastewater typically contains any number of pharmaceuticals and hormones that people have either excreted or flushed away for easy disposal. Many times, these chemical compounds remain biologically active, he says, adding that some of them, especially hormones such as estrogen, appear to significantly alter aquatic organisms.
Do treatment plants remove drugs from wastewater?
Do treatment plants effectively remove drugs, hormones from wastewater? Given the number of human pharmaceuticals and hormones that make their way into wastewater, some people are concerned about how well treatment plants that turn sewage into reusable water remove these chemical s.
Does well water reclamation remove hormones?
While this treatment process has the promise to save an evaporating natural resource, Pedersen points out that little is known about just how well water-reclamation plants remove the pharmaceuticals and hormones that typically are found in sewage.
How much of the toxins in GAC are removed?
In sum, the study found that GAC removed more than 85 percent of the toxins.
Can you drop off medicine you don't use?
Drop off medicine you don’t use, either prescribed or over the counter, a drug take back site, location, or program. If you can’t get to a take back location, don’t flush medicine down the toilet. Follow these instructions to discard the medicine in your trash at home.
Why are pharmaceutical chemicals not disposed of?
Because pharmaceutical chemicals are designed to be biologically active, it is not surprising that disposal of their production waste products into the environment receives particular regulatory scrutiny in many countries.
What are the effluent guidelines?
The Effluent Guidelines are broad and complex sets of requirements that pervade many aspects of pharmaceutical production and processing. The EPA has produced a Process-Based Self-Assessment Tool for the Organic Chemical Industry (U.S. EPA, 1997) with the aim of providing some level of rationality to assist industry managers and decision-makers. It is intended to help industrial facilities implement a comprehensive environmental management system (EMS) plan tailored to the specific processes and facility so they can plan and operate in the most efficient mode to cope with compliance demands for the myriad requirements. These include self-assessments as part of the EMS to identify integrated and potentially more cost-effective means of achieving compliance. This version is from 1997, so there might be some later revisions available, but they should be fundamentally consistent.
What is the purpose of pretreatment?
They perform permitting, administrative and enforcement tasks for discharges to surface waters (NPDES program). Pretreatment requirements are intended to protect publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) and other sewage treatment systems and to reduce conventional and toxic pollutant levels discharged by industries and other nondomestic wastewater sources into municipal sewer systems and the environment.
How much of wastewater is released into the environment?
According to the 2017 United Nations World Water Development Report, more than 80 percent of all the wastewater from industry, homes, cities and agriculture is released into the environment without adequate treatment and flows back into the ecosystem via lakes, rivers, and other bodies of surface water. This process repeats every day across the planet, polluting the environment while losing valuable nutrients and other recoverable materials in the process.
What is the federal wastewater pretreatment regulation?
The federal wastewater pretreatment regulations for pharma, which are addressed in 40 CFR Part 439, establish standards for fermentation products, extraction products, chemical synthesis products, mixing/compounding and formulation, and research.
What is the Clean Water Act?
Compliance with ever-tightening federal regulations for wastewater treatment, handling and disposal — such as the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) — requires pharma companies to be focused on the wastewater issue.
What does it mean to have a water treatment process in place?
Having a water or wastewater treatment process in place means when the time comes to dispose of wastewater and fluids, companies will have a lower volume to discard, or a concentrated stream they can treat themselves for lower cost handling at the POTW.
How does an oil water separator work?
The clean water is discharged by gravity or through an optional discharge pump to the sewer, or back into the process . Oil water separators reduce haul-away costs up to 90 percent, decrease water consumption, and increase life of soluble oils, washwater, rinse water and pressure wash-down water (or process water). 5.
Is pharmaceutical waste a contaminant?
Wastewater produced in pharmaceutical manufacturing, in particular, often contains high levels of contaminants. A study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) showed higher concentrations of pharmaceuticals in the discharge from treatment plants that received wastewater from drug manufacturers. Effluent received from pharmaceutical facilities ...
Do pharmaceutical companies have to pay for wastewater treatment?
Pharma manufacturers who do not treat and re cycle their wastewater must pay for handling, trucking and treatment by their local Publicly Operated Treatment Works (POTW). These costs can vary based on local water supplies, fuel prices, trucking prices, and the edicts of the POTW. Adding to the expense is the cost of clean water required ...