Adsorptive Removal of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals from Aqueous Solutions: a Review

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are pollutants with adverse effects even at very low concentrations; they remain a major concern for water quality. There is a strong link between environmental matrices such as water, soil, and human health. This implies that releasing these pollutants into the environment gets to the human system through contaminated air, water, and food. EDCs pose adverse effects on the endocrine systems of humans and wildlife and act as agents that interrupt metabolism, transport, synthesis, secretion, or elimination of natural blood-borne hormones present in the human body, which are responsible for the development, reproduction, and homeostasis process. The molecular group known as an endocrine disruptor is extremely heterogeneous, including the usage of synthetic chemicals in industrial solvents, lubricants and their by-products (such as 1,2-dichloroethane, 17 alpha-ethinylestradiol, 17 beta-estradiol, 2,4-dichlorophenol, acetaminophen, amoxicillin, antiretroviral, benzotriazole, bisphenol A, carbamazepine, ciprofloxacin, diclofenac, ibuprofen, ketoprofen, naproxen, paracetamol, phenol, tetracycline, metformin, etc. discussed in this work). Natural chemicals in food can also act as endocrine disruptors and some of these chemicals are toxic. Contaminants in water influence all living beings; therefore, to prevent health complications, improve water quality and make it safer in the ecosystem, water must be purified. The complex nature of EDCs has necessitated the development of suitable, robust, and more versatile removal techniques capable of producing the desired result in a very cost-effective manner. The first part of this review addresses source and occurrence of EDCs, available EDC treatment technologies and their drawbacks, and followed by the recent advances in sequestrating EDCs using natural, synthetic (metal-organic frameworks, nanoparticle/nanomaterials), and agricultural waste adsorbents. Influence of different operational parameters on the adsorptive removal of EDCs, mechanism of EDCs sequestration and thermodynamic studies were also discussed. We concluded by providing some useful insights, challenges, and future prospects to foster better efficiency of these adsorbents for EDCs removal to meet various industrial applications.