Detection of Emerging Pollutants Oxytetracycline and Paracetamol and the Potential Aquatic Ecological Risk Associated with their Presence in Surface Waters of the Arges-Vedea, Buzau-Ialomita, Dobrogea-Litoral River Basins in Romania

Pharmaceuticals are a major group of emerging pollutants frequently identified in surface waters. The occurrence of pharmaceuticals as environmental pollutants is a problem involving multiple aspects and continue to cause new and serious challenges to ecosystems and human health. For example, antibiotics exert a selective pressure on bacterial communities in aquatic environments, leading to the selection and increase in the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which is a major problem in the effective treatment of bacterial infections, while for analgesics, a number of adverse effects such as accumulation in tissues and behavioral changes were observed in aquatic organisms. In this paper, the detection by UHPLC-MS/MS of two widely used pharmaceuticals was performed, oxytetracycline (antibiotic) and paracetamol (analgesic) respectively, in surface water matrix from the Arges-Vedea, Buzau-Ialomita and Dobrogea-Litoral river basins in Romania. The potential aquatic ecological risk (RQ) was also estimated by the ratio between Measured Environmental Concentration (MEC) and Predicted No-Effect Concentration (PNEC).