ANALYSIS OF TRACE LEVELS OF PHARMACEUTICAL COMPOUNDS IN SURFACE WATERS IN THE REGION OF EPIRUS (GREECE)

During the last few decades, the impact of chemical pollution has focused almost exclusively on the conventional "priority" pollutants. However, the growing use of pharmaceuticals and personal care products, classified as the so-called emerging contaminants, has become a new environmental problem, which has awakened great concern among scientists. Despite that pharmaceuticals, which are found in very low concentrations, have been studied widely, there is still a lack of knowledge about longterm risks that the presence of a large variety of drugs may pose. Due to their high consumption, pharmaceuticals and their metabolites are continuously introduced to sewage waters, mainly through excreta, disposal of unused or expired drugs or directly from pharmaceutical discharges. Their removal during wastewater treatment processes is rather low and as a result, they are found in surface, ground and drinking waters. Consequently, there is a need to develop reliable analytical methods, which enable their rapid, sensitive and selective determination in environmental samples, at trace levels. In the present study, the occurrence of 19 pharmaceutical compounds, belonging to various therapeutic classes, was investigated in surface waters, in the region of Epirus. These pharmaceuticals were the non-steroidal antinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) salicylic acid, indomethacine, ketoprofen and mefenamic acid, the antiobiotics erythromycin, sulfamethazine and sulfamethoxazole, the antipsychotic risperidone, the antihyperlipidaemic bezafibrate, the estrogen estriol, the H2-antagonist cimetidine, the glucocorticoid steroid budesonide and the beta- blocker atenolol. Pharmaceuticals were identified and quantified using LC-ESI-MS method after extraction by SPE procedure. The average concentrations varied depending on the sampling station. The determined concentrations were in agreement with the levels reported by other researchers in river water samples. This routine analysis of pharmaceuticals can be useful tool to know the amount of pharmaceuticals discharged to the aquatic environment.