Читать книгу Analytical Methods for Environmental Contaminants of Emerging Concern - Группа авторов - Страница 29

It has already been more than 20 years since the problem of pharmaceutical residues in the environment gained huge scientific attention all over the world [1, 2]. In general, pharmaceuticals are chemicals that have been designed to be biologically active at very low doses for therapeutic, prophylactic and preventative purposes. Therefore, they may be classified based on their mode of action or medical purposes. From the chemical point of view, this group of substances is usually referred to as polar and ionizable compounds. However, it should be noted that this is a class of chemicals with a wide range of physico-chemical properties (Figure 2.1) [1]. Based on the selected properties presented in Figure 2.1, pharmaceuticals are compounds with either a very simple chemical structure or a very complicated one, that can be furthermore classified as weak acids/bases or amphoteric compounds [1]. Their structure and hence properties such as acidity and hydrophilicity/lipophilicity influence their fate in the environment. To prove this the estimated adsorption coefficients have also been presented in Figure 2.1, highlighting that some of these chemicals might be recognized as very mobile while others present rather strong sorption potential to soil and sediments [3, 4]. This also explains why pharmaceuticals have been detected in many different environmental compartments [1–3, 5–10].

Figure 2.1 Selected properties of pharmaceuticals.