Chronic Mixture Toxicity of Pharmaceuticals to Daphnia – The Example of Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs
Chronic Mixture Toxicity of Pharmaceuticals to Daphnia – The Example of Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs
复制标题
DOI:
10.1007/978-3-540-74664-5_17
复制
发表时间:
2008
期刊:
影响因子:
--
通讯作者:
M. Cleuvers
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
M. Cleuvers
The release of pharmaceuticals and their metabolites to the environment is an issue of increasing importance. This emission to the aquatic environment took place in large amounts for many years, in fact mostly as complex mixtures via the effluents of sewage treatment plants and sludge. Because the importance of this diffuse pollution of the aquatic environment has been recognized, the European Medicines Agency has recently published a guideline on the environmental risk assessment of medicinal products for human use (EMEA 2006). Nevertheless, the number of studies dealing with the effects of pharmaceutical residues on aquatic organisms and risk assessment is still limited (Henschel et al. 1997; Backhaus and Grimme 1999; Webb 2001; Cleuvers 2002, 2003; Jones et al. 2002; Ferrari et al. 2003; Schwaiger et al. 2004; Triebskorn et al. 2004), particularly regarding long-term studies. Only very few studies have observed the effects of mixtures (Silva et al. 2002; Cleuvers 2004, 2005). Among the detected substances, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), including compounds used as analgesics, belong to one of the most important groups of pharmaceuticals worldwide, with an estimated annual production of several kilotons. In Germany, for example, 93.5 million prescriptions for these substances were written in 2002, with a transaction volume of about 1 562 million Euro (Schwabe and Paffrath 2003). Additionally, some of these drugs are sold as “over the counter”(OTC-drugs) without prescription, so that actual consumption is certainly even higher. As a result of this high application rate as well as the drugs’ pharmacokinetics (half-life, urinary and fecal excretion, metabolism, etc.), analgesics and anti-inflammatory drugs can reach considerable (up to> 1 µg l–1) concentrations in the environment (Stumpf et al. 1996; Ternes 1998, 2001; Ternes et al. 1998; Heberer et al. 1998, 2002). Some substances could be found in very low doses even in drinking water (Heberer et al. 2001a). Findings of diclofenac and ibuprofen have also been reported from other countries, for example, from Swiss lakes and rivers (Buser et al. 1998, 1999; Tixier et al. 2003; Tauxe-Wuersch et al. 2005), as well as from the United Kingdom (Ashton et al. 2004), Brazil (Stumpf et al. 1999), Spain (Farre et al. 2001), Greece (Heberer et al. 2001a; Koutsouba et al. 2003), and the United States (Heberer et al. 2001b), to name just a few. Previous studies (Cleuvers 2003, 2004) revealed that acute toxicities were relatively low, with half-maximal effective concentration (EC50) values obtained using Daphnia in the range from 68 to 166 mg l–1 and from 72 to 626 mg l–1 in the algal test. Thus,