Medicinal products in the environment: novel strategies reducing environmental exposure

由于药物对自然环境和人类的影响，迫切需要降低环境中的药物含量，并遵守不断变化的水质法规。环境中的药物主要来自废水处理厂处理后的废水的排放。因此，水务部门热衷于促进这一领域的知识。水务部门和监管机构已优先对药物化合物进行进一步调查，这些药物是针对心血管疾病、肥胖症、糖尿病和抑郁/焦虑等疾病开出的。一些情况与生活方式的选择有关。为了减少环境中的药物负荷，可能需要在废水处理厂加强控制和处理。然而，这将导致废水处理成本、嵌入碳和运行碳的大幅增加，以及水费的增加。这还不包括疾病给社会带来的更广泛的代价，使问题恶化需要付出两倍的代价。因此，目前的局势是不可持续的，需要颠覆性的改变。这个项目的目的是提供数据和证据，帮助推动这一变化。该项目将专注于利用强大的质谱学技术开发水指纹方法：对选定的药物目标进行三重四极杆分析，并对环境和公共卫生决定因素进行非目标/回溯性分析的高分辨率质谱学。由于城市水可被视为社区和周围环境健康状况的诊断媒介，因此水指纹分析具有变革医疗保健提供的潜力，因为它可以提供实时且具有成本效益的公共卫生诊断。该项目将：1.开发专注于质谱学的时空水指纹框架。对在萨默河流域收集的纵向样本(废水和接收环境)进行分析，以确定环境和公共健康决定因素(药物、代谢物、内源形成的标记)的时空趋势。进行数据三角测量，以核实环境和公共卫生状况以及风险评估，以便制定和应用一种方法，作为衡量所研究区域公共卫生状况的一种手段，并作为预先评估干预措施有效性的工具。

There is an urgent need to reduce pharmaceutical levels in the environment due their impact on natural environmentand humans, as well as to comply with changing water quality regulations. Pharmaceuticals in the environment aremainly attributed to the discharge of treated effluent from wastewater treatment works. The water sector is thereforekeen to advance knowledge in this area. The water sector and regulators have prioritised pharmaceutical compoundsfor further investigation, which are prescribed in relation to conditions such as cardiovascular disease, obesity,diabetes and depression/anxiety. Some of the conditions are related to lifestyle choices.To reduce the load of pharmaceuticals in the environment, greater control and treatment at wastewater treatmentworks could be needed. However, this would lead to a significant increase in the costs of wastewater treatment,embedded and operational carbon in addition to an increase in water bills. This is in addition to the wider costs ofillness to society, which pays twice to exacerbate a problem. The current situation is therefore unsustainable andneeds disruptive change. The intention of this project is to provide the data and evidence to help prompt thatchange.This project will focus on the development of water fingerprinting approaches with utilisation of powerful massspectrometry techniques: triple quadrupole analysis for selected pharmaceutical targets and high-resolution massspectrometry for non-target/retrospective analysis of environmental and public health determinants.Water fingerprinting has the potential to revolutionise health-care provision as it can provide real-time and costeffectivecommunity-wide public health diagnostics, since urban water can be considered as a diagnostic medium forthe health status of a community and surrounding environment.The project will:1. Develop mass spectrometry focussed frameworks for spatiotemporal water fingerprinting2. Undertake analysis of longitud inal samples collected in the Somer Valley (wastewater and receiving environment)to establish spatiotemporal trends in environmental and public health determinants (pharmaceuticals, metabolites,endogenously formed markers).3. Undertake data triangulation to verify environmental and public health status and risk assessmentIn order to develop and apply an approach as a measure of public health status in the studied region and tool forevaluating the effectiveness of interventions.