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水平，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排放。因此，水部门热衷于推进这一领域的知识。水务部门和监管机构已优先对与心血管疾病、肥胖、糖尿病和抑郁/焦虑等疾病有关的药物化合物进行进一步调查。其中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进行更好的控制和处理。然而，这将导致废水处理、嵌入式和运营碳的成本大幅增加，以及水费的增加。这还不算对社会造成的更广泛的成本，这是加剧问题的两倍。因此，目前的状况是不可持续的，需要进行颠覆性的变革。该项目的目的是提供数据和证据，以帮助促进这一变化。该项目将侧重于利用强大的质谱技术开发水指纹方法：三重四极杆分析用于选定的药物靶点，高分辨率质谱用于环境和公共卫生决定因素的非靶点/回顾性分析。水指纹有可能彻底改变健康-由于城市水可以被视为社区和周围环境健康状况的诊断媒介，因此，它可以提供实时和具有成本效益的全社区公共卫生诊断。发展时空水指纹的质谱聚焦框架2。对在Somer山谷收集的废水样本（废水和接收环境）进行分析，以确定环境和公共卫生决定因素（药物、代谢物、内源性标记物）的时空趋势。进行数据三角测量，以验证环境和公共卫生状况和风险评估，以便开发和应用一种方法作为研究区域公共卫生状况的衡量标准和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.