Human pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment: A challenge to green chemistry

Pharmaceutical industry design trends essentially guarantee that in the years to come, persistent active pharmaceutical ingredients (API)-derived pollutants will increase in concentrations and diversity in aquatic systems. It is believed that green chemistry will be able to address these pharmaceuticals in the environment (PIE) problems especially by providing effective methodologies for decomposing APIs in water. This can be done by replacing persistent pharmaceuticals with a new set of drug products designed to incorporate an added criterion that can facilitate rapid removal upon release to the environment. This could take the form of a built in chemical switch that would need to be not activated by any of the body's diverse chemistries but activated upon excretion. Removal can also be achieved via the attachment of affinity groups that could facilitate quantitative sorption on some support to be employed at treatment plants. However, the structure-function-related pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics of important drugs entail numerous subtle and demanding requirements. The development of green products and degradation technologies will help protect pharmaceutical industry from future potential liabilities.