Detection and Treatment of Persistent Pollutants in Water: General Review of Pharmaceutical Products

ABSTRACT

Environmental problems of great complexity arise from the enormous number of toxic substances that are generated by anthropogenic activities. Seemingly, society encounters new issues every day thus these problems seem to be endless. Now in the face of the COVID‐19 pandemic and the SARS‐CoV‐2 crisis, a large number of emerging treatment compounds generated by pharmaceutical companies worldwide makes future issues even more treacherous. For this reason, there is an increasing need to detect and treat emerging compounds to prevent them from becoming persistent pollutants. This review describes the advances in the use of electrochemical sensors with modified carbon‐based electrodes among other issues, to determine antibiotics, anti‐inflammatories and antidepressants levels in the environment. It further explores technologies suggested for cleaning wastewater polluted by pharmaceutical products using biological or advanced oxidation processes including photolysis, photocatalysis, microwave heating, ultrasound, Fenton, electro‐Fenton, photoelectro‐Fenton and various combined treatments.We, the authors, dedicate this report, with love, to all the people afflicted by COVID-19 during the pandemic arising from SARS-CoV-2. In particular, we wish to honor the medical people who have and continue to help affected patients, and the medical researchers who generate the medicines and vaccines for all of us.