Abstract

CORREIA, Angelina  and  MARCANO, Lily. Evaluation of the income routes of domestic use pharmaceutical compounds to the environment study case: Municipaly of Vallencia, Carabobo state,Venezuela. Rev. Int. Contam. Ambient [online]. 2016, vol.32, n.1, pp.77-86. ISSN 0188-4999.

Pharmaceutical products of human consumption are used in big amounts in Venezuela. As there is an increase in their use, the concern about their destination and their potential ecotoxicological effects specially on water bodies (where many drugs have been detected worldwide) has come up. The main income routes of domestic medicines to enter the environment are represented by the consumption itself through the excretion of the pharmaceutical component and also by the disposal of medicine leftovers. The purpose of this study was to evaluate these two income routes through the estimation of the consumption patterns, storage and disposal of six pharmacological groups in the Municipality of Valencia, Carabobo State, Venezuela. For this objective, a survey was applied to a sample of 1152 people, from which it was estimated that 83 % of the medicines are consumed, while 17 % of the leftovers are stored. Regarding the latter, 40 % are consumed afterwards and 60 % are discarded, mainly along with other household waste. This amounts a total of 89 % for consumption, 10 % for disposal and 1 % for donations. Finally, a model was used to estimate the partition of six pharmaceutical compounds between soil and water, where it was demonstrated that discarding with common waste represents an important income pathway for drugs into the soil. Moreover, as the amount of excreted drugs increases and the percentage of removal in the treatment plants diminishes the affectation to water increases upon that to the soil.

Keywords : drugs; metabolism; wastewater treatment; disposal.

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