Detection, identification and determination of chiral pharmaceutical residues in wastewater: Problems and challenges

Chiral pharmaceuticals (CPs) are widely used in different areas of human life, thus they are frequently detected in different ecosystems. However, before CPs reach the environment, wastewater is subjected to different treatment processes in order to remove them. Nevertheless, such processes may affect the chirality of CPs, thus it is very important to monitor CP levels during the wastewater treatment. This review addresses the present state of knowledge concerning the input, occurrence, fate and effects of CPs in the environment. It focuses primarily on wastewater analysis, problems and challenges connected with trace levels of CP enantiomers and highly complex matrices of samples. Analytical approaches used in detection, identification and determination of enantiomers are presented. The application of the results of wastewater analysis to obtain information on the population's health and behaviour has been included and discussed. Moreover, the prospects of the future trends in green enantiomeric analysis are described. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.