Occurrence, sources and conventional treatment techniques for various antibiotics present in hospital wastewaters: A critical review

The occurrence and fate of antibiotic in the environment is an uttermost concern due to development of resistant gene and lowering effect of antibiotic on diseases. In India itself, the problem is intense due to extensive & uncontrolled use of drugs at different medical facilities. They get mixed up with ground and surface water due to lack of proper treatment of hospital wastewater before discharging it. As it contains high concentration of antibiotics, drug residues along with certain heavy metals. The contamination due to this is not only limited to water but affects whole ecosystem severely. The concentration of these antibiotics depends upon various factors such as a characteristic of water and soil, irrational water source, cropping forms, seasonal variation of medicines. Many investigations on the toxicity of these antibiotics and their traces in aquatic environment pose serious threats. If we compare treatments with respect to different drugs then we observe that iodinated contrast media shows better removal efficiency in an MBR with UV about 66% of total load and 99% for all other drugs. It can be concluded from this study that use of about 23 mg/L of packed activate carbon with 1.08 g O-3/g of DOC with 2400 J/m(2) UV will be best for achieving high efficiency in drugs removal. In this paper, our main objective was to review the occurrences and fate of common drugs and antibiotics present in effluents from hospital wastewaters. These effluents get mixed up the others streams of water and are used in various purposes like irrigation and other domestic activities, thus making the situation more complex. The conventional adopted treatment techniques for these hospital effluents are also discussed in detail. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.