TY - JOUR
T1 - Pollution of Soil by Pharmaceuticals
T2 - Implications for Metazoan and Environmental Health
AU - Zhang, Chubin
AU - Barron, Leon P.
AU - Stürzenbaum, Stephen R.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2025 by the author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See credit lines of images or other third-party material in this article for license information.
PY - 2025/1/23
Y1 - 2025/1/23
N2 - The use of pharmaceuticals has grown substantially and their consequential release via wastewaters poses a potential threat to aquatic and terrestrial environments. While transportation prediction models for aquatic environments are well established, they cannot be universally extrapolated to terrestrial systems. Pharmaceuticals and their metabolites are, for example, readily detected in the excreta of terrestrial organisms (including humans). Furthermore, the trophic transfer of pharmaceuticals to and from food webs is often overlooked, which in turn highlights a public health concern and emphasizes the pressing need to elucidate how today’s potpourri of pharmaceuticals affect the terrestrial system, their biophysical behaviors, and their interactions with soil metazoans. This review explores the existing knowledge base of pharmaceutical exposure sources, mobility, persistence, (bio)availability, (bio)accumulation, (bio)magnification, and trophic transfer of pharmaceuticals through the soil and terrestrial food chains.
AB - The use of pharmaceuticals has grown substantially and their consequential release via wastewaters poses a potential threat to aquatic and terrestrial environments. While transportation prediction models for aquatic environments are well established, they cannot be universally extrapolated to terrestrial systems. Pharmaceuticals and their metabolites are, for example, readily detected in the excreta of terrestrial organisms (including humans). Furthermore, the trophic transfer of pharmaceuticals to and from food webs is often overlooked, which in turn highlights a public health concern and emphasizes the pressing need to elucidate how today’s potpourri of pharmaceuticals affect the terrestrial system, their biophysical behaviors, and their interactions with soil metazoans. This review explores the existing knowledge base of pharmaceutical exposure sources, mobility, persistence, (bio)availability, (bio)accumulation, (bio)magnification, and trophic transfer of pharmaceuticals through the soil and terrestrial food chains.
KW - biosolids
KW - food chain
KW - metabolism
KW - pharmaceuticals
KW - soil
KW - wastewater irrigation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85216715783&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1146/annurev-pharmtox-030124-111214
DO - 10.1146/annurev-pharmtox-030124-111214
M3 - Review article
C2 - 39227350
AN - SCOPUS:85216715783
SN - 0362-1642
VL - 65
SP - 547
EP - 565
JO - ANNUAL REVIEW OF PHARMACOLOGY AND TOXICOLOGY
JF - ANNUAL REVIEW OF PHARMACOLOGY AND TOXICOLOGY
IS - 1
ER -
