Fate of Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products in Treated Sewage during Soil Aquifer Treatment

Abstract

 The fate of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in soil aquifer treatment (SAT) was investigated for the introduction of a water reuse system with SAT in Japan. A series of batch experiments simulating short-term SAT with decomposed granite soil was conducted to evaluate the biodegradability and sorption characteristics on nine PPCPs, and to search microbial transformation products produced through SAT. The degradability of PPCPs greatly varied among the tested PPCPs. Thus, SAT should be combined with WWTP and WTP effectively. In addition, several transformation products were found and their backbone structures were similar to those of original compounds. The risk of these transformation products is yet to be determined, but more serious attention should be paid to the fact that unknown compounds will remain even after SAT and may pose health risks when reused.