Title: Toxicity due to Release and Accumulation of Pharmaceuticals and their Metabolites in the Global Environment: A Growing Concern!

Abstract:

Drugs are and an integral part of our daily lives and are used for our healthcare and well being but the extensive and uncontrolled usage of drugs under different classes such as antibiotics, analgesics, antipyretics, antidepressant, anticonvulsants, beta-blockers, steroids, antihypertensive etc. pose high environmental and human health hazards when released and accumulated in the global environment. Recently, accumulation of pharmaceuticals as emerging pollutants, intermediates and raw materials in environment has received great attention all over the world due to their frequent detection in aquatic environment as different group of organic contaminants. Still, there is a lack of awareness concerning pharmaceutical quantities and their metabolites, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), metabolism and transformation pathways, and their  nature; when passed in to the environment.