School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
Sci Total Environ. 2020 Jul 1;724:137947. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137947. Epub 2020 Mar 19.
Pharmaceutical consumption has expanded rapidly during the last century and their persistent presence in the environment has become a major concern. Unfortunately, our understanding of the distribution of pharmaceuticals in surface water and their effects on aquatic biota and public health is limited. Here, we explore patterns in the detection rate of the most frequently studied pharmaceuticals in 64 rivers from 22 countries using bi-clustering algorithms and subsequently analyze the results in the context of regional differences in pharmaceutical consumption habits, social and environmental factors, and removal-efficiency of wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). We find that 20% of the pharmaceuticals included in this analysis are pervasively present in all the surface waterbodies. Several pharmaceuticals also display low overall positive detection rates; however, they exhibit significant spatial variability and their detection rates are consistently lower in Western European and North America (WEOG) rivers in comparison to Asian rivers. Our analysis suggests the important role of pharmaceutical consumption and population in governing these patterns, however the role of WWTP efficiency appeared to be limited. We were constrained in our ability to assess the role of hydrology, which most likely also plays an important role in regulating pharmaceuticals in rivers. Most importantly though, we demonstrate the ability of our algorithm to provide probabilistic estimates of the detection rate of pharmaceuticals that were not studied in a river, an exercise that could be useful in prioritizing pharmaceuticals for future study.
在上个世纪，药品的消费迅速增长，它们在环境中的持续存在已成为一个主要关注点。不幸的是，我们对地表水中药品的分布及其对水生生物和公众健康的影响的了解是有限的。在这里，我们使用双聚类算法探索了来自 22 个国家的 64 条河流中最常研究的药品的检测率模式，并随后在药品消费习惯、社会和环境因素以及废水处理厂（WWTP）的去除效率方面的区域差异的背景下分析结果。我们发现，在这项分析中包含的 20%的药品普遍存在于所有地表水体内。还有几种药品的总体阳性检出率也较低；然而，它们表现出显著的空间变异性，与亚洲河流相比，西欧和北美（WEOG）河流中的检出率明显较低。我们的分析表明，药品消费和人口是控制这些模式的重要因素，但 WWTP 效率的作用似乎有限。我们受到限制，无法评估水文学的作用，而水文学很可能在调节河流中的药品方面也起着重要作用。不过，最重要的是，我们展示了我们的算法能够对未在河流中研究的药品的检测率进行概率估计的能力，这一练习对于确定未来研究的药品优先级可能很有用。
