Pharmaceutical contamination in soil and air has become a critical environmental concern due to its widespread sources, complex behavior, and long-lasting ecological impacts. A review in Environmental Pollution and Management explores the presence, fate, and effects of pharmaceutical compounds in soil, highlighting their entry routes, environmental persistence, and biological consequences. It provides valuable insights into an underexplored dimension of pharmaceutical pollution, aiming to inform future policy development and environmental protection efforts.
Pharmaceuticals infiltrate terrestrial and aquatic environments through various pathways, including agricultural application, pharmaceutical manufacturing waste, sewage sludge, hospital and household discharges, irrigation with contaminated water, and atmospheric deposition. A wide range of drug classes, such as antibiotics, analgesics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, antidepressants, anticancer drugs, and hormones, have been identified in both soil and air matrices worldwide.
The review highlights key processes that affect pharmaceutical behavior in the environment, including adsorption of soil particles, degradation, leaching into deeper layers, airborne deposition, and bioaccumulation in organisms. “These processes significantly influence their environmental mobility and toxicity,” says co-author Md Saydur Rahman. “The presence of pharmaceuticals alters soil microbial communities, reduces biodiversity, and disrupts plant growth and crop productivity.”
Furthermore, terrestrial animals and wildlife exposed to airborne pharmaceutical residues face physiological and behavioral disturbances, raising significant ecological and health concerns.
“This review also highlights the urgent need for interdisciplinary research to better understand the dynamics of pharmaceuticals in soil and their long-term implications for ecosystem health and sustainability,” says Rahman.
The authors also recommended innovative strategies to minimize contamination, including advanced waste-treatment technologies and sustainable pharmaceutical practices.
###
Contact the author:
Md Saydur Rahman
School of Integrative Biological and Chemical Sciences, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville, Texas, USA.
The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 200 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).
Environmental Pollution and Management
Literature review
Cells
A Critical Review of Pharmaceutical Pollutants in Soil and Air: Ecotoxicological Impacts on Animal, Plant and Microbial Communities—Health Hazards and Waste Management.
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.