Ecotoxicological tools to assess the adverse effects of cytostatics in freshwater environments

Abstract

Cytostatic drugs are a class of pharmaceuticals widely used for cancer treatment. Thus, their discharge to environmental matrices is inevitable and they have become a great environmental problem. There is an urgent need to study and develop technologies aimed at the treatment and remediation of wastewaters receiving these chemicals to reduce their potential environmental effects. Accordingly, this work used ecotoxicological studies to: i) predict the environmental impacts of three cytostatics in freshwater biota; ii) evaluate the efficiency of a new methodology to remove cytostatic from the urine of oncologic patients. This was accomplished using standard species, belonging to three key functional groups.