What is it about?
Many pharmaceuticals are now being detected in natural waters, leading to concern about negative environmental effects. Benzodiazepines (e.g. valium) can affect fish behaviour lending urgency to understanding the environmental threat posed by the compounds and related products. This article reports results of a study to test the removal of valium and a related compound from river water. We found that microbes can completely remove these molecules if the environmental conditions are appropriate.
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Why is it important?
Benzodiazepines may produce negative ecological effects in surface waters. We found that a benzodiazepine (diazepam) and its photo-degradation product, a benzophenone (ACB), were taken up by riverine bacterio-plankton communities. ACB was completely degraded to ammonium. Our study provides a coupled abiotic-biotic degradation model for these compounds in surface waters based on experimental data, and can make an important contribution to the development of robust environmental risk assessments.
Perspectives
The benefits of pharmaceutical medicines to humans and animals are undisputed. Nonetheless, the evidence of accumulations within environmental systems, and the possibility of changes in the ecological behaviour of aquatic organisms exposed to these compounds, means that there is now a tension between the availability of certain medicines and ecosystem health. Robust experimental work to determine the fate of widely prescribed pharmaceuticals, such as diazepam (valium), in receiving environments like surface waters is a key component of the risk assessment process.
Dr Mark F Fitzsimons
University of Plymouth
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Bacterio-plankton transformation of diazepam and 2-amino-5-chlorobenzophenone in river waters, Environmental Science Processes & Impacts, January 2014, Royal Society of Chemistry,
DOI: 10.1039/c4em00306c.
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