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Pharmaceutical Formulations As Prescription Or Over The Counter Medications

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Pharmaceutical formulations as prescription or over-the-counter medications are used to treat human and animal disease conditions (Thiele-Bruhn and Beck, 2005). Generally, drugs and other related compounds are biologically active and their molecular weights may range from 200 to 500 / 1000 Dalton. Currently, there is paucity of information on the total global administration of drugs to humans and animals. Despite the unavailability of data, sales in 2004 alone totaled $518 billion (Kümmerer, 2009). An increase to about $1.2 trillion by 2016 is expected due to the influence of merging markets, biologics and generics (IMS Health, 2012). Consequently, increased production, sales and ingestion of pharmaceutical chemicals (PHCs) may translate to higher residues in the environment. Typically, an ingested drug becomes metabolized and a part is excreted through urine and / or feces possibly in different forms. However, their removal during conventional wastewater treatments is inefficient because of their nature (Zuehlke et al., 2004; Daughton, 2007). Prescription (branded and non-branded) and over-the-counter medication are the major classifications of pharmaceutical products available to the United States (U.S.) population. Previous studies have detected chemicals in wastewaters, effluents and surface waters in the past. For example, several organic compounds were found in UK estuaries (Thomas and Hilton, 2004), Spanish waters (Gaffney et al., 2015) and source water from
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