AIRE-PPCP: AI for risk assessment, environmental monitoring, and remediation of pharmaceutical and personal care products: A review

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are considered chemicals of emerging concern. These products include antihistamines, antimicrobials, hormones, chemotherapy drugs, and a variety of cosmetic additives. These compounds are widely utilized in disease prevention, husbandry and growth promoters in agriculture and as veterinary drugs. The global use of these compounds has shown an increase in the past few decades. However, the distribution and occurrence of these persistent organic compounds in the water bodies are of major concern as far as the demands for clean water by the global population have increased. These contaminants have been observed throughout the world and also have the potential for bioaccumulation in organisms of different trophic levels. The major route of release of the PPCPs in the environment is excretion by humans into wastewater systems, and their persistence during wastewater treatment following the discharge into the environment with treated wastewater effluent. These micro pollutants even at low doses are detrimental to living organisms. Thus, the management of PPCPs in the environment has become a social concern. The present review highlights the major sources, features and physiochemical properties of PPCPs. The occurrence of PPCPs in aquatic ecosystems, wastewater and sewage treatment plants, as well as the different technologies used for the removal of these contaminants, has also been discussed , further shedding light on micro-algae-based removal of these contaminants. In the last section, this review has taken into account the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the remediation of PPCPs.