Environmental Pollution Due to Veterinary Pharmaceuticals in Treated Veterinary Wastewater

Department of Civil Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract: This study comes to summarize the recent bibliography on the detection of veterinary pharmaceuticals (VPs) in water and wastewater, outline the relevant legislation and removal methods, and finally pinpoint the available tools for tracking the evolution of such chemicals in the watercourse. Since the quantity of drugs supplied to animals is unavoidably increasing, measures must be taken to protect the environment and the living organisms, from the cumulative effects of concentrations of chemicals, either by treating livestock wastewater (LWW) more effectively, and/or by constraining the treated LWW from entering sensitive aquifers. The extent of groundwater pollution from VPs is studied by tracking a hypothetical sewage leakage from a LWW treatment plant and the possible infiltration of chemicals in groundwater. The GMS-MT3DMS model is used and evaluated. The model simulates the evolution of a pollutant in terms of advection, dispersion, adsorption and degradation. The study shows that the applied modeling tool can be effectively used to predict the level of the caused environmental pollution, given the soil and water characteristics, as well as the chemical properties of the potential animal drugs contained in LWW. The model can also be used to optimize the location of injection and pumping wells, in order to direct the plume away from sensitive aquifers.