Removal of Pharmaceuticals from Water: Conventional and Alternative Treatments

Pharmaceuticals represent an especially worrying class of micropollutants because they are biologically active. Thus, their occurrence in the aquatic environment may cause undesirable effects in living organisms and, if present in water sources for human consumption, may constitute a public health issue. Actually, wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), which were not designed for the removal of pharmaceuticals and cannot guarantee their full elimination, are considered hotspots for their dissemination in natural waters. In this context, the present Special Issue (SI) was launched to contribute to the assessment of the current challenges and advances on the removal of pharmaceuticals from wastewater. The SI consists of seven works with any of two different perspectives: (i) fate and removal of pharmaceuticals by conventional treatments applied in existing WWTP; (ii) advanced and alternative green approaches to remove pharmaceuticals from water. The papers in this SI included five experimental works, two literature reviews, and one case study, all of them presenting unconventional approaches, original views, innovative research and/or novel methodologies. We hope that readers of this SI published by Water may find these papers useful for their research or actual activity and may share the findings with their colleagues and community stakeholders.