Occurrence, analysis and removal of pesticides, hormones, pharmaceuticals, and other contaminants in soil and water streams for the past two decades: a review

Chemical waste constitutes a group of environmental pollutants including pesticides, heavy metals, hormones, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare products that are widely distributed in our environment due to their wide use in various human activities. The presence of these compounds within local communities and ecosystems has drawn significant interest in improving the detection and bioremediation efforts of these compounds. Since these pollutants are highly mobile and stable under ambient conditions, there is a need to detect such pollutants in water and soil samples as an initial step that helps to eliminate their effect through adsorption or photocatalytic degradation processes. This review aims to highlight the origin of these pollutants and recent advancements in available analytical tools to detect such pollutants in environmental samples with a focus on pesticides, hormones, and pharmaceutical products. The environmental ecosystems of focus in this review involve soil, groundwater, and freshwater ecosystems. Various extraction and other pretreatment processes were also highlighted with a major focus on methods reported to decontaminate and help the environment through photocatalytic degradation of these pollutants under various conditions. Graphical abstract