NATO SPS ASI G5535 CETRARO 2019 “DETECTION, DIAGNOSIS, AND HEALTH CONCERNS OF TOXIC CHEMICAL BIOLOGICAL AGENTS"

Water pollution is becoming dramatic because of increasingly invasive and deleterious anthropic activities. A significant number of contaminants called "Emerging Pollutants” (EPs) resulting from point and diffuse pollution are present in the aquatic environment. These compounds, belonging to pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, surfactants, personal care products, analgesics, antibiotics, hormones and a whole range of other pharmaceutical compounds including anti-inflammatory, anti- diabetic, and antiepileptic drugs, are not commonly monitored but have the potential to enter the environment and cause adverse ecological and human health effects (1). The threat lies in the fact that the environmental and human toxinology of most of these compounds has not been well addressed yet and many of these compounds are not removed by the conventional WasteWater Treatment Plants (WWTPs). Moreover, when these contaminants pass through the drinking water treatment systems undergo trasformations that generate derivative substances whose chemical properties remain undetermined. For this reason, it is necessary to try to find low-cost and easy-to-handle alternative methods to solve this vast problem. Fluoroquinolones, which are powerful antibiotics used in human and veterinary medicine for the treatment of diseases and infections are among the drugs most frequently found in environmental waters along with sulfonamides, tetracyclines and macrolides. The synergistic action of these drugs can cause what is known as "bacterial resistance", which is the cause of 700,000 annually people death in worldwide due to resistant infections according to Joint Research Center (JRC) 2018 report.. This means that if no action is taken the estimated annual deaths attributable to bacterial resistance will be 10 million by 2050. Adsorption by using porous materials (like activated carbon, polymeric resins, natural clay and organoclay complex adsorbents) was found to be one of the most simple, efficient, cost-effective, flexible methods to remove fluoroquinolonesin the wastewater treatment process. However, this technique does not lead to the complete removal of parent chemicals and their degradation products and, consequently, other treatments are needed for their mineralization. Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) can be a good choice because, basically, involve the generation of highly reactive free radicals, which convert the organic contaminants into final non-toxic by-products. Among the various semiconductors employed, TiO2 is the most preferable material for the photo-catalytic process (high photosensitivity, non-toxic nature, large band gap, chemical stability and low cost). In this research the photocatalytic activity of this semiconductor immobilized onto the surface of glass borosilicate tubes was evaluated on levofloxacin (trade name Levaquin and other), which is an antibiotic used to treat a number of bacterial infections including acute bacterial sinusitis, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, chronic prostatitis, and some types of gastroenteritis. Kinetics of photoreactions were determined in ultrapure and ground water samples spiked with levofloxacin and photoproducts where identified by liquid chromatography coupled with micrOTOF-Q-II-Mass Spectrometer (LC-MS, Bruker Daltonik GmbH, Bremen).