Cytoxicity and cytostatic drug removal in a membrane bioreactor from wastewater

The growing use of antineoplastic drugs in cancer therapy is an emerging issue in environmental research. The presence of the anticancer drug cyclophosphamide (CP) in municipal wastewater raises several environmental problems. Besides its cytotoxic effects, CP possesses teratogenic and mutagenic properties and is a known human carcinogen. The application of membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology was investigated with the aim of evaluating its potential for cytostatic drug bioremoval. The toxicity removal was assessed from biomarkers tests and related to the choice of the reactor operating conditions. The influence of sludge retention times (SRT) on CP removal was suited but not significant effects were found for variation of SRT from 50 days to 70 days. CP removal up to 80% was achieved under studied operating conditions. In front of such pollution, evidence has been made about the use of MBR. Our study proofed that advances wastewater treatment using a MBR provides a suitable process for lowering CP concentrations before discharge into the aqueous environment. However, a tertiary treatment is necessary for the complete elimination of toxicity