Micro-pollutants in hospital effluents: their fate, risk and treatment options

This chapter deals with the physicochemical characteristics of hospital effluents, focusing on both macropollutants (conventional contaminants) and micropol-lutants (pharmaceutical compounds, heavy metals and diagnostic agents). It com-pares their typical concentration ranges measured in hospital effluents and urban wastewaters, and then discusses the behaviour of micropollutants, mainly pharmaceutical compounds during common treatment processes and upon their release into the environment, attempting to find correlations with their physical properties. It then goes on to provide an overview of the most commonly adopted strategies for managing and treating hospital effluents worldwide, focusing on the ability of the various treatments to remove the wide spectrum of pharmaceuticals contained therein. Some considerations are also made on the tools available for assessing the environmental risks posed by the discharge of hospital effluents, and, finally, guidelines for the best treatment options are proposed