Assessing the Existence of Pharmaceutical Compounds in Hospital Treated Wastewater (Case Study: Sedatives in One of the Hospitals in District 11 of Tehran)

Hospital wastewater is one of the most infectious and dangerous wastewaters that may contain large amounts of pathogenic microorganisms, dangerous pollutants of various hormones. More than 80 different types of drugs have been found that are not completely eliminated in biological processes and reach the receiving water. In this study, one of the important hospitals of Tehran, in a crowded area with high volume of referrals, was investigated. The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of drugs, especially sedative drug compounds, in hospital treated wastewater. For this purpose, instant sampling was carried out three times from the effluent of the hospital wastewater treatment plant and the samples were conditioned using solid phase extraction (SPE) method. The extracted materials were measured by HPLC equipped with UV and FLD detectors, resulting in the identification of various sedatives (including Diazepam, Oxazepam, Lorazepam, Alprazolam Clonazepam, Chlordiazepoxide, and Bromazepam). The mean concentration of sedatives in the January sampling showed that the highest concentration observed for Lorasepam with a mean of 0.15 ng/l and the lowest one for Chlordiazepoxide with a mean of 0.02 ng/l. The highest and lowest concentrations measured in February were 0.15 and 0.02 ng/l for Lorasepam and Chlordiazepoxide respectively.