Emerging pollutants are thought to be responsible for the most significant share of environmental, human health and economic risk. Although the universe of chemical pollutants is enormous, we only monitor and have studied a minor fraction. The study of the fate of the emerging pollutants and their transformation products in wastewater-treatment plants (WWTP) is of paramount importance, since it can provide valuable information on the human consumption of various drugs. Sewage epidiomiology is the new field that was develloped for the estimation of illicit drug use based on measurements of urinary excreted illicit drugs and their metabolites in untreated wastewater. Within this approach, human metabolic excretion products resulting from drug consumption are rapidly collected and pooled by the sewage systems, providing valuable evidence of the amount and type of drug consumed by a population. The main objective of this research is the contribution to the current knowledge on the actual burden of micropollutants on the environment and on the effect they have on the human health.
