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Surfactants are substances that when in aquatic environments can cause negative impacts. Hospital effluents carry numerous chemicals daily, including surfactants, used in sanitization and disinfection procedures. These chemicals are found in the effluents and reach water bodies due to a lack of proper removal in the wastewater treatment plants. The present study investigated data about wastewater monitored from healthcare facilities located in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, focusing on anionic surfactants. The results showed 72 establishments monitoring this parameter, resulting in a median concentration of 1 mg L -1 and 2.49 mg L -1 mean value of anionic surfactants, between 2007 and 2019. It is also observed in the correlation between surfactants and oils in all healthcare establishment sizes, except for the medium-sized. Although anionic surfactants are the most used in cleaning product formulations, cationic surfactants still do not have specific legislation in the studied country that dictates a limit for discharge into sewage; consequently, they are not routinely monitored in effluents. However, these compounds are used in the formulation of routine hospital products., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

Minas Gerais is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil; it is the fourth state with the largest territorial area and the second in number of inhabitants. Since 1997, the monitoring of the surface water quality of the State of Minas Gerais has been carried out. In this study, generalized regression models were constructed to determine the correlation between the Water Quality Index (WQI) and the sanitary and socioeconomic variables: Municipal Population, Human Development Index (HDI), Gini Index, Percentage of Vulnerables to Poverty (Poverty), Monthly Per Capita Income, Percentage of Inadequate or Poor Sanitation. In addition to the sanitary and socioeconomic variables listed, it also used year of water quality monitoring, altitude of the monitoring point, and distance from the monitoring point to the urban center of the municipality. The results from the generalized models showed that the variables year, altitude, Gini Index, monthly per capita income, and poor sanitation variables were positively associated with WQI. In other words, high values of each variable increased WQI, while population variables HDI and poverty were negatively related to WQI, that is, a high population value, HDI, or poverty implies a low WQI value. Socioeconomic variables such as HDI, Gini Index, poorness, or poor sanitation percentage present the coefficients with the largest modulus. Thus, among the socioeconomic variables studied, these are the ones that most contribute to the variability of WQI. The year and altitude variables have positive regression coefficients, indicating that when these variables increase, WQI also increases. The positive correlation with the year shows that the surface water quality of Minas Gerais improved during the monitoring years.

An evaluation of the environmental risk assessment (ERA) proposed by European Medicines Agency (EMA) and its applicability in Brazil was performed on ten of Belo Horizonte's most pharmaceuticals by the Brazilian National Health Service (SUS). The predicted environmental concentrations (PECs) was proposed, with some refinements to a better representation of the city of study. All PECs obtained were compared only to measured environmental concentrations around the world, due to the lack available data in the city of study and in Brazil. During the performance of EMA's guideline, the risk quotient (RQ) of impact was established through the ratio of PECs and predicted no-effect concentrations (PNECs). The PECs obtained in more refined phases show the initial evaluation of EMA's guideline, possible subdimensions, and the potential risks. The RQ for all studied pharmaceuticals ranges from clonazepam (1.26) to losartan (5457.45). These results indicate potential risks to the aquatic life present in the streams that receive the wastewater treatment plant's effluent. This risk can be spread since the streams carry these contaminants to other water bodies that undergo to multiple cities of Brazil, and even after dilutions, it can still be potentially toxic to the biotic life. ERA shows that it can be a useful tool for a better understanding and modeling of pharmaceuticals fate in the environment, specifically in water bodies. In addition, the usage of this model shows to be a useful tool that determines which contaminant should follow a more thorough study since the detection and analysis of pharmaceuticals in environmental samples are costly and technically challenging.