The DOI matches its Crossref record; 125 of the 125 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Pharmaceuticals in freshwater aquatic environments: A comparison of the African and European challenge
Open accessAbstract
Hundreds of tons of pharmaceutical compounds are annually dispensed and consumed worldwide. Pharmaceuticals are an important class of emerging environmental micropollutants: their presence in water bodies is an increasing environmental concern. The aim of this review paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the occurrence of pharmaceuticals in freshwater aquatic environments in the African and European context. A literature survey has been performed, resulting in 3024 data points related to environmental occurrence. The concentration levels of 71 pharmaceuticals were assessed. The top ten most frequently detected and quantified compounds in both continents were sulfamethoxazole, carbamazepine, diclofenac, trimethoprim, ibuprofen, naproxen, paracetamol (acetaminophen), ketoprofen, venlafaxine and clarithromycin. The maximum concentrations of 17β-estradiol, estriol, ciprofloxacin, sulfamethoxazole, paracetamol, naproxen reported in African aquatic environments were ~3140, ~20,000, ~125, ~100, ~215 and ~171 times higher, respectively, than the concentrations reported in European based studies. The variation in pharmaceutical consumption, partial removal of pharmaceuticals in wastewater treatment processes, and the direct discharge of livestock animal farm wastewater were identified among the major reasons for the observed differences. Several pharmaceuticals were found in aquatic environments of both continents in concentration levels higher than their ecotoxicity endpoints. In Europe, compounds such as diclofenac, ibuprofen, triclosan, sulfadimidine, carbamazepine and fluoxetine were reported in a concentration higher than the available ecotoxicity endpoints. In Africa, much more compounds reached concentrations more than the ecotoxicity endpoints, including diclofenac, ibuprofen, paracetamol, naproxen, ciprofloxacin, triclosan, trimethoprim, sulfamethoxazole, carbamazepine and fluoxetine, estriol and 17β-estradiol. Details for each therapeutic group are presented in this review.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Lewis, E. J., Hunsicker, L. G., Clarke, W. R., Berl, T., Pohl, M. A., Lewis, J. B., Ritz, E., Atkins, R. C., Rohde, R., & Raz, I. (2001) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa011303 · Cited by 5,987
Antibiotic resistance-the need for global solutions
Laxminarayan, R., Duse, A., Wattal, C., Zaidi, A. K. M., Wertheim, H. F. L., Sumpradit, N., Vlieghe, E., Hara, G. L., Gould, I. M., Goossens, H., et al. (2013) · The Lancet Infectious Diseases · doi:10.1016/s1473-3099(13)70318-9 · Cited by 4,439
Leucht, S., Cipriani, A., Spineli, L., Mavridis, D., Örey, D., Richter, F., Samara, M., Barbui, C., Engel, R. R., Geddes, J. R., et al. (2013) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(13)60733-3 · Cited by 2,561
Rizzo, L., Manaia, C., Merlin, C., Schwartz, T., Dagot, C., Ploy, M. C., Michael, I., & Fatta-Kassinos, D. (2013) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2013.01.032 · Cited by 2,493
Antibiotics and antibiotic resistance in water environments
Baquero, F., Martínez, J.-L., & Cantón, R. (2008) · Current Opinion in Biotechnology · doi:10.1016/j.copbio.2008.05.006 · Cited by 2,056
Emerging organic contaminants in groundwater: A review of sources, fate and occurrence
Lapworth, D. J., Baran, N., Stuart, M. E., & Ward, R. S. (2012) · Environmental Pollution · doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2011.12.034 · Cited by 1,895
Kasprzyk-Hordern, B., Dinsdale, R. M., & Guwy, A. J. (2009) · Water Research · doi:10.1016/j.watres.2008.10.047 · Cited by 1,678
Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products in the Environment: What Are the Big Questions?
Boxall, A. B. A., Rudd, M. A., Brooks, B. W., Caldwell, D. J., Choi, K., Hickmann, S., Innes, E., Ostapyk, K., Staveley, J. P., Verslycke, T., et al. (2012) · Environmental Health Perspectives · doi:10.1289/ehp.1104477 · Cited by 1,363
Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs): A review on environmental contamination in China
Liu, J.-L., & Wong, M.-H. (2013) · Environment International · doi:10.1016/j.envint.2013.06.012 · Cited by 1,357
The threat of antimicrobial resistance in developing countries: causes and control strategies
Ayukekbong, J. A., Ntemgwa, M., & Atabe, A. N. (2017) · Antimicrobial Resistance & Infection Control · doi:10.1186/s13756-017-0208-x · Cited by 1,315
Cited by
Sathishkumar, P., Meena, R. A. A., Palanisami, T., Ashokkumar, V., Palvannan, T., & Gu, F. L. (2020) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134057 · Cited by 445
Ortúzar, M., Esterhuizen, M., Olicón-Hernández, D. R., González-López, J., & Aranda, E. (2022) · Frontiers in Microbiology · doi:10.3389/fmicb.2022.869332 · Cited by 425
Molecularly imprinted polymer-based electrochemical sensors for environmental analysis
Rebelo, P., Costa-Rama, E., Seguro, I., Pacheco, J. G., Nouws, H. P. A., Cordeiro, M. N. D. S., & Delerue-Matos, C. (2021) · Biosensors and Bioelectronics · doi:10.1016/j.bios.2020.112719 · Cited by 325
Neha, R., Adithya, S., Jayaraman, R. S., Gopinath, K. P., M, P., L, P., & Arun, J. (2021) · Chemosphere · doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.129852 · Cited by 68
Anoob, F., Arachchi, S., Azamathulla, H. M., Al-mahbashi, N., & Rathnayake, U. (2024) · Case Studies in Chemical and Environmental Engineering · doi:10.1016/j.cscee.2024.100639 · Cited by 42
Metadata
- Authors
- Fekadu, S., Alemayehu, E., Dewil, R., & Van der Bruggen, B.
- Venue
- Science of The Total Environment
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2019-03
- Volume
- 654
- Pages
- 324-337
- ISSN
- 0048-9697 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2900095225
- Cited by
- 499
- References
- 125
- FWCI
- 14.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Pharmaceuticals in freshwater aquatic environments: A comparison of the African and European challenge. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.11.072
- The paper
- Fekadu, S., Alemayehu, E., Dewil, R., & Van der Bruggen, B. (2019). Pharmaceuticals in freshwater aquatic environments: A comparison of the African and European challenge. Science of The Total Environment. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.11.072
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
