Pollution of Soil by Pharmaceuticals: Implications for Metazoan and Environmental Health

The use of pharmaceuticals has grown substantially and their consequential release via wastewaters poses a potential threat to aquatic and terrestrial environments. While transportation prediction models for aquatic environments are well established, they cannot be universally extrapolated to terrestrial systems. Pharmaceuticals and their metabolites are, for example, readily detected in the excreta of terrestrial organisms (including humans). Furthermore, the trophic transfer of pharmaceuticals to and from food webs is often overlooked, which in turn highlights a public health concern and emphasizes the pressing need to elucidate how today's potpourri of pharmaceuticals affect the terrestrial system, their biophysical behaviors, and their interactions with soil metazoans. This review explores the existing knowledge base of pharmaceutical exposure sources, mobility, persistence, (bio)availability, (bio)accumulation, (bio)magnification, and trophic transfer of pharmaceuticals through the soil and terrestrial food chains.