Contaminantes emergentes em sistemas de tratamento de esgoto doméstico: impacto da carbamazepina na saúde e no meio ambiente

Abstract

Emerging micropollutants are contaminants, of natural or anthropogenic origin, not monitored or environmentally legislated, which may affect the quality of aquatic ecosystems and public health. Such microcontaminates include a variety of substances, including drugs, which draw attention, both for their occurrence in the environment and for their potential to cause adverse effects. The increasing use of medicines and their inappropriate disposal, which in turn persist in the effluents even after the treatments received, in the most diverse technologies, and return to the aquatic matrices is what contributes to environmental contamination. Studies coupling the occurrence of drugs in treated domestic effluents and the ecotoxicological representation of the consequences arising from environmental exposure are essential to understand the potential threats to public health, as there are still few studies on the relationship of damage to the genetic material of organisms exposed to these drugs -contaminants and their metabolites that may have biological action even at low concentrations. In this work, we observed the presence of a psychoactive drug, Carbamazepine-CBZ, which is widely used in the five continents of the world. Despite the extensive use of this compound, there is a lack of information about genetic toxicity, which makes the indirect consumption of this substance, through the aquatic matrix, a risk for populations. Given this context, the present work aimed to investigate the toxic potential of CBZ at the cellular level. In vitro assays in HepG2 cells for the evaluation of cytotoxicity and mutagenicity were performed, using the cell viability assay through the [3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2yl)-2,5- diphenyltetrazolium] bromide reduction test – MTT and the Micronucleus Assay with Cytokinesis Blockade – CBMN, respectively, in addition to discussing the advances and challenges for the implementation of regulations to establish limits for the release of drugs into the environment through the action of this compound, mainly involving the disposal of these compounds through domestic effluents and the contribution to surface water bodies. The results show that, even understanding the environmental and health consequences of drug contamination, there was insufficient practical implementation of knowledge through pro-environmental attitudes. The results also show that psychotropic compounds present in different environmental compartments, mainly aquatic matrices, have the potential to cause alterations in the genetic material of human liver cells. Therefore, this study as a whole leads to the conclusion that all these factors associated with the problem of the social and environmental policy presented - increasing use, inappropriate disposal and lack of regulation - may be contributing to contamination and, consequently, to the probable deregulation of proper functioning. genetics of the exposed organisms.