Data-Availability of Pharmaceuticals Detected in Water: An Evaluation Study by Order Theory (METEOR)

Abstract

The topic of pharmaceuticals in the environment is of increasing interest both to the scientific community as well as to the public. Although extensive research is currently under way the availability of data on ecological parameters is largely missing. In our research approach we evaluate the data-availability of 16 widely spread pharmaceuticals in 17 publicly available Internet databases. We apply the order theoretical software METEOR which allows the participation of stakeholders in the evaluation process and the software provides the stepwise introduction of weight. We take a closer look at the chosen four point source pharmaceuticals, two cytostatic agents Cyclophoshamide (CYC), 5Fluorouracil (FLU) and two contrast media Diatrizoate (DIT), Iopromide (IOP). Even for these pharmaceuticals the data-situation is extremely bad. Only the large databases ChemExper Catalog of Chemical Suppliers, Physical Characteristics (CEX) and RXList The International Drug Index (RXL) comprise all of the chosen pharmaceuticals. It has to be mentioned however that neither of these databases contain data on ecotoxicity and/or degradation and accumulation.