3.2.3. Surface Waters

This aquatic body was clearly more problematic to the environment when compared to WWIs and WWEs since here is where most of aquatic life inhabits. However, like in the previous water compartments, RQs higher than 1 were observed for all trophic levels and therapeutic groups, with the exception of the anxiolytics. Antiepileptic, anti-inflammatories, antibiotics and hormones remained the therapeutic groups with the highest RQs (Figure 6).

1.E+5 1.E+4 1.E+3 1.E+2 1.E+1 1.E+0 1.E-1 1.E-2 1.E-3 1.E-4 1.E-5

The highest maximum and median values regarded IBU (16,327) and CAR (138) in invertebrates. There were still eighteen pharmaceuticals (AZI, CLA, CIP, ERY, BEZ, GEM, SIM, CAR, CIT, FLU, SER, DIC, IBU, PARA, E1, E2, αE2 and EE2) with RQs above 1.

Antibiotics still presented all of their maximum RQs higher than 1 for algae, whereas lipid regulators presented the same pattern for invertebrates. As for the antiepileptic, their maximum values were above one for algae and invertebrates. In SSRIs therapeutic group, CIT, FLU and SER were the ones that presented RQs higher than 1, contributing to the possible risk posed by this group. The hormones, regarding fish, still presented all median RQs higher than 1, with the exception of E1, with the EE2 obtaining the highest RQs for this trophic level.

As already mentioned, this water body, encompassing rivers and lakes, should be free from risk. Nonetheless, from the 28 detected pharmaceuticals, 18 presented maximum RQs above 1 and even 8 had median RQs superior to 1, posing a threat to all the aquatic organisms.

#### 3.2.4. Other Water Bodies

The results obtained for the RQs of other water bodies are presented in Figure 7. The RQs, in decreasing order, were groundwater, seawater, mineral water and drinking water. Since drinking water is usually obtained through surface and groundwaters, these results sugges<sup>t</sup> that the sources used to produce drinking water were the ones with lower pharmaceutical contaminations or that water treatment plants were removing the selected pharmaceuticals. The results obtained in seawater can be biased, since fresh water organisms were used to evaluate the risk and there are reports that marine organism can be more vulnerable, increasing the risk in this water matrix [178,179].

All of these compartments presented values above 1 for all trophic levels, with the exception of mineral water in algae, highlighting, once again, the pressure sustained by the aquatic organisms in all the aquatic compartments. This indicates that there is also a possible risk for humans. The therapeutic groups with higher maximum and median RQs are hormones, antiepileptic, antibiotics and anti-inflammatories, being the same groups as in WWIs.

With the exception of anxiolytics, all therapeutic groups still present RQ medians above 1, with 12 pharmaceuticals with maximum values above 1, and 11 with medians also higher than 1. If we use the threshold of 0.1, where some risk might be expected, we can find 16 of these compounds. Some RQs are still extremely high, with EE2 presenting values up to 91,150 and a median of 6091 for fish in groundwater. The higher RQs observed in these compartments were for CAR and IBU in invertebrates, and for hormones in fish.

Viewing these results, it is possible to observe not only high risk for aquatic organism in wastewaters but, despite the RQ reduction, several pharmaceuticals still promote risk in other supposedly cleaner aquatic matrices. Additionally, additive or even synergistic e ffects can occur, especially in the pharmaceuticals with the same mechanism of action [139–142].
