Increased population growth and food prices have resulted in more demand for fertilizers, especially phosphorus (P), to be used in agriculture and production of food crops. Phosphorus is one of the important natural resources and will be exhausted in the near future. Nowadays, struvite production is a good method to recover P from urine. However, the natural urines contain high amounts of micro-organic pollutants which may cause health risks. Therefore, in this contribution, we investigated the amount of micro-organic pollutants in struvite from urine. There are various kinds of pharmaceuticals and hormones which are used in the world. Nevertheless, we focused on 10 pharmaceuticals (amoxycillin, carbamazepine, erythromycin, furosemide, atenolol, ibuprofen, norfloxacin, trimethoprim, tetracycline, and acetylsalicylic acid) and one hormone (17β-estradiol) as representatives. The experiments were carried out with synthetic and natural urines. After the production of struvite, the results from synthetic and natural urine samples showed that only tetracycline, erythromycin, and norfloxacin remained in the struvite, and, especially, tetracycline remained in struvite with quite a high amount.
Potential Health Risks from Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in Marine Ecosystem
