Advances in monitoring pharmaceuticals in an aquatic environment: Greenness assessment of analytical procedures

Pharmaceutical residues in the aquatic environment are of particular interest because, despite their presence in low concentrations, their adverse impact on both human health and entire ecosystems has been proven. Classic methods used in water monitoring require large amounts of organic solvents and generate large amounts of waste. Most of them are volatile and harmful to the environment. With the increase in public awareness, more and more attention is being paid to the development of green analytical procedures with less impact on the environment and workers. Moreover, metric tools have been developed for the evaluation of the greenness of proposed methods. This review presents and describes the advances of greening analytical procedures used in pharmaceuticals monitoring in an aquatic environment. The latest developments in eco-friendly sampling and sample processing strategies as well as green instrumental techniques for the determination of medicines in water were discussed.