Markers of cancer in sewage for assessing community health - Laura Ferrando - Spain

The evaluation of micropollutants as tracers of the water quality has become a trend topic within the scientific community because it allows obtaining a global view of the contamination levels in the different aquatic ambiences. These environmental marker s permit to establish relations between them, to identify their aquatic distribution or even to predict their occurrence in aquatic systems. Particularly, the consumption of the so-called cancer drugs, used in oncologic treatments, has considerably increa sed during last years and, based on growing of cancer incidence worldwide, the raise of their use in the next years can be foreseen. Consequently cancer drugs, their metabolites and specific cancer biomarkers are susceptible to reach in the sewage thus be come in environmental markers or tracers. The main goal will be the study of the occurrence of this group of therapeutic drugs from hospital effluents and urban wastewaters as anthropogenic tracers of urban pollution, cancer incidence and/or the chemother apy drugs consume as well as the evaluation of their potential ecotoxicity. In terms of Sewage Epidemiology the presence of those biomarkers and metabolites which are related with chemotherapy treatments will be studied and compared as the optimal tracer.