Investigations on pharmaceuticals and radioactive elements in wastewater from hospitals in Kuwait

A research studies were performed to characterize the wastewater generated from four hospitals located in Kuwait. In general, the wastewater generated from hospitals is discharged directly without any pre-treatment to public sewage treatment plants supervised by Ministry of Public Works (MPW). In this study, wastewater samples were collected on weekly basis from four hospitals (Al-Sabah, Al-Razi, Maternity and Chest diseases). Field wastewater measurements were carried out onsite for all sites including temperature, pH, electrical conductivity and oxidation– reduction potential. The collected samples were analyzed for determination of chemical parameters (total suspended solids and total dissolved solids), organic parameters including total organic carbon, chemical oxygen demand, biochemical oxygen demand and five dominate pharmaceutical compounds (four antibiotics sulfamethoxazole, metronidazole, ranitidine and trimethoprim plus paracetamol) and concentrations of radioactive elements in the wastewater (I-131, K-40, Tc-99m). The laboratory results indicated that all wastewaters from hospitals contained high levels of Tc-99m (0.14–14.151 Bq/L), I-131 (13.56–27.1 Bq/L), and low levels of K-40 (0.45–0.86 Bq/L). In addition, the pharmaceutics’ concentration results revealed a high concentration of paracetamol (580 μg/L), where the maximum was detected in wastewater from Al-Razi hospital. The study recommends construction of onsite wastewater pre-treatment units.