Pharmaceutical’s dynamic compounds have been found in surface waters worldwide and critical alert lately for their plausible environmental impacts. In this study, an environmental risk assessment for ibuprofen for the Eswatini, Ezulwini wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), and seven (7) WWTP in Taiwan are evaluated utilizing prescient qualities for five (5) years in Eswatini and one (1) year in Taiwan. Biochemical water quality boundaries are likewise measured for consistency with standard and removal efficiency in Eswatini. Boron is the solitary parameter that complied when compared with the Eswatini effluent guidelines, while phenol was high above just in 2015, 2017, and 2018. Ammonia in all five years had a maximum effluent value of 30mg/l; nitrate and nitrite showed excessive release with no consistency to the standard thus coming about to possibilities of eutrophication to discharge bodies. Faecal coliforms (FC) were extremely above the standard yet moderately shows a high removal efficiency. High value most of 100 mg/l for BOD5 in 2017, which is 10 times more than the effluent standard. Removal efficiency for all years showed boron having the lowest removal value of 32% and FC having maximum removal (98%), however, FC still cut down way above the standard even with higher removal rates. The occurrence of IBU in Eswatini and Taiwan influent range from 0-508.4µg/l and 0-111 µg/l. Effluent ranged from 4.66-34.6 µg/l and 5.3-9.2 µg/l. Lastly, the risk quotient (RQ) in Eswatini and Taiwan ranged from 0.06 - 88 and 0.1 – 540.5. Therefore, RQ value of more than 1 presents an applicable level of adverse effect in certain species in both countries.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i
ABSTRACT iii
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS v
TABLE OF CONTENTS vii
TITLE OF FIGURES ix
LIST OF TABLES xi
1. INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Background and motivation 2
1.2 Assumptions in the study 5
1.3 Research questions 5
1.4 Research Objectives 6
1.5 Research Process 7
2. LITERATURE REVIEW 9
2.1 Impacts of Ibuprofen in the environment 12
2.2 Application of environmental risk assessment of ibuprofen in previous studies 15
2.3 Previous research on other pharmaceutical pollutants in different regions 18
2.4 Pharmaceutical Wastewater and Waste Water Treatment Plants 22
2.4.1 Trickling Filters 22
2.4.2 Activated Sludge Process 26
2.5 Water quality parameters 29
3. METHODOLOGY 35
3.1 Description of Study Area: Ezulwini waste water treatment plant and Mbabane River and 7 cities in Taiwan 35
3.2 Data collection and Data Analysis 40
3.2.1 Water Quality Standards 40
3.2.2 Removal efficiency in the wastewater treatment plant 41
3.2.3 Linear Regression 41
3.2.4 Estimation of environmental risk 42
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 47
4.1 Water Quality Assessment using the Water Standard Criteria 50
4.2 Water Quality Parameters 50
4.3 Removal efficiency of water quality parameters 57
4.4 Predicted ibuprofen values 60
4.4.1 Ezulwini wastewater treatment Plant 62
4.4.2 Predicted values for 7 different wastewater treatment plants in Taiwan 65
4.5 Environmental Risk Assessment 68
4.5.1 Ecological Framework 69
4.5.2 Environmental risk assessment for Eswatini & Taiwan 70
4.5.3 Comparison of ERA findings with other studies 73
5. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 75
5.1 Conclusion 75
5.2 Suggestions 76
REFERENCES 79
APPENDIX 85

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